Category Archives: Kaliningrad: Mick Hart’s Diary

Bletsoe Garden Fête in an Aston Martin DB2/4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aston Martin DB2/4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you still …?”

“Yes, I am. Are you?”

“To the best of my ability.”

“How’s your wife?”

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

Wherever was that car-parking woman?

“How’s yours …?”

“Mine’s all right, how’s yours …?”

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

“You too, er …?”

Exit stage left.

“Who on Earth was that?”

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

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

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

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

Mick Hart with Red Rolls Royce at Bletsoe

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

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

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

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

Russia Big and Unpredictable You Cannot Help Love It

News just in

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

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

Russia Big and Unpredictable You Cannot Help Love It

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

This ia an electricity pole — Some statements are obvious

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

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

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

Manor House in English Village by Mick Hart

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

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

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

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

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

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

POST LINKS

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

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

Reg gets his Wheel Nuts out at Sywell Aerodrome

Reunion at Sywell Aerodrome UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The perfect events venue

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

Mick Hart and Olga Hart at Sywell Aerodrome

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

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

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

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

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

And it was all downhill from there.

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

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

Mick Hart with Reg and Bernie Wheel Nuts

Posts about places

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

Sywell Aerodrome Website Link

Beldray at Kaliningrad Flea Market a Surprising Find

English Art Nouveau at Kaliningrad Flea Market

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

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

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

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

Beldray at Kaliningrad Flea Market

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

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

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

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

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

Beldray Edwardian Cigarette Box Fopund in Kaliningrad, Russia

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

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

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

Beldray backstamp early twentieth century

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

It’s that man in the Russian hat in Bedford!

May this fair land we love so well in dignity and freedom dwell

28 May 2023 ~ It’s that man in the Russian hat in Bedford!

Great news! That is, great news if you are a dinosauric socialist or a politically challenged liberal: the results of the UK local elections suggest that Labour are back on track to break into Number 10 next year. It is rumoured that when this catastrophe happens, the first item on Queer Stammer’s agenda will not be to reverse rampant crime on our streets or stem the terrorist threat but to reverse Brexit in all but name. A politician, who wishes to remain Anonymous, as he hasn’t had a sex change, has disclosed that a bill will be produced (abracadabra!) that will ensure that whilst officially the UK is no longer a vassal state of the Evil bully-boy Union, the bureaucrats in Brussels will be firmly back in the driving seat.

Beyond rumour is the sure certainty that the UK’s immigration crisis, that is the one the Conservatives are powerless to prevent because, and I quote, of ‘legal challenges’ ~ time for Sorryarse’s UK legal-system to be investigated and overruled ~ is about to go from bad to worse.

The lefties have always been advocates of open-door immigration. After all, it was introduced by Mr Blair and his cronies as a pre-emptive measure to shore up the loss, which they rightly anticipated, of the white-working-class vote when the old grassroots socialists finally cottoned on, which eventually they did but only after it was much too late, that under Mr Blair’s stewardship New Labour had ceased to be the party of whippets, flat hats and pigeons, and that they and their tired old Marxist policies had been well and truly shafted. No one, not even the Neanderthal socialists, asked for multiculturism, and yet many just went along with it because since their grandads voted Labour they hadn’t the gump to ask themselves why they should do the same.

Neither did we ask for a free-for-all immigration fiasco. In fact, the majority voted Brexit to call for a halt to immigration, and what did we get in return? The net result under Tory rule is that immigration has soared to hitherto inconceivable heights. We also voted Brexit to loosen the pseudo-liberal stranglehold on every law that governs our land, particularly countercultural laws that originate from and are weaponised by the European Convention of Human Rights, the sole-serving purpose of which are to pave the way for mass immigration, a move that Britons pay dearly for, always in cash, often with lives. This, we are told, is social enrichment, when all that is enriched by uncontrolled third-world migration are the symbiotic coffers of the UK’s legal profession, the political mannequins on the end of the strings and the shadowy globalist figures whose hands control the strings that make those mannequins dance to their tune.

We will greet them on the beaches!
Sir Winston Chapelcliff

The proof is in the political pudding: You can vote as much as you like in Britain, but you’ll never get what you voted for. Other democracies around the world are routinely dismissed in Britain by its media and its political class, who refer to them as ‘managed democracies’, the implication being that we should think ourselves jolly lucky that the democracy in which we live is perfectly mismanaged.

At the end of the day, and every day on the political agenda, the people that govern our country, whichever party to which they belong, happily and arrogantly ride roughshod over all we believe in and all that we hold dear. Even now, as Enoch Powell’s predictions of ‘Rivers of Blood’ inexorably flows from cerebral to credible, the British media continues to praise the heinous migration chess game of a man whom it applauds egregiously as a ‘philanthropic billionaire and champion of human rights. They over egg the diversity soufflé whilst putting down the culinary critics who see it for what it is, as sickly as sick can be, by labelling them as conspiracy theorists and disciples of the far right. And should everything else in their trick bag fail, leaving nothing to dissemble with, they fall back on their second-rate act, drop Putin’s name into the mix and blame it all on the Russians.

Hats enough of hat!

You have just read the preface of two seemingly disconnected but actually interdependent actions: the singing of a song entitled There Always Was an England and an overwhelmingly strong compulsion to put on my Russian hat.

Look, it’s that man in the Russian hat!

Earlier this month I took my autocratic Russian hat for a test drive in the English countryside. On a date not to be disclosed for fear that they might travel back in time and attemp to rewrite history (the lefties are always at it), I plonked my hat on my head and went for a stroll around Bedford. Now, at any other time in the glorious history of our sovereign country, this would have posed no problem, but today, with almost every English town and city looking, sounding and feeling like the asylum version of Noah’s Ark, keeping a firm hand on one’s tiller is a crucial prerequisite for navigating dangerous urban waters.

This, as it happens (Jimmy Saville was fond of this phrase) is a convenient water-related metaphor, because the first place that my Russian hat took me was along the side of Bedford’s Embankment, next to the River Great Ouse.

Noah is not an English name, so there is a very good chance that he was one among a group of men idling near the water’s edge looking as though they had landed from Eastern Europe. Perhaps Noah himself had brought them?

You could tell that they all belonged to the Tracksuit Bottom Club, because they were all wearing tracksuit bottoms. They were gathered in a circle, and one of the men, the one with the most superior tracksuit bottoms, was addressing the rest in earnest, or possibly Lithuanian, or it might have been Ukrainian (do they have a language?). The group was listening so attentively that its leader must have been giving them tips on how to work the benefit system, which was fortunate for me, as I glided past them in my hat as though it was hypersonic and, undetected by enemy radar, arrived at Bedford’s Suspension Bridge without comment, let or hinderance.

A thing of beauty!

It was a lovely day to be standing above the River Great Ouse wearing a Russian hat. A couple of swans went by, who must have been working for border security because they took as much notice of me loitering in my Russian hat as they would a flotilla of boat people steaming into Dover.

A bus pulled up outside The Embankment Hotel, and a gaggle of shadowy personages alighted and went inside. Was it one of those freebee buses paid for by the government? Sorry, I meant paid for out of the British taxpayers’ pocket? “Don’t go to the Embankment bar,” I heard a prophetic voice whisper. It was the same voice that long ago had told me “Avoid the BBC licence fee as one would avoid the plague!” Besides, as an Englishman in England, I had to watch my step!

Where did you get that hat?

If there is one thing that never ceases to amaze me, and it’s not the Labour party, it is just how useful bridges are when you want to cross from one side to the other, and Bedford Town Bridge is no exception. Bedford Town Bridge was built in 1813 and expanded in 1938. Time for a photo in my Russian hat!

You can tell it is not a selfie, for, if it was, I would have been pouting at the lens, looking like a ten-year old thanks to the camera’s filter. Not having any tats, well, not that I can show you, and without a ring through my snout or a bolt through my lip, the risk of doing something like that was slim to say the least.

I had my photo taken, and I pressed on, passing numerous people both young and old alike who didn’t even see me let alone my Russian hat because every zombie one of them was twiddling on their mobile phones as if they’d sold their soul to Bill Gates, which in effect they had.

Within less time than it takes to invent a pandemic and cash in on those fatal jabs, I came at last to the High Street, which was busy, busy, busy. As I had not been asked to produce my passport, I assumed I was still in England. It’s just not that easy to tell anymore.

I crossed over the zebra crossing, well why not? Like bridges, that’s what they are there for, and continued in the same direction in which I had been going. All of a sudden, a strange looking fellow dressed in a pea-green T-shirt clutching a first-prize trophy that had been given gratuitously to him by the world’s most apolitical club, Eurovision, turned tail and ran. Had he seen my hat? The last thing I saw of him, he was heading towards the offices of the Government in Exile located on Britain’s ‘Take Anyone Street’. Man, that’s an awfully crowded street ~ innit!

I was now standing in one of Bedford’s most populated thoroughfares, next to Debenhams, that has closed, not far from Beales, which has closed, just around the corner from Eurovision Stores, many of which, like borders, are open (A round of applause from the Liebour party!). So far only two people had noticed my hat. I don’t know how they did it, as both have silly great faces of metal and all they do all day long is stand and stare at one another. These ‘statues’ in the centre of Bedford are worth every penny that you, the taxpayer, paid for them: trust me, I’m a politician.

From here it was all downhill to Ethnic Street, or Midland Road as it is sometimes known. Surely someone here would be specialists in Russian hat spotting? But no, so off we went to Wetherspoons. It being at this juncture not just as good a place to stop as any but the best place at which to stop, and that’s a fact! — as you wouldn’t want to walk any further, believe me you really wouldn’t.

Over a thoughtful pint in Wetherspoons we, my camera crew and I, did think about chancing our hat in Bidenham, er sorry I meant to say Biddenham, the home of the Ukrainian flag, but came to the conclusion that as the people who live there exhibit an obvious difficulty in recognising the truth, the likelihood of any of them understanding Cyrillic was much less in their favour as was looking silly in the eyes of the world.

Perhaps I should start a beginner’s course in reading Russian hats at Bedford College. First come, all served! Special discounted fees for people voting Green or Labour. Hurry, as places and brain cells are limited! Just quote the password dorac!!

It’s that man in the Russian Hat!

I take my Russian hat for a walk in the English countryside

18 May 2023 ~ It’s that man in the Russian Hat!

Now, you are probably wondering what I am doing standing in the English countryside wearing a Russian hat. The object of the exercise could have nothing to do with incongruity, for, if so, I might just as well have donned a bowler hat, a top hat or a jester’s cap with bells on. Perhaps I wanted to court controversy among the thistles and the cow slips or rehearse for the main event, which is to strut my stuff through the centre of town dressed in Russian hat and wearing my Putin T-shirt. Don’t forget your trousers!

It, the hat, happened shortly after accidently watching UK news’ latest coverage of that overinflated load of old codswallop the Eurovision Song Contest. The commentator, who was an Indian woman, was ‘informing’ the studio news anchor, who was a black woman, that many people were disappointed that Eurovision’s organisers had decided not to give top billing to Mr Zelensky. Presumably, the plan had been not to parachute him in to join a stage full of second-rate performers but to feed him to us by videolink. What a treat that would have been: Ukraine’s Mr Zelensky emblazoned across our screens yet again. I wonder had he not been rejected if he would have been wearing his signature pea-green T-shirt. Had it been a fashion show I am sure he’d have won first prize. Let’s thank our lucky stars that such technology as widescreen monitors was not around in Hitler’s day: imagine the propaganda advantage at events like the Nuremberg rallies.

In case you have forgotten, but how could you? Last year’s winner of the Ukrainian-vision Song Contest was Ukraine. Now there’s a surprise. But not as surprising as the statement issued this year, an official statement no less, that the Eurovision Song Contest is a strictly apolitical event, hence the spurning of Mr Zelensky.

All well and good, except it wasn’t. From that moment onwards, every other word on the telly and every second image relating to the contest had a Ukrainian slant and every colour was the colour of the Ukrainian flag. They even managed to conjure up a troupe of Ukrainian refugees, who swirled around in fancy dress whilst saying, ‘It’ [the contest venue and by default the UK] was so Ukraine-oriented that ‘It’ felt like a piece of Ukraine itself.

“Huh,” someone snorted, the UK feels like anywhere else except England, so why not give a piece to Ukraine.”

“It’s all so peculiar,” remarked our old friend and colleague, retired scientist, Dr Martin T. It was certainly that and more and so unfair to Mr Zelensky that in protest at one of the sickliest dollops of televised tripe for years, I took to the great outdoors ~ wearing my Russian hat!

By the way, if by some strange miracle Ukraine does not win this year’s Ukroney Visible Song Contest, what’s the chances of them coming second just behind Croatia. Apolitical event my arse!

It’s that man in the Russian Hat!

I suspect you may be thinking that wearing a Russian hat in the middle of the English countryside is not particularly brave of me. However, wearing a Russian hat in the middle of the English countryside does not necessarily preclude you from being noticed.

Mick Hart in Russian hat in the English countryside

England, as you know, is critically overpopulated. Due to lax immigration laws, meaning bogus immigration laws, there are arguably more people to the square foot in the UK than anywhere else in the world ~ land mass considered. The situation is so dire that hotels in England now require that you share a room with an illegal immigrant ~ his mum, his brother and his auntie ~ and foot the bill for the whole caboodle. Taxes are on the rise; it must be Putin’s fault!

Take the day, for example, when I went frolicking across the English countryside wearing my Russian hat. At a sly guess, I estimate that I must have spotted and been spotted by at least 10 people, all well-to-do middle class ladies, walking their dogs and their husbands, each done up to the nines in those cloning country clothes that they buy and which costs them an arm and a leg. (There are other bits to the clothes as well. They are not that unaffordable that you have to buy them in installments.) Even their dogs were wearing Barbour jackets!

Not so much escaping from Johnny foreigner than from Innit Abdul and his boating chums, not only did these country folk, mainly from the city, have the right to be where they were by birth and by decree of cultural lineage, they were all to a man and a woman (no gender deviants here) of certified prime-beef middle-class stock.

Take note: The English middle-class are not just highly amusing in every which way imaginable, they are also extremely versed in the art of not concealing the fact that wherever they might meet you, in the countryside or anywhere else, they really would rather not. And should such a misfortune arise, which in a country as overcrowded as ours it is odds on favourite it will, they really, really and very much really would rather they did not acknowledge you.

Fortunately, however (or not, depending on your point of view) common decency and civility have yet to be so completely destroyed by the age in which we live that a watery smile, nod of the head even perchance a forced ‘good morning’ are considered permissible exchanges before the two parties go hurrying past in opposite and opposing directions.

It is this inability of the English middle class, the inability to be natural, open and honest always and at any time, which might explain why no one recoiled in abject horror at the sight of my Russian hat. I cannot begin to tell you how disappointing it was that no one in a state of shock fell headlong into a ditch, in spite of there being around us some very deep ditches indeed, stepped backwards into a cowpat, went screaming hysterically across the fields or produced a Ukrainian flag, cunningly concealed about their person, and proceeded to wave it in front of my face as if it was a crucifix and I the evil count. (Incidentally, looking like a right count is an inherent problem for many British MPs.) It was all so disappointing. “Morning!” they muttered, through stiff upper lips and then full steam ahead, they were gone.

This resilience to reaction, this tightrope walk between thought and the spoken word, is indicative of the extent to which the English, particularly those who like to be thought of as ruralites, have slipped and missed the net. The war generation, real people with real values, have sadly faded away, leaving in its place an inferior gene pool of hand-me-downs, some browbeaten by political correctness and bottle fed on woke, others who read the Daily Mail and as a result spend their days in a perpetual state of inert fulmination, still labouring under the dangerous delusion that an Englishman’s home is his castle rather than accept the truth that it is the last refuge of an endangered species.

In my grandparents’ day, indeed in my parents’ day, someone certainly would have asked, “What are you doing in that Russian hat?” Your average English country bumpkin, unschooled in the art and social science of snotty middle-class snobbism, would have certainly asked the question, and even in today’s UK, with white middle-class flight gathering momentum from such horrible places as Londonistan as the third-world hoards romp freely in, every English village is still able to boast at least one Village Idiot whose legacy role it is to ask important questions like ‘What are you doing in that Russian hat?’ even if the hat you are wearing is a Eurovision sponsored one adorned in the avatar colours of the ubiquitous Ukrainian flag.

A welcome in the hill sides!

Having failed dismally in the heart of the English countryside to elicit the faintest response to my Russian hat ~ a flock of sheep went ‘mare’, they must have been liberal lefties ~ I then decided to take my hat through the centre of the nearby village, stopping on the way to harangue people in their gardens as they mowed the lawn or dug up dandelions, but not one of those I encountered mentioned my Russian hat, perhaps because they were all pretending that they could not read Cyrillic, thought of me as a football hooligan or had jumped to the conclusion that I was one of those who had come ashore in an inflatable rubber dinghy, thanks to the village idiots who get paid a lot of money for falling asleep in the Palace of Westminster.

If this was phase 2 of Russian Hat in Provincial England, then phase 3 was Russian Hat in an English pub. Admittedly, the optimum pub to have tested the hat would have been The Three Tonnes in Biddenham.

Biddenham is a small village once sequestered on the outskirts of Bedford which has in more recent years, like so many villages outlying towns, suffered the misfortune of having been swallowed up by a greedy backhander-facilitated urban sprawl. Nevertheless, judging by the type of houses and the toffee-nosed people who own them, imagining Biddenham as anything else than a bastion of British Conservatism is as difficult to grasp as a turd you might try to polish. And yet for all its aspirations to be a snooty upper-class English village, it has allowed itself to become a pole for flying Ukrainian flags. Biddenham is a prime example of the extent to which middle-England has been infiltrated by the snidey politics of erosive liberal left woke and the sabre-rattling inertia of those who live by the Daily Mail and who will no doubt eventually die of it.

As such, Biddenham’s Three Tonnes would have been the perfect pub in which to wear my lovely Russian hat. But as we were somewhere not so near, we had to go elsewhere.

In total, we visited two pubs and in both my hat went with me. The first of the two hat venues was rather busy. Here, eyebrows were raised and inquisitive glances passed, but whether this was my hat at work or the photographs we were taking as we took it in turns to wear the hat, is a matter for conjecture.

The second pub was quieter than the first and the only reaction that we got in here, Russian hat or not, was the typical ‘strangers in town’ scenario. For a moment it rained excitement, but once everyone was satisfied that we posed no threat to man or beast and that we had not just rowed up the high street in a Royal Navy-assisted dinghy or jumped out of the back of a lorry from France, ‘normal’ service was quickly resumed.

Mind you, had the latter been suspected we might have been given a pint or two, plus free accommodation for as long as we didn’t deserve it and for which we certainly would not be entitled.

On emerging from the pub after a thoroughly hard day’s hat wearing, I commissioned this innocent photograph of me in my Russian hat looking peaceful, reposed and quite at home in the company of a traditional English phone box. Aww, now ‘aint that a lovely picture …

Mick Hart in Russian Hat next to a British telephone box

Episode 2 of It’s that man in a Russian hat, takes us next to the African/Caribbean/Asian/Lithuanian and Ukrainian town of Bedford. Stay tuned to this channel folks!

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Have a good Victory Day Russia!

It looks different on British TV, but that’s what you pay your licence for

9 May 2023

This is the first time in four years that I am unable to attend the 9^th May Victory Day celebrations in Russia, as I am ‘over here’ at the moment as distinct from ‘over there’.

Olga sent me an email from Kaliningrad this morning, saying: “It is a lovely morning today and the sun is shining for us to put the flowers to the monument of the fallen in the Second World War. Praying for peace and love in the world.🥰❤”

In my reply, I asked her to say hello from me to our mutual friends and let them know that although I am over here, I am thinking of them over there and am certain that Russia will prevail.

Have a good Victory Day Russia!

As I may have mentioned once or a hundred times before, I do not watch telly, but in the past few weeks I have had access to a television set. My first reaction to this novel but invasive experience was, as I had been forewarned, every other commentator, reporter, news anchor, every TV programme, no matter what it is, and every second advert features a person of colour. Said my brother, “Is this what they mean by a colour TV?” I mused on this question before replying judiciously, “When I was young, there was only black and white. We couldn’t afford a colour TV.” Can we afford one now?

In one sense, however, it, TV and life, is more black and white than it ever was. Take, for example, the Eurovision Song Contest, that once flagship of European propriety and conservatism. The last time I watched this programme, someone was jumping up and down to the innocent refrains of ‘Puppet on a String’, now, it would seem, we in the West are all puppets umbilically attached to somebody else’s lifeline, fed on televised pap poisoned with propaganda. Eurovictim is no exception. The song and prance programme has gone the same way as everything else in the West ~ a festering fest of genderism and mass consumption politics for those who like to be told what to think rather than think for themselves.

The other leitmotif of British TV, apart from the black and white issue, is, of course, Ukraine. Am I mistaken or has the ‘o’ in Eur’o’vision assumed the shape of a heart with an infill of colours taken from the Ukrainian flag? What is apparent is that Mr Zelensky gets an awful lot of British TV air space, either through open or covert reference, or in the unastounding character of himself.

“If it ‘aint c…s!” someone cries, glaring at the pub TV, “It’s that f…..g w….r!”

When Mr Zelensky appears on our British TV sets, he does so wearing his ubiquitous T-shirt. There is much talk of the need to defend universal democracy couched in such a way that it sounds like an appeal for more money and more weapons. In the meantime, Mr Z, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell us, we the British people, to which charity we can turn to pay our gas and electric bills?

And on that note, I’d better switch off the computer, as I can see the metre whirring round like a member of the transvestite left at a real-fur coronation.

My message to the Russian people on 9^th May 2023 is simply this: stay firm, trust in your convictions and keep the faith. The importance of your heritage, past and history is non-negotiable. When it’s gone, it’s gone. And don’t we English know it!

Have a good 9th May!

LINKS
Victory Day 2022 Brings Record Turnout
9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021
9th May Victory Day Kaliningrad 2002 & 2020
Immortal Regiment Alexei Dolgikh

Men’s Day in Kaliningrad Brings Out the Soviet Guns

Mick Hart stars in his own Soviet version of Guns and Poses

Published: 5 March 2023 ~ Men’s Day in Kaliningrad Brings out the Soviet Guns

Every year, on the 23^rdof February, Russia celebrates what is officially known as Defender of the Fatherland Day. Originally called Red Army Day, it was granted public-holiday status in recognition of the Red Army’s 1918 inauguration during the Russian Civil War. Known thereafter as the Day of the Red Army and the Navy, and later the Soviet Army and Navy Day, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the holiday was given its current name by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At state level, the day honours the patriotism and sacrifices made by Russia’s military veterans. A formal ceremony is held in Moscow and in other Russian cities, with daytime parades and processions and evening concerts and firework displays. At national level, custom has morphed the day into a time when women honour their menfolk ~ not only military men but all men. Presents are given by Russian women to husbands/boyfriends, fathers, sons, brothers and also to male work colleagues, turning Defender of the Fatherland Day into the better known generic name of “Men’s Day”.

In the UK, liberals encourage ethnics to spit at our troops, not serve them in corner shops and berate them for wearing their uniforms in public. Transgenderism is rife and misandry encouraged. But the one thing that the UK does have that Russia doesn’t is Gay Pride Month …

Men’s Day in Kaliningrad Soviet Exhibition

Russia’s Men’s Day plays host to a variety of events, and this year we were invited to attend a display of Soviet militaria at the Kaliningrad Retro Car Club’s HQ, a former aircraft parts repository of historic Luftwaffe origin.

The exhibition was organised and delivered by a group of Soviet history enthusiasts/re-enactors.

Soviet Re-enactors Men's Day Kaliningrad

On display were documents and printed ephemera relating to WWI and Soviet uniforms from both WWII and postwar periods. To generate the spirit of the occasion and to provide the public with a better idea of the look, style and fit of the uniforms, each re-enactor was dressed either in an officer’s or other ranks’ uniform and most were equipped with combat gear.

De-activated antique guns

The mainstay of the exhibition was a display of small arms, predominantly WWII in character, ranging from handguns to tripod-mounted machine guns. The cache was diverse and impressive and included within the Soviet mix were weapons of German origin. All of the guns displayed were deactivated collector’s pieces.

Although I have handled an extensive variety of classic vintage firearms thanks to my early and enduring interest in all things historic and later in my role as a dealer in militaria, some of the guns in today’s exposition fell into the category of ‘known but not encountered’ and others had eluded me.

The Browning automatic, which was the standard sidearm in WWII for both Allied and Axis forces, was an old friend: it was one of the handguns I have actually fired.

The semi-automatic Mauser, whose production dates to the 1870s, is one of the most distinctively profiled and therefore easily recognisable handguns of all time. The copy on today’s menu was interesting in that it could be fitted with a hardwood stock, a useful accessory upgrading its stability to that of a short rifle and being hollow in part it doubles as a storage case or holster.

Another familiar gun, and one that I have also fired, is the PPSH. The PPSH-41, a submachine gun instantly identifiable by its high-capacity drum magazine ~ 71 rounds when fully loaded ~ was one of the Soviet army’s most widely used infantry weapons. An icon of the period, it features extensively in photographic depictions of Soviet soldiers in battle, is often incorporated into figural war monuments and regularly appears on commemorative badges. Weighing around 12 pounds (5.45 kg), full magazine included, the first reaction of the inexperienced gun user on picking up the PPSH is usually how heavy it feels. It is without doubt a weighty specimen, but, unless you are a seasoned gun user, all guns when first encountered seem surprisingly heavy and also surprisingly clunky.

Although in many respects the Soviet PPSH bests the M1A1 U.S. Thompson, on the UK shooting range some years ago I felt less comfortable firing the PPSH than I did the Thompson. Weight for weight, there is not much difference, but the absence of a pistol grip or side grips on the PPSH means that the weapon has to be held with the supporting hand behind the drum or by cupping the drum itself, a necessity which I personally found impinged upon its accuracy. That said, the PPSH drum mag with its superior load capacity is compensation enough in any realistic performance-related comparison of these two iconic weapons.

Mention iconic firearms in the context of Soviet history and the buzzword is likely to be not the PPSH or the Mosin-Nagant but, yes, you’ve got it, the Kalashnikov. No Soviet firearms exhibition would be worth its salt without the presence of this gun, a weapon universally revered for its outstanding reliability under conditions of an adverse nature and a gun which ticks almost every box, if not ticks every box, as best in its class in the assault rifle category.

Used the world over, the Kalashnikov was and continues to be one of the most popular weapons ever produced. No serious gun collector would regard his collection complete without one. Today’s exposition featured two AK versions, fixed wood and folding-stock variants. We sold both types, deactivated of course, through our UK vintage/militaria emporium.

Another old favourite, which whenever I see it reminds me of the times we spent with the UK re-enacting group, the Soviet 2^nd Guards Rifles Division, was the Degtyaryov machine gun. The Degtyaryov, DP-27/DP-28, was the standard light machine gun of the Soviet military in WWII. The large rotating drum magazine mounted on the top of the gun shaped its unique appearance, inspiring Soviet soldiers to nickname it the ‘record player’.

The Makarov pistol, or PM as it is known, which in 1951 became the Soviet military’s standard sidearm, is, in its definitive form, so well-known and accessible that the sight of one is unlikely to rock the gun community’s world, but you never can tell with guns what variants are out there; specific demand and experimentation are capable of producing the most unusual hybrid version of otherwise commonplace guns. Take the example displayed today. This version of the ubiquitous semi-automatic Makarov had undergone a modification that makes it look as incongruous as a woman’s body defaced with tats.

Makarov with drum mag at Men's Day Kaliningrad exhibition

In details of proportion, the erstwhile small firearm seems to have taken leave of its senses. Strapped beneath its pistol grip is a drum magazine every bit as big and as chunky as the one that is used by the PPSH. However, as wild, whacky and clumsy as it appears, and although the variant was never widely produced, for a while at least this ambitious conversion was heralded as a useful addition to Russia’s law-enforcement armoury, since it enabled officers carrying shields who only had one hand with which to hold their gun to sustain fire over longer periods before needing to reload.

Today’s small arms cache in the old Luftwaffe building was a window on the world of Soviet weaponry. From my point of view, having handled a fair amount of military weapons over a lifetime’s interest in all things history, some were old acquaintances but others took their place in the never-ending learning curve ~ the converted Makarov is a case in point. The past is littered with revelations waiting for someone to pick them up. There is always something new to discover, always something new to learn and the joy of both never grow old. It is one of the enduring delights of the antique/vintage scene.

Soviet Uniforms

The uniforms displayed also brought back memories of our vintage shop and the re-enactments that we took part in as members of the 2^nd Guards group.

As I believe I mentioned in a previous post, re-enactment is a serious historical business. Everything has to be just so, an exact replica of what it was like back in the 1940s. Considerable time and effort is diligently expended in researching and getting the uniforms right and in allocating to those uniforms the correct insignia worn and where and how it was worn. Anything less than perfect is sure to be met with a stern rebuke from the re-enactment group’s leaders and spark derision in those who purport to know more than you do about such important details, one’s group peers especially and, more embarrassingly, military veterans.

At first sight, the Soviet uniform looks pretty basic, and it was. At the time the Second World War broke out It hadn’t changed much since the First World War. It certainly does not compare with the rigid formality of British wartime uniforms and the flash, Hollywood modernity of their American counterparts, whose uniforms and equipment had a certain style all of their own. But what the Soviet uniform lacks in formality and also in panache it more than makes up for in functionality, being lightweight, durable and easy to wear.

As a re-enactor and military clothes dealer, I have worn the uniforms of both Allied and Axis forces, both officers’ and other ranks’, and if I had to sum up each country’s uniform using one definitive word for each, my choice of words would be: American, ‘stylish’; British, ‘itchy’; Soviet, ‘comfortable’.

When re-enacting, the only bone I had to pick with the Soviet uniform was the inclusion of fresh, white, linen neck-liners, which have to be changed and sewn with irritating regularity into the underside of the tunic collar. As an actor on a film set, someone does this for you. It is altogether different when you have to do it yourself: for example, when cold and bleary eyed after a night beneath the rainy skies with only your canvas poncho for protection. Warning: Re-enactment is a serious business.

Men’s Day in Kaliningrad

The reals stars of the Soviet military display held at the Kaliningrad Retro Car Club HQ were the guns, but it would be inexcusably remiss of me if I was to leave the show without giving credit where credit is due for one of the best collections of Soviet gas masks that I have ever seen exhibited at a militaria event.

The impressive collection was the inspiration and work of a young bloke called Valordia. He confided in me that the official requirement of wearing masks during the coronavirus scare had added impetus to his collecting zeal and that during those two surreal years he had substituted cloth masks for gas masks from his collection. Good for him! I thought. I often tried to be different, too, by wearing my mask around my knee. It’s never been the same knee since. It seems to wheeze a little!

Valordia’s gas-mask collection begins with a fairly basic item from WWI, extends through the interwar years, encompasses WWII and finally comes to rest with a state-of-the-art modern mask, modelled by last years’ model (and some) me. In case you didn’t want to recognise me, there I am in the photo, standing as large as life and twice as beautiful in my designer gas mask next to Valordia. This mask has some interesting gimmicks, such as interchangeable this and that’s, and also features a drinking tube for the wearer to take in liquid refreshments (Mine’s a pint of Landlord, please.) whilst remaining safely enveloped in rubber.

Mick Hart modelling a modern Russian gas mask on Men’s Day in Kaliningrad

It’s food for thought, but the accessorising capability of this mask stands it in good stead for nomination as the Gates/Davos prototype ~ the first live-in coronavirus and other nasty man-made-diseases facemask, a must-have accessory for the globalist’s reset future. With a built-in smartphone as standard, which I think we can safely assume it would have, proud wearers will continue to be urged to post their selfies to social media, thus preserving social media’s ongoing cloning affect. The beauty of the mask will be that even more than ever none of your ‘friends’ will know who you are and what you really are, which when assessed at its most fundamental level is what social media is all about: a world of revolving masks in a hall of revolving mirrors. The ‘Like’ tickers and back-slappers will function as before, seeing nothing and knowing less, there mutual appreciation assured as they woo each other with fulsome comments about how young and lovely each of them look hidden behind their filters. Don’t mock! It could happen. It could be a win-win situation, for those who are steadily losing.

But I digress: In an age when everything and everybody seems smartarsephoned, it is reassuring to discover that there are others in the world who share your ardent belief that there is no time like the past, and reassuring again when the other parties concerned are considerably younger than yourself. Keep up the good work, chaps!

Whilst my response to the Soviet exhibition was one of unreserved enjoyment, I completely understand why some people cannot understand why guns, old or new, should be a source of fascination. Unlike my youngest brother, who holds several medals and trophies for marksmanship in most small-arms categories, I do not. It is true that in my youth, I would occasionally run around armed in the middle of the night, not I hasten to add in an urban setting but for the perfectly reasonable purpose of poaching his lordship’s estate. In my dotage, however, guns, have taken their place among the many varied man-made objects invested with an intrinsic ability to stimulate appreciation for their craftsmanship, aesthetics and historic interest alone. And yet, despite such commendable sensibilities and the reservations from which they stem, come the day of the exhibition I could not resist the alpha temptation to pick up and tote a sawn-off or two. Both the shotgun and the rifle, even with modified barrels and stocks, were surprisingly tactile and disturbingly balanced.

Disturbingly unbalanced is the expression on my face captured in the photo where I am holding one of these guns. In that photograph I seem to have achieved a curious manly man hybrid somewhere between Clint Eastward and Bop Hope, either that or my pants are too tight.

Mick Hart with sawn-off gun in Kaliningrad

Looking at my photo (above), I think we can safely conclude that a manly image is not so easily come by as convention would have us believe, even when its Man’s Day and even when you are holding a gun. But you’ve got to admire Squint Westwood’s brass and, if only as an act of charity, give me six out of ten for trying.

Olga Hart with Soviet Re-enactor on Men’s Day in Kaliningrad

F*ck New Year Calendars and How do They Work?

Beware of what you wish for!

Published: 31 December 2022 ~ F*ck New Year Calendars and How do They Work?

Every year, on the 31^st of December, most of us, not all but most, celebrate the arrival of a New Year. Some celebrate it quietly, others party like it’s going out of fashion, hopping, whooping, shouting, working themselves up into a right old frenzy as the hours, minutes and seconds count down to midnight. By the time midnight arrives, sobriety has left, and everyone screams ‘Happy New Year’, and then we get more drunk.

As a consequence of this mandatory ritual, typically and ironically for most of us the New Year starts on a none too auspicious note: We fall into bed at 5am and wake up half-way through the day with a bucket for a head, a mouth that tastes like the cat slept in and a guts ~ Well, let’s not draw a picture.

As the last minutes of the last 365 days of our life tick away, you can guarantee that almost everyone around you will breathe a sigh of relief, chorusing “I’m glad to see the back of 1065,” for example, “1066 can’t be any worse!” I think it was Harold who said that.

So it is with philosophical solemnity, that I present to you today, on this last day of the Year of Our Lord 2022, this photograph of a rather rude calendar, which a ferret and I discovered whilst roving the bars of Kaliningrad.

Now we have no way of knowing, and cannot say for certain, if those who hung this calendar on the wall, presumably in January of 2022, were in receipt of psychic information. Did they have a direct line to the Universe’s Control Centre? Was it just a self-fulfilling prophesy? Or is it the work of a ‘double agent’, ie I will denounce 2022 but secretly I support it. In other words, how does this calendar work?

Presumably, like any other, you pin it on the wall on the first day of the New Year to which the calendar applies. Well, OK, making allowances for hangovers, most likely on the second day. But how do you know? How do you predict how the year will pan out for you? What gives you the right and credibility to hang a calendar on your wall that says F!ck 2022, 2024 or 2020-anything?

Does the advocate of this type of calendar have a sixth sense ~ some might argue that they must have a sick sense? Before hanging such a prophetic calendar on his wall, does he consult the tarot cards, examine his crystal balls, believe in horoscopes, resort to numerological mysticism in which 2+2= 6 (which just means his maths are awful) or does he sign up to the endless twaddle that spews out of YouTube videos from self-appointed, self-proclaimed, creepy homespun spiritualists? The mind ~ that is, the mind that is still in control ~ boggles, and shudders, to think.

F*ck New Year Calendars and How do They Work?

Those of you that cling to the adage that pessimism breeds pessimism, ie what goes around comes around, and that bad-joke calendars like this manifest reality, will no doubt recoil in horror at such presumptuous negativity and may even have a calendar on your wall to set the record straight, a calendar, for example, on which it could be written ‘Welcome 2022’, the bold, pink words surrounded by little elves that dance, fairies that flutter, butterflies that bob and rabbits that bunny and bunnies that rabbit, all afrolick together among the softening rays of a sunburst yellow bathed like a halo on the blue-sky background, and they sigh, they sigh with such sighs of optimism that they carry you back like a tune to your childhood and you know instinctively and have no doubt that this, at last, is Your Year!

Looked at objectively and objectionably, It’s hard to decide which of the two calendars surrenders itself more completely to the irony of fate: the bar’s F*uck You calendar or the optimist’s New Era dream, ‘Hoorah! 2023 is going to be the year for me’. (Some woman on YouTube told me so!) Ah, hem …

I don’t wish to be a killjoy, especially on New Year’s Eve, but it must be plain to the most myopic that calendars that purport to predict the essence of the coming year, both the good and the bad, are best to be avoided, or, if the temptation is just too much, try keeping them off your wall, at least until their year is out and the next year safely in.

Let hindsight be your witness and you will minimise the chance of Irony passing judgement on you!

Oh, and a Happy New Year to you all!

Kaliningrad Retro Car Club in a Festive Mood

In the club on Christmas Eve

Published: 25 December 2022 ~ Kaliningrad Retro Car Club in a Festive Mood

A big thank you to Inara and Arthur for inviting me to the Kaliningrad Retro Car Club end-of-year party last night and to the members of the club for making me feel so welcome and for creating a night to remember. It was especially fortuitous for me that the party coincided with the 24^thDecember, Christmas Eve in the UK.

Apprehension at the outset that the venue for the party, the old Luftwaffe spare-parts building, would be brass-monkey cold was largely unfounded. Improvised heating using one of those gas-fired space appliances worked far better than I anticipated, and as for the cold it could not compete with, this encouraged those who like and want to dance to do just that; their jumping and jiving around proving to be an excellent way of generating the auxiliary heat that we needed.

Kaliningrad Retro Car Club party

The car club’s chef had prepared various nourishing dishes, the warm ones claiming a decisive victory for mission Keep the Cold at Bay, and generous proportions of vodka, cognac and cognac liqueurs, toasts galore and the warmth of the company present ~ particularly the latter ~ all did their sterling bit to stave off the winter temperatures.

It was heartening and appropriate that Father Frost (Father Christmas) should drop by to assist in the festivities and to doll out seasonal presents, and I was especially pleased with the car quiz that proved to me once and for all that when it comes to taking part in quizzes I could do much worse than not take part.

It did occur to me, too late, of course, that to show my appreciation for an excellent evening, I could have volunteered to help clean up the venue the following day, a sort of Christmas Day treat for my conscience, but as the idea refused to catch up with me until the time for action had passed, I will have to think of something else.

One positive thing that I could do is to reiterate my offer to the president of the club, which is to donate a rather fine door to the Luftwaffe building that we have secreted in our garage. I think that it would look very nice and would attest to its functionality hanging on two or three hinges where the hole in the wall to the toilet is. I am nothing if not inventive.

Kaliningrad Retro Car Club members at party 2022

Above: Kaliningrad Retro Car Club members

Above: First Aid for anyone who complains about the cold ~ Vaccine Vodka. And the Retro Car Club’s resident nurse. She has a heart of gold and a lovely bedside manner

Above: Father Frost drops by

Above: Mick Hart with a pint in his hand and Lenin looking over his shoulder

Olga Hart & Inara Kaliningrad Retro Car Club

Above: Olga Hart with a kind and friendly fairy behind her

Mick Hart Kaliningrad with work of metal art

Above: What is it … don’t be rude?! I’m talking about the object I am holding! It is, in fact, a napkin holder made out of vilkee and lorshkee ~ that’s forks and spoons to you!