Author Archives: Captain Codpiece

Cultura Kaliningrad a World-Wide Beer Bonanza!

Cultura Bottle Shop in Kaliningrad

10 August 2023 ~ Cultura Kaliningrad a World-Wide Beer Bonanza!

The beer reviews that I have written to my blog number in the region of twenty five. That I have managed to fit these in between drinking beer is astonishing, but somehow they have taken shape. In these reviews I have dealt exclusively with beers sold through supermarkets, predominantly in PET bottles in regulated volumes of 1.35 to 1.5 litres, but the fact that I have homed in on this category of beer does not mean that during the course of my beer-drinking lifestyle, I have not permitted myself the pleasure of quaffing offerings of a more specialised nature, beers which by their craft or import status are generally considered more exotic and, as a consequence, more expensive.

Thus, in addition to my reviews of the best and the worst of Kaliningrad’s ‘run of the mill’ bottled beer, I give you fair warning that I am now about to embark on the no less difficult appraisal of craft and speciality imported beers.

As in my last series of highly professional and sensible reviews, it is my intention to stick to beers purchased through supermarkets and/or specialist beer-selling outlets, in other words from what we call in England off-sales rather than licensed premises, such as bars, cafes, restaurants and hotels or, to be more precise, beers sold in bottles as distinct from barrel-stored, tap-dispensed beverages.

Whilst supermarkets and smaller shops in Kaliningrad may stock one or two more exotic brands of beers supplementary to their standard fare, such commodities are typically to be found in greater abundance and choice in specialist retail outlets. A number of such establishments abound in Kaliningrad, but one of the best by virtue of its diverse selection and quality has to be Cultura.

Cultura Kaliningrad

Cultura’s pedigree is accredited by discerning beer-buying and drinking afficionados, whose approving comments feature regularly on various beer-tickers’ websites.

Cultura is situated on one of Kaliningrad’s busy city thoroughfares, Prospekt Mira. As with many other shops in Kaliningrad, it is located on the ground floor of a three or four storey block of flats, whose size and scale dwarfs its presence and understates its potential. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the fact that seasoned beer drinkers are like seasoned hunters — they have a nose for their quarry — the shop and its myriad delights could easily be passed by. True, the Russian word for beer (peeva) is large enough not to be missed, but the back-to-basics look, which may or may not be designer inspirited, is a little too convincing when viewed against the backdrop of the tired old flats in which it is framed. However, first impressions can be deceptive, and don’t we drinkers know it, and any misgivings and apprehensions that may be unjustly inferred are swept away immediately once you have wassailed inside.

In fact, once inside Cultura one’s senses positively reel! The shop has an awful lot of beer, an awesome lot of different beers, and even after closing your eyes, opening them again, rubbing them and pinching yourself, the notion that you might have died and gone to beer-shop heaven is delightfully ineffaceable.

Cultura Kaliningrad

I am not much of a traveller, so Cultura is my compensation. Its beers, sourced from around the world, enable me to globe trot at will. I can be in Germany one minute and Belgium the next. I can even be back in Great Britain, no passport or visa required, all that is needed is cash and in the globalist era of touch-card technology even that is not an impediment ~ or so they would have us believe!

Cultura is like a library, and whilst not all drinkers are readers and not all readers are drinkers, who could resist working their way through the legion of beer-bottle labels that line Cultura’s shelves. Volumes and volumes of labels and each label speaking volumes; talk about spoilt for choice! Where on earth does one start?

A good starting point could be strength, country of origin, dark beer or hoppy light, bottle size and cost. Alternatively, you could invite your curiosity to take you where it will, which is more or less the path that I took. As I travelled around the world in my own inimitable way, marvelling at the exhibits, as unique and individual as anything in an art gallery, price became a factor, albeit a not defining one, in the process of selection.

Mick Hart samples Kaliningrad imported beers

Above: Mick Hart in Cultura: one photo was taken during the Plandemic; the other later. Bet you can’t guess which is which?!

Translating roubles into pounds based on the exchange rate on any given day is never easy; performing the calculation as an aid to purchasing beer is analogous to acrobatics, and whilst it may not, and often does not, provide the safety net you hope it will, price variations in Cultura are sufficiently dramatic to make falling back on this methodology an imperfect reassurance.

On my first visit to Cultura at the height of the Plandemic in November 2021, the exchange rate was such that it allowed me to cut some slack, and I was not particularly concerned about paying 350 to 400 roubles for a litre bottle of beer (then about £4.50) even though in those days the average price for a 1.5 litre bottle available from supermarkets was under £1.50. “Treat yourself!” I thought, and so I did.

Come 2023, however, I was less complacent. This was the time when the rouble was billed as the ‘best performing currency in the world’, thanks to the fiscal measures taken to equalise the impact of western sanctions. The resultant disparity in the price and value of craft and imported beers had me effectively sanction myself. Unlike the big sanctions, however, whose efficacy are questionable, my little, private sanctions were not so ill conceived that they would come back later to bite my arse; they were modest in proportion and tenable in their application, working on the kind of budget that the Bank of England can only dream of. Even so, speciality beers, particularly imported ones, have always come with a higher price tag wherever you might be domiciled, and those in Cultura are no exception. I will leave you to decide whether or not you would be prepared to pay £15 or more for a litre bottle of beer.

“Ay up, mother, I think it’s off to the working man’s club!” (Note: Working Men’s Clubs are no longer permissible in British society: (a) because we no longer have a ‘working class’ and Benefit Class does not sound near as 21^st century as politicians would like, and (b) to have a man’s club or a man’s thing of any kind in the UK is impermissible under the ‘Everyone has to be Queer Act’ [source: Winky’s Guide to British Law by N.O. Balls])

That having been said, and I am sorry that it has been, but things do have a habit of popping out (when you least expect them to) [source When I Was Young by Y. Fronts], the price range in Cultura is flexible enough to ease the stays on your wallet without making you walk lop-sided. And once everything is paid for, it all fits snugly in a nice paper bag.

There are red flags and red lights: one is to a bull which the other is to need, and there are green lights that mean Go. Which is why I went to Cultura. No one should court seduction until it becomes a vice, but every once in a while passion needs an outing. Remember the words that your maiden aunt should have listened to but didn’t: ‘a little of what you fancy does you good!’

Cultura has a lot of that little and plenty more besides. You won’t be sorry you went there!

More beer delights in Kaliningrad
The London Pub
Sir Francis Drake
Four great Kaliningrad bars
Dreadnought

The main thing

Cultura Bottle Shop
Prospekt Mira, 46-48, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 236022
Tel: +7 911 860-78-50

Opening times
Fri & Sat 11am to 1pm
Sun to Thurs 11am to 10pm

Website
https://vk.com/culturabottleshop/

Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket is No Woke

“I don’t see it like that!”

All it took was a bag of frozen peas left on the end of the checkout conveyor belt, my public spiritedness and up went the balloon. And it was high drama at the local supermarket.

1 August 2023 ~ Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket is No Woke

I had just arrived at the local supermarket checkout with my week’s shopping ~ six bottles of beer, a can of cheap beans and a pound of liver, which I will need to replace mine if I carry on drinking like this ~ when I espied a lonely bag of frozen peas beached on the metallic rim at the end of the conveyor belt.

There was only one person in the queue in front of me, an elderly black lady.

“Are these yours?” I politely asked her, nodding towards the peas.

“No,” she replied, in a strong Jamaican accent, then, whistling through her teeth, asked “Why do people do such things?”

“A sign of the times,” I replied.

I began to unload my purchases from the basket to the conveyor belt, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

A lady, unusually large for the time of year, one of those scarred for life by the coronavirus Plandemic who cannot escape from her facemask, was asking me: “Are these your frozen peas?”

“No,” I answered. “I asked the lady in front of me the same question.”

A public-spirited person, ie me, then sought to bring the lonesome bag of peas to the attention of the foreign gentleman manning the checkout (‘manning’, we are not supposed to say that, are we?’).

“It’s OK,” he said, in a strong foreign accent, “Lady has gone to get something.”

That told me. But hardly had he finished speaking than he began to take a peculiar interest in something at the checkout opposite. He continued to look in that direction, calling as he did so, “Lady, lady, your things here!”

I looked where he was looking. The ‘lady’ to whom his comments were addressed, presumably she who had left the frozen peas, was standing in the opposite queue. She was big and black with a face resembling something that Buffalo Bill Cody would have been familiar with. Just then we, the elderly black lady who had spoken to me earlier and who was in the process of paying for her goods, glanced at each other. A second earlier she had turned her head to look at the culprit who had abandonned her frozen peas. The elderly lady seemed embarrassed. Hurriedly stuffing her last purchase into her bag, she scurried off, leaving me to mull over her question, “Why do they do it?” Why, indeed?

The foreign white gentleman manning the checkout was still appealing to the foreign black lady’s responsibilities, trying to get her to take the frozen peas back to the refrigerator, but whilst the peas were rapidly thawing, she was frozen within her ignorance.

“They [the peas] will defrozen,” called the checkout man, “defrozen, and then we will have to throw them in the bin.”

At long last, the ‘lady found her voice: “I don’t see it like that,” she retorted.

Now there’s an answer for you!

Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket is No Woke

It was evident by now that the checkout man was flogging a dead horse, buffalo or something. He got up, strode down to the end of his conveyor belt, grabbed the peas and headed towards the fridge.

“It’s all happening at Fiddles today,” said I. “Such drama!”

The mask-wearing woman looked the other way, just in case her mask was not as foolproof as they had made her believe. The little middle-class lady standing behind her ~ and you don’t get a lot of them in Fiddles, come to think of it, you don’t see many of them in Bedford town centre ~ sniggered but did not utter a word.

The white checkout man from who knows what country strode back, resumed his seat and staring into the middle distance said, with an expression of incredulity, “Lady got same products but leave these, why?”

“Cuh,” I chimed, “It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

And it didn’t, particularly as he was white and the frozen-pea leaver was black.

I half expected her to suddenly burst into a tirade of, “Yu wacist! Yu wacist, yu are!” and dash from the shop.

She would then complain online to her friends, who would then alert the authorities, who would then contact Fiddles’ management and demand an apology. The Guardinistan and the BBC would get wind of the situation and commence a campaign on the black woman’s behalf, reporting that she had been so terribly traumatised by the outrageous request to return the peas to the fridge that it had caused her to lose her self-esteem, not to mention her self-respect, and that, as a result, she could no longer go to the supermarket unless she was accompanied either by her grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews or nieces, preferably all of them together, which is why they are currently bobbing about in an inflatable dinghy on the English Channel, soon to dock at Dover from whence they will be V.I.P. driven to a nice five-star hotel, providing there are any left that are not already full.

Frozen Peas in Bedford

Shortly, a solicitor, one of those who specialises in just these sorts of cases, would volunteer to represent her. Her case would go to court. Naturally, the LLJUK (Liberal Left Judiciary UK) would award her compensation ~ a frozen packet of Fiddles’ peas for life to be delivered every week by hand by Fiddles’ CEO and in addition, and just for good measure, a handout of two million quid.

As for the white foreign gentleman, who had been totally out of order for calling the woman’s attention to the bag of peas she had ditched, he would be sacked forthwith, and his bank, The Cashless Globalist Inc., would immediately close his account Nigel Farrage-style, and wouldn’t that serve him white! What would he do? Where would he go? No lifetime’s guarantee of frozen peas for him. How would he survive in an overpriced country dominated by profiteering supermarkets, greedy utility companies, extorting financial institutions and totally in-the-pocket-of-George-Sorryarse MPs? There would be nothing for it but to turn gay, join the British Army, sue them for being beastly to him, or perhaps not beastly enough (pass the mascot, ‘Woof!’), and leave the service with his own compensation.

It’s not what you do; it’s the way that you do it … and in the UK that’s a fact!

Pass the peas, please!

Links to ….

Three Kaliningrad babushkas in a bread shop
Secret Weapon in Kaliningrad
Russia’s love of cakes differs from the UKs‘
It’s that man in the Russian hat in Bedford!

Don’t Kill Cash!

Don’t Let Them Get Away with It!

Don’t Kill Cash. They have tried terrifying and jabbing you into submission, they have weaponized immigration and now the banks are putting the boot in.

24 July 2023 ~ Don’t Let Them Kill Cash

When the news broke about Farage having been turned into a martyr by the pseudo-liberal banking system, I kept an open mind. It was only when the BBC, that organisation to which you are forced to pay a licensing fee for stuff you do not want to see or hear, the same organisation for which Jimmy Saville used to work, was mentioned in the same breath as the bank in question and soon afterwards a flurry of responses appeared in the liberal-left controlled media refuting Nigel’s claim that he had been politically shafted, and the usual suspects on social media and the establishment media lackies claiming that Farage’s accounts had been closed as his wealth had dropped below a certain threshold, that I began to grow suspicious.

Then, on 10 July, Farage announces on Twatter that he has proof that the bank lied to him and that he, the man who had single-handedly wrested us from the grasping clutches of the Evil Union, was polishing up his crusade whistle in order to expose the machinations of a woke-oriented banking system, the same system, the same people, behind the covert operation to replace cash completely in favour of electronic transactions, which, as every schoolboy knows, is not just a means of financial control but a giant stride towards totalitarian tyranny, the perfect model, in fact, for tracking, surveillance, threat and extortion.

OTT? Think Justin Turdeau and the control template he gave to his globalist chums, when the only way he could stop his country’s patriotic truckers, whose gallant siege exposed him for what he was ~ a very horrible Turdeau ~ was to weaponise the banks.

WOKE WATCH UK!

Don’t Kill Cash!

I hadn’t heard of the Don’t Kill Cash campaign until I tuned into Farage’s bank debacle; in fact, I think a great many other people were most likely oblivious to it ~ so thank you the globalist banking system for victimising Nigel Farage and bringing this latest plot of yours to everyone’s attention.

It’s bad enough to be incessantly told that we live in a democratic society where freedom of speech is sacrosanct, when every time we open out mouths we have to say in a whisper, whilst taking a backwards glance, “We’re not supposed to say that!” Imagine what it will be like if the globalist banking system gets you by the balls (LGBTQ Z It Others + ??? WTF included, where physically applicable.).

‘I’m sorry we’ve closed your account because you did not “take a knee” (although we, the bank, will give you one!); because you resisted the globalist jab; because you used the expression bum bandit; because you complained about the State-facilitated third-world invasion; because you don’t believe a word the UK media says about Ukraine; because you won’t roll over and accept socially engineered multiculturalism, which would not be so bad if it worked, but it doesn’t; because you are not a fan of woke; because you like the expression ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’; because you suspect that the climate-change industry is just that ~ an industry; because you believe that the UK establishment is using ‘unstoppable immigration’ as an excuse to rejoining the Evil Union; because you oppose woke at every level; because you want to see law and order restored on the streets; because you ardently support the abolition of political brainwashing in the British education system; because you don’t want to pay the BBC license fee because the BBC is politically biased; because you cannot bear to watch television anymore, especially the commercials; because you don’t want to pay £4 for a packet of breakfast cereal, £3.90 for a bottle of brown sauce and thousands of pounds to greedy, profiteering utility companies; and, most of all, because you love the country you had and hate the mess that it has become. Er, did I forget to mention because up every glove-puppet UK politician you can see the hand of the super-rich?’

“I’m sorry, we’ve closed your bank account because you refused to wear a Zelensky T-shirt!”

“But I’m wearing Ukrainian flag-coloured underpants, and I changed my avatar to ‘I’ll stand where I’m told too’, rather than use my brain cell!”

“That’s not good enough! We need to see evidence of total compliance!”

Don’t KIll Cash campaign

The GB News Don’t Kill Cash campaign is said to be one of the fastest-growing campaigns in UK history.

‘Whether it’s confusing parking apps, educating children about money, giving a quid to a busker or leaving a tip in a restaurant, the rise of the surveillance society or just your local pub suddenly insisting on card payments only, more and more people are getting in touch to tell us why they’re infuriated by ‘cashless’ Britain and support our stand.’ ~ GB News Don’t Kill Cash campaign

Don’t let them get away with it! Add your name to the Don’t Kill Cash petition today: https://www.gbnews.com/cash

It is gratifying to see the BBC and other confederates of the lefty media not so much climbing down from their high-ground perches as being knocked off them yet again by Nigel Farage. Even more gratifying to hear Nigel Farage say that he is not going to let it rest there. The media, certain factions of it, is changing its underwear faster every minute as it struggles to free itself from the straightjacket inevitability of having to issue a formal apology to Nigel Farage, following its disingenous kneejerk response to Farage’s victimisation.

The following quotes have been taken from the Reform Party email letter.

Extracts from a newsletter from Nigel Farage as UK Honary President of the political party Reform UK
“Without a bank account you are a non-person in the digital age. Decent people are living in fear. I am going to fight this all the way.

Hundreds of thousands more people live in fear of cancel culture. Whether in their jobs or on social media, they might also begin to fight back against woke bullying. In fact millions of people around the country have had enough of being told what they can and can’t say.

The old mainstream parties have betrayed us. It is because of them that our most basic freedoms are being destroyed.

Labour and the Tories had no intention of controlling immigration or delivering on Brexit. I despise what they have done to our country.

Reform UK are now the only party who are prepared to fight for our freedom and I am proud to be our party’s Honorary President. “

The task ahead is even bigger than Brexit. It is only just beginning, and we have an enormous opportunity to take our country back. I’m standing with you as I have always done, against an establishment determined to tear our country down. Together, I know we can Make Britain Great.”

Link to REFORM UK

😮 Woke UK Banks Need to be More Accountable

Image attributions:
Bank building: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Bank-vector-clip-art/6595.html
Devils’ face: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Devil-head-vector-clip-art/15602.html
No Exit Sign: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/No-exit-vector-sign/10341.html

Victor Ryabinin Artist Four Years Out of Time

Victor Ryabinin left Königsberg in 2019 to go back there. There is so much presence in his absence that it is hard to say if he ever went at all.

18 July 2023 ~ Victor Ryabinin Artist Four Years Out of Time

Featured image: Victor Ryabinin with Mick Hart, The London Pub, Kaliningrad, 2015

Our friend, artist, philosopher and local historian, VIctor Ryabinin, who lived out his entire life in Königsberg, died on 18 July 2019. He was, as I and others have written, a most unassuming, but in spite of and because of this, most remarkable man, both intellectually and on the level of humanity.

This is the first year that I will be unable to make the annual homage to his grave, as I am in England at present doing all the things that we people have to do whilst we are alive and which, when we die, mean very little if nothing to anyone. “Is it worth it?” sang Elvis Costello.

Such is not the case with Victor: Victor left behind a concatenation of friends and colleagues who filled the hall at his funeral to pay their last respects to him, who have written heart-felt eulogies to him, enough to fill a book, and who continue to speak of him with great affection and reverence. This is the yardstick of a worthwhile life: to have people remember you for the essence of the person you were and the light that you brought to their life.

It was a small affair, my funeral: There was the vicar, who begrudgingly turned out on a wet afternoon when the pubs were open, Ginger the cat, who had nothing better to do, and two professionals from Rent A Mourner. No one could be asked to dig the grave, so they used a post-hole digger and buried me standing up. My brother, the one who is a carpenter, made the coffin from MDF, his stock-in-trade material and, in order to keep things cheap, cut corners literally so that my feet stuck out one end. Happily ~ purely for the sake of appearances, mind, nothing to do with respect ~ someone found an old pair of wellies, so that took care of that.

Leonard Cohen was played throughout, and a man, chosen because of his serious face and the fact he cost a fiver, read an excerpt from my favourite short story, Ligeia, by Edgar Allan Poe, and then the graveside bystanders, muttering “He always was a miserable bugger.” ~ Ginger the cat said “Meow!” ~ off they went to the nearest pub at a gallop and by the time their first pint had been downed they had forgotten I ever existed.

Victor Ryabinin Artist

Something as ignominious as this could never happen to the likes of Victor Ryabinin, because he was a truly likeable man: admired, respected, loved, revered, warm of company and generous in spirit.

In 2022, we privately and officially celebrated Victor’s life and commemorated his death with a plaque that we had commissioned, and which is now attached to the wall of our dacha. There was talk once, there always is a lot of talk full of good intentions immediately after someone dies, of erecting a plaque in Victor’s honour on the wall of the building where his studio once was. It is a great pity that this idea has never been brought to fruition, as many people ~ poets, architects, historians, artists, museum curators and me ~ were privileged to sit with him there, surrounded by relics from Königsberg and the artworks created in his own hand, artworks which these relics, these haunting pieces of the past combined with his personal memories, had assigned him to compose and pass on for posterity.

Another building that deserves to be endowed with a plaque in memory of Victory Ryabinin is the Kaliningrad Art School, where Victor worked as an art teacher for many years. His former students speak warmly of him, both of the man and the teacher, and it is gratifying to discover that the inspiration that he instilled shines through their sketches and paintings, which are displayed at various times in solo exhibitions and with the works of other artists in Kaliningrad’s art museums.

Today, I am far away and unable to make my annual trip to Victor’s graveside. When he died, I vowed this would never happen, but show me the man who is master of his destiny and we’ll sit together and talk of lies. Fortunately, our minds are capable of travelling far greater distances than any machine, and special people and unique places never stray far from our thoughts. They are a source of great comfort in its ever having been and a source of equal pain in its never to be again.

What happens to the heart? Leonard Cohen asks. And well he might. Whatever it is, we have no choice but to live with it, if only, thankfully, for a little while longer ~ somehow.

Victor Ryabinin
Arrived in Königsberg 17^th December 1946
Returned to Königsberg 18^th July 2019

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian: A biographical essay by author Boris Nisnevich

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad: Mick Hart recalls how fortunate he was to have met and to have known Victor Ryabinin

“Through Victor, I learnt many things that I had seen throughout my life in Königsberg but had never really thought about.“ ~ Stanislav Konovalov, student and personal friend of Victor Ryabinin

Woke UK Banks Need to be More Accountable

Nigel Farage Warns Don’t Bank on it!

10 July 2023 ~ Woke UK Banks Need to be More Accountable

You don’t have to look very far in the UK to find another pitiful example of Woke, or political correctness as it used to be known. The media landscape has more examples dotted around its internet sites and corporate TV outlets than there are small boats of smiling immigrants disembarking on Dover’s shores. But you may have been surprised to learn that Nigel Farage, no less, has been singled out for special treatment by the western globalist banking cartel, which has withdrawn his banking facilities.

WOKE WATCH UK!

Now, picking on a high-profile figure like Nigel Farage at a time when trust in the UK political establishment is at an all-time low is probably not the smartest thing to do. Of course, we cannot say without a shadow of a doubt that Farage’s banking difficulties are ideologically motivated, but when you delve a little deeper suspicion begins to accrue. And if the smoke is not without fire, then someone in the world of banking has really gone and shot themselves in their ideological hoof.

Woke UK Banks

According to Mr Farage, the bank, with whom he had been a customer for years, suddenly and without explanation, closed down his account. So go and open an account elsewhere. Well, this is what he tried to do, but the first bank he approached refused him, the second bank refused him and so on and so on and so on … (Nigel Farage YouTube).

Katie Hopkins, who is very good at grasping the nettle of truth, because she has learnt the hard way, reviews the ‘noise around Farage’ in the context of her own experience and the experience of others like her (Katie Hopkins, YouTube).

It is obvious from Katie’s videos and the commentary that accompanies them that there is a firm and growing belief among UK legacy Britons, who are far from happy with the ‘liberal’ status quo, that the UK’s answer to the Chicago Outfit, the super-rich elite, syndicates with other globalist lynchpins ~ political establishment + corporate media + partisan judiciary + banking institutions ~ to exert their collective power, and whilst they casually talk the talk of democracy subvert it to its lowest level by robbing those individuals of whom they are afraid of the right to freedom of speech and by depriving and dispossessing them of their socio-economic existence.

Katie Hopkins, who asserts that she was turned into a ‘non-person’ by the machinations of the powers that be, acknowledges the many unsung heroes of Britain’s growing Resistance, the ordinary people with no public voice, who have fallen foul of the cancel culturists and their ideological programme.

Woke UK Banks Need to be More Accountable

So how credible is it that Nigel Farage woke up one morning and found himself in bed with Katie and Tommy Robinson? Providing the closing of his accounts are ideologically motivated, which by all accounts ~ and closed accounts ~ it appears they may have been, then sadly the answer is incontrovertibly. We know stranger things happen at sea. Just think of the Royal Navy escorting rubber dinghy after rubber dinghy daily into Dover.

Now, as everybody knows, none more so than the liberal left, Nigel Farage is not a man to provoke. He is the man who took on the EU octopus and beat it single handedly. Look out naughty banks! Another irony is that closing down his bank account could not have come at a less propitious moment for the woke-obsessed establishment.

Breaking News!

For hot on the heels of the Farage story, came the sensational revelation that a clergyman living in Yorkshire had suffered a similar fate. The vicar’s (There’s something so delightfully English about ‘vicar’, don’t you think?) building society whipped away its welcome mat from beneath his reverence’s feet simply because he was straight talking ~ perhaps because he is straight? Believing naively in the corny old mantra that he lived in the land of free speech ~ hadn’t the political establishment and BBC been telling him this for years? ~ instead of holding back like many people do (We are not supposed to say that, are we?), he criticised the building society of which he had been a client for years, for promoting gender issues.

For this unforgiveable sin, he was promptly given the bumsrush. He was stripped of his pieces of plastic. The bank pulled down his accounts and, finding himself in Queer Street, a very unpleasant place to be, almost as bad as Radio 3, he was given a proper defrocking, if only in the financial sense. When the Mail Online latched onto this, it and its readers went ballistic, and then, as usual, they made some tea and quietly went back to the crossword.

Seven across: Every shirt has a silver lining, even a lifted shirt.

The dual plights of Mr Farage and the vicar of Wake-up-Call, serve to remind us yet again of the financial tsars central role in pushing the pseudo-liberal agenda.

It is bad enough that all of us are expected to change our avatars to the colours of the Ukrainian flag, when most of us have no idea where exactly Ukraine is or what we are changing our avatars for. What next? Compulsory membership of the Fudge Packers’ Union and mandatory Gay Pride jabs? Thank heavens for the prophesy that Pride comes before a fall and that still strong countries like Russia are determined to make a stand, acting as a bulwark against the rising tide of Western woke.

As the political elite and banking institutions push us towards a cashless society to achieve their tripartite goal of surveillance, tracking and control, the daunting realisation that it is no longer politicians but super-rich globalist bankers who run our western countries and who are sufficiciently confident and arrogant enough to go way beyond cancelling culture to rubbing you out completely, is a sobering thought indeed.

I now have proof of being lied to by @CouttsandCo over PEP status.

They are dishonest in the extreme and above all else breached privacy. I am considering my options.

Closing bank accounts, and a cashless society, means complete control. We must fight these corporate forces. pic.twitter.com/sPvOutn2cH
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) July 10, 2023

The time is coming fast when the only way to thrive and prosper in UK Plc is to sit on a sunbed for a week, wrap yourself in a blanket, grab the latest hi-tech phone, jump an inflatable dinghy and steam across the channel with the aid of the Royal Navy to be given a nice, free comfortable room in a top UK hotel.

No need to hurry; no need to rush; no need to have a bank account as the trip is all-inclusive. And the offer is ending no time soon.

Oh Hokey Wokey Cokey
Woke and Hypocrisy: it really is God Save the King!
Woke Watch PC UK!
Colston Woke Statue 4 Scratch the Itch of History
Keep Woke out of Football!

Image attributions
Credit card: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Golden-Credit-Card-Vector/2843.html
Parrot: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Stylized-Parrot/44695.html

Further reading
British building society admits closing accounts …
Banks free speech blacklisted accounts …

Bletsoe Garden Fête in an Aston Martin DB2/4

Bletsoe Garden Fête is just one event on Mick Hart’s enviable social calendar. This year he put away his bicycle clips and went by Aston Martin instead.

2 July 2023 ~ Bletsoe Garden Fête in an Aston Martin DB2/4

Among the high-quality merchandise that I am disposing of at present, I happened upon a box full of the 1960s’ educational comic for children Look and Learn.

Opening the pages of these august volumes, I was treated to a compendium of educational articles, some features, others comic strip but all superbly illustrated and all reminding me of the way we were when England was really England.

The content of the magazines reflected the educational ethos of the time, presenting informative articles of a historic, scientific, cultural and practical nature. The scope of the subject matter was world-wide but the emphasis was squarely placed on inculcating the young into appreciating the unrivalled part that England played in the evolution of the civilised world. Topics ranged from famous English people to national passtimes to traditional British games to great events in British history, so that it was impossible not to come away from the magazine instilled and inspirited with a patriotic sense of pride.

It was at that moment that a modern-day version of Look and Learn insinuated itself into my unguarded imagination. There it was saturated with Black Lives Matter, the joys of immigration, LGBTQ+ZX!!&£££, Radio Zelensky, how to adapt your broom cupboard to house an economic migrant, and how to get out of Brexit free. It was also spattered with lots of adverts, just like those we see on TV, which show people from far flung places acting and talking like cloned English persons eating roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with lashings of Bisto gravy. Ahh Bisto. Ahh Bullshit. I’ve always been a green bananas and bread-fruit man myself.

Bread fruit are marvellous. It occurs to me that they are the humane steam-powered alternative to Scotland’s McSporan haggis. I like them, which is more than I can say for cricket. I have never liked cricket, correction, I never liked playing cricket, but whenever I take a turn through the English countryside in the midst of summer the sight of men dressed in their cricketing whites and the sound of leather on willow is most inspiring. BDSM aside, (it’s always gone on in English villages) another revered and quite frankly reassuring English tradition has to be the garden fête, or garden fetty, as my wife liked to call them.

Now that summer is here and the nights are growing whiter, as in gentlemen in their cricketing whites, it is difficult to decide which is the most exciting: men stumping their middle wickets or England’s profusion of garden fêtes.

“It’s come to something,” said my brother, “when all we’ve got to get excited about is the local village garden fête. But this is unfair, if not true. It’s when your calendar has a string of garden fêtes on it and nothing else that you should be worried.

Anyway, not that we have a list of local garden fêtes you understand, but our first fête this year was Bletsoe, to which we would be going in style. My brother had changed his socks, and I had my Russian hat on. Oh yes, and we were also going there in a vintage 1954 classic Aston Martin.

Now, to look at this Aston Martin you might think, ‘Look at the state of that!!’, or you could, as I overheard some chaps saying when we arrived at Bletsoe Garden Fête, “You don’t see many DB2/4s in original condition.” To repaint or not to repaint, that is the ££££ question?

Aston Martin DB2/4

The Aston Martin DB2/4 was produced from 1953-1957. The model shown here is a a four-seater drophead coupé, The engine is a Lagonda straight-6, 2.9 L, providing the vehicle with 140hp and a top speed of 120mph [193km/h]. A DB2/4 Mk I drophead coupé featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds.

The Aston shown here is one of the few to have survived in its original untouched condition. Most Aston connoisseurs argue that the vehicle should not be resprayed but left as it is. The engine has been rebuilt.

Having videoed our trip to the fête from the inside of the Aston, we stopped out front Bletsoe Church to allow Martin to blow a hole through the wall of his wallet and steal a fiver for the entrance fee.

This difficult operation accomplished, but not without some groaning and sighing, we pulled up at the entrance to the field where a young lady asked us, “Are you exhibiting?”

“We’re not,” replied brother Joss, “but he is (pointing to Martin]. He’s got no trousers on?”

The fact that we were exhibiting but still had to pay an entrance fee was a bit rich in my opinion, even if the money was going to a good cause — the vicar’s holiday in St Tropez. But I put it down to the mercenary sign of the times and quickly blamed it on Russia.

The man who took the fiver off us was not the girl on the gate, well who knows what gender anyone is in England nowadays? The fiver took, someone then told us that if we headed in that direction towards the field, someone’s wife will be there to show you where to park.

Another someone said, mention no names, “I bet she isn’t, she’s most likely behind the hedge in the arms of another man!” [That comment loses something in translation, but this is a family blog.] Anyway, there was no one there when we got there, or where we thought we ought to be, so we parked up and jumped out. Actually, we struggled out accompanied by lots of geriatric groans and ‘oo-ahhh!’ noises. Aston Martin DB2/4s are certainly young men’s cars.

We hadn’t been there more than five minutes rubbing Fiery Jack into our joints when three more young men arrived, all driving early 1960s’ Ford Zodiacs. I liked the model that starred in the old 60s’ TV series Z Cars. It was, reputedly, the first 100mph car on the road. That taught the crooks! It did, they all went out and got Jags. As for the pink-outside, pink-inside job (see photo), well what can you possibly say? The owner-driver had even taken the trouble to ensure that the 1960s’ music seemingly coming from the car’s original radio only played hits up to the time that the car was produced and no later.

Once the circulation had come back, we began to circulate. There were a number of stalls in the offing and the first we visited was one that was selling vintage clothes. Nothing they stocked caught my eye and the clothes that caught my brother’s also got caught around his stomach, so we had to pass.

Sitting next to the clothes stall was a man surrounded by treen (look it up!).

“Did you make it all yourself?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “I’ve always been good with my hands.”

The wife of the man whom he said would be there was nowhere to be seen.

Today would be a day when I would meet people that I had not seen for some time ~ those who thought of coronavirus have an awful lot to answer for. The problem was that they all seemed to be faces with no names. You know the situation: “Hello, how are you, er …”

“Yes, I’m alright. How are you, er …?”

“Are you still …?”

“Yes, I am. Are you?”

“To the best of my ability.”

“How’s your wife?”

“I haven’t got one, but I’ve got somebody else’s …”

Wherever was that car-parking woman?

“How’s yours …?”

“Mine’s all right, how’s yours …?”

“Well, its’ been nice speaking to you, er …?”

“You too, er …?”

Exit stage left.

“Who on Earth was that?”

Others, however, were indelibly impressed on my memory, and it was very good to see them. (Their names have been withheld in order to protect our senility.)

After I had had my Pims, Joss his coffee and Martin all the sandwiches, we took a photographic stroll around the pre-war and wartime vehicles. And what an outstanding collection there was! Among them I made a bittersweet discovery: the presence of a Daimler the precursor of the Lanchester.

My friend had a Lanchester. Back in the 1970s, we teenagers used to pub crawl in it. He sold it eventually for 70 quid, and all I’ve got left is the ashtray. If only he had known then what I knew then and never fail to mention every time I see him now.

My brother Joss is on a salad diet. He’s currently eating about 3cwt of lettuce a day, which is probably why he could not resist buying a big sticky chocolate fudge cake from the cheap produce stall. He also found some moisturising cream, which he said was orgasmic ~ I think he meant ‘organic’ ~ but we passed on that all the same, preferring to invest instead in the guarantee of a good dawn chorus — four cheap cans of Heinz Baked Beans.

Mick Hart with Red Rolls Royce at Bletsoe

It was now time for Martin to buy me a drink. He was heading for the ‘bar’ quite nonchalantly when someone mentioned that it was his round and into the grass went his hooves like a donkey. Martin’s wallet is such a hard nut to crack that even the Hatton Garden Mob would think twice before attempting it. Eventually, however, he did cough up, but the experience was so traumatic that he collapsed rigid and spluttering onto a bale. Either his wallet was in dire need of Anusol or perhaps he was clenching it safe between his cheeks.

We stayed where we were for the rest of the event, watching dugs catch biscuits. Joss’s diet had got to him so badly that he was down there on all fours hoping a biscuit might come his way. We told him he was barking.

The next garden fête on the list ~ not that we have got a list, you understand ~ Ha! Ha! just talking metaphorically, is Milton Ernest. Did you know that the famous American big band leader Glenn Miller was billeted at Milton Ernest for a while during the war? He took his last fateful flight from nearby Twinwood Airfield. Both he and his list of garden fêtes were never seen again.

Some other posts
Reg Gets His Wheel Nuts Out at Sywell Aerodrome
Kaliningrad German Helmet in all its Steampunk Glory
Fort XI Kaliningrad Hosts Retro Car Club Day

Russia Big and Unpredictable You Cannot Help Love It

News just in

25 June 2023 ~ Russia Big and Unpredictable You Cannot Help Love It

The Master of Understatement prompts me to comment that the past two days have been the most dramatic 48 hours in recent Russian history. Over here as distinct from over there, the first I heard about the ‘spat’ was when my brother tuned into the internet to check whether he could sue the Fat Busters company for having sold him an expensive tub of tablets that guaranteed to relieve him of 20 pounds in weight in a week but which so far had only succeeded in taking 20 pounds out of his wallet.

Russia Big and Unpredictable You Cannot Help Love It

I don’t have a television set, wouldn’t give one house room, literally, and although my brother has one, he uses it sporadically, as he finds the adverts disturbing (think about it), so, we glean our news mainly from the internet.

This ia an electricity pole — Some statements are obvious

On 24 June, I received an email from Olga with two video links to what she described as ‘a mutiny in Russia’. She wrote that she was with two friends watching President Putin’s address on TV to the nation. There was an uneasy irony in the parallel that she drew, the recollection that the last time that she had listened to such an address it had been in the company of the same friends back in the 1990s. She noted that then it had been a different president and that the speech was slightly different, and ended on the foreboding note, “Whatever awaits us next …?”

Whenever a big story breaks, I read news from around the world, preferring not to rely on corporate western media, and then after reading several news bulletins or articles on a specific topic, draw my own conclusions. I did note that the UK media was not crowing as much as one might expect. Had the ‘mutiny’ so-called been favourable to the West, it would have been a different matter, but it was obvious in the absence of champagne corks popping and from the general sense of restraint and reticence percolating throughout the media that a possible outcome to the Russian scenario was not one that they favoured. As I wrote to Olga in the second of several emails that day, for the West it really looks like a case of ‘Be careful what you wish for!’

On Saturday evening, we took a walk across the fields enroute to the local pub. It was a warm night. The sun was low in a clear sky, a burning orange ball, and, with no cloud of which to speak, from the high plateau on which we were situated, we were offered a magnificent sun-drenched view out over a rural landscape that coined the immortal lines, “England’s green and pleasant land.” Descending from the corn fields, we passed through a typical English village, replete with manor houses and cottages so old and established in time that they looked as though they had been planned by nature rather than built by the hand of man.

Manor House in English Village by Mick Hart

On the bend, just outside of the village, the local pub was a picture: thatched roof, traditional pub sign, neat and tidy gravelled car park, a small, grassed garden with tables to the front and to the rear a naturally undulating beer garden backing onto open fields.

Sitting there, sipping at our beers, as the sun went to rest and the lights from the pub came on, I became conscious of a surreal distance greater than distance itself between my experience in the here and now and that of my Russian friends.

I ruminated quietly over the emails that Olga and I had exchanged earlier this evening. I had read an article in the British press in which responding to someone asking if the UK government was urging all British citizens to leave Russia the reply was, we have been instructing British citizens to leave Russia since the outbreak of the troubles in Ukraine.

I wrote to Olga: “Did you know that the UK government has been advising British citizens to leave Russia? No one told me. Anyway, there’s no point in you celebrating. I shall still come back whatever the situation. I’m too old to let it bother me and, besides, it gives me something to write about.”

It was an odd feeling, most bizarre, but I felt as if by being in England I was missing out on history?

However, I knew that there would be at least one bright spark in the pub who given recent events would weigh in with: “Well, so what do you think about Russia now!” The reply I gave couldn’t have been more obvious: “I leave Russia for five minutes and look what happens!”

POST LINKS

By Volga to Yantarny
Moving to Russia from the UK
It always snows in Russia

Image attributions
The News: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/The-news-sticker-vector-image/15689.html
Teddy Bear: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Teddy-bear-toy-vector-clip-art/8873.html

Reg gets his Wheel Nuts out at Sywell Aerodrome

Reunion at Sywell Aerodrome UK

19 June 2023 ~ Reg gets his Wheel Nuts out at Sywell Aerodrome

If, like me, you have a sentient rapport with the first half of the twentieth century, in particular the 1920s to the 1940s, and Art Deco is a design style that you just can’t live without, then the Aviator Hotel in Northamptonshire is something not to be missed. It is called the Aviator as the hotel is conveniently situated on the perimeter of Sywell airfield. People who name things think of everything, don’t they?

All airfields in the UK have an interesting historical background and Sywell is no exception. It originated in 1927, when a local landowner let 55 acres of his land to the Northamptonshire Aero Club and was opened officially in 1928 by Air Marshall Sir Sefton Brancker. Throughout the 1920s Sywell went from strength to strength. By 1929 it had its own clubhouse and hangar and by the close of the decade it owned two Gipsy Moth aircraft and played host to 14 different types of aircraft. The first half of the 1930s saw a new clubhouse constructed at Sywell, now known as the Aviator Hotel, and the day-to-day running of the aerodrome pass into the hands of the Brooklands Flying School, known throughout the world today as Brooklands Aviation Ltd. In the second half of the 1930s, leading up to World War II, the airfield’s facilities expanded considerably to cater for a civil RAF training school, and another hangar was included as an RAF repair depot for Wellington Bombers. During the war, Sywell Aerodrome was shrouded in secrecy, as it was here where close on 100 Mark II Lancaster Bombers were built. Sywell Aerodrome escaped enemy bombing during the war thanks to its heavy camouflage.

Among the luminaries who have visited and/or played an officiating role at Sywell Aerodrome are Amy Johnson, Errol Flynn, Freda Jackson, HRH Queen Elizabeth and HRH Prince Phillip and, of course, me.

In 2019, Sywell Aerodrome received the AOA Best General Aviation Airfield in the UK award. Methinks that the Aviator Hotel should receive an award of its own.

Everything about the Aviator is right, in that everything hits the Art Deco spot, from its Art Deco modernist exterior, with its elevated aircraft feature, to the simple but stylish lobby, to the wood wall panelling, to the chevron parquet floor, to the style and effect of the lighting, to the deep low-slung cloud-iconic armchairs, to the historic photos displayed on the wall and the evocative aviation relics exhibited in its display cabinets.

If I wasn’t there to do it for him and Biggles was to stroll through the front entrance looking dashing in his leather flying helmet and white silk scarf and the well-healed flappers seated around the tables sipping at their cocktails and posing elegantly with their long, sleek cigarette holders were to fill the air with more than smoke, toying with such words as ‘divine’, ‘heavenly’ and ‘blissful’, you would hardly be surprised.

At the Aviator and at Sywell Aerodrome itself, there is plenty of divine and therefore plenty to be blissful about. The bar and restaurant speak for themselves, but sit out on the terrace on a warm, sunny day and gaze quiescently across the turfed back garden onto the perfectly mown lawns of the airfield and watch the helicopters and light private planes flitting about in the bright blue sky whilst you sip on the amber nectar. If you are lucky, you might be privy to the famous wartime Spitfire or any one of a dozen aircraft deserving of their classic status, since Sywell is a magnet to them.

The perfect events venue

It is its long history of aviation and the facilities at its disposal which makes Sywell the perfect venue for retro and vintage events. Sywell holds several air and vintage shows annually, some on a large scale, as well as being a favourite meeting place and dance venue for 1940s’ afficionados. In our hey-day, that is when we were running the vintage emporium, Olga and I attended several of these events, escaping from the 21^st century if only for an evening.

Mick Hart and Olga Hart at Sywell Aerodrome

On a scale not quite so expansive but none the less enduring, is Mr Reg B’s Wheel Nuts. Reg and his followers have been displaying their nuts, and the rest of their vehicles, on a slice of hard ground at the rear of Sywell Airfield, out front of the Sywell Aviation Museum (more about this in a later post), for as long as I can remember, which is actually seven years. Reg and his fellow Wheel Nuts are wed to, or at least have a long-standing love affair with, restoring, driving, displaying and treasuring vintage and classic motor vehicles.

Once a month, on the first Tuesday of the month, come rain, hail, snow or shine, (well, at least come shine), Mr Reg can be found officiating in his own inimitable style over the gathering of his Wheel Nuts. It is difficult to say which of the two are happier, the vehicles or their owners, as it is a nice day out for both parties. Anyone can roll up in their car and anyone can come and view, and it don’t cost you nowt. For, as long as I can recall, Reg has never knowingly, or even probably accidently, run anything for profit, although on those rare occasions when it does happen, we worry a lot about what went wrong.

In a previous life, the one in which we owned and ran an antiques and vintage emporium, Reg was my favoured partner in ‘crime’, my ‘wheel man’ ~ he was a ‘wheel man’ long before he became a Wheel Nut! This is another way of saying that on our many missions to assess items with a view to purchase, especially house-clearance missions, Reg wore the chauffeur’s hat; he also wore a sheepskin jacket which made him look like Del Boy’s stand-in. His other claim to fame was that he was excellent packer. He could cram things into a van as if he’d invented the Rubik Cube.

The last time I saw Reg, none of us had ever heard of coronavirus, so for this our first reunion in four and a half years, I wanted to surprise him. Reg knew that my brother and our friend Martin would be attending his latest car-club event, but he had no idea that I would sneak up on him, tap him on the shoulder and ask if he had a can of WD40 which I could use on my ‘squeaky wheelbarrow’ ~ a private joke that would take far too long to explain. Every cloud has a silver lining!

“Blimey,” he said, sounding genuinely surprised, “It’s Mick, from Russia!”

And it was all downhill from there.

I have to say, however, that unlike the first Wheel Nuts event that I attended seven years ago, today’s turnout was commendable ~ they must have known that I was coming. Whilst Reg and I talked bullshit, for old times’ sake (I wrote in my email later, “It’s amazing how much bullshit and banter two people can squeeze into forty-five minutes!”), my brother and our associate Martin were sworn in as deputy photograph-takers. Below is a collage of their snapshot skills and some of the wonderful Wheel Nut wagons displayed at Sywell this June.

Nice work, Reg. You always were a promising student!

Mick Hart with Reg and Bernie Wheel Nuts

Posts about places

Angel Park Hotel
How to make a film based in Königsberg
Waldau Castle

Sywell Aerodrome Website Link

Kaliningrad German Helmet in all its Steampunk Glory

An illuminating experience

11 June 2023 ~ Kaliningrad German Helmet in all its Steampunk Glory

On the subject of vintage and antiques, which we were in my last post and are in this one, the object featured today is, in its reincarnated form, neither, but as peculiar and fascinating things go, it has a promising future, and who knows who’s interest it may collect from someone for whom it was destined.

This item, which is a lamp, was made by and purchased from a Kaliningrad metalwares’ sculptor and is yet another example of the talent and creativity which artist Victor Ryabinin spoke of when he talked of the special people who are drawn to, or who have been nurtured within, the ancient Königsberg region.

The components of the piece are identifiable enough: the shade most obviously is a WWII German military helmet; the stem is a length of shaped and sculpted pipework; and the base, though not so easily categorised, seems to have been taken from an engine of some description.

The industrial look, the interior design concept which continues to dominate cafés, bars, restaurants and nightclubs is simpatico. A close relative of steampunk, it, too, cuts to the basics, wedding and distorting common objects from the industrial past with their future in the present.

Kaliningrad German Helmet goes all steampunk

My lamp, or rather the lamp I am looking after for future generations, is artistically endowed with an evocative bronze patina, which, when the lamp is lit, creates a deep and mellow aura.

Sometimes, when I am alone in the attic regarding the lamp over a beer, a macabre realisation seeps quietly out through the helmet’s ragged holes and makes its way into my mind: “Just think,” it says, “once upon a time the light bulb in this helmet was nothing of the sort; there was a German head inside the helmet.” And I go on to wonder who that German was and what eventually became of him. Did he survive the war?

Hmmm? Pieces from the past do that to you sometimes; they talk to you in your present and make you long to complete the jigsaw.

Beldray at Kaliningrad Flea Market a Surprising Find

English Art Nouveau at Kaliningrad Flea Market

6 June 2023 ~ Beldray at Kaliningrad Flea Market a Surprising Find

In a previous post (What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk-Buyer’s Paradise) I wrote about the inveterate and incorrigible habit of collecting: call it antiques, call it vintage, call it what you like, but once you get hooked on collecting stuff it’s hard to kick the habit.

It does not matter where in the world you are, if old stuff is what you are after, you will find it, and the wonderful thing about old stuff is that everyone’s got some somewhere. I’ve dug out old stuff, sometimes literally, from all over England and way beyond. Indeed, one of my favourite junk markets was located close to the centre of Odessa, and what a marvellous market it was ~ street upon street upon street of it, as far as the eye could see. All that stuff laid out on blankets, old sheets of cardboard and hastily erected trestle tables, shimmering like a mirage under the summer sun. Alas, something tells me that it will be a long time, bordering on never, before I return to that market again.

On my current sojourn in the UK, I have yet to attend a boot fair or an auction, but I am gearing up to do so should we ever see the back of winter in what some waggish statesman in Russian called this damp and dismal country.

Beldray at Kaliningrad Flea Market

When in Kaliningrad, if ever I need to feed my addiction for stuff, all I have to do is make for the city flea market. But because I always buy something, I often try to resist the jaunt. However, a few weeks before I left for the UK, I found myself yet again ogling up the stalls that line the side of the pavement, and this is what I found.

As soon as I clapped eyes on it, I knew, providing the price was not too extortionate, that I would be taking it home with me. I don’t smoke, but I do maintain a healthy interest in all kinds of smoking memorabilia, and what was special about this little beauty was that it was unmistakeably Art Noveau.

Made from copper, which in the first quarter of the 20^th century was a popular material for artistic metalwares, the box’s salient Art Nouveau feature is the stylised flower, with its sinewy stalk and voluptuous detail presented in relief on the object’s front-facing side.

The unusual four, small, upturned feet that are hollow in the middle and resemble cups also contribute to the object’s organic form on which the Art Nouveau premise relies. Aesthetically conforming, they were most likely used as miniature ashtrays in which to stub out one’s spent cigarette.

The part-planished finish to the copper surface is by no means unusual for metalwares of this period, although research has it that it is unusual for Beldray, who were less inclined to resort to this technique than some of their competitors.

Beldray Edwardian Cigarette Box Fopund in Kaliningrad, Russia

I like it, and I also like the exposed rivetted construction, which speaks to me of Arts & Crafts. The fact that the box has ‘Cigarettes’ scrolled across the lid, the relief wording framed within an incised cartouche of waisted form, has effectively taken the guesswork out of the object’s purpose, but even had it not been literally spelt out for us, the wooden lined interior would have provided the vital clue. Most cigarette boxes of this age have long since parted company with their fitted interiors, so the fact that this one is still intact is the cherry on the icing.

How much did I pay for it? Ah now, that would be telling.

Some things are bought for profit, others for pleasure. In this instance, the purchase of the cigarette box has nothing to do with the money but all to do with its past and the history it connects me to.

Beldray backstamp early twentieth century

I am always interested in buying old stuff, whatever it is, both in Kaliningrad and the UK, so if you have anything you wish to sell on, are decluttering or need someone to clear a barn, an attic or property, please feel free to drop me a line at konigsbergmick@mail.com