Published: 23 September 2021 ~ An Englishman at the Dreadnought Kaliningrad
Every Jazz lover knows that the best jazz is played in underground basements. Where else would you find a basement? And Kaliningrad’s Dreadnought is one such place.
Billing itself as a ‘legendary English pub’, you would be hard pushed to find a pub like it anywhere in England, but what it most certainly is, is an excellent atmospheric bar-come-music venue and a subterranean supper’s delight, boasting best beers from around the world, including eight permanent and six guest beers on draught.
No need to ask why I was there, then.
An Englishman at the Dreadnought, Kaliningrad
A short walk from Kaliningrad’s Victory Square, down some steps and you are in the Dreadnought. The roomy entrance hall tells you immediately what you can expect. The Union Jack mat, the large wall painting of a gauntlet-covered fist holding a key and a second painting of the eponymous dreadnought battleship, the concrete section walls roughly skimmed with paint: This is a no-frills place, mate; hip, modern, up to date; good music, good beer, young people and me.
Undaunted, I stood on the Union Jack and had my photograph taken and did the same again in front of the dreadnought painting.
Dreadnought’s basement is open plan, but it isn’t exactly. It feels that way because there are no doors, just entrances, so you get the unique ambivalence of airiness whilst sitting in a rabbit warren.
An anteroom immediately in front of the music room enables you to listen to the bands from a distance. The main room, where the bands play, is ‘L’ shaped and divided into three sections by narrowed widths minus doors.
Choice of seats range from high oval tables lined with tall, backed, bar stools on heavy cast-iron bases, low tables with bench seats on either side and, closest to the stage, comfortable-looking captain’s chairs, the sort that swivel nicely and are covered in brown leatherette.
I liked our reserved table. It was one of the tall ones, with high stools on heavy industrial bases. I always like a table where I can sit with my back to the wall. Why not? Look what happened to Wild Bill Hickok!
On the subject of reserved tables, Kaliningrad grows more popular each year, so, if you have a particular place in mind where you want to wine and dine or down a few beers, be advised that you’d best reserve a table or face the possible inconvenience of wandering around from bar to bar ad infinitum. This is particularly true on a Saturday night.
An Englishman at the Dreadnought Kaliningrad
As anybody who follows jazz can tell you, improvisation and spontaneity are highly valued, and I get the impression that Dreadnought knows this. Improvisation and spontaneity have been built into the décor. The basement is basic, real basic, for the walls and the ceiling follows that modern trend where all is exposed and on display: the electrical fittings, wires, heating and ventilation pipes, structural supports and so on. The lighting, even with the many traditional ceiling sockets, is subdued and the industrial-style suspended lamps that dangle over the tables halo the glow with limited dispersal.
Likewise, the interior décor is minimal; its artiness is controlled, aspiring towards the extemporised look, to give that laid-back, unobtrusive but thoroughly engaging appeal.
The British theme, which comes with the dreadnought name, is carried over from the hall into the music room by the further use of Union Jack curtains which, in keeping with the retro theme of the early 20th century, have worn and distressed stage managed into them.
Principal to the decor in the entertainments room are two large wall paintings. Although in content these are naval associated, the style in which they are painted is distinctly 1940s’ United States Air Force. They are, in fact, nose-art replicas, featuring leggy, stocking-clad, frolicking females, partly dressed in uniform, with flirtatious come-hither looks.
The one nearest to our table had its coquette perched on top of a sharks’ teeth painted torpedo set against a billowing wave with ‘On the Wave’ written across the foam, which I imagine should rightly read ‘on the crest of a wave’. The other had its flirty part-uniformed female draped across the suggestive gun barrels of a dreadnought class destroyer. Both pictures are fun and colourful, although historically neither one, or anything vaguely like them, would have been tolerated by the Royal Navy’s upper echelons or likewise by, and especially by, the Royal Air Force, and as such this type of artwork strictly remains an American idiosyncrasy.
There is yet another room in the Dreadnought’s arsenal, which, if you are unaware of it, you are likely to come across on your way to the toilet. It put me in mind of a typical American bar, where the rooms are long and narrow and the clientele perch on tall bar stools at the front of the serving counter that runs the length of the room. The hubbub, which was busy but not rowdy, the clever lighting and silhouette wall-art of the dreadnought’s heavy guns, coalesced to create an ambience that took me back to those heady days of university campus bars.
Food is served at the Dreadnought, but as we had already eaten at the Greek restaurant El Greco’s, I will make no attempt to comment on either the variety or quality of the food. See the Essential Details section at the end of this post , where you will find the Dreadnought’s website address and the food it has on offer.
I had already drunk beer at El Greco’s but that did not stop me drinking beer at the Dreadnought. My choice of beer this evening was Maisel’s Weisse. It’s a German beer which, from experience, agrees with me, although as I sat there drinking it I could distinctly feel those heavy guns from the Royal Navy’s dreadnoughts bearing down on my fraternisation.
An Englishman at the Dreadnought, Kaliningrad
The Dreadnought hosts different kinds of music but tonight, as I have noted, the stage was set for jazz. My appreciation of jazz is reserved more or less to the emerging and principal swing years of the 1920s to the 1940s. Anything outside of this I tend to regard as background music, some of which I like and some which quite frankly jars. I am pleased to say, however, that Dreadful at the Dreadnought were not performing on the evening of our visit, and all of our party agreed that what we heard we liked.
Another plus in the Dreadnought’s favour is that the music is transmitted at an agreeable volume, meaning that you can hear it, appreciate it and still can hear yourself think and talk. How many times have you been to a music venue where you just can’t wait for each successive number to stop so that you can hold that conversation? I often wonder if some bands don’t pump up the volume to prevent the audience from discussing whether they like the music or not. Personally, I like to listen to music at a volume that allows me to converse with my friends without shouting, not to be deafened into submission to fulfill the band’s delusion that I love their music so much that it has rendered me, and everyone else, speechless for the evening.
Everything considered ~ the location, ambience, lighting, service, range of beers on offer, choice of places to perch and, as just appraised, the music ~ the Dreadnought gets the expatriate seal of approval.
But it wasn’t over yet. One of our party, out of the goodness of her heart, had ordered the house specialty for me ~ my very own ‘big gun’ dreadnought. As the photograph shows, the wooden dreadnought model holds a full battery of different flavoured vodkas; large glasses full of them, and all for me at the end of the evening when I’d been drinking beer. The rest of the crew abandoned ship, but, like the good captain that I am, I remained on the bridge ready to do my duty and was quite prepared, if need be, to go down with the ship as the band played on. Sink or float, the following morning I knew I would need a life belt!
Note in the photograph, the thoughtful and conveniently placed fire extinguisher that your friends can put you out with after you’ve overdone it on lashings of chili vodka!
Essential details:
Bar Drednout (Dreadnought Pub) 5 Handel Street Kaliningrad Russia
Tel: +7 (4012) 99 26 06
Opening times: Mon-Thu, Sun: from 12 noon to 12 midnight Fri-Sat: from 12 noon to 3am
Published: 20 September 2021 ~ Trust the Greatest Victim of Coronavirus
One year and six months into the coronavirus era or, according to your perception of it, the pandemic, plandemic, Great Reset, call it what you will, and the people of the world have gone from being recipients of ‘friendly’, almost parental, advice to stay home and stay safe, to being victims of emotional and moral blackmail, hinged to the requirement, mandatory requirement, to get themselves injected with fast-tracked vaccines, none of which have been conclusively cleared by the usual testing protocols.
In my native country, the UK, already divided along the socio-political faultline of legacy patriotism and social engineering, the imposition of lockdowns, masks and the big issue, vaccination, have galvanised attitudes and entrenched beliefs on either side of a great divide.
Some postulate that the Covid plan, or one dimension of that the plan, is based on the divide and rule paradigm that underpins mass, unwanted immigration for the ends advanced by Coudenhove-Kalergi, contemporaneously run in western liberal countries under the codename ‘diversity’ and sugar-coated as being the best thing since more curry.
Others lean towards the speculation that manifests from a suspected unholy alliance between the WHO, Bill Gates and the Big Pharma connection, or, to put it in its simplest form, discounting for the moment chipping people and culling the world’s population, profit.
This article, ‘While the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Just Gets Richer’, is worth considering if only because of this statement: “’The last person I would want to tell me if a vaccine was ready to go is a person who has an investment in the vaccine,’ Krimsky said”1. ‘The last person’ is a reference to Mr Gates; Mr Krimsky is a professor of humanities and social sciences at Tufts University.
And from the same article, “According to Forbes’s estimates, Bill Gates’s private wealth, estimated at around $115 billion, has increased by more than $10 billion during the pandemic. It is unknown if the Gateses have personal investments in companies working on Covid.”1🐷
Gates, his wealth and his objectives aside, it is the socio-ethical repercussions, the fallout from restrictions and new laws within the Covid orbit, that urgently need addressing, as differences in opinion regarding primarily mask wearing and co-opted mass vaccination is in the UK rapidly creating a two-tier society polarised by those who have been vaccinated and who, supposedly, willingly or unwittingly, support repetitive vaccination, and those who strongly oppose it.
The vaccinated are divisible into two sub-groups, determined by obedience and motive. One group consists of people who believe everything that the powers that be and their media tells them. They question nothing and do as they are told and then, having passed through the chrysalis stage, emerge as moral high-grounders, preaching to all in sundry who are hesitant to take or who are staunchly opposed to the vaccine that their recalcitrance is inexcusable, that it poses a threat to the health of others, and for this they must be blamed and shamed and subject to prohibitions.
The other vaccinated group consists of reluctant ‘volunteers’, those that have accepted the vaccine under duress of saving their jobs and livelihoods. In other words they have been coerced into having a foreign body injected into their body with no convincing assurance that it will not eventually harm them, possibly terminally.
The moral high-grounders, who unreasoningly follow the WHO, their governments and whatever the media tells them, condemn those who reject mass and mandatory vaccination outright on ethical and rational grounds by resorting to terminology custom-made for the purpose by ruling elites and their media factotums. Stigmastisation by the ‘conspiracy theorist’ label is the liberal equivalent of shouting ‘racist’, a means when all else fails of avoiding the issue and closing debate.
The moral low-grounding conspiracy theorists are averse to becoming one of the herd possibly because of the connation that herds are silly things that go willingly off to slaughter, but more likely because unlike the moral high-grounders they are suspicious of the links that exist between so-called non-government organisations, charitable foundations, Big Pharma etc.
Some of their persuasion believe that pharmaceutical companies, global investment groups and billionaire philanthropists deliberately conspired to instigate the COVID-19 pandemic; others that the conspiracy between them is more likely to have been formulated as an exploitation of Covid circumstances as and when they developed.
This ‘wait and see’ faction are less likely to concede that the practices of social media gurus to ‘protect’ vaccine vacillators from ‘false news’ and ‘false vaccine information’ is conducted on an equitable basis for altruistic ends, and more likely to consider the self-styled fact checking employed by social media giant Facebook and others as being a simple but effective means of censoring and suppressing legitimate, alternative, critical views on (a) the so-called protective measures adopted for dealing with coronavirus, especially, but not exclusively, with regard to enforced mask wearing and (b) more incisively, to the socio-ethical debate on fast-tracked and mandatory vaccination, where the term ‘mandatory’ encompasses not only legal directives but also the Orwellian implementation and ‘legal’ enforcement of vaccination passports, together with strong-arm fear mongering and emotional and moral blackmail.
The moral high-grounders believe what they are told to believe and do what they are told to do; the moral low-grounders question the validity and credulity of this approach, not only in regard to the approach itself, which is blind and unquestionable, but also from a critical analysis of the people doing the telling and the links between these people, their previous stated objectives and the ever-present profit motive.🐷
Trust the Greatest Victim of Coronavirus
The social media monopolisers, led by Facebook, now operate a blanket and in-depth censorship programme, which blocks content, eradicates comment and routinely reroutes readers to the WHO website or affiliated articles that purport to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Should anyone attempt to post anything that contradicts or challenges the official narrative on coronavirus, especially, but not exclusively, with regard to mask wearing and vaccination, they are vetted, censored and blocked. The same media groups encourage the compliant to advertise their compliancy by changing their avatars to virtue-signalling roundels, ‘I have had my vaccine’. For the initiated, one can only surmise that these rainbow encircled discs are worn as badges of honour; for those who are less easily led, or tend toward skepticism, they are seen as nothing more than misplaced trust and confessions of naivety.
“Currently, Facebook has more than 60 partners who fact-check content in more than 50 languages worldwide. As Remix News has previously reported, 18 out of 20 members of Facebook’s global fact-checking board have ties to George Soros, who has provided funding to liberal causes around the world, including over $50 million he’s spent on defeating President Donald Trump and efforts to undermine conservative governments in Hungary and Poland.”2
The man referred to in the quote above is the same man that the liberal-controlled western media is keen to refer to as a ‘billionaire philanthropist’ and is the same man allegedly whose non-government organisations (NGOs) have facilitated and continue to facilitate the mass mobilisation of people from third world countries into Europe. It is an irony of fate that this man is arguably the de facto precipitant of Brexit.
Eighteen months into the pandemic and the biggest casualty of all is Trust ~ misplaced or abandoned. By the time the ‘pandemic’ is over, by which I mean exposed for what it is or simply eroded by the passage of time and the demise of the main protagonists, will we ever feel able to trust them again? More to the point, do they really care? In the last analysis, trust is a silent commodity whereas money, as we know to our cost, talks …
Updated 14 September 2021 | first published 6 March 2020 ~ Kaliningrad Cinema
*Please be aware that since this post was first published on 6 March 2020 the Zarya has sadly closed. Perhaps another victim of coronavirus? I have published the edited, updated version as an epitaph to a cultural icon that surely must be missed.
There is only one independent cinema in Kaliningrad*, but it has been showing films since the 1930s. It withstood the conflagration of World War II, making it one of a small but respected fraternity of Königsberg survivors.
There is only one independent cinema in Kaliningrad, but it has been showing films since the 1930s. The Scala cinema, as it was first known, was the last cinema to be constructed in Königsberg. When it opened its doors to the public in 1938, nobody could have imagined that, in less than a decade, the city and the culture of which it was a part would cease to exist.
Unlike its compatriots, the Scala, now Zarya (Dawn), whilst badly damaged in the destruction that engulfed the city in the final months of World War II, escaped the fate of its contemporaries as it did the postwar edict to eradicate as many vestiges of the city’s German heritage as was considered practical, a deliverance that has ensured Zarya a place among the small but time-honoured pantheon of surviving Königsberg buildings.
More recently, the Zarya has undergone an imaginative interior refit: a novel, roots-sensitive makeover that has infused the cinema with new life without sacrificing its historic integrity.
Today, the cinema continues the tradition that it inherited, serving as an invaluable place of social entertainment and as a hub of cultural and artistic promotion.
To accomplish this in the hard-edged cinematographic age of monolithic multiplexes, Zarya has had to progressively reinvent itself by offering thematic events, film festivals and even extending its cultural focus to include interactive gatherings and support for local projects deemed beneficial to the wider community (see Interesting Facts panel).
If I am not mistaken (and I generally am) for a while in its recent history the Zarya cinema shared its glass vestibule with Kaliningrad’s casino, later replaced by a restaurant that in recent months has also closed. But then how accurate am I? Vodka+beer+age = inevitable impaired memory.
Today, it is impossible to stroll past the double-glass frontage of the Zarya without asking yourself what sort of place is it that would have a large, vintage film projector sandwiched between its windows? And after answering wrongly retro shop, you might be inspired to conclude a cinema.
European Film Festival
The day we had chosen to visit the cinema had coincided quite by chance with its hosting of the European Film Festival, a prestigious annual event.
Very kind of them
The red carpet was out; very plush; someone must have telephoned and told them that I was coming, I thought.
My wife thought not.
She explained that the red carpet and the hallway decked out in an imaginative tableau was to celebrate the work of the Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte.
Now stop me if you’ve heard this one before but the composition of which my wife spoke consisted of the following: numerous black bowler hats strung from the ceiling at different levels; a large, black, life-size model of a horse wearing a black lampshade (of course); and on the wall a ceiling-to-floor printed screen bearing repetitive images of numerous men, each one wearing a bowler hat, carrying an umbrella and facing this way and that.
My kind of room: the Zarya cinema, Kaliningrad, Russia
The Son of Man
At the back of this mind-teasing display, in front of the foyer, stood a mannequin rendition of the famous surrealistic painting The Son of Man. He was wearing a black jacket, white shirt and bowler hat and had a green apple suspended where his face should have been and above that pendulous apple a bowler hat on a wire. Makes sense? Perhaps, for you who are old enough, it does, viz ‘an apple a day keeps John Steed away’?
Mick Hart & friend at Zarya Cinema, Kaliningrad, Russia
I must say that the assertive presence of monochrome went well with the cinema’s emphasis on red plush textiles. Against the wall, where the red carpet ended, the low-slung tub-chairs had large spongey cushions upholstered in red material. Their further attraction lay in the fact that they had a definite Art Deco slant to them and that the maroon upholstery struck a balanced contrast with the beech-coloured woodwork that comprised the frames and the backs. Keeping them company, and dotted here and there, was the bar fly’s stool of choice: tall, sturdy, their 1940s’ round-back style consistently upholstered in a thematicising rich red fabric. Rumour has it that these seats are faithful copies of those that would have graced the cinema back in its Königsberg days.
Kaliningrad cinema
There was an awful lot going on visually inside the Zarya foyer and going on mainly in bright red and black: black hats, black horse, black piano, black light fittings.
In the hallway the black light shades jostled for air space with the black bowler hats, and their black cables hung in drop-head clusters (more than enough to give an arachnophobiac nightmares) which gathered at a ceiling rose, again in black. The broad red carpet and maroon-rich chairs intensified the blackness, not sordidly or with menace and by no means effetely but in a modern full-bodied way, somewhere between ostentation and class. Red also asserted itself in the heart-shaped cards with which a man-made (sorry about the UK sexism) bush was bedecked. The bush acted as a ‘visitors book’, the cards adorning it pinned there by numerous satisfied patrons, who wished to express appreciation for their cinematic experience by posting notes of goodwill.
European Film Festival at Zarya cinema, Kaliningrad, Russia
Architecturally, the interior of the building must have passed through various metamorphic permutations from the time it was salvaged from the ruins of Königsberg to its present-day incarnation. I was intrigued by the three or four doorless openings at the back of the room, all in one wall and separated from each other by a few feet only. The exposed but painted brickwork was a welcome sight in a building of this age, and the arches above the doorless openings echoed its heritage status.
Underneath the arches …
Through these venerable apertures, through lighting thoughtfully muted, small glimpses could be garnered of the cinema’s licensed bar and of its alcoholic infusions, posh top-shelf bottles strategically arranged to create the illusion of must-have, do-need in the name of style and image. That there was more shelving than bottles was no mistake or oversight; it allowed this coterie of top-brand liquor the space that it demanded to capture centre stage, like the high-priced prima donnas that its members most certainly are.
Between the wall and shelving, in this semi-open space, a long curving bar presided. The counter was ~ surprise, surprise ~ jet black, and this deep hue, together with the inbuilt shelving, bright red bar stools and discreet lighting gave to the whole a rich swanky opulence but of a kind more readily associated with high-rolling nightclubs than cinema interval-drinking space.
Mick Hart in his natural habitat ~ cinema bar, Zarya cinema, Kaliningrad, Russia
At one end of this prestigious bar, the end where I had stood to have my photograph taken, the walls were covered in monochrome photographs, large pictures of people and lots of faces. I could only imagine that here assembled must be the cinema’s doyens, each one an exclusive personage in his or her respected field of filmography.
Kaliningrad cinema
At the other end of the bar, where there was more space, and in an area where the wall curved beautifully, a drawing room suite, constructed according to the 19th century penchant for walnut-framed divans and chairs, offered fortunate patrons one of a number of close encounters with different eras in which to sit and relax.
Timeless style at the Zarya cinema, Kaliningrad, Russia
My wife, having discovered a large Art Deco figurine typically modelled in the female form, a gilt-metal delight symbolising movement, life and energy, just had to have her picture taken sitting in front of the upright piano on top of which this prized piece sat.
I, too, am an ardent fan of Deco, but I did not want to lose sight of the fact that the reason we had come to the cinema was inspired in part by curiosity but also for light refreshment.
The Zarya is not in the habit of serving meals, but then again why should it? After all, it is not Bill’s Café (do you know it?), but two teas and some snacks to go with them was not beyond the cinema’s remit, and once I had managed to rescue my wife from her inveterate deco addiction, we were shown to a seat in a distant part of the building, the window of which conveniently fronts the street, thus allowing you to snack in style as you watch the world go by.
A most agreeable room
This was a room in which the past and present met on equal terms. There was nothing disagreeable about 19th century reproduction antique furniture rubbing cabriole legs with the sleek profiles of modern black-vinyl seats or ebonised baluster rails used as visual divisions. There was a long wall seat, cushioned, comfortable-looking, running the length of the room, its presence literally overshadowed by a print of imposing proportions, gilt-framed, bold in colour and mounted on the wall above it. The scene depicted in this print has classical Biblical overtones, and I am sure that someone will recognise it from the photograph provided. However, you may encounter a little more difficulty when it comes to identifying its fellow print, since this has been suspended, frame and all, high above the flight of stairs that descends to the auditorium, and suspended close to the ceiling so that the image lies at 90 degrees to the floor.
Kaliningrad cinema Pop Art
A second room, running the entire length of one side of the building and at right angles to where we were sitting, accessible by two or three brick steps but cordoned off on the day we visited by a decorative barrier rope attached to two brass posts, offered tantalising glimpses through its doorless entrance and three or four apertures, which presumably once were windows, of its privacy beyond.
Although our view was limited to what could be seen through the gaps in the wall, there was sufficient visibility to see that the room was bedecked with mirrors, together with lighting sconces, retro advertisements and ceiling-suspended designer lanterns, the latter strung at random levels.
As I have said, this room was cordoned off, but if you don’t ask, you don’t get. And on this occasion, we did ask, and we didn’t get told to … you know.
Hide behind that candelabra whilst I take a photo of this magnificent table
It was a super room to be in, and I liked a particular table. There were three tables of the same kind in total: one at either end of the room we were now in and a third occupying the room in which we had just had tea. The design of the table was simple, striking and slightly anachronistic. It consisted of a fairly narrow light-wood oval top ~ reminding me a bit of a Rich Tea finger biscuit ~ and was raised on end supports of three, tall, inverted baluster-type columns supported on a curved base. These tables must be for standing against, unless you could find a high enough stool.
There was no shortage of things to see on the walls, but the attention seekers and getters were indubitably vintage advertisements, large-format reproduced artworks which completely filled the recessed arches in which they had been placed, most probably former windows, and were accomplished in the style generically known as Pop Art.
Through the large patio doors at the far end of this
room an outside seating area beckoned seductively. She, like the rest of
Kaliningrad, had had her fill of damp mediocrity where winter used to be.
It would have been nice to have settled down for 90 minutes in the cinema’s auditorium, but nowt was showing today with English-subtitles, so there was nothing for it but to quit this eclectic environment and take our chance with the weather, outside once again on the Streets of Kaliningrad (come on film/TV buffs, wasn’t The Streets of Kaliningrad a Quinn Martin production?)
*Please be aware that since this post was first published the Zarya has sadly closed. Perhaps another victim of coronavirus?
Interesting Facts about Zarya cinema [Zarya is a member of the Europa Cinemas network, the first network of cinemas to showcase European films] #In 1997 the World Premiere of Titanic was screened at Zarya. Lead actor James Cameron presented the screening #The European Film Festival was first held at Zarya in the early 2000s and continues to be held there #Zarya has connections with the actor Woody Allen #Zarya has devised and hosted hundreds of festivals, many international #Zarya invented a jazz and silent film fusion creating a film-concert concept #Other novel creations from the Zarya management and team include parties, vinyl record sales and a festival library.
The architect of the Scala cinema building was Siegfried Sassnik, whose work encompassed both residential and commercial projects throughout Königsberg. Two of those projects stand today in the near vicinity of the cinema building: the Moscow hotel and the entrance to the Zoo Park.
Essential Details:
Kinoteatr Zarya 43 Prospekt Mira Kaliningrad 236000
Opening Times Sun-Mon 9am to 12 midnight Fri & Sat 9am to 1am
Auditorium details The cinema has two screening halls: one with 343 seats and the largest 3D-screen in Kaliningrad and a smaller hall where festival films and an arthouse are shown.
Published: 13 September 2021 ~ Hippy Party on the Baltic Coast
It didn’t go exactly according to plan, but then what does? I am talking about our hippy party, which was scheduled to take place on the 11th September 2021. The main stumbling block was the weather. We had decided to hold the event on the 11th because two weeks before the day assorted internet weather services were predicting uninterrupted sun, but as the days fell away from the calendar, so the forecast changed erratically.
One consultation revealed that it would be overcast, another that we were in for intermittent rain, another that … In desperation, I even turned to the BBC weather site, knowing only too well that their forecasts, like everything else that they do, has a sharp liberal left slant to it, so the probability of getting the truth, the half-truth or anything but the truth was rather hit and miss, and yes, their forecast was also chopping and changing, like the way they had reported Brexit and the EU referendum.
It was hardly surprising, therefore, that as the day drew near, one by one, people cried away; and on the evening before the day that the party was to take place, we cancelled it.
Between times, we had succeeded in completing the renovation of Captain Codpiece, the deteriorating statue in our garden. Our friend and artist Vladimir Chilikin, with the help of a beer or two, had transformed Codpiece from the worn concrete man that he had become over the past 40 years into a strapping bronzed figure, in which many lost details could now be clearly seen.
Olga Hart with renovated fisherman statue
We, my wife and I, had been admiring Chilikin’s work from the pavement at the end of the garden when who should materialise but our friendly stout babushka.
“Hello,” we regaled her, cheerily.
“Why have you spoilt him?” she asked.
I knew she could not have been referring to me, so she must have meant the statue. Before we had chance to reply, she had exclaimed “He’s black!”
I heard someone saying, but I know not from whence the voice came, that it would not surprise me if it was black. Being British, I am only too aware that white statues are an endangered species, at least in the UK, and that, unless they are all painted black, it won’t be long before they will all have been run off with and thrown over some wall or other into a watery mire. But I ignored this voice and simply retorted, “No, in fact, he is bronze.”
“Well,” replied the stout babushka in a rare moment of concession, “I wouldn’t know because I am peearnee (drunk).”
I think in all fairness we can say ‘tipsy’, because when Olga collected some litter from the side of the road and placed it in our rubbish bag, babushka was quick to comment: “Huh! Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time!”
The statue, which is bronzed not black, was completed that afternoon. We had brought the marble glazed plaque to Victor Ryabinin with us, and before we left at the end of the day, we dragged the boat into place and finished the ensemble.
Hippy Party on the Baltic Coast
We came back on the 11th September as, on the morning of that day, we discovered that the weather forecast had changed again. Now we were informed that it would rain but not until 8pm, and until that time it would be bright and sunny, with temperatures reaching 26 degrees centigrade.
It was too late to rally the fringe, but the old faithful were ready to go and at a moment’s notice, so our hippy party went ahead, albeit reduced in numbers.
An executive decision was reached that it did not seem proper to combine the opening of Victor’s memorial with everyone dressed in flower power, even though Victor’s Boat with Flowers put flowers centre stage. But we abided by the decision and reserved the ceremony for a later date
The renovated statue, rocks adorning the plinth and Victor’s Boat with Flowers joined forces with our rather silly attire, caricature wigs, bright-coloured cushions and mats and, with the help of Arthur’s classic Volga and the dulcet tones of the Beatles wafting from our music system, attracted many a stare and comment from passing villagers.
The stout babushka was not in evidence today, which was a shame. I am sure that she would have had a thing or two to say had she witnessed our shenanigans. But at some point in the early evening a different distraction occurred. Someone had sent a drone buzzing over the garden and consigned us all and our antics to film.
I am sure that a hippy party, themed or not, would not have gone down well had this been the former USSR, even though, or especially since, drinking cognac from cognac glasses gave our particular brand of hippyness a rather bourgeois air.
Peace man! (no sexism intended, of course)
Mick Hart with Artour, who looks like a cross between Jimi Hendrix and Benny HillMick Hart with Egis looking as cool as cucumbers on a hot day
Published: 7 September 2021 ~ How to Grow Old Graciously
For the past week, I have been preoccupied with the 50th anniversary of my former UK school. The school opened officially on 6 September 1971, and I was among the first batch of inmates. To mark the occasion (not me having been there 50 years’ ago but 50 years of the school’s existence) a reunion had been planned to coincide with a book written by the school’s first and longest serving headmaster, the book being an anthology of amusing anecdotes gleaned from his 25 years of tenure.
Although I would not be attending the reunion in person, owing to coronavirus restrictions and the global money-making industry that has sprung up around it in the form of multiple tests and fines for non-compliance, I did join the reunion’s Facebook group to see if I could identify anyone by name or by photograph who was at the school at the same time that I was there. As I had been one of the school’s first intake, I did not expect to find many people that I knew, and I was right. We were the vanguard, the founders, the golden oldies. There were many more who came after us. We were, inevitably, in the minority.
Nevertheless, as I scrolled down the page the odd photograph of people from ‘my time’ at the school and then the names of fellow pupils crossed my memory radar, and before long I was communicating with people that I had not spoken to for half a century.
Having kept a diary for the same amount of time, I was able to regale group members and my fellow alumni by posting extracts from it, which, I was surprised to discover, were greeted and read with unbridled enthusiasm. Within 15 minutes of posting, I was harvesting Facebook likes as if I had paid someone to make me look popular, and my computer was bonking, perhaps a better word would be bonging, like a cash register on Black Friday morning, alerting me to the fact that Facebook comments were flooding in.
Mick Hart’s 1971 diary
It was all nostalgic and all good, except for one peculiar facet. As the day of the reunion grew closer, a number of posts and comments began to appear in which the posters confessed that they were ‘getting cold feet’, in other words that they were having second thoughts about attending the reunion. The reason they gave was almost always the same: they were self-conscious that in the past 30, 40 or 50 years their appearance may have changed. Get away with you. Really!
The more they whinged the more their former friends and colleagues rallied round and sort to comfort them, cajoling them to come to the reunion at all costs!
I could not help but wonder what the object of this exercise could be. If, for example, it was simply a way to solicit reassurance, you know the just-finished-exam patter, ‘I did not do well in my exam, how did you do?’, it seemed to me to be a rather cack-handed way of going about it. For if all they hoped to gain from their confessional was a sympathetic ear and the indulgence of their ‘friends’, surely if they then allowed themselves to be persuaded to attend the reunion, which I presume was what they wanted, then would not the revelations about their fears come back to bite them? Let’s face it (no pun intended), online their former acquaintances may have been kindness personified but after that pot boiler (no pun intended) once offline what would they be thinking? Alas, Human Nature informs us that it would be something like this, “Tom so and so, or Sally such and such, must look a right old state. I cannot wait to clap eyes on them!!”
To draw a parallel, it is a little like telling everyone that you will becoming to the reunion wearing a big false nose, when the last thing that you want is for people to know that you are wearing a big false nose.
Naturally, when we go to reunions or even just bump into someone that we have not seen for yonks, being British we instinctively yearn to say the right thing, which is, and ironically is not, ‘Hello Frankenstein, you haven’t changed a bit!’ Not many people cotton on to the fact that this seemingly innocent line, as over polished as a piece of trench art on an old lady’s mantlepiece, is deliciously offensive, viz: “Hello Frank, you haven’t changed a bit!”
Response: “Really, so what you are saying is that I always looked 65!”
And off goes your old school chum, calling back at you, “We shouldn’t leave it so long next time”, whilst muttering, “Never wouldn’t be a day too soon!”
To be honest, I cannot think of a better way of putting yourself under the microscope than by letting on that you are worried about your appearance.
Some people were obviously so convinced that they had changed beyond visible credibility and that as a result no one would recognise them that they had made name plates for themselves and hung them around their necks or pinned them to their shirts, which must have made them look very official indeed.
I can only imagine how much worse it must have been for name-plate wearers to have recognised someone immediately who had not tagged himself or herself with their names, only to have that person peer studiously at their name plate and then look at their face with bewildered astonishment!
Obviously, with so many ex-pupils from so many different years milling around, name plates performed a valid function, but think how excellent it would have been to have swapped the name plates around a little, and then stood back to see how many people disingenuously greeted others with ‘you haven’t changed a bit, Tom’, revealing that they didn’t know Tom from Adam.
How to Grow Old Graciously
My youngest brother made no bones ~ old and aching bones ~ about the fact that one of the reasons he was going to the reunion was, apart from the legitimate one of looking up old friends, to spot the bulging tums, big bums, double chins, bald heads and grey beards. He omitted ‘lines on the face like the British rail network’, but I am sure if he had thought of it, he would have included it too.
Indefensible? Inexcusable? Come now, let us not be hypocritical. I am sure there were many of you who were doing the self-same thing!
I do not expect there were many, however, if indeed any, who took this strategy to its next logical level, which is to have amused oneself by keeping a written record, something akin to a train-spotters’ notebook, to enable them to judge at a later date who had aged the least gracefully, ie possibly by using a point system to determine the size of bums and tums and the absence of hair on pates.
Unworthy, yes, perhaps, but I can think of a lot worse things to do on a Saturday afternoon.
The point I am making is that whilst people do genuinely go to school reunions to rekindle relationships with their old chums, generally shoot the breeze and chat about old times, they also go for reassurance. By the time we start going to school reunions, any reunion in fact, we have usually arrived at an age of advanced deterioration and hope that by seeing someone we know who is more advanced than ourselves it will make us feel better about ourselves. There is nothing wrong in this, since, as everyone is at it, it falls ironically into the category of mutual appreciation ~ er, or should that be, mutual depreciation?
Perhaps, that is why it is such a sod when you meet that one, really well-preserved person, and you have to say, begrudgingly, “you haven’t changed a bit!” And mean it!
Let’s face it, and I know we would rather not, it’s life. And life is all about deteriorating and then, a bit later on, decomposing. Who sang, “What is the use of trying the minute you’re born your dying?”
I know it was Leonard Cohen who sang, “Well, my friends are gone, and my hair is grey; I ache in the places where I used to play …” And “Who in your merry, merry month of May; Who by very slow decay …”
Hmm, better Auld Lang Syne, me thinks!
The other reason for going to reunions is to discover who has made it and who has not. I mean apart from talent and brains, if we all went to the same school, it figures that we all started with the same hand, the hand that life has dealt us. Thus, whilst at the reunion, if you meet Jane, who wasn’t academically the sharpest knife in the drawer but now has her own international fashion business with several shops sprinkled around the world, a large London town house, a villa in Spain, two beautiful children and, most likely given this profile, a husband who is a merchant banker (see cockney rhyming slang), whilst you have been sitting on the dole for the last 30 years nursing five A levels, you might not be too chuffed.
But, please, do not despair, help is at hand. It is called Bullshit.
This is not something that you can get O and A levels in, more’s the pity or I would have got a PhD, but it is something with a little practice and resolution that you can perfect. So, before you go to your next reunion take a tip from me, re-invent yourself. Determine who you are, what has happened to you, where you have been and where you are going. You can still be you and be somebody else at the same time: you can be you and the you have always wanted to be. Let’s be honest, isn’t that what most people do on social media, invent themselves and the world they live in? And, as almost everybody is on social media, then it follows that this is one skill that everyone possesses.
You may be a dustman, a drain cleaner or even, God forbid, a TV celebrity, whatever lowly station you hold in life, you can change all that, if only for one day! Say, for example, you are by nature a lazy, idle, layabout loafer, a ne’er do well, no good no-hoper, so what of it! Hone your bullshitting skills and by the time you arrive at that next reunion you could be Bill Gates or someone infinitely worse. You could be so successful that you are envious of yourself! And filthy rich, or just plain filthy. Whatever it is you are selling, it’s a way of buying respect!
Never lose sight of the fact, however, that when you are making your own reality, whatever you do in life, be it the ‘real’ one or the one that you have created, you really can change nothing.
Deterioration is the name of the game, and the game as we know it is life.
A friend once said to me, when he was approaching 75 years of age, that he was driving along in his car when he saw his reflection in the rear-view mirror. “I’d better call the police!” he thought, “Some old buggers just stolen my car.”
Or, to look at it from another perspective, at a funeral of a mutual friend, I said to one of the mourner’s “It’s a sad day,” to which he philosophically replied: “Well you can’t stop it!” meaning death. And, as a prelude to it, you can’t stop the ageing process. So just keep slapping on that Oil of Ulay, doing those press ups, eating all of the right food and injecting yourself with Botox, then, when it all fails, sit back, put on Monty Python’s Always look on the bright side of life and have a good chuckle at yourself.
Is becoming an old fart really that bad? Yes, of course it is and more! But he who laughs last laughs longest, which is especially true when you laugh at yourself.
Published: 30 August 2021 ~ A Memorial Garden for Victor Ryabinin
The idea to create our own, modest memorial garden to Victor Ryabinin came to us when we were deliberating on what name to give to the dacha. My wife, Olga, said that she wanted to name it ‘Boat with Flowers House’ after one of Victor’s paintings, which was also used as an illustration for the front cover of his and Sam Simkin’s book on East Prussian poetry.
Victor Ryabinin’s ‘Boat with Flowers’, shown here as the front-cover design for his and Sam Simkin’s book on East Prussian Poetry
We already felt obliged, motivated by our sensibility for history and heritage, to renovate the statue that stands in our garden. The statue is that of a fisherman. We did not put him there and neither did the Germans. In German times the dacha was the village hall, but in the Soviet era it became a hostelry for fishermen. Now it is a place where Olga plays houses and gardens, and I drink beer that I have bought from the local shop. And although I believe that a statue of me with a pint glass in my hand would be something that Nigel Farage would approve of, as the fisherman was there first, there he should remain.
The statue is Captain Codpiece. That is not his real name, of course, but one that has been bestowed upon him by my brother. I don’t think Codpiece minds. He knows we respect him, and he has certainly benefitted from our recent ministrations.
A Memorial Garden for Victor Ryabinin
I started the ball rolling by removing the moss, most of which had gathered on the plinth of the statue, and cleaned the flaking concrete from it, then some chaps from the village, whose building skills are far superior to mine, reconstructed the plinth using wooden planks for shuttering and pouring fresh concrete into the mould.
The statue with its new plinth under construction
Last week, our friend Chilikin, artist and conservationist, drank beer and vodka with me, and he also gave Codpiece the once over with a wire brush before saturating him in a transparent sealing compound, which will also act as a base substrate for the paint job that is to follow. In Soviet times, the statute was bright silver; the paint acted as a weather-shield, but it also transformed the concrete man into something resembling a metallised robot. Times change, and as the silver has worn off and with it the sheen of dubious taste, we have decided to act on Chilikin’s advice and go for a mottled bronze. The ‘distressed’ look will preserve antiquity, and a fresh coat of paint will give the statue a new lease of life.
Valordia Chilikin restoring the statue of the fisherman
Whilst Codpiece will stand tall, literally head and shoulders above the ensemble, iconic to the composition will be the boat we acquired some weeks previously, which will be used to recreate Victor’s Boat with Flowers.
Mick Hart applying preservative to the boat that will be used in Victor Ryabinin’s memorial garden
A memorial plaque has been commissioned and is in the process of being made. Next week we hope to find a suitable boulder on which to mount the plaque.
If we adhere to our timetable and complete the garden by mid-September, there is talk in the air of commemorating the event with a private gathering of clans. The occasion, I have been told, will not be black or white tie, but all attendees will be expected to wear some kind of hippy dress that backdates them to the 1960s. Codpiece was erected in the 1960s, so somehow it only seems right.
Опубликовано: 26 August 2021 ~ Секретное оружие в Калининграде
Вы знаете что британские СМИ постоянно твердят о том что Калининградская область является самой милитаризованной зоной на планете? Похоже, моя жена обнаружила то самое секретное оружие, когда однажды вечером пошла в магазин.
Его кодовое название- “Взлети”, но мы будем называть его непрофессиональным именем: Ботинком по Заднице “Земля-воздух”!
Моя хорошая жена выскочила как то из дома, чтобы совершить обычный поход в местный продовольственный магазин. Это небольшой магазин, с хорошо укомплектованными товарами и продуктами.
В тот особенный вечер в магазине находились – она сама, дама, обслуживающая ее, и ни души больше
Внезапно дверь распахнулась, и в магащин, пошатываясь, вошел чрезвычайно пьяный мужчина. Он был “в зюзю пьяный”, как говорят в этих краях.
Раскачиваясь из стороны в сторону и воняя перегаром, он повернулся к двум дамам в магазине и восстребовал денег: “Я голоден!” – гаркнул он.
Наступила тишина.
Все более раздражаясь, он повторил свое требование.
Моя жена, будучи учительницей и привыкшая отчитывать меня по поводу алкоголя, твердо посмотрела на него и сказала: “Если у вас достаточно денег на выпивку, то у вас, вероятно должно быть достаточно денег для того чтобы прокормить себя!”
Хорошо проспиртованный человек очень рассердился.
“Ты б…..!!” заорал он. – Ты меня обязана накормить ! Я буду сидеть в этом углу и не сдвинусь с места, пока ты не меня не накормишь!”
В этот момент в магазин вошел крупногаборитный мужчина. Он купил несколько товаров, и когда он собрался уходить, владелец магазина прошептала ему: “Этот человек в углу очень пьян и требует денег и еды! Я боюсь его.”
“Что? Этот паразит!!” – недоверчиво провозгласил рослый парень, после чего напрвавился к вышеупомянутому джентльмену, поднял его за шиворот, развернул лицом к дверному проему и, тщательно прицелившись, дал ему пинка под зад.
Хотя секретному оружию удалось продвинуть цель примерно на два метра или больше, цель, как будто все еще не убежденная в возможностях секретного оружья, приползла назад за добавкой. Вероятно он был каскадером?
И вновь человек, отвечающий за оборонительную силу башмаков, посчитал нужным обеспечить дальнейшую демонстрацию возможностей его оружия. Поэтому он развернул мишень, тщательно прицелился во второй раз, прицелился ботинком с земли на задницу и вновь запустив смертоносный ботинок, отправил цель в полет.
“О, спасибо, – сказала продавщица, – но я думаю, что, когда вы уйдете, он [пьяница] вернется опять”.
Она неоодоценила рослого галлантного сэра, потому что он был не только очень хорошим бойцом, оснащенным большой парой башмаков, которые, казались мргли принадлежать кому угодно, но он, по всей вероятности, имел опыт управления компании по перевозке грузов, потому что, как только испуганный владелец магазина выразил ему свои опасения, он буквально схватил пьяного мужчину за шиворот и, приподняв его на четвереньки, переправил его через оживленную дорогу, где, как он заверил дрожащего владельца магазина позже, учитывая его пьяное состояние, если нарушитель попытается снова перейти дорогу, он будет сбит проезжающей машиной и прилипнув к капоту, окажется где-нибудь в Польше.
Мораль этой истории очевидна. Если только вы не носите толстый кусок губки в трусах и не возражаете отправиться в Польшу внезапно, агрессивное попрошайничество в городе Калининграде не совсем рекомендуется.
A rural recreation centre on the site of an old East Prussian settlement
Published: 23 August 2021 ~ Angel Park Hotel Kaliningrad Region
Our journey took us across country that is conceivably the highest, or the most undulating, in the Kaliningrad region. At one point we thrust ourselves forward in our seats, as if the added motion would assist the locomotion of the 1960s’ Volga car in which we were travelling and help it to climb the hill.
We passed through many small East Prussian hamlets, stopped for a breather in the town of Chernyahovsk (formerly Insterburg) long enough to have our photographs taken in front of the statue of Barclay de Tolly, Commander of the 1st Army of the West, the largest army to face Napoleon.
A few kilometers outside of Chernyahovsk, the first car in our cavalcade made a sharp left turn and the others followed, including us.
We had left the road and were now driving along a hard surfaced but uneven track. From our rearguard position it was a grand sight to see, this line of classic Soviet vehicles weaving in and out and bobbing up and down in an effort to miss the potholes, the summer dust flying from their wheels.
The approach road to our destination was a long one, but every now and then, as if someone had pre-empted discouragement, signs had been posted on the roadside trees informing vehicle occupants of the number of meters left to travel before they reached where they wanted to go and where with patience they would eventually be. And all of a sudden that’s where we were.
Where?
Well, the sign to the right of the entrance told me that this was Angel Park Hotel. I knew that this was no ordinary hotel, that it was part of a complex, a rural retreat tucked away in the heart of the East Prussian countryside, but other than that I had not the foggiest.
The gate through which we had passed had taken us into a carpark but today it was fully occupied. Thus, the line of retro vehicles moved slowly onward with us playing follow the leader, the leader being Yury, the man who had literally pipped us to the post at the Königsberg car rally a few weeks ago. Yury knew the Angel Park Hotel, he had visited it on many occasions, so our presumption was that he knew where he was going.
We bumped along for a few more metres, overgrown landscape on one side and a thicket of trees on the other, before emerging into a large, grassed area, scattered with tents and dotted with gazebos. It appeared that we had arrived.
It is not a man-made entity, the land occupied by and encompassing Angel Park, but a work of art painted by nature.
Angel Park Hotel Kaliningrad Region
The concept around which the Angel Park Hotel has been created is both defined and obscured by the word ‘park’. It is not a park in the municipal sense, laid out in the fashion of benches on either side of straight paths set within vistas of trees and neither does it entirely conform to the country park formula popular in the UK, where disused ground, such as depleted gravel pits and the wasteland that surrounds them, is requisitioned, reclaimed, replanted and then conserved.
On the contrary, the land occupied by Angel Park would appear to hold true to its natural contours: a secluded, sequestered, slightly undulating ground that tapers gently off before falling away abruptly from pronounced banks at the edge of a serpentine river.
At the upper level the park and all that it contains is as good as hidden by a steep grass-covered gradient, one side hemmed in by knolls and bushes, the other by an open, sweeping groundswell of natural foliage. At its lowest level, the river Angrappa cuts a broad winding swathe, its steep banks on the opposite side enveloped by a dense and heady profusion of numerous species of trees, bushes and wild plants. Behind these banks, as far as the eye can see, the land rises steadily, creating a valley below and crowning it above with woodland, the tops of its tall trees reaching up and touching the ark of the sky. It is not a man-made entity, the land occupied by and encompassing Angel Park, but a work of art painted by nature.
We had entered the park at its furthermost point, pulling our cars onto and in line with the edge of the camping area. From this position we were offered much of the view that I have described and, in addition, were able to obtain a better understanding of the park’s facilities, at least in this quarter.
The gazebos, to which I alluded earlier, some hexagonal, some rectangular, some with wooden rooves, some pantiled, are positioned far enough apart to offer group visitors a measure of privacy and personal space. Each gazebo comes with its own custom-built barbecue and is fitted with electric hook-ups for kettles, radios, lighting etc.
In the centre of this arrangement stands a large, partially open-sided barn with enough seats and tables to accommodate a party, perhaps 50 people or more, with plenty of room left for dancing for those who are so inclined.
This building is festooned with all manner of swings and other suspensions, including a giant sized punchbag, certainly enough gizmos to keep children and those who are big kids at heart occupied.
The bank above the river on the park side falls on two levels, and I particularly liked the way that the owners of the park had used this natural feature to build small huts into the banks and build them in such a way that their rooves and smoking barbecue chimneys rise cosily out of the ground.
Angel Park Hotel Sand Embankment & Swimming
The gentle, rolling nature of the landscape backed by judicious tree and shrub planting makes Angel Park the sort of place that inspires an immediate need to explore and no sooner had we arrived than Olga and I decided that we would take a stroll along the river.
Our walk brought us to a section of the riverbank that has been skillfully turned into a beach. Sand replaces grass in a large area where the ground rises and falls quite spectacularly and in whose centre lies a pond, the cone-shaped sides of which make it look like a giant funnel.
The river at this point attracts swimmers, whilst those who would rather watch than participate can lie back literally on one of several chunky wooden recliners overlooking the watery scene below. Barbecue facilities and the odd table or two make for a harmonious arrangement, offering both swimmers and their spectators a thoroughly workable compromise.
Olga, who is a swimmer, was so taken with this place that she advocated that we put it to our party that we relocate here pronto, but that was before we had grasped that each gazebo is hired in advance and that our gazebo was bought and paid for, for the duration of our stay. I had no quarrel with that. A seat, some beer and an excellent view, what more could one conceivably ask for?!
When we returned to our compatriots it was not beer that was on the menu but homemade vodka, so I quaffed some of that instead and, after a bite to eat, and having explored the hinterlands, we set off on foot again to explore the parts of Angel Park hidden from view by the trees.
The careful planting of groups of pines and firs, shrubs and bushes and the wending of pathways through them has created a woven intricacy where every twist and turn reveals something new, something different, something unexpected.
The sign of a confused Englishman
Weatherstone (above): No need to ever consult your mobile phone again about the weather! Angel Park Hotel’s Weather stone can tell you all this and more. It even has a built-in security system to alert you should somebody try to run off with it!
We happened upon various gazebo-style structures and chalets before emerging into the carpark opposite the main gate. Here, to the right of us, nestled among the trees, we discovered the ‘weather stone’ and in front of us a large, semi-open barn able to accommodate about 30 people. I particularly liked the way thinly sliced logs had been used to act as screening within and around this building.
Next door to this is the park’s reception and admin office and above it the restaurant. The restaurant has a wooden balcony offering gazers a pleasing view over a block-paved forecourt, with an accommodation hall to the left and a smaller accommodation unit in the centre. The scene is one of instantaneous tranquility. Whomsoever chose the background music that streams magically across the square like a gentle current of water trickling over a bed of smooth pebbles, must be as tuned to the natural ambience as he who designed the buildings, whose emphasis on softening materials and bygone architectural features compliment the rural setting without upsetting its apple cart.
Angel Park Hotel Accommodation
Most of the buildings at Angel have been imaginatively created and most have an olde-worlde theme. The accommodation block is a case in point, with its half-timbered finish, wooden staircase and eave-sheltered landing deck. The restaurant, largely through its balcony, extending eaves and pan-tiled roof, is pleasingly conformational, each element lending to the other, as well as to those of the surrounding buildings, an air and impression of relaxed rusticity.
Angel Park Hotel office & restaurant
Restored building Angel Park
Accommodation at Angel Park
The point at which two rivers meet, Angrapa and Pissa, is a place where people go to make a wish. Sergey, the owner of the Angel Park Hotel, recalls that many of his guests have confirmed that the wishes that they have made there have come true. I don’t know what’s happening behind that sign, but I have an idea its just wishful thinking!
Some of the buildings are new and aged by sensitive artifice, others, like the admin and restaurant building and the building in the centre of the square, have been rescued, renovated, built around, preserved and extended. Some, like the small row of wooden shacks that form a little street, which runs from the edge of the square opposite the rabbit hutches, are economy-built but yet possess a provincial charm of their own, and still others, such as the block we stayed in, have what might be called an acquired antiquity thanks to the use of recycled materials and a touch of the past in the stepped gable ends.
The accommodation at Angel Park Hotel ranges from no-frills basic to surprisingly rather plush. If you are going economy you get a little more than a Japanese capsule, but not a great deal more. For example, some of our group had decided that pushing the boat out was not for them but found out later that the harbour in which they were staying was rather small to say the least. An economy room at Angel Park Hotel basically, very basically, consists of a double bed, with single bed above it and a toilet.
To see how the other half would be living, we also took a gander in one of the wooden shacks that I mentioned earlier, where we found a similar set-up, differing only in the sense that one room had been built around the size of a double mattress, the other contained a single bed and between them both was a toilet and wash basin. Clocked from the outside, I could almost get romantic about these little wooden cabins, but romantic is not enough if you don’t like snug.
The good news is, however, that the average cost at the Angel for somewhere to lay your head, if your tenting days are done, is a mere 1500 roubles (15 quid) or, if you’re tenting days are not yet over ~ and mine decidedly are ~ you can pitch a tent at Angel Park for 300 roubles (£3), plus 100 roubles (£1) for each occupant.
Capsules, huts, tents none of these applied to me, as our good friends at the retro club in recognition of my Englishness and on the understanding that I needed somewhere to swing my cravat, and possibly because I am bit long in the tooth ~ long in the what? ~ I said tooth (it’s an expression which means old codger) ~ and having spent a relatively rough life but now in need of a little senior comfort, had seen fit to book my wife and I into one of Angel’s more upmarket rooms.
Our accommodation comprised two rooms in open-plan format with a spacious bathroom. The rooms were well equipped, with a king size double bed, dining table and chairs, a reproduction antique double wardrobe, well-stocked fridge, wall-mounted television and enough space in the upward direction to swing a hundred cravats. Bright, spacious and airy, and better than some four-star hotels that I have frequented, these rooms are the Angel’s Ritz. Their sleek, modern and capacious bathroom also sports a jacuzzi! And what is the difference in price, you ask, between these luxury rooms and the bargain basements? Only 2000 roubles, I gleefully reply, which in pounds sterling equates to £20 (Angel Park Hotel has many different categories of accommodation. For a full appraisal link to their website at the end of this article.)
If this had been England I would be expected to go down on one knee and beg for forgiveness for being so privileged; had it been communist Russia, I would have had to confess to bourgeoise tastes. Instead, I settled in and settled down with my conscience, trying to ignore a Bob Hope echo — the ironical line from the spoof western Paleface, which was: “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight”!
Angel Park Hotel Restaurant
Budget people or no-budget people, in the evening it was a fait accompli that we and some of our group would meet up in the restaurant.
A large room, capable, I suspect, of holding about 50 diners, Angel’s restaurant benefits from the visual appeal of the pitched roof, angularity of the dorma windows and the boxed supporting framework that holds it all together, all of which are attractive features. When we entered the restaurant, Frank Sinatra was singing, “ … my kinda town …”, and this was my kinda restaurant.
I do not usually go a bundle on pastel décor, but in this setting it helped to amplify the appreciated presence of the old stuff with which the room was blessed. At the top of the winding staircase, a case of deep shelves display a fine collection of vintage typewriters and heavy metal sewing machines by Mr Singer & Co. There is a series of different mincers (not the kind that you find in Brighton) assembled on one of the cross rails, the wall at the far end of the room is besotted with all kinds of clocks and on top of the shelving units, which contain all kinds of mementoes and antiquarian books, I even found a black and white photo of my old friend Stierlitz, the fictional lead from that classic and superb 1970’s Russian TV serial Seventeen Moments of Spring. As I said, ‘my kinda restaurant’. Another plus was that the beer was different and good …
The next morning, not feeling as good as the beer tasted the night before, I was up and out just in time for last call for breakfast. One of our crew had finished breakfast and had also finished a pint of beer. No, I couldn’t!
Angel Park Hotel History
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Timeline of the site on which Angel Park is located
The settlement of Pakalehnen was part of Kraupischkehmen of the Insterburg region (today Chernyahovsk) until 03.06.1938. According to the census in 1933, 85 inhabitants lived on its territory. The owner was August Guddat. He was born in Pakalehnen, cultivated the land and kept cattle. He died during the First World War. To date, August Guddat has more than 300 descendants living around the world.
In 1938, Pakalehnen was renamed Schweizersdorf , meaning ‘Swiss village’.
From 1945 the site became a farm with changing owners until 01.07.2012.
Today, it is a country park – Angel Park Hotel – and has been since 03.07.2013.
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The highlight of today, apart from feeling better as time went on, was when the owner of Angel Park, Sergey Martynov, came out into the courtyard to fill us in on the history of the site where he had brought his vision of Angel Park to life.
It was here that he told us the story of the water and the well (see inset panel) and the impromptu construction of the function room (see inset panel).
The well In the courtyard at the front of Angel’s restaurant and admin building, just to the left, stands a covered well. As part of the renovation and development of Angel Park, Sergey and his family re-opened the well, dredged it and re-dug it. Out of curiosity, Sergey took a sample of the water to be analysed and was amazed when a few weeks later the test results revealed that the water was some of the purest in the former East Prussian region. Later, a large solid silver Roman Catholic crucifix was found at the bottom of the well, causing some to postulate that this could account for the water’s quality. But whether this was because of faith in the age-old belief that silver is a natural water cleanser or faith in something infinitely more arcane, who can readily say?
Angel Park Hotel Function Room
Testifying that his love for history equals that of his love for nature, Sergey showed us the cellar they had unearthed whilst digging the footings for the new function room.
The short winding staircase that leads down into a single arched-roof chamber, all in dark red-brick, is honoured to have had its own above-surface entrance built especially for it, also in red brick, complete with proper door. But why is this subterranean room called ‘Whiskey Bar’?
Whiskey Bar My wife, Olga, emailed Sergey for clarification: Why is the cellar called ‘Whiskey Bar’?
Sergey replied: Good afternoon Olga. It just happened! People sometimes give their own names to places. For example, the Small Bath on the price list is called Small Bath, and we hung a wooden carved sign next to it saying ‘Russian Soft Bath’, but the guests called it Black Bath and the name that was given to it by the guests got stuck, and now we also call it Black Bath ;)))). By the same principle, the guests called the basement ‘Whiskey Bar’. At one point I joked, saying to the women that the cellar is for men only! ~ and this turned the women on so strongly that they became unstoppable in their desire to get in ;)))))). That’s how the playful name got stuck !
There is a project to make a small museum in the basement to display cognac samples produced in Chernyakhovsk (they produce about 25 types today!). If I’m not mistaken, our local Chernyakhovsk factory produces 13% of all the cognac produced in Russia!
The entrance to what Sergey believed was once the cellar of the settlement’s principal domicile has been simply but effectively incorporated into the function room by linking to it with a sloping roof, thus turning what would have been external space into an integral porch or even an outside smoking room.
The function room Angel Park Hotel’s function room is a gem: bright, airy, atmospheric and with the capacity to cater for 150-people. Its original Art Deco bar was rescued from a condemned hotel in Germany and shipped to the former East Prussian territory, where it now holds pride of place. Judging by the quality of this building you would naturally think that a lot of time and planning went into its placing, design and construction, but you would be wrong. Time was limited and of the essence. According to Sergey, the owner of Angel Park, the gestation period from conception to construction, including putting the finishing touches to the interior and the ground around it, was less than nine months. This was because someone who was interested in holding their wedding reception at Angel Park, whilst more than satisfied with the location, noted that the upstairs restaurant could only accommodate 50 guests, whereas they required a hall for 150 people. After a brief discussion and the fee for the party agreed, the potential client suggested that Sergey should build a function room for them. Sergey proposed that if they were willing to pay a deposit to meet the costs of the party (a percentage of the £150 hiring fee!) in advance, he would give it his best shot. And less than nine months later, his ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ style of entrepreneurship gave Angel Park a brand-new function room, which was christened by its first marriage in August as planned.
At the rear of the function room, a double set of doors opens up onto a secluded patio. On the other side of this, partially obscuring the view beyond, stands an ancient linden tree, whose outspread bough shaped like an arch could have been custom made for Angel Park and its weddings. Adorned with a white veil and lights, the novel shape of the linden tree’s bough adds a photogenic and romantic touch for newlyweds on their special day and passing beneath it the experience only gets better.
Mick Hart & Olga Hart beneath the linden tree
On the other side, a few steps away, from a viewing platform purpose built for the eminence there, the most magnificent view presents itself high above the winding river and out across a blissful landscape that must over many years have captured the hearts and minds of countless generations.
Sergey Leonidovich Martynov’, owner of Angel Park, with Mick & Olga Hart & members of the Kaliningrad Retro Car Club
Treasure, I thought; “gift!” said Sergey, and in the same breath touched upon the other-worldly, the positive energy with which this magical East Prussian landscape has been blessed.
Of the many special moments of this weekend, the two that will remain with me are when we were standing in the courtyard listening to Sergey recounting the history of the land before and after he bought it, and when we passed beneath the linden tree.
In the courtyard, references to the lost German village, to its people and to the profusion of relics belonging to that vanished world which are continually being unearthed and in such prodigious quantities that they could fill ‘two or three museums’, along with other time-portentous tales, wafted around our semi-circle of listeners like wisps of smoke from a fire still burning somewhere in the past. With the sun shining down upon us and the soft music rippling from the park’s external speakers, I was struck by a mystical tone that is far harder to describe than it will ever be for me to forget.
The second unerasable memory was when I passed beneath the linden tree to that glorious view on a glorious day: the river winding and snaking below, a sparkling ribbon of movement and light, and the banks on its opposite side rich with trees and foliage.
I remember Sergey saying that for newlyweds the act of passing beneath the linden arch into the grandeur beyond symbolised the new beginning in their lives.
Looking back at the linden tree, with its arched carved out by nature, I wondered about the nuanced meanings this ancient tree had possessed for the people of the past and the part it had played in their changing lives and fortunes. How fascinating it would be to play it all back slowly, peeling away at the layers of time over each successive moment.
There was a slight breeze, it carried across the river, brushed through the hair of the people sitting on the viewing platform and came to rest in the linden tree behind us. On it I heard the voice of Victor Ryabinin reminding me, “I told you that this region was a special place, it drew me into it as it has drawn countless people …”
It added me to its list a long time ago, and having met and spoken with Sergey Martynov I have no doubt that he has been inducted also.
Come to Angel and join the club.
Angel Park site 2014
Sergey Leonidovich Martynov’s Story of Angel Park
Angel Park
The Angel Park Hotel and its grounds, or, as his family call it, ‘The village for spoilt city dwellers!’, is the result of Sergey Martynov’s personal vision, which was to restore and recreate the old settlement, breathe new life into it and form a recreation centre for families in the east of the Kaliningrad region.
Angel Park site 2021
Sergey Martynov, Angel Park’s inspiration and owner, recounts: When we arrived in the region in 2012 there were few places of entertainment for children and families in rural areas. In fact, few exist today.
Our plans were and are to build a dozen more houses and cottages in the style of rural Prussia and restore the Walfrieden Mud Clinic on the site of the Angel, the medicinal properties of which were known far beyond the borders of Eastern Prussia until 1944.
Every year we build at least one building and make improvements to the site.
We bought the settlement in 2012 and began restoring it in 2013. The picture below shows the only surviving building, if you can call the five walls of the barn a building, which in the past was used by 120 native villagers.
Wherever possible, we try to preserve the old style and the old materials of the buildings we restore and recreate. For example, the roof of the building in the photograph below and its walls are built from old bricks and pantiles.
The cellar, pictured here, is preserved in its original condition.
The pictures below show the gradual evolution of Angel Park from when we bought the land and first arrived here to how it looks today.
Nature, assisted by the new owners of the old settlement, create a corner in paradise:
Essential details:
Angel Park Hotel 238158, Kaliningrad region Chernyakhovsky district 92nd km of Gusevskoye highway A229
Published: 12 August 2021 ~ Russian Anecdote a Man Exempt from Coronavirus
As any of you who have read my blog post will know, I was married, here, in Kaliningrad, Russia. Before delivering my speech at the wedding reception, I passed the written draft to my wife for critical appraisal. As predicted, her response was, ‘OK but I do not think that Russian’s will understand your strange British humour’. Hmm, I thought, should I take the bit about holes in underpants out?
Nevertheless, with a little invisible mending, the speech went ahead, almost without me, which is not surprising considering the amount of vodka I had drunk, and if people were laughing at me instead of with me it did not matter as at least they were laughing at all the right moments.
Whilst some elements of British humour might miss the mark with Russians, Russian humour conveyed in the traditional form of an anecdote often ends as enigmatically as it has begun.
My first encounter with a Russian anecdote left me wondering if Tolstoy had written it to counteract criticism that War & Peace was too short. The question as to whether I found it funny or not was quite frankly immaterial. As the yanks would say, I never left first base. The plot, which had more twists, turns and red caviar in it than one of Agatha Christie’s who dunnits, was so convoluted that it is my opinion that even Poirot’s little grey cells would have struggled to have made sense of it. At the end of the anecdote, I was left with the question, ‘What?’
Since then, I have learnt to compose my own, simplistic version of the Russian anecdote, and this one, which I have the honour of presenting to you now, might even be a true story.
Now, are you sitting comfortably?
Russian Anecdote a Man Exempt from Coronavirus
A conversation with a Russian man about whether he had had the vaccine, wanted the vaccine or was avoiding the vaccine, led him to confide in me that the nature of his job was such that under the new laws he was ‘obliged’ to have the vaccine. And yet, he told me, he was vehemently opposed to it.
In this frame of mind, he attended one of the city’s mobile vaccination units. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than he demanded from the white-coated medic a vaccination exemption certificate (do such things exist?) on the grounds that since he had an allergy he could not have the vaccine.
When the medic nonchalantly replied that he need not worry as the van opposite was an intensive care unit, and in the unlikely event that he exhibited any untoward side-effects from the jab, they would rush him in there immediately, he promptly replied: “If I do not get my exemption certificate, it will be you who will need intensive care!”
It was not for nothing that this reasonable gentleman had decided that a career in the diplomatic core was not for him.
The vaccination certificate duly administered, but not the vaccine, our man with his certificate in his hand, walked into a nearby shop to purchase a bottle of peeva.
Arriving at checkout he was just in time to experience one of those peculiar mask-wearing confrontations that are unfortunately blighting our daily life. At the counter, a middle-aged woman was being lectured by the checkout girl to cover her face with a mask.
“But, I only have two items [to buy],” the woman complained bitterly, “and I have forgotten to bring my mask.”
“Then you must buy one,” said the shop assistant curtly.
“Buy one!” the woman exclaimed. “I’ve enough of the filthy rags hanging about my home already!”
The shop assistant, as shop assistants do in situations like this, kept shtum. But her pursed lips and the body language of a nightclub doorman left little doubt that no mask meant no sale!
The woman with a house full of masks but none on her person was about to remonstrate with the iron maiden again, when a nice elderly gentleman, who had just been served, lifted up his mask and said kindly from beneath it, with a bit of a sneeze and a splutter: “You can borrow my mask if you like.”
Another woman, standing in the queue seeing that no mask meant no service was searching frantically for a mask which she also did not have.
Meanwhile, the first woman, having turned down the gentleman’s magnanimous offer, suddenly found herself in the throes of one of those euphoric moments when brought to the cusp of despair by the realisation that you have no mask, you find one, thrust deep down in your jeans’ back pocket among the fluff, dust and grubby remnants of knotted old pieces of tissue.
Extracting it and holding it five inches from her nose, but not following the proprietary rules for mask application (who does?), the sight of a mask wherever it might be was sufficiently acceptable from the shop assistant’s point of view to make further objection unnecessary. The woman had a mask. The world was safe. The woman could be served.
The second woman in the queue, who, alas, had no snot-ridden mask concealed about her person, now almost besides herself with woe was promptly offered the loan of the gentleman’s mask, which was now sitting on his whiskery chin, and the first lady, who had dropped her mask twice on the floor before wiping her spectacles with it, also offered her mask. Oddly enough the second lady refused on both counts.
Now that she had left her full basket at the till and gone to the shop next door where they never asked for masks, our man fresh from the vaccination van made his debut. He, too, was sans maskee.
The shop assistant was just on the verge of exercising the only power that she had ever been invested with and was ever likely to have in her life, when our anecdotal hero stepped promptly forward, certificate proudly in hand.
“As you can see,” he asserted, “I have an exemption certificate. This means that I do not have to have the vaccine, and if I do not have to have the vaccine, then it stands to reason that I cannot catch or spread coronavirus. It also means that it is not necessary for me to wear a mask!” and with that, he slapped his bottle of beer loudly on the counter.
The shop assistant, who was a paragon of logic, immediately recognising that the validity of this argument trumped forgotten, shared and improperly worn face masks, picked up the bottle of beer as one would reverently touch the road to salvation (which, dear reader, beer most often is), and placing it into a bag allowed the wiley man to pass without further let or hinderance onto the other side. It was almost as if she was manning* the Pearly Gates like Peter (or is it Bill?) which, without wanting to spoil the end of the story, perhaps indeed she was.
*Any similarity to actual LGBT persons, living in the UK or it and otherwise, is purely coincidental
Updated: 12 March 2022 | Published: 8 August 2021 ~ For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London
Warning! In response to Russia’s special operation aimed at ‘demilitarising and de-Nazifying Ukraine’, the UK media has embarked upon and is actively pursuing an intensive propaganda programme which is resulting in widespread anti-Russian sentiment and Russophobia. Aimed at cancelling Russian culture and demonising Russian citizens at every level, incidents of verbal abuse and physical aggression towards Russian nationals have been reported in various western countries, including the UK. This comes against the backdrop of reports suggesting that Facebook is greenlighting hate speech against Russians on its social media platform. You are advised to travel to the UK only for essential reasons and whilst there to exercise caution.
This is the third in a series of blog articles in which I provide Russian’s who are considering emigrating to the UK real advice, as opposed to the jaunty ‘I’m off to uni’ kind that has about as much gravitas as the WHO in the midst of a pandemic.
It is a ‘taken for granted’ that all who read this are fully apprised of the latest situation pertaining to coronavirus, as defined by the UK government, and equally are fully cognisant of UK travel and entry requirements regarding Covid-19 testing, quarantine and the many and numerous Covid-related restrictions that apply within the UK, especially with regard to ‘vaccination passports’.
This accepted, I write this guide with the honest but bemused assumption that in spite of common sense there are still people who, possibly because they have recently missed their psychiatric appointments, are yet to be dissuaded from moving to Plague Island, and it is with them in mind that I do proceed. Forgive me.
When anybody asks me in Russia where did I live in the UK, they expect me to answer London, and if I miss out the fact that I did live in London choosing instead to mention one of the 14 other places where I also lived whilst in the UK, they are either stumped or do not want to know. This is because most Russians, like a lot of other people around the world, confuse London with England and have precious little knowledge of anything else about the UK.
This is not their fault, because after all London is the capital city of the United Kingdom, but the disproportionate focus on London at the expense of the rest of the country has been a transformatory one, effectively turning London from capital into country and eclipsing England in the process.
The way in which the UK, and England in particular, is portrayed falsely implies that where London leads the rest of the country follows, which, as my Indian friend would politely put it, is ‘bullshit’! (He’s a real refuge from Idi Amin!) Everything, especially the socio-political makeup of the UK is filtered through a metropolitan media that writes about issues that have no relevance for anyone except a certain political class that lives in a world of virtual reality known to them as London. The UK media is little more than the public relations arm of what is commonly referred to as the ‘Islington set’, a catchall that speaks for itself, as Islington is the London borough that symbolises the unholy ground of neoliberal elitism.
What this means is that the behaviour, beliefs, dogma, political prejudices, attitudes, in fact most everything that you read about UK life as conveyed by its mainstream media is hopelessly skewed and distorted. It represents the minority view of a small percentage of people who live in the Island of London within the British Isles, most of which are as English as Genghis Khan (isn’t he the mayor of London?) and only just make British by virtue of a paper pledge bubble-gum stuck to rights that could be whipped away at a moment’s notice by any political wind depending on where it is coming from and the force of its emission.
Well said that man!
In order for you to know England, not the UK or the spurious Britain in which hardly any Britons live, you need to get out of London and go elsewhere in the country. I am not advocating that you give up on London altogether, far from it. For all its faults and pitfalls, London is ~ still is ~ an interesting and dynamic place, so not to go there would be doing yourself a great disservice. But going there does not mean that you have to live there; you might not even want to live there. So, by all means travel to London to see what it is like, buy yourself some union jack underpants, put them on smartishly so as not to offend the ‘minorities’ and, if you have any money left after you’ve paid your rail fare and been duly mugged in Enrichment Street, you can tell your friends you’ve been to London, and they will be impressed, if only because you’ve been to London and lived to tell the tale. Alternatively, you could save yourself the risk, the bother and the cash, have a cheap day out in Scunthorpe and tell a fib instead!
Experience over or conscience placated, it is now time to get a feel of what England is really like. I will say that again: what England is really like and what English life is about. To do this, you should venture forth, like the fictional character Blackadder, into England’s provincial towns and villages.
I am not suggesting that you substitute London for Manchester, Brum (Birmingham), Leeds and so on. A large city is a large city, and all of England’s cities have suffered the irretrievable fate of the ignominious liberal experiment. Of course, if that is what you have come to see and want to experience, then go to these places you must. But I should warn you that most sane people in the UK, those who have not been indoctrinated and are still free thinkers, most of whom live in the provinces, would only end up in these places if they accidently caught the wrong bus, and then they would not admit to having been there. However, as you are ‘not from ’round ‘ere’ no one can really blame you. I should mention at this point, however, that many of the UK’s smaller towns, especially those ‘up North’ also have the blight. Size is not a guarantee, but sometimes you might be lucky..
Methodology
In the scope of this post and considering that I want to go for a beer, it is not possible, you’ll be pleased to know, for me to ramble on about every town and village in England, so with this in mind, and that pint or six I’m waiting for, I’ll confine myself to outlines and pointers and then we’ll move on to housing costs.
For the sake of brevity and extremes, I am going to follow the simplistic plan of dividing England along its traditional faultline, North and South, but whilst skirting adroitly around London, please do bear in mind that there are many other towns, and indeed villages, from which you can learn about English life other than the two examples that I have chosen here.
For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Cornwall
We will start with Cornwall in the southwest of England. It is an interesting place for many reasons, one being that a small group of Cornish nationalists, whilst not pushing for complete independence from England in the way that the Crimea yearned to return to Russia to avoid becoming a vassal EU state, have none the less made protestations for their county to be granted some degree of regional autonomy. This is quite ironic, as I am sure I am not alone in my estimation that Cornwall (and its neighbouring counties Devon, Dorset and Somerset) is one of the most English places in England. I will underline that again English, emphasised because the term British has been hijacked, misappropriated and rendered virtually meaningless by invasion-abetted politics and its confederate appeasement policies.
Where Cornwall is exactly can easily be determined by a cursory glance at the map of the British Isles. It is the last county at the tapering end of the country, a peninsula of wild moorland, small atmospheric towns and ancient villages. Its two coastlines, no more than 22 miles apart, offer holidaymakers beautiful sandy beaches on the south side and a dramatic shoreline of precipitous cliffs on the north. The south coast, with its quaint harbour villages and sandy coves has earnt itself the name of the Cornish Riviera; the north as the place to go for dynamic seascapes and surfing. At the furthermost tip of Cornwall lies Land’s End, the most westerly point in mainland England. It is rugged, dynamic and a little bit spoilt by over-commercialisation but nevertheless remains one of the country’s most famous landmarks.
Like the sound of it already? Then let’s take a look at how much it costs to rent or buy a property in this little corner of southwest England.
For no other reason other than that I have been there, the first town that I have chosen for this exercise is Penzance.
For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Penzance
Penzance is the last major town in Cornwall before the land runs out at Land’s End. Hey, you don’t think that’s why they called it Land’s End, do you?! It is a market town, whose historical claim to fame is that in the latter years of the 19th century it was the only coastal town in Cornwall to have its own promenade. Also in the 19th century, the Great Western Railway reached the end of the line at Penzance, a culmination that swiftly diversified its age-old status as a thriving port to that of a major holiday resort. Some say that its holiday appeal has tapered off in recent years, but how much this has to do with the fickleness of tourist preference and how much with being locked down in your own home whilst wearing a mask and putting ‘I’ve had my vaccine’ on your rainbow-tinted Facebook avatar is anybody’s guess and, in all likelihood, tomorrow’s documentary.
What I can say is that to help me with my inquiries regarding renting and buying properties in Penzance, my first port of call was to what has been described as the UK’s largest online real-estate portal and property website. I can see that you are impressed!
Renting property in Penzance
Surprisingly, the largest property-search website in the UK returned no more than four properties to rent in Penzance, and this return was based on a non-filtered search query.
Bottom of the barrel and top of the least expensive list was a one-bedroom property at £460 per calendar month, offering the potential tenant a mouth-watering zero-deposit carrot.
About the deposit: In my previous article on renting property in London, I mentioned the dreaded deposit. This is a lump sum that the prospective tenant pays in addition to one month’s rent in advance as surety to the landlord that on leaving the property the bricks, mortar, fixtures, fittings and furnishings (if there are any) are in the same condition as when the tenant moved in.
The deposit is usually, but not always, equal to a month’s rent. It is a built-in safeguard for the landlord that the tenant treats his property with respect, based on a legal agreement that on vacation of the property should any damage or excessive wear and tear be evident, the cost of repair and/or replacement will be deducted from the deposit. In the event that the property is in tip-top shape on the day that the tenant leaves, theoretically the deposit that he or she has paid should be refunded in full.
This all sounds reasonable enough, until the time comes for you to leave the property. It is then that your scurrilous landlord, or rather the crooked estate agent acting on his behalf, accuses you of all sorts of vandalism, for which you have no redress, and consequently holds back a large proportion of your deposit to compensate for fictitious damage and/or depreciation. So, it is a real boon if you can rent a property in the UK where the deposit is waived, although my advice to you is deposit or no deposit, before you move in take as many photos as possible of the flat/house and all its contents and make sure the photos are date stamped. Even better, send copies to the estate agent, making sure to home in on any existing damage and anything else that is worn and jaded.
This property, the one-bedroomed one advertised in Penzance , offers the inducement of ‘zero deposit available’. Why ‘available’ and not just ‘zero deposit’ is I suspect a difference to be ultimately determined by the score that your credit-rating check returns, a game-changing factor which can ultimately make the difference between getting that flat you are after or being flatly refused. And incidentally, credit scoring is by no means as straightforward as you might think. If you have never had or never used a credit card, then you will have a zero-credit rating: that’s bad. If you have used your credit card(s) and missed payments, even once or twice: that’s bad. If you owe an awful lot of money but have consistently paid your lender back the capital you have borrowed plus their extortionate interest on top: that’s good. Just saying.
Back to the one-bedroom ‘property’ at £460 per calendar month. By UK standards this is not expensive for a one-bedroom flat. But wait a moment, this is not a flat. It is, and I quote, “a double bedroom in a house of multiple occupancy”? A ‘house of multiple occupancy’, whilst it might sound like a nice way of saying brothel, is, I am sorry to disappoint you, just a posh way of saying bedsits. Your ‘double bedroom’ for £460 per calendar month is in fact no more than a room in a converted Victorian/Edwardian house that has been rabbit-hutched into bedsits.
Note that the room is ‘single occupancy only’, so no migrants with eight children please, or a stream of live-in lovers. It is ‘fully furnished’, which means it has a bed, sofa, small fridge, bedside table and chest of drawers ~ cheap but perhaps not cheerful. There are five other rooms in this ‘house of multiple occupancy’ so let’s hope that you all get on with one another because the kitchen, which is small, is shared, as is the bog and bathroom.
Having been in bargain basement for longer than I cared to be, I then went up-barrel to see what a house would cost to rent in Penzance and found a two-bedroom terraced house at £850 per calendar month. Admittedly, this property, which is unfurnished, has been refurbished in a style that will be attractive to some, especially younger people (it would be interesting to see an interior photograph of this property as it was in the 1930s!), but it is still a terraced house. There is no garden, front or back, not even a few feet of owned space between the front door and the pavement. If this is unimportant to you, no sweat. What you see is what you will get.
Eight hundred and fifty pounds per calendar month for a two-bedroomed terrace house in Penzance would seem to compare favourably with the £1,152 you would need to stump up for a two-bedroom flat in one of London’s more down-market boroughs, such as Bexley, until that is you consider that the average wage in Cornwall is £28.8K1, which is pretty piss poor compared to the national UK average salary, which is alleged to be £38.6K (2020).
But what if you are not interested in renting a property in Penzance but want to join the UK’s masses in declaring your home your castle?
Most people in the UK want to buy a property these days because even with a barely supportable 25-year mortgage and all the entrapment and misery it brings, for a while at least you can enjoy the illusion of owning your own home even if in reality it is actually owned by the bank. It is well to remember, however, that UK castles are not impervious to debt collectors, county court judgements and bailiffs, hence the small print in your mortgage contract telling you that ‘your home can be repossessed if you fail to keep up repayments on your mortgage or on a secured loan’. For those perspicacious readers, and I know that you all are, the emotive use of the word ‘home’ instead of property will not have escaped your attention.
Buying property in Penzance
To assist me in finding an Englishman’s castle, I turned again to the superior property portal that I had consulted earlier, what’s it called? Wrongun, where I found instead a flat, the main features of which were listed as a double bedroom, open-plan living room/kitchen, shower room/wc, gas-fired central heating, glazing and no onward chain.
Before we go any further just a word to the wise: When considering any house purchase or rent, learn how to translate estate-agent speak. For example, what we have here is a ‘double bedroom’ (a room into which a double bed will fit ~ usually just), an ‘open-plan living room/kitchen’ (living room and kitchen lumped together without dividing wall), ‘shower room/wc’ (a room with a toilet not big enough to get a bath into), ‘gas-fired central heating’ (good point), glazing (does that mean double-glazing or that the windows have panes of glass in them?). The last feature, ‘no onward chain’, is an important one and also a good selling/buying point.
“A property with no onward chain is one which is ready to be sold straight away. The seller will not need the funds (or proceeds of sale) from an existing sale to purchase the next property or move on. For buyers, it’s an advantageous position to be in as, by and large, it simplifies the sales process.”2
The price tag on this double-bedroomed flat in Penzance with glass in the windows and ‘no onward chain’ is a mere £100,000, and I jest not when I affirm that in this day and age this is a good price in the current UK market.
However, before you break your piggy bank, take note that the tenure of this property is ‘Leasehold’, not ‘Freehold’. What does that mean exactly? It means that if purchased you will own the property but not the building or the land on which it sits. This will be owned by a ‘freeholder’ to whom you will be expected to pay ‘ground rent’. Conversely, should you purchase a ‘freehold’ property you own both the building and the land, which is really what you want if you want to call your home a castle.
Moving on, but not necessarily swiftly, I looked next for a house as opposed to a flat in Penzance and found one which was described as being “located in an exceptional position … ” which, knowing Penzance as I do, I can assure you from the description of it, it most certainly is.
Although this house with its ‘captivating outlook’ is offered as a two-bedroomed property, the description of it suggests that it has the flexibility to be three-bedroomed, which means, I assume, that with a bit of imagination and some DIY skills alterations could be made. With this house you get great views across the bay, gardens to the front and a carport at the rear. How much? £395,000.
At first you may think that the price tag on this property owes a lot to its location in Penzance and the rejoiceful views that it offers, but a quick skim through various property portals reveal that for a two-bedroom house in Penzance £360,000 is about the average minimum price that you can expect to pay, and as most of the ads for properties in Penzance are not cast-in-stone prices but ‘offers over’, ‘offers in excess of’ or ‘guide prices’, you can expect to pay much more. Now what was the average wage in Penzance again?
We conclude, therefore, that properties in Penzance though not half as expensive as in London are, in terms of like for like, still way beyond most people’s pockets. However, if you are not most people but a well-healed high-roller, houses and flats in Penzance make good second-home investments, and high-flying executive types forced to accept distance working because of coronavirus charades could find that working and living in Penzance, with its captivating view over the bay to St Michael’s Mount, infinitely more agreeable than watching statue-molesting thugs at work somewhere in downtown London.
Council Tax in Penzance
But we have yet to mention that second mortgage, the UK’s dreaded council tax, the devious nature of which I adumbrated in my previous post. Council tax bands in Penzance compare unfavourably on an income-to-expenditure ratio to what you would pay if you lived in London. But, hey, there has to be some compensation for living in one of the world’s most rip-off capitals!
The lowest council tax you will have to pay if you live in Penzance is £1361.31, the highest £4,083.90 per year3.
As for the cost of living in Penzance, whilst nowhere in the UK is the cost of living higher than it is in London, equally nowhere in the UK is the cost of living low. Penzance located in one of England’s most desirable holiday destinations is bound to mug your wallet and having a big one to enjoy what is arguably the best coastlines, best sea views, best historical venues and best of dramatic landscapes is not a surprising contingent.
Crime in Penzance
What is surprising is that on the flip side of beauty lies dread: “Penzance is among the top 5 most dangerous small towns in Cornwall and is among the top 10 most dangerous overall out of Cornwall’s 218 towns, villages, and cities. The overall crime rate in Penzance in 2020 was 73 crimes per 1,000 people. This compares poorly to Cornwall’s overall crime rate, coming in 41% higher than the Cornwall rate of 43 per 1,000 residents. For England, Wales, and Northern Ireland as a whole, Penzance is the 177th most dangerous small town, and the 1,300th most dangerous location out of all towns, cities, and villages … The most common crimes in Penzance are violence and sexual offences4.” So Crimerate.co.uk tells us. But the good news is, from the same source, that “Penzance’s least common crime is bicycle theft”. So, even if you are raped, beaten to a pulp or murdered, at least you can be fairly sure that your bicycle will be safe, but I wouldn’t count on it.
As I said in my previous article, and if I forgot to, then I should have said it, the UK’s famous North-South divide is nowhere more conspicuously reflected than in the price you have to pay to put a roof over your head.
For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Durham
In the second part of this article, I decided to go to Durham. Why? Two reasons. First, I have always wanted to know what it was about Durham that made the singer/songwriter Roger Whittaker want to leave it so much; and second, and more to the point, it is cited on many property prices and cost-of-living websites as being the most inexpensive UK city in which to purchase property.
Durham is a cathedral city, which means that is a town that has city status because it has a cathedral. Durham is the county town of County Durham in northeast England, noted for its Romanesque cathedral, Norman castle, low-cost property and Roger Whittaker’s insistent desire to leave it, leave it, leave it … (I know he said that leaving was ‘bringing him down’ but he did not sound at all convincing!)
Apart from its university, tourism and Roger Whittaker’s song, I know very little about Durham’s employment market. They no longer mine coal thereabouts and flat caps and racing pigeons are possibly not as chic as they used to be, but I have it on good authority (our cat told me) that one of its major industries has earnt Durham the title of the ‘City of Medicine’, named such for the 300 medical and health-related organisations that thrive there. Thus, I think we can say without fear of rebuttal, not the best place to be if you live in fear of compulsory vaccination but a tremendous city to live in should you want to get out on the streets to protest against the iniquity of vaccination totalitarianism.
But first you will need to live somewhere. According to the property and estate agents sites that I visited, the average house price in Durham is £174,841 as of August 2021. Flats sold for an average of £157,792 and terraced houses for significantly less, at an average of £135,425. But let us take a closer look.
Renting property in Durham
For some reason, the rental market in Durham is not particularly cheap. Our old friend Arightbigportal reveals that two-bedroom apartments (which means flats) are priced at £700 per calendar month. The one that I looked at online was, admittedly, ultra-modern and fully furnished to boot.
However, perhaps a better deal is the three-bedroom semi-detached house that I discovered on the same site. It is a modern gaff with a rental price of £575 per calendar month. Now, that’s more like it!
Well, it would be, until you consider these gloomy statistics provided by Payscale.com5. The average salary in Durham UK is £26K. Not as much as Bill Gates earns in his lunchbreak? But wait, there is more: “Trends in wages decreased by -100.0 percent in Q2 2021. The cost of living in Durham, England: Durham is 100 percent higher than the national average.” Gulp!
Buying property in Durham
Buying a castle in Durham, even a one-bedroom castle, does not bode well for those who have to subsist on the average Durham salary, but at least in Durham one can cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth. In other words, property type and prices vary and those variations are quite broad. An internet search revealed that one-bedroomed flats can be purchased between £65,000 and £85,000 and that there was a smattering of two-bedroom flats from £80,000 to £115,000.
Two-bedroom mid-terrace houses have an asking price of £140,000~£150,000, with the magic qualifier ‘offers in the region of’ (so, hows about £140,000.01?), rising to £250,000 depending on property type, ie Victorian, and area.
Things are better in the semi-detached bracket provided you have no objections to a modern housing estate. Here, you can pick something up ~ I mean a property ~ for less than £120,000.
Council Tax in Durham
You might be tempted to believe that given Durham’s ‘up North’ location that the one prime advantage of living there would be a relatively low council tax. Thing again, sucker!
Durham’s Band A council tax, the lowest band, is £1360.91 and its Band H, the highest (‘H’ for high, you see they are clever are British councils), is £4082.747, which means if you move from Penzance to Durham, travelling, for example, on your unstolen bicycle, you could end up saving yourself 40 pence at the lower band and £1.16 at the higher. ‘That’s it!’ I hear you cry, ‘Durham here we come!’
The price differential between any property type in Durham compared to similar property in London is as striking as the difference between respect and social cohesion in 1930s’ England and what there isn’t today, but this ‘advantage’ has to be weighed against Durham’s abysmal wage packets and what about its quality of life?
Crime in Durham
Apart from the insecurity of living there if you are not on better wages than the ones they pay in Durham, how does Durham shape up in the national crime stats? Allegedly, when compared to the national crime rate, Durham county’s crime rate comes in at a depressing 115%6.
And there’s more: “Most crimes, 39.5k crimes were violent crimes which is 33.3% of all crimes committed in the area. Violent crime rate is at 142% of national crime rate. Public order crime was the fastest growing crime and it increased by 12.5% over the last twelve months6.”
Little wonder then that the healthcare and medicines industry is a thriving concern in Durham.
Conclusion
In compiling this article, I obviously appreciate that the number of Russians hungry to live in Penzance and/or Durham might not be incredibly high. London with all its intrinsic peril and high-octane Woke has a great deal more to offer in every capacity than small regional towns and small cathedral cities and that ‘more’, most essentially, also includes job diversification and higher earnings opportunities, not to mention a ‘vibrant’ culture, albeit a rather dangerous one, and the kind of teaming nightlife that you’ll never be able to ever afford because of the cost of your rent or mortgage.
For those of you who are mega-wealthy or have a secure and reliable well-paid job, preferably working from home, the likes of Penzance or Durham may be a marriage made in Heaven ~ or somewhere. Otherwise, it’s sea fishing and amusement arcade operatives in UK coastal towns or in Durham, for example, NHS workers or prison officers.
At least we now know why Roger Whittaker left. He most likely left Penzance as well? And on the evidence of his most excellent intuition would most certainly have thought about leaving London before he ever went there.
Where do you want to leave? In considering life in the UK, you’ll never run out of places to choose from.
