A kind, charming, thought-provoking and sentimental animation
Published: 2 December 2022 ~ Hedgehog in the Fog seen in Kaliningrad
Before setting off to London/Bedford England last month, we were walking back from a coffee in the café gardens (Soul Garden) by the Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, when we were thrilled to discover that some artistic person or other had painted the perfect impression of the star (Yorshik) from the famous 1970s’ animation, Hedgehog in the Fog. Normally, or abnormally, depending upon your personal prejudice, I am unable to accept painted or spray-canned text or images plastered on public or private property as anything else but what it truly is ~ a brazen example of vandalism. But, as with most things in life, exceptions to the rule exist, and this, I have to admit, is as true of graffiti as it is of anything else, providing that you want it to be.
Hedgehog in the Fog is a highly acclaimed Soviet-Russian multiple award-winning animated film. It was written by Sergei Grigoryevich Kozlov [Серге́й Григо́рьевич Козло́в] and animated and directed by Yuri Norstein [Ю́рий Норште́йн]. It is both an animation and intellectual masterpiece, capable of myriad interpretations, but whose ultimate message is as simple as it is sublime as is it sentimental: that we all need someone in this world with whom we can count the stars.
Once seen never forgotten, the majority of Russians would recognise Yorshik’s likeness instantly, certainly as unmistakeably as they would the stars of such classic Soviet films as Irony of Fate and Office Romance.
The portrait was also discovered and recognised by Kaliningrad’s administration department, and before we left for England, I caught sight of a media report in which the administration was asking the public to cast their vote ~ with the proviso that the paint used was harmless to the tree ~ on whether the image should be removed or be allowed to remain.
Since I have not walked that part of Kaliningrad recently, I have no idea what the fate of Yorshik might be, although I for one would hope that when the votes were counted, they favoured Yorshik’s continued presence.
Not only does the composition capture Yorshik’s appearance perfectly, but the artist has also located him within a beautiful blue graduated background, where he shares space romantically with twinkling stars and fairies.
Whether Yorshik has survived or not, if the artist would like to contact me, I have a canvas, an interior wall, which is just crying out for this work of art to be replicated!
Hedgehog in the Fog (Yorshik) painted on a tree in Kaliningrad
Hedgehog in the Fog is a Soviet-Russian animated film about a hedgehog (Yorshik) who sets off on foot to visit his friend, a bear cub (Meeshka), and finds himself lost in the fog. As in folklore, fairy tales and fantasy and in Gothic and psychological suspense genres, fog as a literary/cinematographic device is typically employed in the film to deviate objective reality, turning the world as we know it ~ or think we do! ~ into a claustrophobic and distorted realm where the heightened possibility of supernatural occurrences amplifies the vicissitudes encountered in everyday life.
In this state of altered consciousness, Yorshik’s imagination supersedes logic, creating a new and unnerving reality in which, for example, an owl and white horse ~ one commonplace the other rare but possible ~ take on puzzling and sinister shades of meaning.
When Yorshik stumbles into the river he assumes that he will drown, but carried along by the current he relaxes into his situation, resigning himself to the journey wherever it may take him.
His ordeal culminates when a mysterious submersible benefactor, a ‘Someone’ as the subtitles tells us, lifts him onto his back and conveys him safely to the water’s edge.
Once on dry land, Yorshik hears his friend, Meeshka, calling out to him through the fog and by following the direction of his friend’s cries the two are at last united.
Hedgehog in the Fog is a simple story, but one which arguably manages to achieve what no other comparable animation has in its simultaneous creation of an atmosphere of dread tempered by quiescence. The kinetic tempo has a lot to do with this, as does the steady, hushed and neutral tone of the omniscient narrator, but the fundamental appeal of the film and the extent to which it engages us lies in its ‘seen through the eyes of a child’s perspective’, its lilting dream-like quality and its effortless ability to invoke and mirror the childhood world which we all once inhabited, with its troublesome symbols and shadows, its half-open doors to what, where and who, its many unanswered questions and its never completely understood what may lie within and beyond.
In following the classic tradition of all that is best in fantasy motion pictures ~ The Haunting (original version), Night of the Hunter and, with one or two exceptions, the complete canon of Hitchcock’s works ~ the key to Hedgehog in the Fog’s allure is that just below the surface of fairy tale enchantment it taps profoundly and incisively into our childhood psyche.
It calls upon the fog and the river for their habitual literary symbolism: the first for its incarnation of a supernatural milieu where anything is possible, the second for its depiction of life as a predetermined current against whose superior will we are powerless to resist, and it besets the journey with downstream dangers, credible menace, innate fears and the almost tangible presence of death. All the things that we learn about living as we are hurried along by the current of life.
The still frames from Hedgehog in the Fog are every bit as resoundingly emotive as the narrative in flux. Single static images such as the looming face of the owl, the white horse, apparition-like and luminescent, the bewildered expression on Yorshik’s face and, most memorable of all, the concluding frames of the film where the re-united Yorshik and Meeshka sit on the log together, with their jam, tea and samovar and the scent from the burning juniper twigs, counting the stars in the heavens, are each and every one blissfully indelible.
Hedgehog in the Fog works, even for we adults, not only because the artwork, the cinematography, pace and timbre are as spot on as they can be, but because the overarching feel of the film is unashamedly affectionate and applaudably sentimental.
However unnerving the fog may be, the narrator takes us by the hand and, like the dreamy river of life upon which the hapless Yorshik floats, albeit with philosophical tranquility, he leads us reassuringly from opening credits to heartfelt conclusion.
If you have the samovar, the juniper twigs and the raspberry jam, all you need to count the stars ~ as the stars are always above you ~ is the log on which to sit and that special someone next to you for whom those stars shine as brightly and mean the same to them as they do for you.
Published: 22 November 2022 ~ Bedford more to like than not
Rumours that I haven’t posted much to my blog recently have invoked theories ranging from a nasty reaction to not-working sanctions to being fitted up by the British unjudicial system for saying things that are not allowed. But that wasn’t me. Clue: Marvin Gaye, he ‘Heard it through the Grape Vine’. Whatever the rumours, they are greatly exaggerated.
Alas, the explanation is far more mundane: I’ve been on holiday in the UK.
“A likely story,” says someone who accuses everyone else of conspiracy theories. “I suppose you will be telling us next that you had no access to the internet!”
Well, as it happens, where I was staying, no.
Travelling package-style by Hart’s Tours, which would have been a successful company had it not been inaugurated on the eve of the coronavirus experiment, the exclusive hotel in which I would be staying is renowned for containing more antiques than Britain’s got migrants (er, possibly not), but what it has not got is the internet. No point in taking my laptop, thought I; just extra weight to carry.
Verily, no internet connection and also no TV is an excellent way of detoxifying yourself from the insurgency of cyberspace and the brain-numbing mumbo jumbo thrust wilfully up you by mainstream media. If you are one of those, or even just one of those, who have become enslaved to your iPhone and are concerned about being controlled and tracked on a daily basis by the slippery Silicon Valley Mob, I recommend when visiting England that you opt for Towlson Towers. As a no frills hotel, complete with a host of truly irritating inconveniences, such as 40 watt bulbs where 100 watts should be, cold and cold running water, as many steps in unusual places as one could ever want to trip up, over and down and an invigorating absence of any form of heating (a luxury extra at this establishment even before Britain’s energy crisis took hold), TTs is the place.
My return to the UK did not take me to London: “Love the history, Fawlty, can’t stand the Woke!” No, I was headed to Bedford, a market town in Bedfordshire, of which C.F. Farrar wrote in his excellent book Old Bedford nothing happened for five hundred years. A lot did happen in the many years preceding the five hundred when nothing happened and a lot has happened since, but nothing for the better. Bedford town centre, like every other town and city in the UK, is a sad and sorry reminder of just how radically and irreparably our liberal masters have dismantled and infected what once, without a shadow of a doubt, was one of the greatest countries, if not the greatest country, the world has ever known.
If you buy into or simply pay lip service, because you are told to do so, so you think you must, to the political mantras about ‘enrichment’ and ‘vibrancy’ and all the other embarrassing slogans attached to the back of multiculturalism, which are rattled out like an old tin can tied to a frightened cat’s tail, then go ahead and love it! But for the majority, there is no doubt that there is more to be avoided in modern British society than there is to be enjoyed.
But this is not to single Bedford out. Many white British who live in the surrounding villages are very quick to assert, and are adamant with it, that they ‘never go into the towns!’ wherever those towns may be.
Acknowledging, therefore, the relevance of the old song lyrics, ‘Things ‘aint what they used to be’, let’s briefly escape from the modern-day tragedy of Bedford, representative as it is of the plight and prescient social upheaval that awaits the UK in the not-too-distant future, and dip a little into its past ~ into the real English beginnings and their making of the character of the place.
Bedford more to like than not
Bedford is a market town and the historic county town of Bedfordshire. Its name is said to derive from an amalgamation of the name of a Saxon chief called Beda and a ford that crossed the River Great Ouse. Offa of Mercia, the Anglo-Saxon king, was buried in Bedford in 796 but is probably no longer there, as his tomb on the banks of the Great River Ouse most likely ensured that he upped and floated away.
Bedford had a castle, which was constructed under the auspices of Hugh de Beauchamp, within 20 years of the Norman Conquest in 1066. “This was the time when it all went wrong!” a friend of mine is fond of saying. He is not necessarily or at least exclusively referring to Bedford itself, of which a lot went wrong in more recent times. He means to imply that it all went wrong with England. “It’s the fault of those bloody Normans!” he likes to cry, whenever we see a rabbit or driving along through country lanes espy a church with a Norman tower.
For Bedford Castle, it all went wrong when a robber baron, Sir Fulke de Breauté (there were a lot of robber barons about in those days), fatally overestimated not only his own importance and invincibility but the impregnability of his castle.
He believed that by kidnapping a judge (as you do) and incarcerating him within his castle, he would prevent the Crown from taking the castle away from him. Instead, he succeeded in getting the castle sieged, bombarded, breached and blown up and a number of people killed, before he was eventually brought to ground himself and exiled to a terrible place where nobody wanted to go, not even in the middle-ages, across the Channel to France!
Today, all that remains of what reputedly was a redoubtable fortification, Bedford Castle, is a large grassy mound. “A great place to sit and eat chips,” someone wrote in a tourist review. I would add to that, “a great place to sit and eat chips whilst pondering British history.”
Bedford’s Castle Mound is still worth visiting as it is situated in what is easily the most attractive quarter of the town, The Embankment. Getting to it from the town centre enables you to say hello to the town bridge and opposite the Swan Hotel, a classic 18th century edifice built by the Duke of Bedford in 1794-1796, that is to say that the Duke of Bedford commissioned it to be built. I am not suggesting that he was out there at the end of the 18th century with a trowel in one hand and a stone in the other.
The Swan Hotel As hotels go, you are not going to get anything as quintessentially 18th century than this outside of Oundle or Stamford! The current Swan Hotel ~ there was an earlier one ~ had the Duke of Bedford commission the well-known London architect Henry Holland to design and build it between 1794~1796. If you stand on the forecourt, you will notice, I know you will, that contrary to Georgian architectural paradigms, the hotel is asymmetrical. The right-hand gate is missing. It was sacrificed in the 1880s to make way for the The Embankment road, which dissected the hotel’s gardens. Inside the hotel is a curious mix of old Georgian and modern swank.
Had you arrived in Bedford before the 1970s, after appreciating the regality of the Swan you would next have been delighted by the magnificent sight of a large and impressive building of neo-Gothic persuasion. The Town and Country Club, as once had been its function and by which it had been known, was, alas, swept away with numerous other buildings of exemplary historical importance, as former Bedford historian Richard Wildman agonises, during a time in which town planning in Britain was the vandalistic equivalent of social engineering today.
Bedford’s Town & Country Club. One of many historic Bedford buildings destroyed in the 60s and 70s
Bedford is by no means the only town in the British Isles that bears the scars of the 1960s’ anti-heritage culture, but, as a leaf through any of Richard Wildman’s pictorial history books show, it has the dubious distinction of listing among the legions of the architecturally damned and demolished more than its fair share of victims.
Bedford more to like than not
So, we pass swiftly on and, as we do, we cannot help admiring the beautifully landscaped and typically English character of the scene as it unfolds. The Great River Ouse meandering calmly away from the city centre, leaving behind lack-lustre Kempston and no-go Queen’s Park, transports you to one of those timeless English vistas replete with sleepy meadows, avenues of trees, formal gardens with floral Victorian beddings, posh rowing clubs, happy swans and geese and some of the finest examples of Gothic Revivalist architecture that you could ever wish to behold in the residential category.
The wealth, prosperity, order, security and dignity all of which was once England presents itself in the large, often vast, red-brick houses and imposing villas that sweep along the Embankment and radiate into the streets beyond. Built in the Gothic Revivalist style at the end of the 19th century, these infinitely desirable properties, with their impressive facades of carved stone, half-timbered gables and deep bay windows, are deceptively more extensive than even the grand scale of their stately frontages suggests. I won’t gild the lily by saying that they seem to go on forever, but some of them tend to go on considerably further than one might expect.
Above: The Embankment Hotel Unmissable, thanks to its wonderful and evocative medieval-style half-timbered façade, the Embankment Hotel and Restaurant occupies a prime place overlooking Bedford’s Embankment Promenade and the River Great Ouse. The 1891-built hotel boasts that it has no ‘stuffy resident’s bar’, which is all well and good, but what it does have, especially on a Friday and Saturday night, is a very noisy public bar, which does tend to dilute the otherwise genteel image. In its defence, however, try finding a pub in Bedford on a Friday or Saturday night that does not resemble a cattle market! Go there in the week!
The following photographs were taken on a bright, late October morning in 2022. We perambulated with the best of them along the Embankment Prom and then crossed over to the meadows on the other side of the river via the landmark Victorian Suspension Bridge.
One barks the other bites!Happiness is obviously an arse that fits!Bedford Suspension Bridge
Suspension Bridge Bedford Suspension Bridge, a landmark architectural feature, was constructed in 1888. It provides access from The Embankment to Mill Meadows. The bridge was designed by John James Webster, the remit being to allow the passage of sailing boats.
View from the Suspension Bridge towards the town centreButterfly Bridge
Butterfly Bridge And please, don’t ask why do they call it Butterfly Bridge?! It opened in 1997 and was designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects, reputedly as a late 20th century/early 21st century equivalent to Webster’s 1888 Suspension Bridge, each bridge landmarking the end and beginning of their respective centuries.
Unless you live in a vacuum, believing that this is how it is, how it was and always will be, me and my mobile phone, it should not be incredibly difficult to imagine what scenes of elegance were once to be found as the Edwardian upper classes strutted their decorous stuff along the walk at Bedford Embankment. And if you cannot imagine, use it as an excuse to call in at the Three Cups public house on Newnham Street, where not only will you find an exciting, changing range of delicious British real ales but also framed black and white photographs of Bedford Embankment as it looked at the turn of the 20th century.
The Three Cups, Newnham Street, Bedford. Real Ales & Atmosphere!
Above: A rare sight. The locals of the Three Cups looking more normal than usual on Halloween
Check out the style of the chaps in their striped blazers and boater hats (I am referring now to the pictures on the walls!) and the ladies of quality in their crisp, light dresses or perfectly turned-out dress suits, nipped in at the waist, embellished with lace and other feminine attributes. Yes, there really was a time when the people of the British Isles were not as they are today, less better dressed than a boat load of Navy-escorted grinning migrants.
Bedford, it’s not a bad place. Put it on your visiting list.
More about Bedford
The Embankment War Memorial The War Memorial on Bedford’s Riverside Walk was sculpted by Charles S Jagger and is situated opposite Rothsay Road. Made from Portland Stone and marble, it commemorates the fallen in three wars: the First World War, Second World War and Korean War.
The Boer War Monument The impressive and detailed monument that stands in front of the Swan Hotel, Bedford, surmounted by an infantryman in full battledress, pays tribute to the 237 Bedfordshire men who lost their lives in the Boer War, 1899-1902.
John Bunyan statue Every town is known for someone. In Bedford, it’s mainly John Bunyan, thanks to the large bronze statue of him that stands at the crossroads at the top of Bedford High Street. John Bunyan was about in the mid-to-late 17th century. He was an English Christian writer and dissenter, an occupation that saw him committed to Bedford County Gaol on two occasions. Apart from being locked up, Bunyan was, of course, famous for having authored the Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, most of which, it seems, was written during the two periods when he was languishing in gaol. The book was eventually published in 1678. This monumental work of literature, which has never been out of print and has been translated into more than 200 languages, influenced many a literary genius, among them Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Bunyan’s Bedford connections and life history are celebrated in the John Bunyan Museum in Beford. The statue is magnificent; the museum a source of serious historical reflection. {photo credit: Simon Speed}
Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller The legendary American big band leader, Glenn Miller, was billeted in Bedford, to be more precise in Bedfordshire in Milton Ernest Hall. He took his last fateful flight from Twinwood Airfield, now home to the biggest swing music festival in the UK. A bronze bust of Miller occupies pride of place in a niche in the wall of Bedford Corn Exchange, which was built and opened in 1874, still functions as a concert venue and plays host to the annual Bedford Beer Festival.
Bedford Corn Exchange
Cardington and the airships Just outside of Bedford lies the old Cardington airbase, what is left of it. Like every other square foot in the UK, it has been covered in concrete and bricks. Because that is what the UK needs: more houses for more people! Nevertheless, the Cardington Sheds still dominant the skyline; the massive hangars in which the great airships of the early 20th century were constructed. It was from these ‘sheds’ that the fated, experimental R101 was hauled out to make its maiden voyage to France, where it crashed killing 48 passengers and crew on board. The remains of the dead are buried in a mass grave in Cardington Cemetery. A monument in the church opposite provides a roll of honour, naming those who lost their lives in this historic misadventure.
John Howard Most people who are not as thick as two short planks (innit?) will know that the large bronze statue standing at the crossroads to Bedford High Street is John Bunyan. But who is that other chap overlooking the weekly market, holding his face in his right hand and staring pensively down at the ground? That’s Bedford’s second celebrity, the eighteenth-century philanthropist and prison-conditions reformer, John Howard, cast in bronze by the celebrated, if not occasionally controversial, sculptor, Sir Alfred Gilbert, creator of the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus, London. Whenever I look at the pose and expression of John Howard, I cannot help but think that having watched over the centre of Bedford since 1894, he has accumulated serious doubts as to whether his reformation work was after all a misappropriation of time and effort. He is most likely silently advocating, “Bring back the birch!”. He also has a statue in Ukraine ~ not many people know that!
The Higgins Art Gallery and Museum A short walk from Bedford Embankment in the area known as the Castle Quarter, The Higgins Art Gallery and Museum, known as The Higgins after Bedford’s prominent Higgin’s family and its connection with the museum site, is the culmination of a six-million-pound project that effectively united three cultural venues: Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford Museum and Bedford Gallery. Higgins, who was a brewer, so he must have been a good man, left detailed instructions in his will as to how the museum would be run and organised. Structurally, the museum is fascinating in itself. It links the old brewery buildings in Castle Lane with the Higgins’ family home and incorporates the Hexagonal Gallery, which was built in the early 19th century on the foundations of Bedford Castle. I like old breweries and social history, so both the industrial building and the Higgins’ family home are sources of wonder to me. The museum provides the opportunity to appreciate impressive collections of fine and decorative arts and highly accredited watercolours, so you can brush up on your knowledge of antiques whilst learning all you need to know about Bedford, its people and the history of the town. Website: https://www.thehigginsbedford.org.uk/Home.aspx
Published: 16 November 2022 ~ How to blog when you are not
Not seen nor heard of since the last time I was seen and heard of, people have no idea why they are asking where is he, when, by all that was two and thruppence, I should be posting things to this blog. After all, you don’t buy a blog and bark yourself.
People are saying things and jumping to confusions:
Ms Nosepoke: “He hasn’t posted anything since 18th October. If you ask me, he’s up to no good.”
Ms Nogood: “What are you suggesting?!”
Ms Knowsitall: “What the eye don’t see …”
“More tea vicar?”
And then there are the rumours; the dark and sinister rumours:
He turned gay and joined the BBC. He got himself a job with The Guardian as Chief Wokesperson. He won the lottery and bought himself a beach hut in Brightlingsea (aah, how he remembers Lynn and that hot summer of 76!).
The media says (so it can’t be true) that the sanctions worked (we know it’s not true!). They forced his return to Devil’s Island, where he is currently doing penance. Each time he goes to the supermarket, he carries with him an old lady’s shopping bag and solemnly swears at checkout, “No, don’t give me a carrier bag; the UK is saving the planet’, even whilst its government, ignoring the needs of the NHS, continues to ship thousands of tons of ozone-depleting munitions to far-away lands at a time when the country’s cost of living and inversely its standard of living are exploding and imploding respectively as if every day is November 5th.
He’s in the UK, there’s no doubt about that! Someone who knows him, saw him. He has cunningly disguised himself as Lord Lucan. He was spotted in a Paki shop in Peterborough buying some UHU to hold his moustache in place and an overcoat to wear in bed! “Such selfishness! He always was a selfish man; a man of toxic masculine aspirations!” (previous mother in law, twice rejected) “And his poor, poor, neglected greenhouse tomatoes, what’s left of them, shivering in that conservatory with ho heater to call their own, recalling at their tormented leisure the chilly and chilling maxim, ‘politicians in glass Number 10s should never throw stones or tantrums !” Poor Liz Truss, she never got the chance. No sooner on the inside than on the out, she was not in the glass house long enough to do any permanent damage: Smash! And now what has become of her? And what has become of the blogger?
We will accept a reward
His family, who are extremely concerned that he might come home, are offering a substantial reward, payable to them, from anyone who has any information pertaining to his whereabouts and who hasn’t got the decency to keep it to themselves.
Retired police officer Superintendent Clampit, from the City of Armston, warns that anyone discovered not to be withholding vital information about his whathaveyous will be subject to the full and most serious rigours that the law can implement, and, on conviction, which will never happen as the police are far too busy arresting people for allergic reactions to Liberal (I heard it on the Grapevine) Jeremy, could face five years in Vine Street Prison or be sentenced to a lifetime’s subscription to The Guardian, whichever of the two is perceived to be the most terrible, vile and odious.
Lifetime friend, Professor Toalbucket, who met him yesterday, but don’t know where, don’t know when, had this to say: “It’s all so peculiar!” And after a moment’s reflection: “It don’t make sense!”
How to blog without heating
The missing blogger’s neighbour saw him in the garden once. He was going back into the house. This did not stop him wondering, however, why a man who to all intents and purposes was a born-again extrovert but hardly ever went out was where he was when he should have been blogging. His neighbour had an awful lot to say on the subject but, being Russian, he would keep talking in his own language in spite of attempts by trillionaire string pullers of western-leaders to cancel Russian culture. Since sanctioned, he no longer has access to things that he never knew he had and didn’t need, but he knows that he has a lot of gas and he’ll use it to heat his house this winter.
One theory is that the blogger has stopped posting because he hasn’t posted anything recently; another that he might have posted in invisible ink; and yet another ~ conceding that the previous two are as silly as a country that fills its hotels with thousands of migrants at a cost of millions each day (Are you a politician or a politician’s friend who owns or has a stake in a string of British hotels?!) ~ that he may in fact still be posting but posting surreptitiously using a false identity and assumed name.
Someone, someone who makes money out of things that have no relevance to the real world, has suggested that he could be posting in an esoteric way, such as posting somewhere in a parallel universe or at an earlier time in his life, when, for example, he was at school, in those inconceivably terrible days before internet and arsephones.
Chrystal Bollocks, YouTube’s Number One snake-oil salesperson, called upon her disciples, the gullible and emotionally vulnerable, to tune into her latest meditative video, and there, amongst the postsynch sounds of tinkling tubes, tiny bells and dubbed-on heavenly choirs, in a husky half-monotone whisper (barely audible above the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs) she pulled the answer to this and to everything else in the Uniperverse, as if it was rabbit pure and simple, out of her magician’s hat. We are so lucky, don’t you think, that we live in an age where, without recourse to qualifications, nuisance of track record or the inconvenience of credible reason, we are blessed with so many experts.
Whether it is better to be trapped inside the mind of some meditating monk or stuck in Dr Who’s wardrobe with a gaggle of prissy old BBC wokists, it is widely believed, from one end of Hackney to the other, that he will just turn up like a bad Rupee. Some say that he should have stuck to the straight and narrow; others that he did, but it sent him round the bend and then, with the full complicity of the French Government, across the Channel to Blighty.
The Dover Port Police, acting on information received by George Sorryarse, have already launched several more boats to ferry migrants freely across the Channel. At the same time, they are conducting a dinghy-by-dinghy search.
Should, during the course of this extensive operation, it be discovered that he has concealed himself among the deserving illegals, make no mistake, said a Labour MP, we shall turf him out.
“We simply won’t tolerate English people wanting to live in their own country!” said a spokesvestite from the Home Office. (Patriots live in hope that one day they will rename this department the Go Home Office and that once renamed it will at last succeed in performing the vital function for which British taxpayers’ money funds it, namely to ‘send the buggers back home!’. Anything less than this should immediately see the department renamed in the spirit by which it is highly regarded, in other words the Home Orifice.)
“Bugger!” his kindly uncle retorted, inspired to do so by some word or other he’d see in print recently: “He wouldn’t come looking for me so why should I go looking for him!”
Asked to comment on his whereabouts, all his old university tutor was willing to say was (He had a wry smile upon his face when he said it): “One can only hope that he doesn’t end up like his favourite author, Edgar Allan Poe, paralytic, face down in the gutter, garbed in somebody else’s clothes … mind you, if my memory serves me right, it wouldn’t be the first time.”
Someone with his mind so thoroughly grounded in the mundane and his logic so infused with and underwritten by commonsense that it couldn’t possibly do him any good had the impertinence to suggest that his whereabouts is Kaliningrad, and that, having recently returned from a sojourn in his native country, England, he is preoccupied with solving the question ‘Is Bedford UK Worth Visiting?’ And that once he has answered this question to the accord and dictates of his own satisfaction, he will post his response forthwith. Even bloggers take holidays, this venerable person ventured.
He was immediately slammed a conspiracy theorist and has had his culture cancelled!
Published: 19 October 2022 ~ Toast Making in Russia an Important Tradition
One of the great joys of making friends in Russia is the party invitation. Birthday, anniversary, public holiday or simply a get together in someone’s home, whatever the occasion and scale, you can always be assured of a warm welcome, tasty food, plenty of vodka and good company.
Like any party should be, Russian parties are a celebratory experience, an opportunity to bring family and friends together in an atmosphere of goodwill and conviviality. But Russian parties are more than that. They enable the participants to express their feelings openly to the person or persons to whom the event is devoted, and to pledge their admiration, esteem and/or love for them before and in front of the company present.
Toasts, personal speeches in someone’s honour culminating in the act of drinking to their health and good fortune are, you might be surprised to learn, even more traditional and realistically Russian than bears, snow and furry hats with ear flaps. No matter where you are or who you are with in Russia, once the drinking starts a toast or several is unavoidable.
As someone who has no difficulty saying ‘cheers’ before I raise my glass (don’t even think of it!) but is by no means qualified as an after-dinner speaker, the seemingly natural public-speaking faculty of ordinary Russians never ceases to amaze me. If anything exceeds this skill, then it can only be the speaker’s ability to thoroughly bare his or her soul to the loved one or dear friend to whom the toast is pledged.
Toast making in Russia is an important tradition
I was once inclined to believe that Russians must spend ages learning, rehearsing and polishing their toasts but, having witnessed toasts every bit as touching and verbally accomplished at impromptu gatherings as at pre-planned ones, I am driven to conclude that the Russian nation is endowed with a certain remarkable and natural propensity for oratorical genius. It is a national characteristic that tends to belie the notion that the only toast you need to know in Russia is the one that hardly anyone uses, Na zdorovye! ~ which literally means ‘To health!’ But if you are lost for anything better to say, then this is better than nothing.
It is expected of all party guests that at some point in the proceedings a toast will be presented. Sometimes toasts are organised on a formal, rotational basis but mostly toasts are performed ad hoc, when and as occasion dictates.
It is to be reasoned that the necessity of committing oneself to such a public undertaking is not to be relished by shrinking violets, a plant with which I am personally acquainted and one to which I am most endeared, but if long experience has taught me anything it is that necking sufficient vodka before you take centre stage is often conducive to a fair result. If you are more than a trifle self-conscious, it helps considerably to make your debut at a later rather than earlier spot in the course of the festivities, by which time, it is to be hoped, you will have accumulated enough Russian Courage (which is not dissimilar to the Dutch variety) to impress yourself and the rest of the room. And even if you do muck it up, chances are by then that most everyone around you will be safely in the same squiffy boat and your falling headlong overboard won’t be particularly noticeable.
The art of toast making in Russia
There’s a very good chance that if you have been called upon to make speeches at UK parties and have developed a knack for it, that it won’t help you in Russia at all. Unlike in the UK, where short party speeches err towards the frivolous or are laced with suggestive digestives and saucy innuendo, the intimacy of Russian toasts tend to be pitched on a quite different level.
Some may be intellectual, some political, some artistic, but almost all Russian toasts, whatever form they take, are philosophical, frank, open and sincere, and resonate with the quality of unalloyed genuine feeling. When Russian relatives and friends toast fellow relatives and friends, they do so from the bottom of their heart. They do so with unreserved emotion and a poetry of the soul that is the touchstone of love and integrity. There is nothing to ask and nothing to doubt. The sentiments expressed emanate from and reaffirm the importance of traditional values, the core values of family and friendship, and their intimate public disclosure strengthens inter-family and community ties on which social cohesion depends.
Good Russian parties, like everything else in life, eventually come to an end, but the feel-good factor lives on, not just in the individual in whose honour the party has been held but in each and everyone who has attended and contributed to and embraced the ethos of kinship and camerarderie.
The photographs included within this post are from a recent party of innumerable toasts. I could have lost count of the number of toasts and could have remarked, had I been sober, on the emotional, poetic and linguistic integrity with which these toasts were delivered, but I was too busy raising my glass (there he goes again!) between taking turns on the dance floor.
Six of the best for raising my glass too often!
Toast at undercover Soviet Spy Centre UK
Note the retrospective Soviet theme and the wonderful, old, industrial building in which this event took place!
What’s the difference between a country and a camping site?
Published: 7 October 2022 ~ UK Identity Crisis and its Impact on Patriotism
In 2014, Russia ditched daylight-saving time and switched to permanent wintertime, which is good in some respects as it negates the need to remember when clocks should go forward or back one hour. How many times in the UK have you forgotten to apply this rule and as a result have woken up either an hour too early or an hour too late? Admittedly, some people seem to revel in the confusion, possibly believing that by gaining an extra hour in bed they have become the master of time, rather than time the master of them. For we who are lifelong insomniacs, however, that extra hour in bed is something to be abhorred: arrggh, another hour of torment!
Permanent wintertime removes this obstacle but replaces it with another, which is no less disorientating for my circadian rhythms.
In summer, should I have forgotten to put the blackouts up, at 4am the sun blares through the window as objectionable as Tony; in winter, especially in the depths of winter, it is as though we have been plunged into eternal night. It is dark until 10am and dark again at 4pm, and the filling in between is like the illusory light of white privilege (or should that be the illusory white of light privilege?).
This is not something that our cat, Ginger, unduly worries himself about. No matter what time I stagger out in the morning, he’s there to greet me … rolling around, stretching, purring away. He doesn’t have to worry about getting up for work, driving home at night, paying the gas and electricity bill, Liz Truss devaluing the pound, virtue signalling by changing his avatar or wearing a tight green T-shirt. And if you happened to mention mobilisation to him, he would possibly think you meant that it was time that he took a turn on the balcony.
Bet you can’t do this!
It was presumably for this reason that a when a friend from the UK, who would no doubt be a friend of Gingers if he did but know him, attempted to engage me in a discussion on mobilisation, Ginger did not to take part.
Our conversation on this topic prompted speculation about the reaction of the UK populace should a similar situation ever arise in Britain. And it was then that we went all historical goosebumps.
UK Identity Crisis and its Impact on Patriotism
At the outbreak of the Second World War ~ and, incidentally, I am using this purely as an example and not trying to pre-empt events with predictions of a third world war, as I would be expected to do if I worked for the UK media ~ conscription was introduced and was, by all accounts, successful. By the end of 1939 more than 1.5 million British men had been called up for military service. Times change (don’t they just!).
A survey undertaken by YouGov in 2018 revealed that only 20 per cent of male Brits said that they would volunteer for service and as many as 39 per cent said they would avoid conscription. Not surprisingly, the highest percentage of males within the avoidance bracket, 34 per cent, fall within the millennial category (ie, the age group which the media likes to refer to as the ‘entitled generation’).
Now, as an oldie, I am not in a position to pass judgement one way or the other, or I could end up sounding like one of the elder generation from the First World War: “By George, If I was your age; I’d be going with you!” But I suspect that the abstention figures from an updated 2022 survey would cause even greater concern in the corridors of power (or, knowing our government, perhaps not) and among the British military establishment’s chief of staff, when it comes to evaluating Britain’s ability to raise the manpower needed to respond to a major conflict. (Oh, I’m sorry! Tut, tut: and the women power, and deviant power, etc)
In trying to define this seismic shift in attitude, we have to look beyond the response of the entitled young millennials, who could be seen by some as the enlightened entitled young millennials, as there is more to the changes in Britain than living at mum’s and breakfast in bed.
Back in 1939, Britain still had a sense of who it was. It drew for its identity on its history, its traditions and the glories of its past. Its people were largely united ~ or as united as a country can be, given its class divisions ~ and the need to defend the realm, should that need arise, was questioned, when it was questioned, by the relative few.
Fast forward to the 21st century
In case you’ve missed it, twenty-first century British society bears little or no resemblance to the social and values composition of its 1940s’ forebear.
Today’s Britain is, to put it bluntly, a cosmopolitan catastrophe, a place of muddled multicultural mayhem, a country divided and fragmented along exacerbated fault lines and manipulated sectarianism, the proponent manifestations of which are diversity, race, religion and gender transmutation. In short, the UK of the twenty-first century is in a terminal state of identity crisis.
This in not to say that if the balloon went up, there would not be any number of English men who would volunteer for national service. I can clearly think of some who would be champing at the bit to go and do their bit, but what about the rest ~ the liberal anarchists, the illegal migrants ferried into Dover each day by the Roya Navy taxi service and the entitled enlightened young millennials, who demonstratively have what it takes to take but not, it seems, what it takes to give.
Then there is the question of the ethnics, which is one that is easily answered. The Black Lives Matter mob are hardly going to rally around the flag, are they? They are far too busy defacing and pulling down statues and rallying around luxury goods, such as widescreen tellies and the latest iphones, which always seem to go missing during ‘largely peaceful’ demonstrations. Terrorists don’t as a rule rally around the flag, do they? In fact, they usually burn the flag of the country to which they have run for sanctuary.
Black muggers and Albanian drug dealers are a category apart. These groups can be said to have reserved occupations: the first, to relieve the useful idiots, tolerant whites, of their ill-gotten privilege, especially the privilege of walking the streets in safety (Where’s a policeman when you need one? Arresting Englishmen for mean tweets, of course!); the latter working hard to get themselves on the waiting lists for a nice comfy cell in UK prisons. And even if these two factions, and the many others like them, were not gainfully employed as described, would the British flag mean anything more to them than an accommodating table cloth for a line of doctored snort?
It is not just the ‘take me to your free hotels’ and bless-me-with-benefits freeloaders that fall into the ‘useless’ category; homegrown liberal lefties are hardly likely to lower themselves to rise in defence of the realm when their entire life has been devoted to parasitically trashing it.
But I hear, you say, somewhere among this rag bag of worthlessness surely there must be patriots? Patriots? Yes, we do have patriots, but since patriotism became a dirty word in the lexicon of the left, what patriots we do have are supressed by an ideology that they vehemently despise and a virtue-less society which they do not recognise, never asked for and certainly do not want.
Ask yourself this: Would you rally around the flag to ensure that the UK’s liberal elites continue to live and rule in the woke and globalist manner to which they are accustomed?
Ironically, for the past thirty years or more our political classes have been actively engaged in rebranding the British flag as a racist symbol, disposing us to guilt, even imposing fines, should anyone in an illicit moment of patriotic pride hoist it up a flagpole and by doing so commit the cardinal sin, as enshrined within the religion of Woke, of impinging upon the delicate blossom of ethnic sensibilities. (All sing: “Oh, show them the way to go home …”). And yet, a second and saving irony is that ideological dictates such as these are just what the doctor ordered for patriotic verve to flourish and perpetuate.
As good or bad, depending on your point of view, as today’s nationalist disenfranchisement is, the defiance and indifference from which it takes its lead was cultivated and curated during the Vietnam war of the sixties, as epitomised by the then controversial, fabled and now dated but eternally seductive slogan ‘make love not war!’
Doomed to perish prematurely, but not before deflating the fortunes of rubber plantation owners whilst sugaring the pharmaceutical industry’s promiscuity pill, it was what sentiments of this nature were not putting into the perennially voracious coffers of the transatlantic industrial military complex that would eventually ensure that the 1960s’ pacifist movement would be rendered virtually impotent.
Notwithstanding, nineteen sixty was a very significant year in British social history. It was the dawn of a new, new decade and, although no one, with the exception perhaps of the fashion industry, the music industry, the brewers and the dope dealers, fully realised the extent to which it could be exploited, the country was on the threshold of a social revolution.
Affectionately, nostalgically, we refer to this era as the swinging sixties, but as innocent as the sobriquet sounds the fundamental truth is that the pendulum of change that provided its momentum was a force that was far from benign. Each sweep swept away years of traditional norms and mores. It slashed through the fabric of British life and what it left behind, which it left in tatters, was the beginning of the end of civilisation as we knew it ~ a headlong fall into the murky abyss of a post-conservative world.
Illustration shows a man labelled “Consumer” tied to a bed with cords labelled “Graft Tariff”, watching as a pendulum labelled “Cost of Living” with a sharp blade affixed to the bottom swings over his body, coming closer to cutting him in half. ~ My caption: 21st century Britain
It may or may not be coincidence ~ the old guard would argue not ~ but 1960 was also the year in which National Service officially ended in Britain.
National Service had been introduced in Britain in 1916 and remained operational until 1920. It was revived in 1939 and continued until 1960. In its latter iteration, physically fit males between the ages of 17 and 21 were duty bound to serve in one branch or another of the British armed forces for a period of 18 months, and then placed for four more years on the reserve list.
I, and my generation, were subsequently excluded from it, although my father wasn’t. His National Service stint coincided with the Korean War, but Lady Luck smiled on him. Possession of a spotless HGV (Heavy Goods Vehicle) licence and experience of driving some of the then largest flatbed trucks, diverted him from overseas deployment to the not unenviable job of collecting damaged tanks and other battle-scarred military hardware from their disembarkation point at Liverpool Docks and transporting them, depending on their condition, either to repair shops in different parts of the country or, if they were beyond repair, to breakers and salvage yards.
For post-1960s’ Britons, however, the closest yoof came to National Service was watching Get Some In!
On the flip side, I do know people who have been in the army, left the army but never left the army. Case in point: A few years ago, I was strolling peacefully across the English countryside with a friend who had served in the special forces, but, like me, had reached an age where anything more demanding than enlistment in the Home Guard would have been nigh on impossible.
The sun was shining, the birds were singing, it was a perfect day in early autumn, when we approached a large grass meadow that rolled down hill quite steeply, reached a point where it dipped and then travelled back up as steeply again to a gate on the far horizon.
As we entered this field, my ex-military friend espied a pile of stones. They were big, round and heavy. Suddenly he stopped. Came to attention. Glared at the stones and said, in a sergeant-majorly fashion, “I bet you can’t put one of those stones under each arm, Hart, and run across the field with them!” And without waiting for an answer, a stone apiece leapt under his armpits, and he was off across that field like nobody’s business. I stood and watched him go in awe, glad that we hadn’t put money on it.
Published: 25 September 2022 ~ Woke and Hypocrisy, it really is God Save the King!
If any of you were in any doubt about the extent to which Britain has lost its way on the navigational chart of respect, decency, morality and decorum, a brief look at the media coverage of the death of the Queen during the official mourning period should be enough to vouchsafe your suspicions.
I was wrong. Wrong when I opined that no sooner would the Queen’s funeral be over than the liberal lefties would be calling for the abolition of the monarchy. They started long before the funeral had taken place. Almost overnight, Arsebook and Twatter became a hot incestuous bed of anti-monarchist rants.
And I was right. Right when I predicted that before the funeral was over, by hook or by crook the lefty media would have found a way of introducing examples of bedwetting woke.
WOKE WATCH UK!
Who read the article about the ‘young republican’, ie one of those who constantly fantasizes about substituting the monarchy for an Obama head of state, who complained that during the official mourning period following the death of the Queen he was so very, very frustrated that he could not speak out on his favourite topic, abolishing the monarchy
I am sure there are many in the UK who empathise with him; who know, only too well, just how frustrating it is not to have a voice; who know how frustrating it is to live in a society in which globalist politicians and their neoliberal chums pontificate incessantly about the value of free speech but are painstakingly selective about what can be said and who does the saying. For example, try saying on Arsebook or Twatter, ‘multiculturalism not in my name’ and ‘we do not need or want any more third-world migrants’, without falling foul of foul-mouthed preachifying liberasts or even a visit from PC Plod in his role of political policeman.
Obviously, the frustrated young republican ~ along with a handful of anti-monarchy protestors who were arrested under breach of the peace laws ~ are woefully lacking in social propriety, particularly with regard to the maxim, ‘There is a time and place for everything’.
Mind you, it is hardly surprising. British schools these days are far too busy venerating Black Lives Matter and grooming the young in woke to teach fundamental traditional values such as respect, decorum and decency.
Liberals fear tradition like Count Dracula feared Van Helsing’s crucifix, which is a pity for them because British society and the British way of life are founded on tradition; expunge it and all you have left is a void, an echo chamber of pithy parroted phrases, of which freedom of speech is the most vacuous.
Simply put, in a language that even ‘young republicans’ should have no difficulty in understanding (He will, when he gets older, as this is the way of the world; when he is old enough to know that world and wise enough to think for himself.) all that he needed to do to thwart his mewling frustration was to put a latch on his gob until such time as it was deemed acceptable and polite to do otherwise.
In Victorian times it was de rigueur that young children should be seen and not heard, and who could argue with this good sense! Likewise, how beneficial it would be if young republicans were seen and not heard, at least until we could bear to listen or, even better still, if they were neither heard nor seen full stop!
To be looked upon with less intolerance, wet-behind-the-ears wanna-be republicans and anti-monarchist banner bearers could do worse than take a leaf out of the Queen’s good book and conduct themselves with the grace and dignity which during her long reign won her so many plaudits, unequalled enduring respect and enviable acclaim that stretched from John o’ Groats to Timbuctoo and, with the exception of Loony Liberal Land, lots of places between.
God Save the King!
Young republicans apart and ignored, it was inevitable, and hypocritical, that the state funeral for the queen would also attract a cabal of highly vocal whingeing, whining would-be armchair economists, who railed against the cost of the funeral.
Indeed, the same article ~ the one that revolved around the poor ‘young republican’ ~ also cited a young woman (I need to be careful here, since the photograph of the person concerned left me in considerable doubt as to gender identity. It happens more and more, does it not?) who, describing ‘herself’ as ‘staunchly anti-monarchy’, professed not to understand how anyone could defend the financial commitment to the Queen’s state funeral and the forthcoming coronation at a time when the UK’s cost of living is soaring out of control.
It’s a great pity that she, and people like her (her?), do not feel it incumbent on themselves to ask how anyone can justify the cost of the state-sponsored migrant invasion and/or raise Cain about the unbearable drain on the UK’s public purse resulting from the indefensible policy of shipping arms to Ukraine whilst the NHS falls apart at the seams and every average person in the country ( I don’t include the political elite.) is scared to turn the heating on.
Between you and me and the gatepost (Ukrainegate), it is my considered opinion that it is not so much the monarchy as an institution or the cost of running it to which liberal lefties object, it is more to do with who the monarchy are in terms of their class, breeding and ethnicity. Or, to put it more succinctly, because they are white, have class, are properly educated and ~ guess what! ~ talk the Queen’s English, not wot and Innit and high-five man!
God Save the King!
Sigh, I don’t believe that the lefties will be satisfied until they have installed something in Buckingham Palace (which will then have to change its first letter from ‘B’ to ‘F’) that is lesbian, feminist and preferably darker than the Blackwall Tunnel at midnight during a total eclipse and power outage. Meanwhile, in Number 10, I suppose toxic white masculinity, if ever such a Herculian thing should occur there (no chance!), will have to give way to a mermaid.
Permit me to inform you that this glorious vision has inspired me to press on with my 21st century re-write, in accordance with the agenda of liberal-left revisionism, of the classic tale Robin Hood. Renamed Robin Hoody and set in Lambeth, it is a soap-operatic epic about Its and Others in rainbow tights (what else!) flouncing through Sherwood Forest (sink estate) giggling and squealing excitedly whilst hotly pursued by that most famous of 13th century celebs (given a mermaid makeover) the shirtlifting Sherriff of Nottingham. Hope you don’t mind the plug. The Sherriff doesn’t, but then he’s liberal.
A well-known TV personality not exactly known for his positive affirmations of British society, or of anything come to that, struck an unusually optimistic note in one of Britain’s tabloids, when he said ~ and I paraphrase ~ that until the death of the Queen it felt as if everything in Britain was turning to sh*t, but when the news of the Queen’s death broke, and in the days to follow, according to him, Brits turned away from the UK’s negatives and focused on the positives.
PM perhaps you should be our PM! It’s a nice thought, and nicely put, but you forget that the media that pays your salary simply blinked for a moment. Once they remember to turn the fan back on, the sh*t will take flight as usual.
But let’s not sully what this same man from the media described as the ‘most extraordinary, remarkable and moving event’ that he had ever seen. He was, of course, referring to the Queen’s state funeral, not the ill-timed and completely inexcusable anti-monarchy demonstration or the shirtlifting Sherriff of Nottingham transgendering around in his fibre-fit tights.
And he was spot on. Not only was the state funeral executed with incredible dignity but with a choreographic excellence which had me breathing a sigh of relief when it was all over. It was simply astounding to calculate how many things could have gone wrong and didn’t, and that includes the weather
Nature, too, came out on the side of the Queen. It is reported that when the congregation emerged from the service at Westminster Abbey, the clouds parted and the sun shone through. Taken together with the double rainbow that appeared above Buckingham Palace just one hour before the Queen’s death was announced, a more symbolic and befitting tribute is difficult to imagine.
There are a great many people from all walks of life ~ statesmen, actors, entertainers, poets, authors, singer-songwriters, even politicians ~ whom my generation and generations immediately prior to mine have been privileged to share our lifetime with. Sadly, most are gone. All are irreplaceable, none more so than the Queen.
‘God save the King!’ we cry, “especially from mindless woke.”
Britain loses its lifeline to its past, identity and tradition
Published: 9 September 2022 ~ The death of the Queen the last light out
An email to my family yesterday evening (8 September 2022) regarding the death of the Queen:
Hello Carolyn/Joss
An hour ago, I tuned into the internet and discovered that the Queen had died. My immediate reaction was to feel sad for the Royal Family, but not incredibly sad, after all at the age of 96 the Queen has had a ‘good innings’ and, moreover, in a reign that spanned several decades miraculously survived ~ no thanks to the tabloids, which sought to turn her life and the life of the Royal family into a cheap and tacky soap opera ~ with her dignity and regality intact.
I did feel sorry for mum, however. One of my earliest recollections at the age of four was the framed sampler of the Queen’s Coronation that hung on Nan’s wall between the TV and the ‘chocolate’ cupboard. The Queen was mum’s role model; she idolised her as you idolised the Beatles, I idolised Mel Smith and David and Joss idolised all the wrong people because they were born too late.
Someone commenting on one of the Russian media websites said, echoing my own sentiments, “I suppose if I just confirmed Liz Truss as the new PM, I would give up on life too.” A little harsh, I think, but understandable.
I have never been a Royalist myself, and I have never not been a Royalist either, but, as many commentators have said and written, the Queen was a symbol of the UK’s past, its history, heritage and our ancestral home. To me she was the last living connection among ‘the ruling classes’, who connected us and our country to a time when Britain and its people were proud and united, a time when Britain deserved to be called ‘Great’ Britain. How I mourn the passing of that last great generation of British people, who we were fortunate enough to have known in our lifetime ~ those who lived through World War II. How different it all was then!
The death of the Queen the last light out
When the Titanic was launched in 1911 (something I do not personally remember!), Britain believed it was the dawning of a new era. It was; but not the one envisaged or wanted. I cannot help feeling, with the foreboding that comes from hindsight, that the death of the Queen draws ominous parallels with the opening years of the twentieth century, and that history is about to repeat itself.
Our poor old country: ‘Whither Goest Thou?’
I never thought after all those years of ducking and dodging the Queen’s Christmas Speech when we were young that I would shed tears on hearing that the Queen had passed away. But I did.
Yet consolation has a habit of springing from the most unlikely of sources. I remember when I was a teenager asking Uncle Son why he never accompanied us on our visits to England’s stately homes, a question to which he replied with typical brusque level-headedness:
“They [the royalty/aristocracy] wouldn’t pay to look round my house, so why should I pay to look round theirs?”
He’s absolutely right, of course. Dry eyes and stiff upper wotsits. Anything else at a time like this simply would not be English!
Goodnight and xxxxx to you all
Mick
PS: Thank you to my friends in Russia who offered their condolences regarding the death of our Queen.
Update: Advice to Russians (to anybody!) thinking about moving to the UK
Published: 4 September 2022 ~ Thinking about moving to the UK? Think again!
This post is an addendum to, or update of, four posts I wrote earlier advising Russians on what to expect should they ever contemplate the possibility of emigrating to the UK.
You may think that ‘Don’t!’ derives from the Russophobic situation that is sweeping across the West faster than coronavirus leaked from a US weapons lab, but the proliferation of anti-Russian sentiment is small potatoes, chicken feed, compared to the calamitous financial mess with which the UK is engulfed.
The extent of this crisis, if not its far-reaching societal consequences, can be ascertained from a simple experiment. Go to Googlenews.co.uk and in the search window key in each of the following search terms in succession and see what they bring up:
UK cost of living soars
UK standard of living falls
UK house prices rocketing
Here are five randomly selected media articles pertaining to each of the search categories (as of 24 August 2022)
UK cost of living soars UK inflation hits 10.1% in new 40-year high as cost-of-living crisis continues to soar
‘A tragedy’: Britain’s cost-of-living crisis worsens as rents soar and energy bills top $5,000
Cost of living crisis: Wages plunge at record pace as bills soar
Mother-of-four says ‘every day is a struggle’ as cost of living soars
Cost-of-living payments branded insufficient as energy bills soar
UK standard of living falls UK living standards ‘to fall at fastest rate since mid-1950s’
UK faces worst drop in living standards since 1970s, economists warn
Brits told to brace themselves for worst standard of living since records began
UK faces long recession and deepest plunge in living standards on record, Bank of England warns
Britain, a services superpower sinking into stagnation
UK house prices rocketing UK house prices rise at 11% annual rate despite cost-of-living crisis
UK house prices set to rise even higher despite a 36% decline in buyer demand, experts say
Postal districts around the Olympic Park see house prices increase as much as £537k over ten years
UK house prices rise at the fastest rate for 18 years
UK builder Bellway reports record revenue as house prices climb
As you can see from the randomly selected online headlines, cost of living in the UK is soaring, the standard of living is in decline and yet, against this backdrop of misery and woe, house prices are rocketing.
Discard immediately any reports that you read in the UK media that house prices are ‘slowing’ or that there is a ‘correction’ in the housing market. Statements of this nature appear periodically in the UK press, every six months or less, but by the time you have digested them house prices are off again, climbing that fateful ladder from which the only way down is rapid and fatal. It is interesting to note in this respect that, as Sherlock Holmes would say, ‘The game is afoot’. In the last three days UK media, with nothing new on the coronavirus front to bluster about and the British public’s Twitter-afflicted attention span no longer able to focus on Ukraine, has turned to startling prophesies of an impending crash in the housing market to provide my fellow Brits with the crisis fix they crave.
Whatever they tell you, the fact remains that cost of living is up; standard of living is down; and buying a house in the UK is out of reach for most people.
To understand the mechanism by which the catastrophic gulf between cost of living, standard of living and artificially inflated house prices have come about in the UK, you need to turn the clock back to a time that several generations of Britons were born too late to know. In this era, which was a continuation of hundreds of years of history, homes, as the word implies, were houses where people lived, typically for the entirety of their lives and for generations of a family’s descendants.
The key word in this scenario is ‘home’, since that is what houses had always been and were, homes, and to a large extent they remained as such until the Thatcherite era of the 1980s, when houses ceased to be homes and became instead a speculative commodity.
In the 1980s under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Thatcherism, as it became to be known, was turbo-charged capitalism. Faced with no other way of shoring up the country’s coffers, plundered and sacked as usual by the outgoing Labour government, Maggie had no alternative but to sell off the ‘family silver’, privatising everything in sight (well, almost). In her zeal to mobilise the country’s economy1, she sacrificed the right, the historic right, to a stable family home, by turning houses into a make-money-quick scheme. Instead of a home for life, houses became speculative investments to buy for profit, not to live in. The nation became obsessed, first by the aspirant desire to join the ranks of owner occupiers and then, like them, to make money from their acquisition. This obsession continues today.
Looks like an Englishman’s home is no longer his castle
As part of her grand plan, Maggie also introduced the Right to Buy, a housing act giving tenants of local authority housing (council houses), the right to buy their ‘home’. This programme of apparent social mobility, which had the soon-to-become socialist dinosaurs breathing fire and brimstone, was all well and good as long as ‘home’ and ‘right to buy’ appeared in the same sentence. But it didn’t quite work that way. A good many social housing converts had no sooner bought their ‘home’ than, following the lead of legacy homeowners, they were selling them on for a profit. An Englishman’s home was no longer his castle, it was a rapid succession of cash cows: sell the house, buy another house, use the cash from the sale of the first property to develop the new house. Invariably, however, there was never enough money from the sale of the first property to entirely fund the second, so in order to make up the shortfall, it was cap in hand and off to the bank for a mortgage. Did you hear the sound of thunder off-stage! As any seasoned Monopoly player will tell you, once the mortgaging starts for many the game is over.
The immoral transformation of home to commodity, which would re-energise the wealth and social aspirations of a generation of Brits during the Thatcher years who, let’s face it, had been ‘shat upon’ by Labour, rapidly gained traction in the UK and has steamrolled ever since. It gave ‘ordinary people’ the chance to make what they saw as mega bucks by buying properties, knobbing them up, living in them until they felt the time was right and then swiftly selling them on. In all fairness some of these latter day quick-profit speculators did make money, some, a minority, made a fortune. Very few had a home. My boss bought and sold the houses in which he and his family lived so many times in succession that his son once tellingly remarked that he had no idea what a proper home was! But whilst ‘your average punter’ was sweating and toiling away to keep up with his relocating neighbours, those who made the lion’s share and are coining it in still, were and are ~ surprise, surprise ~ property developers, bankers and financiers.
By the time ‘our Tony’, Tony Blair, arrived on the scene, the die had been cast. Not since Al Capone had built a criminal empire on the back of prohibition had one so young been better positioned to re-align a political party, adopt and adapt the housing boom template and make, by all accounts, a tidy profit in the process4 whilst driving the country into debt, more debt, greater debt, desperation and moral depredation. The old rank and file socialists, what’s left of them, must, when they look back on Blaire’s stewardship of the country, hear the ghostly voice of Val Doonican singing “If I knew then what I know now” (Sorry, what’s that you say? You’ve got all his LPs?), for Tony’s New Labour was, and is ~ as we all know now ~ no longer Labour at all but the New globalist-oriented Liberal-Lefty party2, a syndicated branch of the Davos Globalist Cartel.
Not content with flooding the country with unwanted immigrants, all of whom needed housing of their own (funny, that!), Tony threw himself body and ~ well, we won’t say soul ~ behind the housing boom, making in the process, so it is alleged, a pretty penny or two for himself whilst subjecting the nation to fictitious wealth, unrelenting debt and eventual penury3.
Under Blairism, loans and credit cards were floating around like confetti at a wedding of 85 genders. It was all aboard the unsecured loans, unaffordable mortgages, credit cards bandwagon and nobody seemed to realise ~ or if they did, they did not care as long as they might make money ~ that the final destination would be Debt. Irrefusable offers and multiple invitations to climb aboard the credit bandwagon dropped through Britain’s letter boxes in such monstrous egalitarian profusion that they almost outdid Reader’s Digest in their contribution to the junk mail mountain.
Today, whilst most Britons feel like door mats for the political elite to wipe their mucky boots on, at least their own door mats are virtually free of offers which they should never have not refused. With the goose no longer laying the golden egg of unlimited loans, the days of making a ‘fast buck’ on your home, whilst not entirely over, is fraught with pitfalls. Now, the only way for ordinary folk to claw back a little money from their property is to sell and move into a shoe box. This symptom of desperation, the practice of fleeing to a smaller home, relies on the buzzword ‘downsizing’ to sugar coat the pill, but people do it, and more and more, because moving into a smaller and less desirable property is practically the only way of keeping the bailiffs from the door and, in the process, with a good back wind, to extricate yourself from your incumbent children who, since they cannot afford a mortgage themselves, could otherwise be living with you until they receive that telegram from the Queen.
By divvying up the dosh from the sale of your former and better property, your cherished family home, you might just be able to give your children the amount of wonga required to meet the mortgage deposit demanded by the bank. This down payment (and ‘down’ is the word to note), should ensure that yet another generation signs its precious life away to the mortgage devil. Don’t worry, the bank will help you. It’s skilled in the art of having your leg up onto the property treadmill.
Do I mean ‘the property ladder’? No, I meant what I said. For a 25-year mortgage is a sure and certain way of condemning yourself to a job in which you dare not rock the boat or dive overboard even if your sanity depends upon it, because you are chained to that monthly mortgage payment, and if you cannot afford to stump up the money every month on the dot you are going to lose your house, which means you are going to lose your home. As it says in the small print of every mortgage contract (always read the small print), ‘if you cannot keep up payments on your mortgage you are liable to lose your ‘home’ ~ that’s right ‘your home’: the threat could not be more explicit ~ Got you, wage slave!
However, just because the majority of folk in the UK are no longer making lots of wonga on playing the property game, it does not mean that everyone is in the same leaky boat. This is because not everyone is a wage slave ~ most are, but not everyone. Inflated house prices, big-big mortgages, high-interest loans and revolving credit is just about the only thing that keeps the UK afloat, the definition of what constitutes the UK restricted to bankers, financiers, politicians and moneyed elites. The gilded members of this UK, a club that only the few belong to, have been living it up, metaphorically and actually, on their luxury yachts for years and only now are beginning to wonder if the collective term for their privileged buoyancy is spelt the same as Titanic. It’s almost time to look for the lifeboats, which for many won’t be there.
Thinking about moving to the UK? Think again!
For the majority of ordinary Brits, keeping one’s head above water is difficult enough. It is widely recognised that given their track record Britain’s politicians couldn’t save a drowning man in a back garden paddling pool, let alone provide adequate lifeboats to save the nation. But the economic situation has become so tragic that most Britons would willingly settle for a half share in a snorkel, if only they could afford one.
In this tragi-financial-comedy, every time the victims of artificially inflated house prices take on a mortgage it offers the same security as flipping a coin. But no matter which side up the coin lands, for the political-legal-banker cartel the outcome is always a winner. These are they who are literally coining it in.
Vital Statistics Deposit: At least 5% of the cost of the house you would like to purchase. If you are a first-time buyer, most banks will expect potential buyers to pay a 10% deposit
Average cost of a house in the UK: As of May 2022, the average UK house price was approximately £280,000 which represents an average increase of £30,000 in a 12-month period
Predicted rise in utility bills in UK end of 2022: Energy prices are forecast to more than double in the 12-month period ending 2022. Some sources suggest that energy prices will exceed £5000 by the end of 2023.
Making much about house prices is a justifiable exposition when it comes to laying bare the problems of living in Britain. It is not by far the only cross that Britons have to bear when it comes to making ends meet, but when all is said and done housing is the big one.
As I noted in my earlier posts, whilst keeping up mortgage payments on your home will devour at least half of your monthly income, what’s left of it will be gobbled up by utility bills and council tax. As for those other ‘necessities’ ~ contents’ and buildings’ insurance, the cost of running a motor vehicle or two (including petrol costs), internet connection bills, credit card payments … let’s not go there! But do remember to bear them in mind!
In the pecking order of daylight robbery, after burglary by mortgage comes mugging by utility bills: always a dreaded spectre; now they are downright terrifying.
How convincingly the meteoric rise in gas and electricity prices can be attributed to the UK establishment’s wanton participation in the United States’ criminal Ukraine adventure is debateable. Unlike Europe that relies for its comfortable existence on Russian gas, it is claimed that Britain only has a 5% reliance stake in gas from Russia. Be this as it may, it doesn’t help any when you are a small country devoid of natural resources to turn your suppliers into your enemy just to please a collapsing United States and to indulge Liz Truss’s make believe that she is Margaret Thatcher.
There are, in fact, a number of interlocking issues that explain why the British public are being hit with gargantuan utility bills: historic bad management of the economy is one of them; the other is the bogus alternative energy argument, which is the alternative energy industry; and the other, of course, is Ukraine.
The Russians dun it
Citing Russia’s special operation in Ukraine as a reason for old age pensioners freezing to death in energy-starved Britland this winter, is part of western governments’, and therefore western media’s, shaky mainstream narrative. At the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, western leaders actively exhorted the easily-manipulated British public to invite a Ukrainian refugee into their country, even into their homes, orating in glowing terms of how humanitarian crises in far-flung distant lands were infinitely more important than selfish preoccupations such as keeping warm in winter, keeping the lights on at home and keeping yourself from fainting with shock when you pay for your fuel at the filling station. But such gung-ho noble sentiments whilst entertaining in summer tend to lose their ennobling appeal as the icy blasts of winter gather upon the horizon of the western hemisphere. And it is no consolation that whilst the majority of Britons will be rubbing their hands together in an attempt to generate warmth, a small and privileged minority, viz the CEOs of utility companies, will be rubbing theirs and each other’s for entirely different reasons.
Western politicians and the media with which they collude are keen to sell the line to the British public that the Ukraine conflict is driving up the global gas price as traders are concerned that they may not have access to Russian gas in the future, whilst carefully omitting that the reason why Brits will go cold, broke or possibly both this winter is a direct consequence of US globalist ambition. The US-led western collective’s attempt to crush the Russian economy and destabilise the country by imposing sanction after sanction on it and perpetuating the Ukraine conflict by throwing public money away on arms shipments has barely dented Russia but has subjected the British populace to energy and standard-of-living impoverishment barely known in the UK since old man Labour was last in power. Come on liberal lefties! What about the NHS and the escalating energy bills! Get out those banners and riot around the streets!
Another thing that is rarely mentioned, if ever, is that the renewable energy industry, which has long been touted as the answer to the Earth maiden’s prayer, is full of rapacious snake oil salesmen. The suspicion that renewable energy is a complete fraud is echoed and substantiated by socio-political experts around the world, who agree that inordinate amounts of tax-payers money is siphoned off each year to fund futile renewable energy projects at the expense of energy security5.
Most UK politicians do not want to hear this, and the Greens are having a shit fit! How dare renewable energy be exposed for the fraud that it is!6 Goodness knows what they, the Greens, are going to do this winter to keep warm. Downsize into the smallest shoe box imaginable, put on a couple of extra anoraks and get their live-in Ukrainian to pump the bellows around the candle? Mind you, the cabbage-brained Greens are so adept at producing hot air about the so-called iniquities of those on the right (and usually in the right) of politics and trumpeting loud and long about bizarre, unworkable loony-left policies that they could keep the entire country warm by the laughter that they generate.
But is it a laughing matter (snigger)?
British people shiver in winter as they cannot afford to pay their energy bills
The UK is often cited as a country that no longer makes things or produces anything. It is a funny little place that pushes funny money around on computer screens in banks, loan shark offices, credit card companies and in one of the biggest gambling houses in the world (although the news on the street is that even this is losing its edge to foreign competition) the London Stock Exchange (see: Charlie Richardson and the British Mafia). Inflating house prices and concreting over the countryside with little unattractive, unimaginative red-brick boxes badly built and not worth a quarter of the money that they are ‘valued’ at is the UK’s financial equivalent of The Last Chance Saloon. ‘Britain needs more houses’ is as facile and environmentally catastrophic as Britain needs more immigrants is suicidal, but old slogans, like old habits, die hard, especially when they serve the self-serving interests of the country’s corporate carpetbaggers and its slippery liberal politicians.
The UK is also a country that allows (did I hear you say ‘encourages’?), a monthly tsunami of illegal immigrants from all corners of the third world; thousands upon thousands of freeloaders whose social security benefits, hotel bills, translator and interpreter fees, housing costs ~ the list goes on ~ comes out every pocket of every working British citizen in his, her or its taxes, just so liberal lefty can say, “Hello Sammy from Bongoland, aren’t we kind and tolerant!” The only reason that this silly country, the UK, is not a silly bankrupt country is that as soon as the going gets tough, those at the top of the very pointy pyramid simply print more money, as they did when tipped the wink by the WHO that coronavirus was the perfect excuse for doing so.
Thinking about moving to the UK? Think again!
I am not going to expatiate on the auxiliary costs of living in the UK and the reason why The Smiths’ lyrics, “I was looking for a job and then I found a job and heaven knows I’m miserable now!” is so applicable to modern UK life. Suffice it to say, and we’ve all been there, that once you’ve got that job that took six months, 100 application letters and almost as many interviews to get, you soon learn, usually the day after the euphoria dies, that it will never pay enough to keep your head above water: cue credit cards, sequential loans and very happy financiers. It’s not long before you hate that job. In fact, you loathe and detest it. All that shit from your employers and those awful people with whom you have to work, who, if you saw them coming towards you in the street, you’d quickly cross the road to avoid. But you are trapped: your mortgage depends on your salary, and in an overpriced, under-governed and horribly overcrowded country where hundreds of people chase every job, you have no other option but to stay put and endure it, no matter how desperately skint you are and how tragically miserable your life has become.
Apart from this, living in the UK is bad (at last whilst the liberal-lefty globalists are in charge). Why would you want to live there? Why would you want to go there? This post has discussed the positives, next we’ll expose the negatives.
Man the lifeboats! What am I saying!!! ‘Its and Others first!’
Footnote: See reference 3 below. In this article published in 2015, the author writes: “It is crucial that the next government introduce detailed, workable and effective measures to boost housing supply across the country.” That’s the UK for you! All they can think of is ‘build more houses’ Like unlimited immigration, where, or rather how, will it all end?
The important thing is that we wouldn’t be allowed to drink it in the UK, at least not unless we wrapped the bottle in a flag of a different country, as the Union Jack has been radicalised by oversensitive ethnics operating under the auspices of liberal-left self-culture loathers.
Recalling how racist it was to fly the national flag during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, I wasted no time in removing the cap from the bottle, took a quick whiff, made a couple of notes, decanted it into my beer glass and hid the bottle behind a nearby chair. And then I remembered that I was not in the UK but drinking beer in Russia, where, oddly enough, nobody seemed to mind if my bottle displayed a Union Jack or not.
I must say that whenever I see bottled beers which are flag- or otherwise-affiliated with countries of distant origin, particularly western countries and more specifically England, I tend to avoid them or, failing that, buy them out of curiosity but rarely make the mistake again.
Thus, I remind you that it was not I who purchased this ‘anglicised’ beer, but my wife. Not that I am complaining: Wives who buy husbands beer are why they are wives in the first place, not left on the shelf like Watneys; they exhibit a finely tuned awareness of the status quo and a responsibility to it that makes anything, even anything vaguely feministic, almost acceptable and often excusable. But as redeemable as such commendable actions are, what wives don’t know about beers you couldn’t fit into Biden’s mind, so let that be an end to the matter.
Relying on the same nose that I was born with, rather than a sex-changed appendage, whilst making allowances for its toxic masculinity, it had me know that the Beer that I was smelling was a hoppy thing overly mixed with blackberries and infused with the essence of Vimto.
The mixture poured into the glass rapidly. I was thirsty. It gave a froth and then quickly took it back again, like a present I didn’t deserve, and what was left on the sides of the glass couldn’t be bothered to stay.
The first sip was like thrusting your head into a mixed bag of fruit in search of hops ~ “Come out with your hops up, we know you’re in there!” And sure enough, after some coaxing the hops came out, yet not with a white but purple flag. Can you drink a colour? The chemical fruit intensifies as it descends in the gullet, yet although the hue is a faint light amber your mind is fixed on purple. I believe it’s what’s called a trick of the light.
Bochkarev British Amber Beer in Kaliningrad
At a very sensible 4.3% OG, alcohol content can play no part in delivering the firm impression that you are consuming a very sweet energy drink packed with glucose and fructose or that, whilst you were looking the other way in search of a real beer, someone snuck up behind you and stuck a stick of rock in your glass. Similar things can happen, I’m told, if you turn your back in Brighton.
With this exception noted, I have to say that Bochkarev British Amber is possibly the most unBritish beer that I have ever tasted, and if this is Heineken at its best then thank the lord that they have Fd off from Russia (ie, Finally decided to go).
I do not pretend to speak for everyone, since your taste is probably different to mine and mine is probably better. Nevertheless, Bochkarev British Amber could explain why certain Russian celebrities took European holidays at the coincidental times that they did and that when Heineken took a similar holiday they returned to the safety of a decent beer. Like the death of Freddie Mills in 1960s’ London, Bochkarev British Amber ~ what it is made of, why they bother to stew it and why they call it British ~ may forever remain a mystery.
😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Bochkarev British Amber Brewer: Heineken Brewery Where it is brewed: St Petersburg Bottle capacity: 1.35 litre Strength: 4.3% Price: It cost me about 187 roubles (£2.53 pence) [at time of writing!] Appearance: A shade amberish Aroma: It doesn’t smell like beer Taste: It doesn’t taste like beer Fizz amplitude: 4/10 Label/Marketing: Counterfeit British Would you buy it again? No Marks out of 10: 2
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
A summer’s day on Svetlogorsk prom (where there is a lift)
Published: 25 August 2022 ~ Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk
Look! Is that really me sitting outside a café bar in Svetlogorsk gazing out across the sea! I wouldn’t want you to get the erroneous impression that I have a peculiar Freudian obsession with lift shafts, but here I am back in Svetlogorsk again checking up on what has happened or not, as the case may be, along the prom extension of the Svetlogorsk coastline, at the base of Novyy Promenad lift. Perhaps I am just sitting there for the convenience of the location, enjoying respite and inertia and the pleasure of drinking beer. Will we ever know? And will the world stop turning if we don’t?
Approaching the lift on the uplands, we walked through the landscaped grounds of Yantar Hall, described by tour guides as a ‘modern multifunctional cultural centre’, a place where bold futuristic design meets pretty silver-birch woodland. What a juxtaposition! I cannot recall what was here two decades ago when I first came to Svetlogorsk. “Bugger all!” my brother cries. For once, he could be right. But we won’t split hairs about it, if only because as one gets older one tends to becomes more follically challenged. However, we will politely venture that a percentage of the ground requisitioned for this ambitious development consisted of hard-surfaced tennis courts and more of the woodland that surrounds it today. Should I be wrong, excuse me. (I know you often do …)
On a warm summer’s day, although the streets of Svetlogorsk are not exactly teaming with people, give or take several score more than there was twenty years ago, charting one’s course to the lift via the grounds of Yantar Hall is to court serenity. You mind knows and so does your soul that you are walking in step with nature, heading towards the sea.
It does not take long, in fact a surprisingly short duration, for new buildings to make their peace with Nature. Already, the headland entrance to the lift has begun the process of blending, or perhaps for the sake of accuracy we should say that the environment into which it intruded no longer baulks at its presence
The plate glass wall that perimeterises the outdoor viewing area and stops you from travelling down to the prom without the aid of the lift, could make you feel a little queer if heights are not your thing, but if you are feeling queer and heights don’t bother you, don’t fret, the only thing you need worry about is that there is something wrong with your gender. Viewed from a different perspective, from the crest of the bank to the ground below and out across the sea, it is the perfect place for people, who have forgotten to bring a cameraman with them, to take those all-important filtered selfies to post on social media. A picture is worth a thousand words, make no mistake about that, possibly more if you care to count them.
The view from the gallery inside the building, looking down on the construction site that hugs the coastline below, revealed within visible limits no dramatic alterations since my last reconnaissance. That luxurious premier apartment overlooking the sea has yet to box the space that it has been allocated, but I am sure that it is out there somewhere, somewhere in the future, complete and enviably occupied.
For the time being, however, I would have to be content with commenting on such changes that had occurred, and which could be seen and appreciated once we reached ground level.
Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk
The first appreciable development was the opening of a café bar at the front of the lift’s terminus, facing the prom and the sea. It did not take long to leave me here to enjoy a beer, or two, whilst my fully aquatic wife flirted with the Baltic.
The small forecourt at the front of the café is demarcated inside a rectangle of black metal planters, which would ‘good looks’ (as my wife used to say, until I put her right) as screening for a home patio. Craning over the top of the planters, I was able to observe that the adjoining area containing the retro fast-food vans, which had acquired two more in my absence and was beginning to look like a diner-vans’ colony, was also territorially enclosed with planters, but ones that resembled tubs on wheels. Their portability opened up all sorts of possibilities for mobile garden planning (see, my time as an editor on Successful Gardening was not entirely wasted), failing which they could be exploited as excellent roving ice buckets, eminently suitable for large-scale soirées or adventurous garden parties. They would also make good kiddie buggies into which to throw your children and tank around the lawn or, exclusively for my wife, a customised nomadic swimming pool. I could take one of these buckets on wheels, roll it under the apple tree, fill it full of water and my wife could go and sit in it. And I, of course, could take photos of her that she could then post to VK.
When my water-winged wife got out of the sea, any chance that I may have had to impress her with my notions were lost to a flurry of praise of how wonderful it was to swim and commune with ‘beautiful nature’. Now she was imploring me to take photographs of the ‘amazing’ sunset. Cuh!
Keeping my plans for the planters secret, I finished my second pint and fortified in stereo walked over to the sea wall not to take photos of sunsets but of the lift and its immediate surroundings from the perspective of the front elevation. Hmm, perhaps I do have a lift shaft fetish? But that is by the by. If I had not pursued my inclinations, I would not have been any the wiser that above the café where I had been sitting a restaurant had been installed. By no means the largest restaurant that the world has ever known, it does have long, broad windows through which you can gaze at the briny.
Eventually, I did take that picture of the sunset over the Baltic Sea and in doing so discovered an excellent example of utilitarianism that either had not been where it is now when I last leant on the wall or if it was, I had not been paying attention. Every three or four feet or more flat surfaced wooden rectangles, approximately one foot in width and two feet in length (I am an ardent supporter of the old imperial system ~ it really does make life just that little bit less simple) had been bolted along the top of the wall, creating, in effect, handy little table tops on which to stand your sundries. A man standing next to me placed his can of beer on one. What a good idea!
How well these table tops will hold up when the summer weather turns dramatically to winter is a point I wished you had not raised. Perhaps they are detachable? No matter, I am so taken with the concept of them that should they float or fly away I will return with one of my own.
Making off in the direction of the older promenade, where one would have been when Svetlogorsk was Rauschen, nothing leapt out at me like a mugger in Brixton to alert me to something that I may not have seen already. But when we reached the giant sun dial, the starting point of the old prom, sheets of corrugated tin barring further access reminded me of an article that I had read in the local news about future reconstruction work to the resort’s historic esplanade. That future was obviously now.
Not meaning to imply by the word ‘historic’ that the in-situ esplanade is the one that Germans once strolled along, most likely not even the foundations on which it stands is of German origin, nevertheless its Soviet heritage must retain nostalgic value for others not just me, but me included since I have sauntered along it many times over the past 20 years.
Following the diversionary tactics of other pedestrians, we ended up on a hard-surfaced path hidden inside the bushes, running parallel to the promenade, that I had forgotten had ever existed, and it was from this path and the bushes lining it that I was able to take a photo of the old prom (see above) looking rather sad and forlorn in its decommissioned condition. Whether the whole kaboodle is to be replaced or the framework preserved and a new plateau raised above and around the existing structure, your guess is as good as mine. But lured by my illicit love ~ my affair with Svetlogosrk lift shaft ~ I am bound to find out sooner or later. When I do, I’ll let you know.
