Published: 29 September 2021 ~ Beware of the Babooshka!
It was an extremely hot day when my wife decided that as I had made the mistake of buying a new lawnmower, perhaps now would be a good time to cut the lawn. “Why whinge?” you ask. “There is nothing so easy as cutting a lawn. Modern, electric-powered lawn mowers cut lawns as if they were made for the job.”
“Ah, yes,” I concede, “but there are lawns and lawns.”
The lawn in question was big and, as it had not been cut for a year, it was intolerably overgrown and full of long, brown straggly things.
Nevertheless, not one to walk away from a challenge when there is the promise of beer at the end of it, I set to with a vengeance.
About four hours later and three-quarters of the way through it, I was just looking back over what I had done and secretly congratulating myself, when a stout and redoubtable babooshka came marching down the road.
As she drew level with me, she stopped, peered over the fence and gazed intently first at the lawn, then at the mower and then at me.
“I’ll bowl her over with my scintillating grasp of Russian,” I thought. So, I call out, merrily.
“Strasveetee [Hello]!”
The babooshka looks but says nothing.
Perhaps she was spellbound by the conquistador job that I was doing.
When she finally did say something, it sounded short and to the point. I asked my good lady to translate.
“What did she say?” I asked. I suppose I was expecting to hear a compliment.
“She said, “‘You don’t do it like that!’”
“Don’t do what, like what?” I asked
“Don’t cut lawns like that!”
Well, really, had I been in England I would have put her right and no mistake: “Listen to me my good woman, I’ll have you know that I’ve been mowing lawns man and boy …”
But that was just it. I wasn’t in England and, if I had been, would an elderly lady address me like this?
Certainly, in days of yore, when I was a nipper, they would have done. But that was then and now is now. Grandmas in the UK no longer dispense worldly advice and criticism, they are too busy nightclubbing and looking for dates on Tinder.
Having said her piece the babooshka went on her way, and I continued to cut the lawn the way that I always shouldn’t have done.
This was the same babooshka, incidentally, who had sworn blind that our statue was black when, in fact, it is bronzed-brown (I repeat the incident from my former post, Hippy Party on the Baltic Coast).
We were standing on the pavement at the end of the garden admiring the newly painted statue when who should appear but the friendly village babooshka.
“Hello,” we regaled her, cheerily.
“Why have you spoilt him?” she snapped.
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 shot a glance at the statue. Heavens, should we be taking a knee?!
“No, in fact, he is bronze,” I curtly corrected her.
Olga bent down and picked up some litter from the side of the road and placed it inside the rubbish bag we were carrying.
“Huh!” the babooshka tutted, “Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time!”
A few days later, without me, I am sad to say, my wife ran into her again.
“Hello,” Olga greeted her.
“You haven’t done much, have you?” came the oblique reply.
Who remembers Albert Tatlock from Coronation Street?
Olga asked for clarification.
She got it: “The house. You haven’t done much to it. All you’ve done is painted the statue black!”
Who remembers Nora Batty from Last of the Summer Wine?
My wife attempted to turn the tables adroitly, innocently remarking on the nice sunflowers that she had observed in a neighbour’s garden.
“What’s the use of them?” the babooshka asked, and before Olga could think of nothing in response, went on to say, “Those sunflowers are in my relative’s garden. Look at it. It’s full of potatoes, but she hasn’t looked after them properly. They’re all overgrown. Spent too much time on those sunflowers, I suppose.”
See end of post for image attribution
The next time my wife bumped into this ray of golden sunlight, she was caught by the philosopher as she was running to catch the bus.
“What are you running for?” the merry babooshka asked.
“To catch the bus,” Olga explained. “The last time I almost missed it. The driver left earlier than he should.”
“Well,” retorted the babooshka, “sometimes he gets here early, so he leaves early.”
“But he shouldn’t!”
“Why not, he can do what he likes. If he’s here early there’s no point in him sitting about. He wants to get on.”
“Yes,” my wife argued, “but there is such a thing as a timetable.”
“Timetable,” the babooshka snorted contemptuously, “what’s the point of that when he’s here early and doesn’t want to wait?”
“But people will miss the bus,” exclaimed my wife.
“That’s their problem, not the bus drivers,” concluded the babooshka.
Beware of the Babooshka!
Sometimes the most important and valuable things in life can pass you by, and when we are reminded of them we should be eternally grateful. For example, if it was not for this babooshka, it would never have occurred to me that I had spent the greater proportion of my life cutting the lawn like I shouldn’t have done; that our bronzed statue was black; that there is no possible excuse for growing sunflowers; and that impatient bus drivers had better things to do than to adhere to timetables and pick up passengers.
It is surely food for thought that I have reached the age that I have but still have much, so very much to learn.😉
Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)
Published: 25 September 2021 ~ Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad
Article 15: Gyvas Kaunas
Well, just look at it! I bought this lager in spite of, rather than because of, the appearance of the bottle. It reminded me of someone or something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Could it have been that brassy blonde that I had met in an East London nightclub? Was it something I had seen on an Italian reality TV show? Did someone try to sell it to me once? I vaguely remember his voice, “Oh to be sure, to be sure. ‘Tis the real thing, sure enough. On the memory of my sainted mother would I tell you otherwise …” No? Panto, perhaps? Or something in a joke shop window?
Gambling all on the forgiving notion that tasteless is not always the red flag that we take it for, I paid my 140 roubles, which isn’t cheap considering that this fairground bottle only holds one litre, and left the shop quite smartishly, as if I’d just purchased the drinks equivalent of a mucky book or had been seen with a TV celebrity.
Once safely indoors I stashed the bottle away behind the potatoes and made a mental note to forget that I had bought it, but come the witching hour, seven o’clock (and, listen you lushes, I do mean seven in the evening!), the hankerings overtook me, and before you could say, “Do you really think that this is a good idea?!”, I had whipped it out and took it upstairs.
Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad
On the coffee table, which also functions as a beer table, the bottle looked distinctly out of place, standing there as it did next to my manly Soviet tankard. I had the uneasy feeling that I was about to open a bottle of fizzy wine and that nothing short of Hinge and Bracket’s tablecloth and Liberace’s candelabra would do the experience justice.
Gee it was Gaudy, with a capital ‘G’.
Never mind. I put on my sunglasses, peeled away at the pink foil wrapper, put the corkscrew back in the drawer and slipped off the top. Now came the moment of truth. I moved slowly towards the neck of the bottle, longingly but apprehensively. The camera, had there been one, began to revolve at 360 degrees, the lighting first went dim and then became suffused. I lowered my nose to the opening. Chanel No 5 or Canal in need of dredging, which one would it be? Eureka, or You Reeka Lot! Downwind of a lav portacabin on a very warm and windy day!
Desist or resist! As I wouldn’t judge a book by its cover, neither would I allow my olfactory senses to be the sole arbitrator in the case of Pong vs Palate.
I poured the liquid into my glass, observing it, of course, with no small degree of suspicion, and then I took the plunge.
Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad
Verdict: fruity.
There was the essence of bitter grapes, tinged with grapefruit, a touch of lemon and a fondle of orange and, thanks to a long-life fizz, a loyal taste that did not immediately let you down and simply walk away.
All things considered, it would be unfair of me if I did not admit that the experience had been worth the 140 roubles that I had paid. And, yes, you may be right. My criticism of the packaging could be due to a lifetime of drinking British ales dispensed from stalwart old-world handpumps. So, was I being too hard?
I would not go so far as to say that it was Casablanca ~ the start of a beautiful relationship ~ more like a one-night stand, but I have put the empty bottle aside, as who knows one day it may come in handy should I ever want to remodel my room to resemble Del Boy’s flat.
😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Gyvas Kaunas Brewer: Kalnapilis Where it is brewed: Vilnius, Lithuania Bottle capacity: 1 litre Strength: 4.6% Price: It cost me about 140 roubles (£1.41) Appearance: Pale golden Aroma: Don’t ask! Taste: Fruity mix with bitter twangs Fizz amplitude: 7/10 Label/Marketing: Why? Would you buy it again? Read the post Marks out of 10: 4.5
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
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.
