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Kaliningrad via Gdansk

Kaliningrad via Gdansk
My first visit to Kaliningrad: left UK 23 December 2000

Kaliningrad via Gdansk is one in a series of posts that recount my first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000, and my first impressions of the land, the people and its culture.

Updated: 18 January 2022 | First published: 16 August 2019

It’s 7pm, 23^rd December 2000, and I am sitting nervously on a British Airways’ plane bound for Warsaw, Poland. I am one of those peculiar types that believes sitting in an aluminium tube with thousands of gallons of highly inflammable fuel at 35,000 feet is perfect insanity. Never mind about the well-meaning ‘statistically safest form of travel’.

But was it a nice place where I was hopefully going to get to?

Previous post in this series: See you in Kaliningrad, Russia!

As I said in my previous blog post, I hadn’t flown since 1971, but here I was jetting off to Warsaw. From Warsaw, we would take a bus to Gdansk and then, after a night or two there, a train to Kaliningrad, Russia.

For a non-flyer I took a perverse almost masochistic delight in the journey, overcoming much of my fear with the aid of three or four vodkas and a very complacent brother, who grinned like a jackanapes all the way.

For my own part, arriving at Warsaw Airport was not only novel in that we had arrived but also for the officialdom that greeted us. Here we were in the East, where it pleased my literary and cinematographic prejudices to discover a far more officious and militaristic reception. In London, Heathrow, it had been all suits, ties and ‘ladies and gentleman’; here, in the East, it was visor caps, uniforms, side-arms and cold stares. Passing through passport control was a stereotypical dream come true: the steely eyed and expressionless face of the man inside his little glass booth, glancing first at my passport photo and then searchingly back at me.

My first visit to Kaliningrad (year 2000) and my first impressions of Kaliningrad and Russia. Links to posts in this series arranged in chronological order:
1. The Decision: My first visit to Kaliningrad December 2000
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk (23 December 2000) {{You are here! 😊}}
3. First Day in Gdansk (24 December 2000)
4. Christmas in Gdansk (25 December 2000)
5. Boxing Day in Gdansk: Kaliningrad 2000 (26 December 2000)
6. Into Russia (27 December 2000)
7. Kaliningrad: First Impression (27 December 2000)
8. The Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk (27 December 2000)
9. Exploring Svetlogorsk (28 December 2000)
10. Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train (28 December 2000)
11. Kaliningrad 20 Years Ago (28 December 2000)
12. Russian Hospitality Kaliningrad (28 December 2000)

The ‘Sausage’

Somewhat disappointed that I had not been mistaken for the spy that they had been waiting for, I was then treated to what for most people I should imagine is a dull and onerous routine ~ retrieving one’s luggage ~ but which for us, thanks to a certain bag in our entourage, proved to be most entertaining.

The bag in question was a cylindrical-shaped canvas hold-all with a rubberised waterproof base. In theory it was a great piece of kit, capable of holding, well, anything really, and, when empty, folding away into nothing. Problem was, however, that when full it was very bulky, extremely heavy and extraordinarily long and, although it was well-catered-for with various handles and straps, those little wheels, which are such an indispensable feature of today’s large travel bags, were conspicuously non-existent.

So there we were with the rest of them waiting patiently at the side of the carousel for our luggage to emerge. One by one our cases appeared, and we duly retrieved them. But where was that last, that special bag?

With about six people left around the carousel excluding ourselves, we began to grow concerned. But just as we began to fear that we may have lost our exclusive bag, we caught sight of it, coming out of the luggage hold from behind the rubber flaps ~ only it didn’t. It sort of popped out, sat there for a while and then nipped back in again.

Two or three large heavy cases then came tumbling out in a kind of jumbled confusion, quickly followed by another sighting of our long and lost bag. For some odd reason, it was making its exit and entrance at a compromising angle.

Moving closer to the exit point, we could clearly hear lots of huffing, puffing and cursing from behind the rubber curtains. Our bag was now sandwiched sideways across the gap, forming a blockade with the remaining cases caught on top and behind it. From what we could make out, a lot of frustrated energy was being expended out of sight behind the scenes and then, with a thump and a cry, our obstinate bag and the others that it had bullied came tumbling into view.

Whether our long bag didn’t think much of Poland or was simply a petulant creature, this we will never know, but It was evident from the large boot prints on either side of the bag that our ‘Sausage’, as it became to be known, had put up a hell of a fight!

By bus to Gdansk

After this trauma, we no doubt took a quick snifter or two of vodka from the hip flask that I had brought with us. It was now time to lug our luggage, including our recalcitrant Sausage, from the warmth of the airport to the snowy wastes outside.

The plan was to bus it to Gdansk. We were both looking forward to the journey, to relaxing on the bus, that is until we saw what it was that we would be travelling in. Being English, we can be forgiven for believing that we would be going by luxury coach when, in fact, the carriage awaiting us was a rusting, clapped-out minibus with mustard lace curtains that once no doubt had been white.

I don’t recall being too perturbed by the fact that almost everyone was smoking on the way; my brother was a smoker and I was prone now and then to indulge in the odd cigar. Looking back on it, it must have been a right old stinker ~ the curtains weren’t yellow for nothing, although my smell memory retains a distinct essence of diesel fumes more than it does tobacco.

It was a long journey, and we were very tired. It was snowing continuously and sometimes quite heavily, but this merely added to the stereotypical image that I had nurtured, and it pleased me for its novelty as much if not more than for the differences I noted as we trundled on our way: shops and road signage, all written, of course, in Polish; the filling stations whose names I did not recognise; and, when it was possible to see through the steamed-up windows, the distinctive change in architecture.

As the open road gave way to increasingly built-up areas we knew we were travelling through the outskirts of Gdansk.

We had in our possession a computer printout identifying the hotel where we would be staying and, according to the bus driver, we were close to where we wanted to be. We alighted from the bus, cramped and stiff, on the side of a dual carriageway teaming with traffic, shell shocked from travel fatigue but anaesthetized by vodka.

My wife to be, Olga, had arrived there some hours before us and, as luck would have it, I spotted her having a cigarette in the window of the hotel restaurant across the busy street from where we were standing. Remember those wonderful days? Having a cigarette in the restaurant! {Post-normal days’ comment: Remember those days before coronavirus, ie sitting in a pub or a restaurant!}

Thus, the first stage of the journey into Russia was complete. We would stay for three days in Gdansk, which included Christmas Day, and then, on the 27^th December, leave Poland by train for Kaliningrad.

Next post in this series:
3. First Day in Gdansk

Feature image attribution: Photo by USFWS on Pixnio: https://pixnio.com/vintage-photography/men-in-the-aircraft-cockpit-old-vintage-photo#

See you in Kaliningrad Russia!

The Decision

My first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000: 23 December 2000

See you in Kaliningrad Russia! is one in a series of posts that recount my first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000, and my first impressions of the land, the people and its culture.

Updated: 11 January 2021 | First published: 8 July 2019

I am not, and have never been, a traveller, so my first trip to Russia was as much a surprise to me as it was to everybody else.

The story of my first trip to Russia has been told so many times that it is almost legendary, but for the uninitiated it goes something like this. From my unlimited knowledge of the country, having grown up in the late 60s early 70s on Len Deighton’s and John le Carré’s Cold War thrillers, Michael Caine spy films and Callan, and having been force fed Solzhenitsyn’s novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, at school, as far as I was concerned Russia was the USSR and in deciding to go there I was off behind the Iron Curtain.

My first visit to Kaliningrad (year 2000) and my first impressions of Kaliningrad and Russia. Links to posts in this series arranged in chronological order:
1. The Decision: My first visit to Kaliningrad: December 2000 {You are here! 😊}
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk (23 December 2000)
3. First Day in Gdansk (24 December 2000)
4. Christmas in Gdansk (25 December 2000)
5. Boxing Day in Gdansk: Kaliningrad 2000 (26 December 2000)
6. Into Russia (27 December 2000)
7. Kaliningrad: First Impression (27 December 2000)
8. The Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk (27 December 2000)
9. Exploring Svetlogorsk (28 December 2000)
10. Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train (28 December 2000)
11. Kaliningrad 20 Years Ago (28 December 2000)
12. Russian Hospitality Kaliningrad (28 December 2000)

In the weeks leading up to my departure I took advantage of the internet, using computers in the offices of the publishing company where I was supposed to be working to research my travel arrangements and Russia in general. In those days I was not particularly switched on to the British establishment’s trashing of everything Russian, so I took all of the warnings and don’ts very seriously. Admittedly, it was not all fabrication. This was the year 2000 and the catastrophic after effects of perestroika were still ricocheting throughout Russia.

It was my intention to access Kaliningrad, Russia, via Gdansk, Poland, about which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) warnings were also dire. At this time Poland was independent. It had its own sovereignty and had not yet become a vassal state of the European Union.

The end result of my internet research was that I ended up with a hulking great Lever Arch folder bursting at the seams with the scariest stuff imaginable ~ not a reassuring read for a novice and nervous traveller.

Why Go?

My decision to fly to Russia had not been made on the basis that I wanted to discover Russia or anywhere, for that matter. As I said earlier, I was no traveller. The thought of flying was anathema to me. I had not flown since a school trip to Switzerland in 1971. But, in the summer of 2000, all that was to change.

I met a woman who was later to be my wife. Her name was Olga. Olga was an English language teacher. She was spending a month in London, having brought a group of Russian students on a cultural trip to England. We met, I showed her around London ~ mostly around the pubs of London ~ a relationship developed, and when she had to return to Russia as her visa had expired, and I was faced with the unthinkable prospect of never seeing her again, I decided that if she could not come back to England then I would go to Russia. That this decision was taken after several pints in Clerkenwell’s Wetherspoon’s pub in London is immaterial. I had made a promise, and I had to stick to it!

But I would not be going alone. My fear of flying was so ingrained that I needed a co-pilot. I found one in my younger brother, whose flippant, frivolous and devil-may-care attitude was exactly what was needed on a dangerous mission like this.

See you in Kaliningrad Russia!

What Brits don’t know about Russia you could write on a postage stamp ~ billions of them ~ but one thing we do know is that it snows out there: Russia is very cold.

I cannot recall a single Russian spy film or television series made in the West where there is not a surplus of snow and furry hats, so you can be certain that we spent the weeks leading up to the trip equipping ourselves for Siberia, filling our oversized bags with woolly jumpers, great thick socks, big hulking overcoats, thermal shirts and the must-have cotton long johns. As it happened, even though we were travelling to Russia’s westernmost point, where the climate is not dissimilar to England’s, on this occasion we had been wise to take precautions, as the temperature sank whilst we were there to minus 29C.

In addition to clothing baggage, there was another type, the kind that comes with security. Having read over and over again that we were likely to be robbed at knife point or, at the very least, succumb to spates of pickpocketing, we had taken every precaution and more.

Credit cards were stashed away in various places; credit card company emergency numbers had been written down in at least two pocket books; the names of family, friends and close associates, all of whom could help us if we found ourselves in a jam, were meticulously listed along with contact numbers and emails (where they existed!); and money? ~ we were taking US dollars, some of which I had cunningly concealed in a money belt.

The money belt that I would be using to keep my dollars safe was no ordinary, bog-standard traveller’s belt. Having read somewhere that savvy robbers went straight for the type of belt that you buy from travel-clothes shops, I had acquired from an old army friend an ordinary leather belt which had a zipped liner at the back into which notes could be threaded. This belt wasn’t additional; it was the one that held your trousers up; the notes were very tightly stashed in a thin threaded line, so you can imagine the difficulty of paying for something, especially in somewhere busy such as a supermarket! Still, the currency that I had stuffed inside the leg of one of my socks was not such a difficult enterprise.

After a month of fretting and dwelling masochistically on what it would be like to be plummeting earthwards in a doomed airliner, I was ready to say goodbye.

Before departing (I was inclined to say ‘leaving’), a close friend of mine did all he could to reassure me: “After all,” he said philosophically, “it’s not the flying you have to worry about, just the crashing.”

Next post in this series:
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk

Kaliningrad 2000: First Day in Gdansk

First Day in Gdansk

First Day in Gdansk is the third in a series of posts that recount my first visit to Kaliningrad in 2000, and my first impressions of the land, the people and its culture.

Published: 1 September 2019 | Updated: 9 January 2022 ~ Kaliningrad 2000: First Day in Gdansk

My brother likes breakfasts. He does not like getting up for breakfast, or, to be more precise, he would rather breakfast was at half-past-three in the afternoon, which for him it often is. For him breakfast is, de rigueur, a full fatty fry, otherwise known as a Full English, aka an overfull Englishman. So, when he emerged from his room this morning, impelled to do so by the fact that breakfast was included within the hotel tariff, the absence of three whopping great sausages, a load of greasy bacon, a fried slice or two, two fried eggs, beans, tomatoes and a loaf of toasted bread was not so easily digested. He soon cheered up, however, when he discovered the as ‘much as you can eat’ Polish buffet, a culinary experience typical in this part of the world and one which through its familiarity over the coming days would induce him to coin the catchphrase ‘cold meats and cheeses’ whenever the words Poland and breakfast were brought into close proximity.

My first visit to Kaliningrad (year 2000) and my first impressions of Kaliningrad and Russia. Links to posts in this series arranged in chronological order:
1. The Decision: My first visit to Kaliningrad December 2000
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk (23 December 2000)
3. First Day in Gdansk (24 December 2000) {{You are here! 😊}}
4. Christmas in Gdansk (25 December 2000)
5. Boxing Day in Gdansk: Kaliningrad 2000 (26 December 2000)
6. Into Russia (27 December 2000)
7. Kaliningrad: First Impression (27 December 2000)
8. The Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk (27 December 2000)
9. Exploring Svetlogorsk (28 December 2000)
10. Svetlogorsk to Kaliningrad by Train (28 December 2000)
11. Kaliningrad 20 Years Ago (28 December 2000)
12. Russian Hospitality Kaliningrad (28 December 2000)

Touring Gdansk

We were only in Gdansk for a couple of days, in transit, so to speak, so any sight-seeing that we hoped to do would be at the very best fleeting. Apart from exploring English breakfasts, my brother was a keen tourist, but he was not convinced that cold meats and cheeses were nutritionally sufficient to ward off the worst effects of the ever-sinking ambient temperature, so before heading off into the great outdoors we bulked out our bodies with as much winter clothing as we could and succeeded in looking dafter than we usually did.

Needless to say, our urban excursion took us into what today are well-known tourist destinations: Ulica Długa (Long Street) and Długi Targ (Long Market). Then, we knew nothing of these places. As I have said before, I am no globe trotter, but I am, and always have been, more than just a little fascinated by my mysterious fascination with time, with my love for history and need for the past.

First Day in Gdansk — Trip to Kaliningrad, Russia. Poland, Gdansk in 2000.

Previous article: Kaliningrad via Gdansk

Of the history of Gdansk, I was sadly lacking, but I did know enough about architecture to understand that the great proportion of the 17^th century buildings in the ‘old’ quarter, with their Flemish (Dutch), Italian and French influences, were predominantly reconstructions. Adolf Hitler and Co had made certain sweeping changes back in the 1940s and subsequent generations of architects, designers and town planners had embarked upon an adventurous and inspirational programme of rebuilding with (oddly enough) minimum attention to Germanic influences.

To what extent a reconstructed building, street, district can be said to embody the cultural-historic significance of its predecessor is a moot point. I personally prefer not to erase the patina from original antique furniture, but when it does happen the piece concerned can still retain historical value and suffer no detraction in its aesthetic appeal. Admittedly, it may no longer be the complete genuine article, but as long as it possesses something of its past it cannot be discounted, and on this day back in the year 2000 my novice traveller status, love for the past and for architecture left me with an impression of Gdansk’s historic district that was and is distinctly memorable.

My memory of atmosphere is possibly only challenged by the recollection of how cold it was on that day but also how wonderful it felt to leave the outside chill for the warmth, comfort and cosy interior of a welcoming café-bar and then, having fortified ourselves with hot food and red wine, to return enthusiastically to the crisp and snow-flurried streets.

St Mary’s Church Gdansk

Olga, who had visited Gdansk on three or four occasions prior to our visit, was eager to visit again the large ~ very large ~ church which was located in the district that we were visiting. The building to which I refer is, of course, the world-renowned St Mary’s Church, believed to be the largest brick-built church in the world, dating back to the mid-to-late 14^th century. As with most of Gdansk’s buildings, this, too, was severely damaged during WWII and extensive renovation and rebuilding had been required to return it to its former glory. Fortunately, most of the ancient and valuable artworks contained within the church were removed for safekeeping early in the war and many have since been returned.

If a small English parish church can entrance me with its age and history, you can imagine how intensely mesmerised I was by St Mary’s Church, Gdansk.

Guide books would be doing St Mary’s Church a great disservice if they failed to mention the clock and the great views of the city afforded from the 78-metre tower (they always do mention these things, mind), but as one time traveller to another my advice to you is simply visit the church yourself and feel the history.

Time is fascinating and time was ticking on; we were getting peckish; the cold meats and cheeses were definitely wearing off and, apart from that, we all agreed that it was time to sup some ale. Until now, we had been drinking vodka, but only because of the difficulty of fitting an appreciable amount of beer into a hip flask, and having renounced grim lager many years hence, we were none too keen to start again now.

Vodka was not a beverage that appealed to me either. I had had a bad experience with it many years ago, when I was nine years old to be precise. One nice sunny day I had raided my mother’s drink cupboard, filled a bottle with vodka and undiluted orange squash and, together with a friend, had taken it on a picnic. Between us, we consumed the entire bottle. That evening I was at church, singing in the choir. Gothic churches are great places to commune with history, but they take on an altogether different aspect when they are spinning like a top. The hangover was also magnificent!

On the subject of bars (which we mostly are), whilst our Polish hotel had no such facility, on our return from wherever it was we had been, we happened on one but a short walk away, and this is where we ended our evening.

Tomorrow would be Christmas Day in Gdansk.

Next post in this series:
4. Christmas in Gdansk

Previous posts in this series:
1. See You in Kaliningrad, Russia
2. Kaliningrad via Gdansk

Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 645 [9 December 2021]

Published: 8 December 2021 ~ Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

Diary of a self-isolator is one of a series of posts and thoughts on self-isolating in Kaliningrad. Links to previous posts appear at the end of this post.

It’s amazing isn’t it! Just when you were gullible enough to think that zippety zoo zah, zippity ay, I have had my two vaccines everything’s going my way. You read articles and see videos that claim* that:

a. Vaccinated people can catch coronavirus just as easily as unvaccinated

b. Vaccinated people can spread coronavirus just as easily as unvaccinated

c. Vaccinated people can catch coronavirus, become seriously ill and die just as easily as unvaccinated

d. Your two jabs are not enough, and you need to have another … and another … and another …

{*Don’t believe everything you read, see on the telly and is printed on underpants’ labels}

And then, just when you’ve consoled yourself with the barely consoling thought, well, hey ho, it’s almost Christmas, along comes the WHO with a deadly new strain of coronavirus, and its off the ladder, down the snake and back to square one again.

I am not too dismayed by these revelations as I never left square one.

Sitting here in Kaliningrad, the only strain that I am feeling is the strain on my underpants. Perhaps, I should elaborate. Sorry madam, what was that? Yes, I spelt it right, strain.

The one downside of self-isolating that is rarely touched upon is the toll it takes on your underpants, by which I mean from all that sitting. The wear and tear on a self-isolator’s underpants are possibly something that the office of statistics has not yet got to grips with. The upside of self-isolating ~ and by default one of the positives of not having a QR code ~ is that with nowhere to go you will definitely save on shoe leather, but the downside, in your pants, is where does that leave them? “Ahh soles!” you might think to yourself, if you are prone to too much rambling (Don’t bother saying it! I’ll get to the point soon enough!), but pants are pretty low, without elastic, and in one’s clothing-monitoring kecking order they are bottom of the pile.

Thus, it never occurred to me, as most likely it has never occurred to you, that two years of social distancing had taken it out of my pants. My word, I thought, peering into my underpants, they are looking tired and shabby.

Nevertheless, I didn’t give it a second thought. Why should I? The logical thing to do was to go out and buy a new pair. But sometime later, whilst reading about the anti-vaccine passport riots in Canada and Australia, something alarm-like went off. It couldn’t have been the elastic twanging in my pants, as there was not enough spring left in them. No, it was something far more dire than that. It was the impromptu possibility that pants were now off-limits! That the introduction of QR codes had rendered them non-essential!

My mind began to race. I felt like I was on the start line of Santa Pod Raceway, the drag racing strip in England, where I used to drink and work (and in that order). You could almost see the skidmarks (Richard Skidmark, damn good actor, almost as good as Burt Shirtlifter.). The chilling possibility that QR codes had effectively rationed underpants was a blow below the belt; it was the thought process equivalent of a ‘bleach burnout‘. Ahh, and what about bleach!? Could you still get it? Surely, bleach, like bog rolls, is fairly essential stuff. And what about bog rolls? How essential are they?

Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

How I laughed two years back at the maddening crowd of Brits who at the start of the so-called Pandemic rushed out mob handed to buy up the country’s bog roll reserves. The boot was on the other foot now. It was a silly place to put it, but I was in such a rush to find and recycle my old, used face masks that I had hung seven next to the toilet suspended by their straps before the thought occurred to me that since grub was deemed essential and toilet rolls and bleach were sold in every supermarket, access to this commodity could not be denied. All well and good, I thought, but where did that leave my underpants?

Taking underpants off (the essential list that is) just does not seem right. It’s unethical, not to mention unhygienic, but in these straitened days where essentials are defined by the right to bear a QR code, ease of access to underpants is no longer the civilised liberty that once was taken for granted.

Let us hypothesise that you are one of the QR codeless, and therefore unable to enter non-essential shops from which to buy your underpants. Would the answer to your dilemma be to entreat somebody else, someone in possession of a vaccination passport, to buy your pants on your ~~behind~~, behalf? Appointing a pant-buying proxy would certainly get them off the hook, but, as with everything to do with this pandemic, and equating it to the state of my pants, there has to be and is an inevitable snag.

The crutch of the matter is that here, in Kaliningrad, the size ratio of men’s underwear is a trifle obscure. If you were given to conspiracy theories, you might easily infer that underpants have fallen foul of the misinformation/disinformation industry and that the mere mention of them would be enough for Facebook to redirect you to a place which purports to sell you the truth about the size of pants in Kaliningrad. This may not be such a bad thing, as the last time I bought a large pair they fitted me like Houdini’s straitjacket! I returned to the market where I had bought them, and no, I did not ask to exchange them ~ I now use them as a pocket handkerchief ~ but I did say, with unabashed pride to the lady from whom I had purchased them, “Nice pants, but they don’t fit. I need an extra-large pair”.

Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

Between you and me and nobody else, I must confess that I was rather chuffed. I’d never bought a pair of XXL’s before, but somewhere between tearing back on the bus to try them on and getting home to do so, it occurred to me, quite sadly, that the reason why XXL pants are the only option in Kaliningrad is that all pants come from China ~ the one place in the world where smalls are what they say they are, small.

As the mystery of the extra-large underpants unravelled before my eyes, much to my chagrin, the ‘Made in China’ connection still did not explain how big burly Russian men manage to fit into such tiny pants. Had I just discovered the answer to the West’s rhetorical question: Why do Russians look so serious? If so, then my understandable disappointment at having debunked the myth that mine were a large pair was more than compensated for by my having stumbled upon the answer to a riddle as far reaching and out of sight as the Soch Less Monster question, “Do Scotsmen wear pants under their kilts?”

Alas, getting to the bottom of this one may forever elude us, as may the answer to the question how come more stockings and suspenders are sold in Scotland than there are females in the population? A statistical anomaly that may all change now that vaccination passports have been inflicted on the Scots (Well, you would vote old hatchet face in!)

The good news, proving the maxim that every pair of underpants has a silver lining, is that according to popular rumour, QR codes will not be extended to restrict access to public transport. Thank heavens for that. Imagine dusting off the old Soviet bike and rattling across the Königsberg cobbles on two flat tyres with the suspension gone in your underpants.

I imagine that bikes are not classed as essential items, and if they are not classed as essential items then without proud possession of a QR code you won’t be able to buy new tyres or buy yourself a bike to go with that saddle you bought last month.

But as my philosophising Indian friend is wont to say ~and say too often: “Every problem has a solution.”

Vaccination Passports Stop the Spread of Underpants

I had already worked out that if socks had been declassified as essential items, I would still be able to buy them, if not on the black market, then from the roadside market. Babushkas make lovely thick, warm, colourful, woollen socks. I am not altogether sure that babushka-made woollen underpants would be quite that lovely, rather like wearing a British 1940s’ teapot cover, but needs must when the Devil drives. “Hello, could you put through me to the Scottish Import Department, please.”

What else might be deemed non-essential in the new QR code age? I looked out of the window and noticed that our neighbour had been thinking along the same lines. He had a spare bog standing in the garden, just in case. He had also leant a long plank outside his house to enable his cat to climb up to the first floor flat where he lived. He had cut down the silver birch tree that the cat used to climb up, presumably because he knew something that we didn’t, possibly some obscure Covid-restriction connection between QR codes, cats, trees, planks and toilets in gardens.

Not 100% convinced that QR codes would not appear on transport, I put on my mask and went to the home of a used-car dealer who wanted to talk sales. On the way there I saw my neighbour sitting on a box in his front garden. He had not been able to get into his house for a week as he had lost his key, and, as you know, keys are non-essential items.

It was raining hard, and my neighbour’s arm was sticking up into the air. Normally, it would have had an umbrella on the end of it, but as my neighbour had no QR code, and as umbrellas are non-essential, he could not get into the shop to buy one, which serves him jolly well right! The last thing that you would want a conspiracy theorist to have is an umbrella!

At the used-car salesman’s place, after a glass or two of home-made vodka ~ Ha, who needs shops! ~ I became the proud owner of my first Russian car. It was a snip at twice the price I paid for what it is really worth. It has an irrefutable pedigree: One getaway driver, 2000km on the clock (which the seller told me he would let me have after he had finished working on it), a full tank of whatever it is, six months MOT valid until April 1967 and a tin opener.

I cannot wait to drink with him again. He is also selling a helicopter.

On my way back home, wondering why I had waited so long to pay twice as much for a car that any sane person would not have bought in the first place, at least not for that price, a thought crept into my head from the gaps around my face mask. It was that the coronavirus age had probably spawned a lot of bored people with nothing better to do than sit at home and count their bog rolls, as well as homespun philosophers like me, modern-day Kants, who sit around in attics writing at large and in-depth on underpants.

One thing I know for certain is that my wife’s belief that prickless people will be made to wear a yellow star to enforce their segregation is not worth the material that my underpants are lacking.

On the contrary, the unrepentant vaccine eluder will be instantly conspicuous from the serve-him-right effects of his inadmissibility. With his long hair, worn out jeans, brightly coloured babushka socks, his bikeless saddle thrust sadly between his legs and more holes in his underpants than Jodrell Banking arsetrologers could hope to see in a lifetime of peeping up their telescopes, should the unvaccinated leper still fail to catch your eye, then you really should consider taking that trip to Specsavers. A word to the wise, however, don’t forget to show them your vaccination passport or they might pretend that they cannot see you through the spectacles you are wearing.

“I wouldn’t be seen dead in a pair of underpants like those!” ~ shouted a man who had just been vaccinated. Tut, if only he’d bought the XXLs.

Image attributions:
QR Code: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Commons_QR_code.png
Toilet rolls: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=53180&picture=toilet-tissues-isolated-background
Man in pants: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Underwear-man/73457.html

😉Some other posts to keep you out of mischief!
Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes
A New QR Code Era in Kaliningrad
QR Codes Enforced in Kaliningrad

Diary of a self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad
Previous articles:
Day 1 [20 March 2020]
Day 6 [25 March 2020]
Day 7 [26 March 2020]
Day 9 [28 March 2020]
Day 10 [29 March 2020]
Day 16 [4 April 2020]
Day 19 [7 April 2020]
Day 35 [23 April 2020]
Day 52 [10 May 2020]
Day 54 [12 May 2020]
Day 65 [23 May 2020]
Day 74 [1 June 2020]
Day 84 [11 June 2020]
Day 98 [25 June 2020]
Day 106 [3 July 2020]
Day 115 [12 July 2020]
Day 138 [30 July 2020]
Day 141 [2 August 2020]
Day 169 [30 August 2020]
Day 189 [19 September 2020]
Day 209 [9 October 2020]
Day 272 [11 December 2020]
Day 310 [18 January 2021]
Day 333 [10 February 2021]
Day 365 [14 March 2021]
Day 394 [12 April 2021]
Day 460 [17 June 2021]
Day 483 [10 July 2021]
Day 576 [11 October 2021]
Day 579 [14 October 2021]
Day 608 [2 November 2021]

Celebrating the Memory of Königsberg Tour Guide Stas

In Memory of a Good Friend

Published: 1 November 2021 ~ Celebrating the Memory of Königsberg Tour Guide Stas

28^th November 2021. Today was the anniversary of Stas Konovalov’s death. After paying our resects at the graveside, a group, consisting of family, close friends and neighbours, were brought together by Stas’ mother for a memorial gathering. It was an emotional, at times difficult, and yet nevertheless, heart-warming occasion.

Encouraged and mentored by artist and art-teacher Victor Ryabinin, from an early age it seemed as if Stas would pursue a career in art himself. Some of his drawings and paintings, most of which he had created in his youth and teenage years, and in which the symbolic hand of Ryabinin is clearly apparent, were displayed by his mother at the memorial gathering today. His art showed promise and had not life intervened in that indifferent way that it does, he might very well have gone on to fulfil his artistic destiny.

Mick Hart with Stas Konovalov 's mother next to her son's paintings — Mick Hart and Stas’ mother with some of Stas’ artwork that he created as a student of art

One of Stas’s more bleak compositions, ‘What awaits us …’

Later, again under Ryabinin’s tutelage, Stas developed a love for the history of Königsberg and the region to which it belonged and went on to establish his own tour guides and tour-guide videos, which he worked, reworked and honed to perfection.

Among the complement of friends and neighbours who had gathered today to pay tribute to him were people who had known him for most of his life, some of whom he had been at kindergarten with. By comparison, Olga and I were newcomers. We had known Stas for less than two years, but we had taken to him easily and instantaneously and had formed an insoluble friendship.

It was Victor Ryabinin who had introduced us to Stas.

Stas told me afterwards that Victor had said to him, “An Englishman is coming to live in Kaliningrad. I think you should meet him. He is interesting, and I think you will find a common language.” I never did pay Victor for calling me ‘interesting’, but Stas and I did find a common language ~ in our love of the past and through our mutual and high regard for the history of Königsberg-Kaliningrad and its region. We also found a common language in the degree to which we found beer, vodka, cognac and good conversation agreeable!

Under the direction and guidance of Victor Ryabinin, we had arrived at Stas’ flat on a cold winter’s evening. The puddles on the road and pavement had turned to ice, and the snow underfoot was multi-layered and covered with a fresh fall. Victor pressed the doorbell to Stas’ flat and then began to perform star-jumps on a square of pavement next to the building where the snow had not penetrated. Each time he jumped, he clicked his heels together in mid-air, performing the ritual with a cheery grin.

The obvious question was why? And when asked, the not so obvious reply had been that Stas’ flat was possibly the only flat in Kaliningrad where you would not be asked to remove your shoes on entering, so Victor was doing Stas the honour of cleaning his boots before crossing the threshold.

Stas was a big man, who looked even bigger in contrast to little Victor, but it soon became apparent that this difference in size had no bearing on the common personality and interest denominators that both shared ~ in fact, which we all we shared.

Stas’ flat was an intriguing place. It bore all the hallmarks of expressive work in progress and was dotted about with Königsberg relics, more of which were proudly displayed inside a large, antique, cabinet. It was a home from home for me ~ the flat as well as the walnut cabinet!

Celebrating the Memory of Königsberg Tour Guide Stas

It was our mutual interest in history, relics of the past and the warm, open nature of our friend, Stas, together with the good memories of the times we spent together, that found us at his memorial gathering today. There were, perhaps, about 30 people in attendance ~ family, friends, neighbours ~ and most had tales to tell of their relationship with Stas or wanted to express their gratitude for knowing him in life and the sorrow they felt at his death.

I am always amazed at how proficient and adept Russian people are at public speaking and how openly and without reservation they bare their souls and reveal their innermost feelings. It is a lesson that we Brits, who are frightened to stray too far from banter and/or prevarication, could certainly learn from.

The individually rendered memories and tributes were sometimes moving, sometimes amusing and consistently complementary.

At times the tributes to Stas were so touching as to be almost overwhelming. I caught myself more than once glancing wistfully across at Stas, grinning from his photo-framed portrait behind the statutory glass of vodka with its piece of bread placed on top. Would he have been surprised at this gathering and to hear the tributes to him that were so touching as to be almost overwhelming?

All I know is that for me to accumulate so many well-wishers at my funeral or memorial wake, I would have to set up a trust fund or at the very least pay people in advance to attend.

Celebrating the Memory of Königsberg Stas

Stas was, as Leonard Cohen would say, ‘almost’ young when he died ~ too young. But if there is any consolation to be had, then it echoes in Stas’ own words. With characteristic magnanimity, he left a note asking people not to brood in the event of his death, affirming that he had lived a full and eventful life in which he had achieved much of what he had set out to do.

Gracious, selfless and sensitive to the needs of others until the very end, this was Stas Konovalov. We are proud that we can count ourselves among his many friends, who loved and admired him in life and remember him in death for the commendable person he was.

R.I.P. Stas.

(We wish Stas’ mother, family and friends well, and thank his mother for her gracious invitation to attend the memorial gathering.)

Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes

“Bucket!” he shouted. They hadn’t let him in!

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 608 [2 November 2021]

Published: 2 November 2021~Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes

So I said to my wife, “No, I don’t think so. I’ve got better things to do this morning.”

But she looked so disappointed that I relented, saying, five minutes later, “OK, I will walk with you to the market.”

“You don’t have to, unless you want to,” she quickly said ~ a little too quickly for my liking.

I know when I’m not wanted.

I remember hearing my mother and father quarreling when I was about six months old, blaming each other, arguing about whose fault it was. I have no idea what they were arguing about, but when I got to the age of five I suspected something was wrong when I came home from school one day and found some sandwiches, a bottle of pop and a map to Katmandu in a travelling bag on the doorstep.

Never one to take a hint, I knew that my wife really wanted me to walk to the market with her today, so I swiftly replied, “Well, if you really want me to come with you, I will.”

Apart from knowing when I’m not wanted ~ it gets easier as you get older ~ I needed to buy myself a new atchkee. No, not ‘latch key’. Atchkee is the phonetic spelling for spectacles in Russian. Isn’t my Russian improving! I am a two-pairs spectacles man. I like to have one pair so that I can find the other.

This was a great excuse for being a nuisance, so I got ready, tried not to look at the cat, who always looks sour at us when he sees that we are leaving the house, and off we went, on foot, to the central market.

“Ee by gum,” I might say, if I was from Up North in England, “but it were a grand day.” Here we were at the end of October, underneath a bright blue sky and the sun right up there where it is supposed to be.

We stopped off for a coffee at the top of the Lower Pond, risked the public Portaloos and then made our way to the market from there.

Being Saturday, and good weather, the second-hand and collectables market was in full swing.

When it was our business to buy and sell, we always had an excuse to buy, now all we could say was, ‘we’ll just have a quick look’. And then leave an hour later barely able to carry what we had bought.

Today was no exception. That’s willpower for you!

During the course of not buying anything we got to talking to one of the market men, who was not wrapping something up for us because we hadn’t just bought it.

“Good thing about outside markets,” said I, no doubt saying something entirely different in Russian, such as “Would you like me to pay twice as much for that item that we really should not be buying?” It must have been something like this, because when I checked he had short-changed us.

That sorted, I continued: “Good thing about outside markets, you don’t need ‘Oo Er’ codes.”

“QR codes!” my wife corrected me impatiently, as she bought herself a pair of boots that she didn’t need.

“QR codes!” repeated the market man solemnly, with a sorry shake of his head. “It’s bad business and bad for business. You can’t go anywhere without them now.”

“Niet!” I agreed, looking all proud at myself for saying it in such a Russian-sounding way, which enabled him to sneak in with, “But if you do not have a QR code, there is another way of getting access to bars, shops and restaurants.”

My ears pricked up at this intelligence, or was it because someone walking by had laughed, as if they knew what I didn’t?

I was too intrigued to be diverted: “How is that?” I asked

“Tin buckets!” replied the market man, with stabilised conviction.

“Tin, er …?”

“Like this!” the market man infilled.

And there, in front of me, where it hadn’t been a moment ago, was this large tin bucket.

Mick Hart with tin bucket in Kaliningrad — **Old fort, old fart & a tin bucket (thanks to my brother for this caption)**

As tin buckets go, it was quite the bobby dazzler.

It was one of those vintage enamel jobs; a pale, in fact, with a cream exterior and a trim around the rim.

“If you don’t yet have your QR code,” the market man continued to solemnise, “all you need is a tin bucket and, as you say in England, Fanny’s your uncle.”

Well, there is nothing LGBTQITOTHER about that, I had to admit.

“OK,” I said curiously, “I’m listening.”

There was Olga in the background, sticking to her non-purchasing guns, busily buying something else.

“That’s it really. Just say at the door, ‘I haven’t received my QR codes yet, but I do have a tin bucket’.”

I am telling you this just in case you are wondering why I have photos in this post of me walking around Kaliningrad with an old tin bucket. (That’s not a nice thing to say about your wife!)

The next stop was the city’s central market, where I bought a pair of specs, better to see my tin bucket with.

I needed to confirm that I really had bought that old tin bucket and that it wasn’t, after all, a figment of my stupidity.

“Ahh, you are British!” the spectacle seller exclaimed.

“No, English,” I corrected him. “Anyone and everyone can be ‘British’. All you need is to arrive illegally on a small boat, and a couple of months later they give you a piece of paper with ‘you’re British’ written on it.”

Now I had my new specs on, I could see that approximately 75 per cent of the market had been rendered inoperable. Many of the shutters were down, and I could read the ‘closed’ signs that were Sellotaped to them, stating that they would remain closed for the ‘non-working week’. If coronavirus turned up here in the next seven days, it would be sorely disappointed.

Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes in Kaliningrad Market — **Spot the old bucket**

Nevertheless, by the time we had exited the market at the end where the spanking brand-new shopping centre has been built, my bucket was getting heavier.

I put it down for a rest, on the pavement, directly outside of the new shopping centre entrance, thus giving myself a commanding view of the row upon row of plate-glass doors, behind which sat shops that still had nothing inside of them. Obviously, no chances were being taken. Should the thousands of square metres of space remain empty, the risk of non-mask wearers and QR fiddlers entering the building would be considerably reduced. In addition, the spanking shopping-centre was surrounded by a large impenetrable fence, creating a 20 metre no-go zone between itself and the pavement. A red-brick fortress had also been built just across the road, so that any attempt to cross the minefield between the pavement and shopping centre, if not thwarted by the mines and patrolling Alsatian dogs, would be repelled by a volley of arrows, or something closely resembling them, fired from the slits in the fortress wall. In particularly demanding circumstances, for example when everything in the shops that had nothing in them was half price, thus attracting the crowds, I would have thought that backup, in the form of mobile dart vans stationed close to the entrance, would be advisable. But who am I to say? Confucius say, “Man with tin bucket talks out of his elbow!” Confusion says, “Man with elbow talks out of his tin buttock.” (The last sentence is sponsored by The Cryptogram and Sudoku Society.)

Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes Shopping centre Kaliningrad

Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes front of Kaliningrad shopping centre

A lesser person would have been intimidated by fantasies of this nature, but not I. I had a tin bucket and, in case I haven’t divulged this already, that same tin bucket contained a green leather jacket, which I did not buy from the second-hand market, and a jar of homemade horseradish sauce, which I had not bought from the city market.

Old Tin Buckets & QR Codes

The bucket was as heavy as my heart as we parked ourselves on one of the seats outside a once-often visited watering hole, Flame. We were waiting for a taxi.

We had not long been sitting there, when I began to develop a jealousy complex. Staring back at us from the large glass windows were our own reflections. What were they doing in the bar without QR codes? It was then that I noticed that my reflection had an old tin bucket with him. What a coincidence, it was not dissimilar to mine. I recalled the wisdom of the man on the market who had sold me the bucket; his tale about old tin buckets having parity with QR codes for gaining access to cafes and restaurants.

However, before I could put his advice to the test, our taxi arrived. We said farewell to our reflections and hopped inside the vehicle. Our taxi driver, who was a stickler for rules, did insist that our bucket wear a mask for the duration of the journey. Stout fellow!

Although the taxi driver never asked, I was unable to say whether or not we managed to gain access to anywhere using our tin bucket in case the authorities find out and proceed to confiscate every tin bucket in Christendom.

The taxi driver did want to know what we were going to use that old tin bucket for, but I was not about to divulge my secret to him.

Give me a week two and I will divulge it to you. Although there will be a small charge for the privilege.

You can ‘read all about it!’ ~ as they say ~ in Mick Hart’s Guide to Homemade Vaccines.

Some posts that have nothing about tin buckets in them:
Tracking World Vaccination with the Prickometer

Something for the World’s End, Sir!
UK Lockdown New Board Game
Exit Strategy Board Game
Clueless World Health Game

A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 579 [14 October 2021]

Published: 14 October 2021 ~ A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

ON THE 9^thOF OCTOBER, the day after the QR code restrictions hit Kaliningrad, Olga and I walked through the atmospheric autumnal streets of Königsberg and then whizzed off by bus across the other side of town on an errand.

Having alighted from public transport, we decided to stop for a coffee. If we had attempted to enter a café, restaurant or bar today, we would have had to produce a QR code, but because we were buying refreshments from a pavement kiosk, we were, at least for the moment, QR exempt.

Subliminally, the advertising gimmick had worked. I saw a giant cup and a cup of coffee I wanted.

As I waited for my brew, I could not resist contemplating what it must be like to go to work each day not in an office, school, fire station, police station, on a building site or in a city bar but inside a giant coffee cup ~ and an orange one at that!

Through the little glass windowed serving hatch it did not look as if there was an awful lot of room inside the cup, and I began to imagine some of the more expansive people whom I knew in the UK working there. I concluded that they would not be so much inside the cup as wearing it.

Coffee can be bought from kiosks during a new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Joss, my brother, could live in it. I could see the place slowly converting before my eyes. It had a television arial on top, a satellite dish on the side and protruding from the roof a long metal chimney that was smoking like a volcano. Outside, there was a crate of empty beer bottles and a pair of old pants and socks, both with holes in them, hanging on a homemade line strung across the front of the cup, looking like last month’s tea towels.

If this coffee cup was for sale in London, it would be described by London estate agents as ‘a most desirable property’, well-appointed and almost offering commanding views over the road to the bus stop. You certainly would not get much change out of a million quid for it. Five miles outside of Dover, with a 5-star sign above it, the cup would be housing a boat load of migrants. Why Nigel Farage is gazing at it from a hilltop through his binoculars the British government will never know ~ and don’t want to! But this is hardly surprising, as Nigel has a reputation for waking up first and smelling the coffee!

With no one any the wiser as to whether we had a QR code, a bar code, a one-time code, a code that needed verifying or a code that was Top Secret, we took full advantage of our incognitoism by finding a spot in the autumnal sun in which to savour our brew.

Giant pavement-side coffee cups, even bright orange ones, do not as a rule run to tables outside, but just at the back of this one there happened to be an old, long, green Soviet bench, where one could drink one’s coffee whilst ruminating upon the good old days when the proletariat sitting here would have been comfortably unaware that the USSR when it folded would eventually be replaced with coronavirus QR codes. This long and sturdy bench also facilitated my admiration of the pretty and well-stocked flower bed and enabled me to keep an eye on the plums.

Plums! What plums? Whose plums were they? And how had these plums got there? They weren’t aloft growing on a tree these plums but scattered upon the ground. Someone, I conjectured, must have sworn bitterly, perhaps a bit stronger than blaher moohar, when the bottom of the bag that they had been carrying split, plummeting plums all over the paving slabs.

The who and the why of the plums, whilst inspiring at first, soon gave way to the far more exciting realisation that by observing people’s reactions to the plums, I could play the psychoanalyst and categorise them according to plum personalities. Of course, the way they approached and dealt with the plums would not help me to determine whether or not they were in full possession of their QR codes, were evading pricks or considering vaccination at any moment, possibly when they least expected it, but when all was said and done the experiment would be an interesting one, and, besides, I had a cup of coffee to drink.

Twenty sips or so into my coffee and a substantial cohort of pedestrians later, and I had been able to determine that there are basically four types of plum approachers.

1. Those that spotted the plums and walked around them, giving them a particularly wide berth. Any wider and they would have needed a visa, not to mention a coronavirus test or six, as they inadvertently crossed the Polish border.

2. Those who spotted the plums but carried on walking anyway, chatting casually to their companions as though they were no strangers to plums in public places, yet who picked their way through them gingerly as they would a minefield on their way to buying a Sunday newspaper.

3. Next came the sort of people that you would not want to walk across a minefield with, since, seemingly oblivious to their feet and where they were putting them, they inevitably stepped on one or two plums, immediately looking down in alarm at the squish beneath their shoes, no doubt fearing that the lack of fines for Fido’s indifferent owners had landed them in it yet again.

4. Finally, it was the turn of “I’ll give them plums on pavements!” This category was mostly comprised of manly men; you know the sort, either their arms don’t fit or they have gone and grown a beard, not knowing why they have done it and because, quite obviously, it certainly does not suit them, it was the last thing on Earth, next to deliberately stepping on plums, that they should have gone and done to themselves, unless it really was their intention to make themselves look like a bit of a dick.

This category saw the plums but chose to pay no heed to them. They juggernauted along as if plums grew on trees and these boots were made for walking. Unbeknown to them, however, plums can be slippery customers and more than once were the over-confident nearly sent arse overhead. They would step, squash, slip a little, look around really embarrassed, hoping no one had seen them, and then hurry on their way, leaving behind the priceless memory of a bright red face burning like a forest fire in a beard to which they were both ill suited, as well as a boot-imprinted trail of squishy-squashy plum juice.

So, what I had learnt from all this plum gazing? Not a lot. It had been a different way of occupying one’s mind whilst drinking a cup of coffee, although it had made me wish that I was 14 years’ old again, so that I could shout, “Watch out for the plums!” or simply “Plums!” But you can’t go around doing silly things like that when you are (ha! ha!) a ‘mature person’, especially not when you are in somebody else’s country. I bet Adolf Hitler never shouted “Plums!” when he was cruising about the streets of Paris. Boat migrants to England certainly don’t. They just shout, “Take me to your 5-star hotel and give me benefits!” And liberals, who always find something to shout about, would, on seeing the black shiny plums in their path, have been unable to resist the wokeness of going down on one knee whilst crying, “My white knees are in trousers, please forgive me, I am too privileged”.

Conkers on the day of A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Young boy: They ain’t plums!
Me: I know. But I just wanted to show that in Kaliningrad at this time of year there are also a lot of horse-chestnut tree …
Young boy: You put those there because you ain’t got any pictures of plums …
Me: Why you cheeky little f …

I finished my coffee, wished the entertaining plums good day, and off we went to complete our errand.

On the way, on this second day of QR codes, giant cups and plums (plums, no less, my friends, which had fallen by the wayside), we overheard a lady at a bus stop complaining loudly to anyone who had a mind (or not) to listen.

It was quite evident by her excited, ruffled and animated manner that she had recently undergone a most traumatic experience. Apparently, she had ventured into a small café to buy some jam and was horrified to discover that not only were most of the people inside the shop not wearing masks but, as far as she could ascertain, none had been asked for their QR codes. “I shall report them! I shall report them!” she wailed, shouting so loud that had her mask been properly in place, which it wasn’t, it would have fallen from her nose, like plums from a wet paper bag, to end up uselessly wrapped around her chin. It was fortunate, therefore, that such a calamity could not occur, as that is where her mask was anyway ~ swaddled around her chin protecting it from coronavirus.

On completion of our errand (there has to be some mystery in this post somewhere!), whilst sitting on the bus with my mask strapped to my elbow, I drifted into contemplation of the feasibility of QR codes extended to encumber access to the city’s supermarkets.

I wondered: “Does it mean that if you do not want to get vaccinated you will have to buy your own shop?” And: “What is the going rate for one of those giant coffee cups?”

Mick Hart on Day 2 of A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

If it does happen, if they do impose QR code restrictions on shops, I can see some astute entrepreneur, some Russian equivalent to Del Boy, quickly cashing in on the act. It is not difficult to imagine a fleet of shops on wheels whipping about the city from one estate to another, selling everything from buckwheat to outsize, wooly, babushka-made socks.

Alternatively, we could convert our garage into a Cash & Cart-it Off. Our garage stands at the end of the garden, some distance from the road, but in these coronavirus-challenged times what once might have been regarded as a commercial disadvantage could potentially be transposed into a positive marketing ploy.

All that was needed would be to install large glass windows in the sides of the garage, stack shelves behind them full of sundry goods, position two telescopes on the side of the pavement, preferably coin operated so as to make a few extra kopeks and, Boris your uncle, Svetlana your aunt, you’re in business!

Potential buyers viewing our wares through the telescopes provided could place their orders by Arsebook messenger. On receipt of their orders we would select the goods, load them on the conveyor belt and ship them from store to roadside before you could say, who’s making millions out of the sales of coronavirus masks? What could be better than that? Accessible shops, you say?

Come to think of it, there are probably not a lot more inconvenient places than shops where QR codes could be implemented, except, of course, for public lavs.

Imagine getting jammed in the bog turnstile unable to get your mobile phone from your pocket to display your QR code whilst the call of Nature grows ever more shrill!

This situation, difficult though not insurmountable, would stretch both the imagination and the resources of even the brightest entrepreneur, who would be faced with the daunting prospect of rigging up some curious contraption or other, consisting of a series of pipes, funnels and retractable poes on sticks.

On a less grand but no less adventurous scale, my wife has suggested that we plough up the lawn at our dacha and use it for growing potatoes, which is not such a bad idea, as it would mean no longer having to mow the lawn. But would it mean that we would have to get a statutory dog that never stops barking as a deterrent to potato thieves and to ensure that our neighbours are completely deprived of peace? “What is the use of having a dog that don’t bark? An intelligent lady once said to us. Answer: about as much use as one that never stops barking! Or about as much use as a dog owner who allows its dog to incessantly bark.

Whilst a constant supply of beer and vodka would not be a problem as we could always convert our Soviet garage back to what it was obviously used for when it was first constructed, alas ploughed up lawns will not grow washing sponges or cultivate tins of baked beans. And the last thing that I would want, even if my potato patch was the best thing since Hungary stood up to bullying EU bureaucrats, was to own something so useless that all it does is shite on pavements and bark as if a potato thief has thrust a firework up its arse before leaving the garden with a sack on his back.

Of course, all things considered, it would be far easier and, perhaps, far wiser, certainly less embarrassing, just to go and get vaccinated. But if you do that, will you be tempted to go out every night to the city’s bars and restaurants, just to say that you can? And if so, can you or any of us for that matter, be 100% sure that, even after vaccination and thirty years of boosters, whichever vaccine it is and from wherever the vaccine comes from, will we, the little ordinary people, be guaranteed at some point, preferably sooner than later, a return to the life that we had before? Er, or any life, for that matter. >>‘This statement is false!!!! (See G Soros’ Fact Checker). You will now be redirected to the neoliberal globalist version, which is as honest as philanthropy and almost twice as honest as the EU parliament ~ which is not exactly difficult (Source: An Open Borders Publication}’<<

Plough a straight furrow or walk a taut tightrope, whichever path you choose to take, do ‘Watch out for those plums!’

ON TOPIC>
A trilogy of games by that renowned board-game maker John Wankinson: the perfect way to unlock, unwind and vaccinate whilst taking your mind off coronavirus and the interminable elusiveness of returning to normality:
UK Lockdown New Board Game
Exit Strategy Board Game
Clueless ~ a World Health Board Game

Image attributions:
Yapping dog: https://www.clipartmax.com/download/m2i8Z5H7G6A0N4H7_barking-dog-animal-free-black-white-clipart-images-yap-clipart/
Plums: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/539028.htm

QR Codes Enforced in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 576 [11 October 2021]

8 October 2021, QR codes are officially introduced in Kaliningrad and across the Kaliningrad region. What are they? Think Vaccination Passports in the UK and you are on the right track.

Published: 11 October 2021 ~ QR Codes Enforced in Kaliningrad

Since the 8^th October 2021, it has no longer been possible in Kaliningrad to access restaurants, cafes, bars, canteens, buffets, snack bars and similar establishments, without flashing your QR code. From 1^st November the QR code restriction will be extended to cover swimming pools and fitness centres, cinemas and cultural institutions such as theatres, philharmonic societies and concert halls¹.

How all this works exactly, with regard to official documentation delivery and locating your personal QR code is explained in this article¹.

How do you get a QR code? You’ve guessed it, vaccination! Once you have completed a full vaccination course you will then have access to your QR code

Mandatory vaccinations for certain categories of workers have also been extended².

Here are some statistics about coronavirus in the Kaliningrad region²:

“Since the beginning of October, the Kaliningrad region has broken several records for the daily increase in coronavirus cases. Every day, more than 250 people fall ill in the region. In September, mortality from infection increased by 20%.”

And here are some more:

“As of early October, more than 330,000 people have been vaccinated against the coronavirus in the region. About 311 thousand people underwent a full course of vaccination. According to Rospotrebnadzor, these indicators are insufficient to combat the spread of infection.”

QR Codes Enforced in Kaliningrad

Rumour also has it³that somewhere along the line QR codes might be needed for visiting shopping centres. Just in case, I have stocked up the larder with seven tins of baked beans and 356 bottles of beer. Will it be bog rolls next?

Sources:

1. https://www.newkaliningrad.ru/news/community/23958084-kovid-fri-po-russki-kak-v-kaliningradskoy-oblasti-budut-rabotat-qr-kody.html

2. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/97260-ne-menee-80-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-rasshirili-spisok-dlya-obyazatelnoj-vakcinaciikgd.ru

3. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/97271-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-rassmotryat-vopros-o-vvedenii-qr-kodov-dlya-poseshheniya-torgovyh-centrov

Image attribution:
Bear slamming door: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/832345.htm

Hippy Party on the Baltic Coast

A funky, flower-power, fabulous day

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 11^th September 2021. The main stumbling block was the weather. We had decided to hold the event on the 11^th 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 Russian fisherman statue — 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 11^th 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)

Hippy Party on the Baltic Coast — Mick Hart with Artour, who looks like a cross between Jimi Hendrix and Benny Hill

Mick Hart with Egis Kaliningrad — Mick Hart with Egis looking as cool as cucumbers on a hot day

How to Grow Old Graciously

Tums, bums and bald heads

Thoughts inspired by my school reunion in 2021

Published: 7 September 2021 ~ How to Grow Old Graciously

For the past week, I have been preoccupied with the 50^thanniversary 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 Harts Diary 1971, shows How to Grow Old Graciously — 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.

The Oldest Swinger in Town!

Offstage: “So, Mick, why didn’t you go to the reunion?”

Mick: “As I said, coronavirus restrictions.”

Offstage (sounding like Sergeant Wilson from Dad’s Army): “Ha! Ha! Oh yes, of course, coronavirus restrictions …”

Mick Hart’s Diary 2021

Image attribution:
Elderly man & clock: Openclipart (https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Old-man-and-his-clock/71948.html