Published: 8 December 2022 ~ Badger Club Kaliningrad a Bohemian Night on the Tiles
My wife, Olga, went to a concert recently (see the photos below). I know exactly how my eloquent and highbrow musician friend in the UK will respond when he attempts to equate ‘concert’ with the images from that evening: “WTF?! Let’s go there!”
Now I am not the world’s most mainstream guy, but I have to admit when I saw the photos and heard an account of the evening, which did not happen until the following day because my wife rolled back at some ungodly hour in the morning, they made me feel positively ~ as the American author Henry James might say ~ ‘Ground into the mill of the conventional’.
It is not clear from the photographs whether the establishment is cavernous, but it certainly looks covenous ~ all that dim lighting, candles, hanging masks, dolls, natural-wood sculptures, enchanting (and possibly enchanted, Gothicised cabinets), and, moreover, wild and whacky costumery! Right up my surrealist street!
The top hat and tailed gentleman, the owner of the club, Aleksandr Smirnov, is obviously a ‘quick-change’ expert ~ one minute impresario, the next an updated rock-star figure from the minds of the Brothers Grimm. He, I am told, is a chimney sweep, only he isn’t, he is an accomplished and original artist who produces highly detailed bronzed relief plaques (apologies if I am slightly less than accurate, but I am having to base my opinion on mobile phone snaps) and, as you will see from the photographs, is also a bit of a wizard in the costume creation department. That’s him in the photo with his chopper in his hand. I’ve never seen one as big as that before; and me having been active in the antiques and militaria trade!
Choppers aside, this particular evening was dedicated to accomplished musicians and good music: There was a soulful and original indie art-folk band, Sfeno, first-rate singer guitarist and a young lady violinist, a virtuoso of her craft, who was on the fiddle a lot that evening. Vodka was not rationed, people got up and jived and my wife, much to her great surprise, if not unalloyed delight, was both chatted up and propositioned, which is always good for the ego (I’ve lost count of the number of times that the same has happened to me (you wish!)). The location, in fact the whole evening, was so spellbinding that it reduced Harry Potter to as much comparative magic as a meeting of the Women’s Institute at the local village-hall on a wet afternoon in the 1930s.
Never one to moralise, even when occasion justifies, whilst all this frivolity was going on in Kaliningrad’s answer to Alice’s Wonderland, I was at home with the cat, genning up on Königsberg and the history of East Prussia by reading (both the cat and I) that excellent publication Legends of the Amber Land, by Andrey Kropotkin.
Although I must say, with my wife rolling in at some unseemly hour of the morning ~ we won’t say when! ~ I would have been quite within my conjugal rights had I demanded of her, “And what time do you call this then!?” or have cast myself in the role of the heavy-handed Victorian husband, with “Why, you dirty stop-out.” But I contented myself with the elevating thought that if I have learnt one thing and one thing only in my brief visit to this muddled world, it is reflected in my born-again status as a stay-at-home Captain Sensible. Stout fellow that I assuredly am: resisting the lure of the bright lights nightlife in order to set the perfect example of how people of a certain age are expected to, and should, behave.
Thus, by the time my wife had sneaked in from her evening of ‘reasonable refreshments’ ~ making it difficult to imagine that she had been brought up in the social climate of anti-decadent Soviet-Russia! ~ I had read my book, patted the cat, drunk my cup of cocoa and with teddy tucked snugly under my arm had taken myself to bed: zzzzzzzzz.
Have you ever had the feeling that you are missing out on something?🤔
Aleksandr Smirnov introduces singer guitarist Andrey BerenevOlga Hart withAleksandr SmirnovOlga Hart in the Badger clubBand Sfeno performingAndrey BerenevOlga Hart surrounded by the esotericOlga Hart with vintage oil lamp and fantasy fairy tale furniture made by ‘Chimney Sweep’ Aleksandr SmirnovInara looking hornyConfronted with a large chopper
Aleksandr Smirnov By all accounts*, Aleksandr (Chimney Sweep) Smirnov is an artist, costume designer and consummate wizard at conjuring up interior design of a distinctly unusual and exotic nature.
Able to work with all kinds of material, including wood and metal, much of what you see in the photographs in terms of fixtures and fittings are said to have been made by his hand, the same hand that has orchestrated the natural, historical and decorative elements that set apart the club’s interior from any other you may have encountered. The syncopated fairy tale feel that you get from all of this is no coincidence. A little fairy tells me that he writes fairy tales as well. *Дом трубочиста или выходные в сказке (turbopages.org)
The Badger club, Kaliningrad The Badger club has a dedicated clientele who value not only the décor and entertainment but speak with great warmth and affection about the club’s welcoming ethos and its friendly, inviting atmosphere. Why not go and see for yourself? You may just become a regular in the process?!
Links to bars, restaurants to visit in Kaliningrad
A kind, charming, thought-provoking and sentimental animation
Published: 2 December 2022 ~ Hedgehog in the Fog seen in Kaliningrad
Before setting off to London/Bedford England last month, we were walking back from a coffee in the café gardens (Soul Garden) by the Upper Pond, Kaliningrad, when we were thrilled to discover that some artistic person or other had painted the perfect impression of the star (Yorshik) from the famous 1970s’ animation, Hedgehog in the Fog. Normally, or abnormally, depending upon your personal prejudice, I am unable to accept painted or spray-canned text or images plastered on public or private property as anything else but what it truly is ~ a brazen example of vandalism. But, as with most things in life, exceptions to the rule exist, and this, I have to admit, is as true of graffiti as it is of anything else, providing that you want it to be.
Hedgehog in the Fog is a highly acclaimed Soviet-Russian multiple award-winning animated film. It was written by Sergei Grigoryevich Kozlov [Серге́й Григо́рьевич Козло́в] and animated and directed by Yuri Norstein [Ю́рий Норште́йн]. It is both an animation and intellectual masterpiece, capable of myriad interpretations, but whose ultimate message is as simple as it is sublime as is it sentimental: that we all need someone in this world with whom we can count the stars.
Once seen never forgotten, the majority of Russians would recognise Yorshik’s likeness instantly, certainly as unmistakeably as they would the stars of such classic Soviet films as Irony of Fate and Office Romance.
The portrait was also discovered and recognised by Kaliningrad’s administration department, and before we left for England, I caught sight of a media report in which the administration was asking the public to cast their vote ~ with the proviso that the paint used was harmless to the tree ~ on whether the image should be removed or be allowed to remain.
Since I have not walked that part of Kaliningrad recently, I have no idea what the fate of Yorshik might be, although I for one would hope that when the votes were counted, they favoured Yorshik’s continued presence.
Not only does the composition capture Yorshik’s appearance perfectly, but the artist has also located him within a beautiful blue graduated background, where he shares space romantically with twinkling stars and fairies.
Whether Yorshik has survived or not, if the artist would like to contact me, I have a canvas, an interior wall, which is just crying out for this work of art to be replicated!
Hedgehog in the Fog (Yorshik) painted on a tree in Kaliningrad
Hedgehog in the Fog is a Soviet-Russian animated film about a hedgehog (Yorshik) who sets off on foot to visit his friend, a bear cub (Meeshka), and finds himself lost in the fog. As in folklore, fairy tales and fantasy and in Gothic and psychological suspense genres, fog as a literary/cinematographic device is typically employed in the film to deviate objective reality, turning the world as we know it ~ or think we do! ~ into a claustrophobic and distorted realm where the heightened possibility of supernatural occurrences amplifies the vicissitudes encountered in everyday life.
In this state of altered consciousness, Yorshik’s imagination supersedes logic, creating a new and unnerving reality in which, for example, an owl and white horse ~ one commonplace the other rare but possible ~ take on puzzling and sinister shades of meaning.
When Yorshik stumbles into the river he assumes that he will drown, but carried along by the current he relaxes into his situation, resigning himself to the journey wherever it may take him.
His ordeal culminates when a mysterious submersible benefactor, a ‘Someone’ as the subtitles tells us, lifts him onto his back and conveys him safely to the water’s edge.
Once on dry land, Yorshik hears his friend, Meeshka, calling out to him through the fog and by following the direction of his friend’s cries the two are at last united.
Hedgehog in the Fog is a simple story, but one which arguably manages to achieve what no other comparable animation has in its simultaneous creation of an atmosphere of dread tempered by quiescence. The kinetic tempo has a lot to do with this, as does the steady, hushed and neutral tone of the omniscient narrator, but the fundamental appeal of the film and the extent to which it engages us lies in its ‘seen through the eyes of a child’s perspective’, its lilting dream-like quality and its effortless ability to invoke and mirror the childhood world which we all once inhabited, with its troublesome symbols and shadows, its half-open doors to what, where and who, its many unanswered questions and its never completely understood what may lie within and beyond.
In following the classic tradition of all that is best in fantasy motion pictures ~ The Haunting (original version), Night of the Hunter and, with one or two exceptions, the complete canon of Hitchcock’s works ~ the key to Hedgehog in the Fog’s allure is that just below the surface of fairy tale enchantment it taps profoundly and incisively into our childhood psyche.
It calls upon the fog and the river for their habitual literary symbolism: the first for its incarnation of a supernatural milieu where anything is possible, the second for its depiction of life as a predetermined current against whose superior will we are powerless to resist, and it besets the journey with downstream dangers, credible menace, innate fears and the almost tangible presence of death. All the things that we learn about living as we are hurried along by the current of life.
The still frames from Hedgehog in the Fog are every bit as resoundingly emotive as the narrative in flux. Single static images such as the looming face of the owl, the white horse, apparition-like and luminescent, the bewildered expression on Yorshik’s face and, most memorable of all, the concluding frames of the film where the re-united Yorshik and Meeshka sit on the log together, with their jam, tea and samovar and the scent from the burning juniper twigs, counting the stars in the heavens, are each and every one blissfully indelible.
Hedgehog in the Fog works, even for we adults, not only because the artwork, the cinematography, pace and timbre are as spot on as they can be, but because the overarching feel of the film is unashamedly affectionate and applaudably sentimental.
However unnerving the fog may be, the narrator takes us by the hand and, like the dreamy river of life upon which the hapless Yorshik floats, albeit with philosophical tranquility, he leads us reassuringly from opening credits to heartfelt conclusion.
If you have the samovar, the juniper twigs and the raspberry jam, all you need to count the stars ~ as the stars are always above you ~ is the log on which to sit and that special someone next to you for whom those stars shine as brightly and mean the same to them as they do for you.
Published: 16 November 2022 ~ How to blog when you are not
Not seen nor heard of since the last time I was seen and heard of, people have no idea why they are asking where is he, when, by all that was two and thruppence, I should be posting things to this blog. After all, you don’t buy a blog and bark yourself.
People are saying things and jumping to confusions:
Ms Nosepoke: “He hasn’t posted anything since 18th October. If you ask me, he’s up to no good.”
Ms Nogood: “What are you suggesting?!”
Ms Knowsitall: “What the eye don’t see …”
“More tea vicar?”
And then there are the rumours; the dark and sinister rumours:
He turned gay and joined the BBC. He got himself a job with The Guardian as Chief Wokesperson. He won the lottery and bought himself a beach hut in Brightlingsea (aah, how he remembers Lynn and that hot summer of 76!).
The media says (so it can’t be true) that the sanctions worked (we know it’s not true!). They forced his return to Devil’s Island, where he is currently doing penance. Each time he goes to the supermarket, he carries with him an old lady’s shopping bag and solemnly swears at checkout, “No, don’t give me a carrier bag; the UK is saving the planet’, even whilst its government, ignoring the needs of the NHS, continues to ship thousands of tons of ozone-depleting munitions to far-away lands at a time when the country’s cost of living and inversely its standard of living are exploding and imploding respectively as if every day is November 5th.
He’s in the UK, there’s no doubt about that! Someone who knows him, saw him. He has cunningly disguised himself as Lord Lucan. He was spotted in a Paki shop in Peterborough buying some UHU to hold his moustache in place and an overcoat to wear in bed! “Such selfishness! He always was a selfish man; a man of toxic masculine aspirations!” (previous mother in law, twice rejected) “And his poor, poor, neglected greenhouse tomatoes, what’s left of them, shivering in that conservatory with ho heater to call their own, recalling at their tormented leisure the chilly and chilling maxim, ‘politicians in glass Number 10s should never throw stones or tantrums !” Poor Liz Truss, she never got the chance. No sooner on the inside than on the out, she was not in the glass house long enough to do any permanent damage: Smash! And now what has become of her? And what has become of the blogger?
We will accept a reward
His family, who are extremely concerned that he might come home, are offering a substantial reward, payable to them, from anyone who has any information pertaining to his whereabouts and who hasn’t got the decency to keep it to themselves.
Retired police officer Superintendent Clampit, from the City of Armston, warns that anyone discovered not to be withholding vital information about his whathaveyous will be subject to the full and most serious rigours that the law can implement, and, on conviction, which will never happen as the police are far too busy arresting people for allergic reactions to Liberal (I heard it on the Grapevine) Jeremy, could face five years in Vine Street Prison or be sentenced to a lifetime’s subscription to The Guardian, whichever of the two is perceived to be the most terrible, vile and odious.
Lifetime friend, Professor Toalbucket, who met him yesterday, but don’t know where, don’t know when, had this to say: “It’s all so peculiar!” And after a moment’s reflection: “It don’t make sense!”
How to blog without heating
The missing blogger’s neighbour saw him in the garden once. He was going back into the house. This did not stop him wondering, however, why a man who to all intents and purposes was a born-again extrovert but hardly ever went out was where he was when he should have been blogging. His neighbour had an awful lot to say on the subject but, being Russian, he would keep talking in his own language in spite of attempts by trillionaire string pullers of western-leaders to cancel Russian culture. Since sanctioned, he no longer has access to things that he never knew he had and didn’t need, but he knows that he has a lot of gas and he’ll use it to heat his house this winter.
One theory is that the blogger has stopped posting because he hasn’t posted anything recently; another that he might have posted in invisible ink; and yet another ~ conceding that the previous two are as silly as a country that fills its hotels with thousands of migrants at a cost of millions each day (Are you a politician or a politician’s friend who owns or has a stake in a string of British hotels?!) ~ that he may in fact still be posting but posting surreptitiously using a false identity and assumed name.
Someone, someone who makes money out of things that have no relevance to the real world, has suggested that he could be posting in an esoteric way, such as posting somewhere in a parallel universe or at an earlier time in his life, when, for example, he was at school, in those inconceivably terrible days before internet and arsephones.
Chrystal Bollocks, YouTube’s Number One snake-oil salesperson, called upon her disciples, the gullible and emotionally vulnerable, to tune into her latest meditative video, and there, amongst the postsynch sounds of tinkling tubes, tiny bells and dubbed-on heavenly choirs, in a husky half-monotone whisper (barely audible above the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs) she pulled the answer to this and to everything else in the Uniperverse, as if it was rabbit pure and simple, out of her magician’s hat. We are so lucky, don’t you think, that we live in an age where, without recourse to qualifications, nuisance of track record or the inconvenience of credible reason, we are blessed with so many experts.
Whether it is better to be trapped inside the mind of some meditating monk or stuck in Dr Who’s wardrobe with a gaggle of prissy old BBC wokists, it is widely believed, from one end of Hackney to the other, that he will just turn up like a bad Rupee. Some say that he should have stuck to the straight and narrow; others that he did, but it sent him round the bend and then, with the full complicity of the French Government, across the Channel to Blighty.
The Dover Port Police, acting on information received by George Sorryarse, have already launched several more boats to ferry migrants freely across the Channel. At the same time, they are conducting a dinghy-by-dinghy search.
Should, during the course of this extensive operation, it be discovered that he has concealed himself among the deserving illegals, make no mistake, said a Labour MP, we shall turf him out.
“We simply won’t tolerate English people wanting to live in their own country!” said a spokesvestite from the Home Office. (Patriots live in hope that one day they will rename this department the Go Home Office and that once renamed it will at last succeed in performing the vital function for which British taxpayers’ money funds it, namely to ‘send the buggers back home!’. Anything less than this should immediately see the department renamed in the spirit by which it is highly regarded, in other words the Home Orifice.)
“Bugger!” his kindly uncle retorted, inspired to do so by some word or other he’d see in print recently: “He wouldn’t come looking for me so why should I go looking for him!”
Asked to comment on his whereabouts, all his old university tutor was willing to say was (He had a wry smile upon his face when he said it): “One can only hope that he doesn’t end up like his favourite author, Edgar Allan Poe, paralytic, face down in the gutter, garbed in somebody else’s clothes … mind you, if my memory serves me right, it wouldn’t be the first time.”
Someone with his mind so thoroughly grounded in the mundane and his logic so infused with and underwritten by commonsense that it couldn’t possibly do him any good had the impertinence to suggest that his whereabouts is Kaliningrad, and that, having recently returned from a sojourn in his native country, England, he is preoccupied with solving the question ‘Is Bedford UK Worth Visiting?’ And that once he has answered this question to the accord and dictates of his own satisfaction, he will post his response forthwith. Even bloggers take holidays, this venerable person ventured.
He was immediately slammed a conspiracy theorist and has had his culture cancelled!
Published: 19 October 2022 ~ Toast Making in Russia an Important Tradition
One of the great joys of making friends in Russia is the party invitation. Birthday, anniversary, public holiday or simply a get together in someone’s home, whatever the occasion and scale, you can always be assured of a warm welcome, tasty food, plenty of vodka and good company.
Like any party should be, Russian parties are a celebratory experience, an opportunity to bring family and friends together in an atmosphere of goodwill and conviviality. But Russian parties are more than that. They enable the participants to express their feelings openly to the person or persons to whom the event is devoted, and to pledge their admiration, esteem and/or love for them before and in front of the company present.
Toasts, personal speeches in someone’s honour culminating in the act of drinking to their health and good fortune are, you might be surprised to learn, even more traditional and realistically Russian than bears, snow and furry hats with ear flaps. No matter where you are or who you are with in Russia, once the drinking starts a toast or several is unavoidable.
As someone who has no difficulty saying ‘cheers’ before I raise my glass (don’t even think of it!) but is by no means qualified as an after-dinner speaker, the seemingly natural public-speaking faculty of ordinary Russians never ceases to amaze me. If anything exceeds this skill, then it can only be the speaker’s ability to thoroughly bare his or her soul to the loved one or dear friend to whom the toast is pledged.
Toast making in Russia is an important tradition
I was once inclined to believe that Russians must spend ages learning, rehearsing and polishing their toasts but, having witnessed toasts every bit as touching and verbally accomplished at impromptu gatherings as at pre-planned ones, I am driven to conclude that the Russian nation is endowed with a certain remarkable and natural propensity for oratorical genius. It is a national characteristic that tends to belie the notion that the only toast you need to know in Russia is the one that hardly anyone uses, Na zdorovye! ~ which literally means ‘To health!’ But if you are lost for anything better to say, then this is better than nothing.
It is expected of all party guests that at some point in the proceedings a toast will be presented. Sometimes toasts are organised on a formal, rotational basis but mostly toasts are performed ad hoc, when and as occasion dictates.
It is to be reasoned that the necessity of committing oneself to such a public undertaking is not to be relished by shrinking violets, a plant with which I am personally acquainted and one to which I am most endeared, but if long experience has taught me anything it is that necking sufficient vodka before you take centre stage is often conducive to a fair result. If you are more than a trifle self-conscious, it helps considerably to make your debut at a later rather than earlier spot in the course of the festivities, by which time, it is to be hoped, you will have accumulated enough Russian Courage (which is not dissimilar to the Dutch variety) to impress yourself and the rest of the room. And even if you do muck it up, chances are by then that most everyone around you will be safely in the same squiffy boat and your falling headlong overboard won’t be particularly noticeable.
The art of toast making in Russia
There’s a very good chance that if you have been called upon to make speeches at UK parties and have developed a knack for it, that it won’t help you in Russia at all. Unlike in the UK, where short party speeches err towards the frivolous or are laced with suggestive digestives and saucy innuendo, the intimacy of Russian toasts tend to be pitched on a quite different level.
Some may be intellectual, some political, some artistic, but almost all Russian toasts, whatever form they take, are philosophical, frank, open and sincere, and resonate with the quality of unalloyed genuine feeling. When Russian relatives and friends toast fellow relatives and friends, they do so from the bottom of their heart. They do so with unreserved emotion and a poetry of the soul that is the touchstone of love and integrity. There is nothing to ask and nothing to doubt. The sentiments expressed emanate from and reaffirm the importance of traditional values, the core values of family and friendship, and their intimate public disclosure strengthens inter-family and community ties on which social cohesion depends.
Good Russian parties, like everything else in life, eventually come to an end, but the feel-good factor lives on, not just in the individual in whose honour the party has been held but in each and everyone who has attended and contributed to and embraced the ethos of kinship and camerarderie.
The photographs included within this post are from a recent party of innumerable toasts. I could have lost count of the number of toasts and could have remarked, had I been sober, on the emotional, poetic and linguistic integrity with which these toasts were delivered, but I was too busy raising my glass (there he goes again!) between taking turns on the dance floor.
Six of the best for raising my glass too often!
Toast at undercover Soviet Spy Centre UK
Note the retrospective Soviet theme and the wonderful, old, industrial building in which this event took place!
Published: 25 September 2022 ~ Woke and Hypocrisy, it really is God Save the King!
If any of you were in any doubt about the extent to which Britain has lost its way on the navigational chart of respect, decency, morality and decorum, a brief look at the media coverage of the death of the Queen during the official mourning period should be enough to vouchsafe your suspicions.
I was wrong. Wrong when I opined that no sooner would the Queen’s funeral be over than the liberal lefties would be calling for the abolition of the monarchy. They started long before the funeral had taken place. Almost overnight, Arsebook and Twatter became a hot incestuous bed of anti-monarchist rants.
And I was right. Right when I predicted that before the funeral was over, by hook or by crook the lefty media would have found a way of introducing examples of bedwetting woke.
WOKE WATCH UK!
Who read the article about the ‘young republican’, ie one of those who constantly fantasizes about substituting the monarchy for an Obama head of state, who complained that during the official mourning period following the death of the Queen he was so very, very frustrated that he could not speak out on his favourite topic, abolishing the monarchy
I am sure there are many in the UK who empathise with him; who know, only too well, just how frustrating it is not to have a voice; who know how frustrating it is to live in a society in which globalist politicians and their neoliberal chums pontificate incessantly about the value of free speech but are painstakingly selective about what can be said and who does the saying. For example, try saying on Arsebook or Twatter, ‘multiculturalism not in my name’ and ‘we do not need or want any more third-world migrants’, without falling foul of foul-mouthed preachifying liberasts or even a visit from PC Plod in his role of political policeman.
Obviously, the frustrated young republican ~ along with a handful of anti-monarchy protestors who were arrested under breach of the peace laws ~ are woefully lacking in social propriety, particularly with regard to the maxim, ‘There is a time and place for everything’.
Mind you, it is hardly surprising. British schools these days are far too busy venerating Black Lives Matter and grooming the young in woke to teach fundamental traditional values such as respect, decorum and decency.
Liberals fear tradition like Count Dracula feared Van Helsing’s crucifix, which is a pity for them because British society and the British way of life are founded on tradition; expunge it and all you have left is a void, an echo chamber of pithy parroted phrases, of which freedom of speech is the most vacuous.
Simply put, in a language that even ‘young republicans’ should have no difficulty in understanding (He will, when he gets older, as this is the way of the world; when he is old enough to know that world and wise enough to think for himself.) all that he needed to do to thwart his mewling frustration was to put a latch on his gob until such time as it was deemed acceptable and polite to do otherwise.
In Victorian times it was de rigueur that young children should be seen and not heard, and who could argue with this good sense! Likewise, how beneficial it would be if young republicans were seen and not heard, at least until we could bear to listen or, even better still, if they were neither heard nor seen full stop!
To be looked upon with less intolerance, wet-behind-the-ears wanna-be republicans and anti-monarchist banner bearers could do worse than take a leaf out of the Queen’s good book and conduct themselves with the grace and dignity which during her long reign won her so many plaudits, unequalled enduring respect and enviable acclaim that stretched from John o’ Groats to Timbuctoo and, with the exception of Loony Liberal Land, lots of places between.
God Save the King!
Young republicans apart and ignored, it was inevitable, and hypocritical, that the state funeral for the queen would also attract a cabal of highly vocal whingeing, whining would-be armchair economists, who railed against the cost of the funeral.
Indeed, the same article ~ the one that revolved around the poor ‘young republican’ ~ also cited a young woman (I need to be careful here, since the photograph of the person concerned left me in considerable doubt as to gender identity. It happens more and more, does it not?) who, describing ‘herself’ as ‘staunchly anti-monarchy’, professed not to understand how anyone could defend the financial commitment to the Queen’s state funeral and the forthcoming coronation at a time when the UK’s cost of living is soaring out of control.
It’s a great pity that she, and people like her (her?), do not feel it incumbent on themselves to ask how anyone can justify the cost of the state-sponsored migrant invasion and/or raise Cain about the unbearable drain on the UK’s public purse resulting from the indefensible policy of shipping arms to Ukraine whilst the NHS falls apart at the seams and every average person in the country ( I don’t include the political elite.) is scared to turn the heating on.
Between you and me and the gatepost (Ukrainegate), it is my considered opinion that it is not so much the monarchy as an institution or the cost of running it to which liberal lefties object, it is more to do with who the monarchy are in terms of their class, breeding and ethnicity. Or, to put it more succinctly, because they are white, have class, are properly educated and ~ guess what! ~ talk the Queen’s English, not wot and Innit and high-five man!
God Save the King!
Sigh, I don’t believe that the lefties will be satisfied until they have installed something in Buckingham Palace (which will then have to change its first letter from ‘B’ to ‘F’) that is lesbian, feminist and preferably darker than the Blackwall Tunnel at midnight during a total eclipse and power outage. Meanwhile, in Number 10, I suppose toxic white masculinity, if ever such a Herculian thing should occur there (no chance!), will have to give way to a mermaid.
Permit me to inform you that this glorious vision has inspired me to press on with my 21st century re-write, in accordance with the agenda of liberal-left revisionism, of the classic tale Robin Hood. Renamed Robin Hoody and set in Lambeth, it is a soap-operatic epic about Its and Others in rainbow tights (what else!) flouncing through Sherwood Forest (sink estate) giggling and squealing excitedly whilst hotly pursued by that most famous of 13th century celebs (given a mermaid makeover) the shirtlifting Sherriff of Nottingham. Hope you don’t mind the plug. The Sherriff doesn’t, but then he’s liberal.
A well-known TV personality not exactly known for his positive affirmations of British society, or of anything come to that, struck an unusually optimistic note in one of Britain’s tabloids, when he said ~ and I paraphrase ~ that until the death of the Queen it felt as if everything in Britain was turning to sh*t, but when the news of the Queen’s death broke, and in the days to follow, according to him, Brits turned away from the UK’s negatives and focused on the positives.
PM perhaps you should be our PM! It’s a nice thought, and nicely put, but you forget that the media that pays your salary simply blinked for a moment. Once they remember to turn the fan back on, the sh*t will take flight as usual.
But let’s not sully what this same man from the media described as the ‘most extraordinary, remarkable and moving event’ that he had ever seen. He was, of course, referring to the Queen’s state funeral, not the ill-timed and completely inexcusable anti-monarchy demonstration or the shirtlifting Sherriff of Nottingham transgendering around in his fibre-fit tights.
And he was spot on. Not only was the state funeral executed with incredible dignity but with a choreographic excellence which had me breathing a sigh of relief when it was all over. It was simply astounding to calculate how many things could have gone wrong and didn’t, and that includes the weather
Nature, too, came out on the side of the Queen. It is reported that when the congregation emerged from the service at Westminster Abbey, the clouds parted and the sun shone through. Taken together with the double rainbow that appeared above Buckingham Palace just one hour before the Queen’s death was announced, a more symbolic and befitting tribute is difficult to imagine.
There are a great many people from all walks of life ~ statesmen, actors, entertainers, poets, authors, singer-songwriters, even politicians ~ whom my generation and generations immediately prior to mine have been privileged to share our lifetime with. Sadly, most are gone. All are irreplaceable, none more so than the Queen.
‘God save the King!’ we cry, “especially from mindless woke.”
Published: 3 July 2022 ~ Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions
With Lithuania threatening to blockade Kaliningrad by restricting transit of goods from mainland Russia by train, the Latvian Interior Minister gleefully announcing that this proved that the West was poised to ‘take Kaliningrad away from Russia’1 and the Prime Minister of Poland making so much noise that it is difficult to tell whether it is his sabre rattling, his teeth chattering or something else knocking together, it looked as though once again the storm clouds had begun to gather over the former region of the Teutonic Order.
I cannot say with any semblance of sincerity that, as the shadow slowly dispersed, the Kaliningrad populace breathed a sigh of relief for, quite frankly, and with no flippancy intended but wanting as always to tell it how it is, nobody ~ at least nobody that I am acquainted with ~ seemed to give a fig.
You can put it down to whatever you like: the Russian penchant for c’est la vie, faith in themselves and their country, a growing immunity to the West’s mouth and trousers or perhaps the absence of a corporate media that makes its fortune by pedalling fear. But whatever you ascribe it to, if the residents of Kaliningrad were supposed to feel afraid, it didn’t happen.
Perhaps it was because we were all too busy laughing at Boris Johnson’s jokes, the ones about the situation in Ukraine never occurring had Vladimir Putin been a woman, which, Boris woked, was “the perfect example of toxic masculinity’ (By the way, what is the definition of non-toxic masculinity? Is it where you rove around without your pants on having painted your gonads rainbow colours? Or when go into hiding like President Turdeau whenever you hear a trucker’s horn?) and his suggestion at the G7 Summit that the leaders of the ‘free’ world (free with every packet of neoliberal dictatorship) should take off their clothes to equal the manliness of Vladimir Putin, to which Mr Putin replied, and I think this is something we can all agree on, “I don’t know how they wanted to undress, waist-high or not, but I think it would be a disgusting sight either way.”2 Er, I assume that Boris was joking ~ wasn’t he? ~ and joking on both accounts?
Alack-a-day if he wasn’t, they just might be some of the most stupid things he has ever said. That’s a close call, because occasionally, but very seldomly and most likely accidentally, Boris can say things that make some sense, not much and not often, but it does happen, which is more than can be said for anyone in the Labour party ~ or about any and all of their supporters. But you must admit, Boris, that the things you are blurting out of late do have a rather silly public schoolboy wheeze about them. Were you the President of the United States at least you could plead senility or, failing that, insanity. But beware! Keep on behaving like this and you’ll make yourself the perfect candidate for filling Biden’s boots when Biden’s booted out.
I suppose we should all just take a step backwards and feel thankful that in the pre-bender-gender days of Winston Churchill, the great man himself was endowed with more than his fair share of so-called ‘toxic masculinity’, had he not been, we’d all be speaking German now. Mein Gott!
We don’t. And the storm over Kaliningrad and the storm in a teacup, the G7 Summit, both failed in their endeavours.
Actually, I have been rather parsimonious with the truth, I mean about the storm in Kaliningrad. It did break and when it did, it surprised everyone. After a glorious week of sun, sand and sea weather, Kaliningrad and its region were suddenly plunged into the most frightful and persistent series of electric storms that I have ever experienced.
For three days and nights, the firmament’s guts growled, sheets of livid light flashed across the sky, and lying there in bed listening to it, as we didn’t have much choice, it was easy to imagine that the entire world was forked ~ forked with lightning!
Olga was in a right old tizz. To her it was a celestial sign, a sign that her tarot-card readers and crystal-ball gazers, whose predictions she believes implicitly and to whom she refers collectively as the esoterics, and whom I call snake-oil salesmen, had got it right: change was in the air, tumultuous change. This was the start, the new beginning, the tip of the dawn of a different world. As strange as it may seem, Gin-Ginsky our cat did not appear to have any opinion on it at all, or, if he did, he was saying nothing. He is a very diplomatic cat. He might also be a very crafty cat.
Considering him to be a little less slim than he used to be, Olga recently changed his food to a product branded ‘Food for Fat Cats’. This and the use of the word ‘light’ on the packet obviously implying dietary benefit. Our cat Ginger loves it. He scoffs it twice as fast as his usual food and in ever-increasing quantities. Every now and again he will look up from his bowl between mouth fulls and fix you with his ginger eyes as if to say, “I’ll show you!” Perhaps, the ‘Food for Fat Cats’ tag line is meant to read ‘Food to make cats fatter’? I must remember to warn him, if he ever attends a G7 Summit, not to take his shirt off!
Those of you who in the West, especially those of you who changed your avatars and are now ashamed you did so (but will never admit to it!), are dying to hear, I know, how badly the sanctions are biting here in Kaliningrad. That’s why I mentioned the cat: he’s biting his grub. But I would be Boris Johnson should I say that the price of cat’s grub has not gone up. But what other things have gone up (ooerr Mrs!), or are we all eating cheaper brands of cat food?
I know that an interest in this exists because lately a lot of people have been tuning into my post Panic Buying Shelves Empty. I can only presume that this is down to Brits kerb-crawling the net in search of hopeful signs that western sanctions are starting to bite. In a couple of instances, we, like our cat, are biting into different brand-named foods than those we used to sink our gnashers into, the reason being, I suppose, because the brands that we used to buy belong to manufacturers who have been forced into playing Biden’s spite-your-nose game: Exodus & Lose Your Money. Also, in some food categories, price increases have been noted. Pheew, what a relief. If these concessions did not exist then the whole sanctions escapade would be more embarrassing than it already is for leaders of western countries who are ruining their own economies by having introduced them.
Were we talking about beer? Well, we are now. Some beer brands are absent, although the earlier gaps in shelves have since been filled with different brands from different companies and from different parts of the world. Those that are not the victims of sanctimonies, which is to say those that still remain, do reflect a hike in price, but as prices fluctuate wildly here at the best of times it is simply a matter of shopping around as usual.
So, there you have it. Not from the bought and paid for UK corporate media and their agenda-led moguls but from a sanctioned Englishman living in Kaliningrad, Russia, who is willing to swear on a stack of real-ale casks, honestly, one hand on heart and the other on his beer glass, that life in Kaliningrad under threat and sanctions has changed so little as to be negligibly different to life as it was in the days of pre-sanctioned Kaliningrad.
If I have disappointed your expectations, I’m sorry.
Published: 16 June 2022 ~ What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyers paradise?
In 2000, the first time I set foot on Kaliningrad soil ~ a giant step for a man who had never been to Russia before ~ one of the major attractions very quickly became the city’s flea market or junk market, as we like to call it.
The junk market was located at the side of Kaliningrad’s central market, a monolithic and cavernous complex consisting of all kinds of exciting combinations of traditional stalls, units and multi-layered shops, selling everything from fruit and veg to jewellery.
In those days, to get to the market we would cut around the back of Lenin’s statute, which occupied the place where the Orthodox cathedral stands today (irony), and making our way along a make-shift pavement of boards raised on pallets, often treacherously slippery as winter approached, we’d pass amidst the wagon train of covered craft-sellers’ stalls, trek across the city’s bus park and on the last leg of the journey sidle off down a long, wide alley with rattling tin on one side and a towering building on the other. I have no idea why, as I was often in Kaliningrad during the sunny seasons, but my abiding memory of walking along that alley was that it sucked wind down it like the last gasp of breath and was always wet and raining.
Another ‘in those days’ was that the junk market extended along the side of the road which is now a pedestrianised space between buildings ancient and modern and the latest super monolithic shopping centre. Dealers could be found in an old yard opposite, plying their trade from a shanty town of stalls, all higgledy-piggledy and cobbled together, whilst public sellers set up shop on a narrow sloping scar of land, a grass verge worn down by years of junk-seller hopefuls.
In our militaria dealing and 1940s’ re-enactment hey days, we bought twenty pairs of sapagee (high leather and canvas military boots) from a bloke stalled out on this piece of ground over several consecutive days. We also bought Soviet military belts from him, the ones that he was wearing. On the last day of purchasing, we would have had his belt again had he more to sell, but all he had left by the time we were through was a piece of knotted string to keep his trousers up.
When we left Russia at the end of a month’s visit, this was in 2004, the border personnel searched our vehicle, and on finding twenty pairs of old Soviet boots, rolled up, tied down with string and stashed in bin liners, sniggered to themselves. But we had the last laugh. We hadn’t sneaked off with an icon, but boots at one quid a pair that could be sold in the UK to re-enactors and members of living history groups at £35 or more a pop was lubbly jubbly. Whilst we wouldn’t get rich on the proceeds, it would certainly offset the cost of our trip. It shames me to recall, comrade, what a despicable capitalist I once was.
When I first came to Kaliningrad (2000) I was buying stuff mainly for myself but as I turned dealer, as most collectors are obliged to do to reclaim the space they live in, I did what all collectors do when the fear of decluttering wakes them from their slumbers in a cold sweat, I went out looking for more things to clutter with, the justification being that I was no longer buying it for myself but selling it on for profit. Believe you me, sooner or later (usually later) every junk hoarder reaches this critical stage of consciousness, when they finally have to admit that buying old stuff is more than a compulsion it is in fact a disease. After confession, however, comes absolution and, like all professional sinners, hoarders quickly learn that regular confession and regular sin go hand-in-hand together.Thus, wherever we travelled the story was always the same ~ be it Lithuania, Latvia, Poland or Ukraine ~ junk markets and antique shops loomed large upon the itinerary.
What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyers’ paradise?
Be it ever so difficult for the likes of us to understand, but old stuff is not everybody’s cup of tea, and the first victims of the development and progressive gentrification of Kaliningrad’s market area were the junk sellers. Speaking euphemistically, they were ‘politely asked to move on’.
I must admit (there you go, I am at it again, confessing!) that when I discovered they had gone, I was truly mortified: new shops, block-paved and tree-inset pedestrian-only streets and a face lift that no amount of Botox or plastic surgery could replicate is all very nice, but oh, what had become of the junk!?
As it happened there was no cause for alarm. All I needed to do was go around the bend, something that I am known to be good at, and there it was, as plain as the specs (the vintage specs) on your nose.
The precise location of the junk market was ~ I use the term ‘was’ because rumour has it that the purveyors of indispensable high-quality items and second-hand recyclables may be moved on again to make way for more civic tarting ~ parallel to the road at the side of the fort opposite the central market, thereupon extending at a right angle along a tree-settled and sometimes muddy embankment that follows the remnant of Königsberg’s moat.
The better-quality items ~ militaria and Königsberg relics ~ are generally to be found on the stalls that line both sides of the pavement. Here you can discover gems, although not necessarily or even regularly at prices to suit your pocket.
The pavement-side sellers are mainly traders, people ‘in the know’, who are hoping to get at least market rate for their wares or substantially more, if they can wangle it.
Experience has taught me that in dealing with these chaps movement on prices is not unachievable, but don’t expect the sort of discounts that are possible to negotiate at UK vintage and boot fairs. Sellers in Kaliningrad are skilled in the art of bargaining ~ seemingly absolute in their conviction that if you don’t want it at the quoted price some German tourist will.
A busy Saturday at Kaliningrad Flea Market
If you are after military items, especially those that relate to WWII and Königsberg’s German past, then it is along this stretch of pavement where you will most likely encounter them. Badges, military dog-tags and Third Reich medals are quite prolific, as is cutlery, ceramics and fragments of ceramics backstamped with the symbols and insignia of the time.
Although, given Kaliningrad’s German heritage and the fierce battles fought here during WWII, you would reasonably expect to find a preponderance of genuine military relics, as anyone who collects Third Reich memorabilia and/or deals in this field will tell you, counterfeit and reproductions abound. Memorabilia, both military and civilian, bearing ideological runes attained collectable status almost before WWII ended, and a thriving market in good quality reproduction items to service this growing interest emerged as early as the late 1940s.
Party badges, military decorations, particularly of the higher orders and those associated with the SS, are difficult to distinguish from the real McCoy since many were struck from the same dies or moulds used to create the originals.
The rule of thumb when hunting out Third Reich bargains from dealers’ stock is that you are less likely to get a bargain than to experience a hard bargain, as the pieces that dealers have acquired will almost certainly have been exhaustively studied and meticulously researched but, if you are tempted to buy, pay attention to the item’s appearance. Remember that genuine military items dating to the Second World War are now in their dotage ~ 70-years-plus ~ and, just like ‘mature’ people, will generally exhibit signs of age-related wear and tear and sundry other defects from natural use and handling.
The other thing to watch out for is a proliferation of similar items at any one time. When in the UK I was a regular attendee at the Bedford Arms Fair, then held in the now demolished Bunyan Sports Centre, you could guarantee that each year there would be a ‘bumper crop’ of one category of Third Reich memorabilia or another. What an alarm bell that is! For example, one year almost every other dealer had German army dress daggers, all sharing the same mint condition; another year it was flags, which looked and smelt the part ~old ~ but whose labels did neither. Caveat emptor!
When I buy German items these days I do so mainly for nostalgic reasons, not to sell on, and because it is the historic not monetary value that attracts me, I am content to purchase military decorations, party badges and so on that have been dug up. Naturally, the condition of such items range from considerably less than pristine to battered, biffed, corroded and poor, but as such they are more likely to be the genuine articles than their ‘remarkably well-preserved’ counterparts and, moreover, you can get them at a price that will not break your brother’s piggy bank (is that another confession?).
It should come up nicely with a light polish …
The same can be said for architectural pieces such as enamel and metal signs that are Königsberg in origin. Enamel signs, advertising, military, street plaques, whatever, are a personal favourite of mine, since they make excellent and historically evocative wall-mounted additions to any thoughtful home design. In purchasing these, the same rule applies: signs of any type and description will in most cases have been used; they will have hung on walls in both internal and external situations, and wherever they were and whatever they are they will demonstrate commensurable signs of age.
In the past four decades, as original signs, especially enamel ones, have grown in popularity and correspondingly price, various retro companies have been successfully plugging the gap in an escalating market and meeting demand with repro goods. Some of these shout repro at you from a telescopic distance, but as techniques in ageing have evolved it can often be hard at first glance, and even several glances or more and even if you study them, to separate the wheat from the chaff, particularly when your impulsiveness has knocked caution quite unconscious. And it is not only signs that have been skillfully ‘got at’. I recall a ‘19th century’ ship’s wheel turning up at our local auction house in Bedford that was so well aged and distressed that had it not been so convincing you could easily have talked yourself into believing that it was the genuine article.
This is what to look out for: Signs that are ‘uniformly’ aged or show wear and tear in the places where you would most expect to find them but not to the extent that it dissuades you from making a purchase are to be put on the suspect list. The last thing you want, after years of gazing lovingly at the antique sign in your home, thinking to yourself this was once on a shop front in Königsberg, long imagining how eyes like yours lost in time and to memory alighted on it as yours do now, is to learn that your treasured piece of history was made in China a week before you purchased it.
Original German/Königsberg signs(photo taken Victor Ryabin Studio, c.2010)
Anything to be had forming a direct link to Königsberg can only be irresistible, not just signs but home appliances, kitchen ware, tea sets, ornaments, furniture, garden tools, anything in fact, especially when that anything bears irrefutable provenance in the form of a maker’s mark. Metalware and ceramics embossed or printed with commercial references, ie references to specific brands or retail outlets, are desirable collectors’ pieces. Old ashtrays, which come in all sorts of inventive shapes and sizes, are top whack in this category. Many are chipped and cracked, but even so still command high prices, and as for the best examples, which are usually in the hands of dealers, after you have exclaimed “How much!” in those same hands they may well remain.
For a less expensive and in-profusion alternative, you could do far worse than plump for bottles. Bottle bygones are dug up in their hundreds, possibly thousands, in Kaliningrad and across the region, but as there are as many different shapes, sizes and hues as there is quantity, it is not unreasonable to discover rare, curious and even exquisite bottles rubbing shoulders with the more mundane.
In the UK, old bottles from the end of the 19th century to the 1960s are as cheap as chips (used to be, before the West sanctioned itself), but Kaliningrad is not the UK, so don’t expect to get bargains on a par. The trade here adjusts the market price according to the needs and instincts of German visitors, many of whom are easily swayed to part with more money than they seem to have sense for a fragment of their forbears’ past. But “Ahh,” I hear you say, ‘what price, philistine, can you put on nostalgia?’ Must I confess again?
I have been known to part with as much as ten quid for an interesting and unusual bottle when it has caught my fancy, but this kind of impetuosity acts in defiance of common sense. If you haven’t got the bottle to part with that much, and you shouldn’t have (Frank Zappa: ‘How could I be such a fool!’), when visiting Kaliningrad’s ‘flea market’, turn 90 degrees from the pavement and head off along the well-worn and sometimes muddy embankment, where you will find bottles and a vast range of all sorts, spread out on blankets, perched on top of little tables and even hanging in the trees from mainly domestic sellers.
I have bought all sorts of things from this part of the market that I never knew I did not need, not to mention clothes that I have not worn and would never wear. For example, I was once obliged to buy an old tin bucket, and I would not dream of wearing it. It’s far too nice a bucket to use as a bucket should be used; so, it sits at home in our dacha full of things that one day I may go looking for but will never think of looking for them there. It’s the sort of bucket that dealers like I typically find in house clearances ~ a bucket of flotsam and jetsam left behind by the owner when he up and decided to die; a bucket of odds and ends destined to take up valuable space; the accidental contents of which having no value at all, I would never be able to give away let alone turn a penny on. I sometimes wonder if this is not the only reason why people fill their houses and barns with junk, viz to make more work for those poor sods whose job it is to clear them after they, the owners, kick the bucket. And what a lovely bucket, my bucket is!
Now, where was I? Ahh, yes wandering around on the bank mesmerised by matter.
As I said at the outset of this post, Kaliningrad’s ‘collectors’ market’ is on the move again. Don’t quote me on this! As Elvis Costello said, it could be ‘just a rumour that was spread around town’, but its veracity is tied to the echo that the strip of wooded embankment roaming along by the side of the Königsberg fort may soon be hosting its last tin bucket. There is a whisper of reincarnation and the rustle of leaves in a public park.
Likewise, I am not 100% certain where this cornucopia of memories, the junk market, is bound, although the wind in my tin bucket tells me that it may be somewhere not too far removed from the city’s botanical gardens.
To be perfectly honest with you (another confession may soon be required), I really harbour no desire to know the next location of Kaliningrad’s junk market ~ what the eye doesn’t see the heart won’t pine after. Thus, the next time that I wake up there handing over my roubles, I won’t be able to blame myself for going there deliberately and for buying things on purpose. Take a leaf out of my well-thumbed book: never leave chance to anything else but intention ~ you can always confess in the fulness of time.
Published: 10 June 2022 ~ Victor Ryabinin Pushes Boat Out with Bronze Aged Fisherman
At last, on Saturday 4th June 2022, the memorial plaque that we commissioned in 2021 linking Victor Ryabinin, friend and Königsberg artist, to our physical representation of his famous painting ‘Boat with Flowers’, which occupies pride of place next to the Soviet fisherman statue, was given a home. The reason it never got attached last year was that we could not make up our minds where the plaque should go. The original plan was to include it within the boat and statue ensemble, possibly secured to a large flat-surfaced rock, screwed to the side of the boat or mounted on some plinth or other. I was easy with any of these three options, but Olga opined that the plaque would be hidden, which would rather defeat the object.
Thus, the location of the plaque was put to the vote, resulting in the unanimous decision to secure it to the side of the house, beside the garden gate. Our friend with the drill and bolts, Mr Chilikin, performed his side of the operation, whilst I, having just returned from the shop with two bottles of beer, provided inestimable assistance by holding the plaque in place.
Victor Ryabinin
When you lose someone as dear and as vital as Victor, time has a perplexing way of flying and standing still at the same time. This July will see the third anniversary of Victor’s death. It seems like only yesterday, ten thousand days or more.
I am not ashamed to say that once the plaque had been placed, I did shed a few tears, but being a real Englishman, not a cheap British counterfeit, in order to maintain the myth of the stiff upper lip, I managed this in private.
Of course, once the plaque had been ‘unveiled’ a toast ensued involving vodka, after which an intuitive silence fell on those of us present, the shared but unspoken thought being that had Death not exercised its non negotiable right to inopportune subtraction, doubtlessly Victor would have been with us today, and no plaque would have been necessary, just another glass. Life goes on, as they say, though never quite in the same old way.
This year our boat is not looking anywhere near as well-stocked and verdant as the one in Victor’s painting, so project two is to rectify that discrepancy as soon as humanly possible.
Before getting down to the serious task of celebrating what was without argument the most glorious summer day this year, Mr Chilikin also made good his promise to turn our fisherman bronze. You may remember that last year’s restorative work on Captain Codpiece, our statue, had garnered criticism from a certain outspoken babushka, to wit that his new coat of paint appeared to be designed to make the feeble minded do something remarkably silly, like go down on one knee. Hence, there was nothing for it: either we had to delete one letter in the ‘Codpiece’ name and add two more in its place or pursue the original plan, which was to make him bronze.
The latter option being the best in good taste all round, though the former was chucklingly good, Mr Chilikin got to woke, I mean work, and with the catalysing infusion of a couple of homemade vodkas gave Codpiece a new look that would make any alchemist jealous.
In the 1960s, the fisherman had been silvered, but that was long ago. The Soviet era passed, the silver wore away and the fisherman’s concrete superstructure began seriously deteriorating. We repaired him, coated the concrete in a special sealant and weather-proof solution and painted him in a dark matte ground with hints and highlights of bronze. Finally, succumbing to the criticism that he was as dark as a midnight mushroom, we turned up the bronze, although some might say that relative to the new beginning he is fullfilling an act of destiny and turning into gold.
Waldau Castle and film noir go so well together, as actor Michail Gvozdenko demonstrates, that not being seen dead there would probably never occur to you.
Published: 24 May 2022 ~ Waldau Castle and film noir make a perfect partnership
On our last visit to Waldau Castle we had the pleasure of watching a 30-minute film noir, Agnes, set in 1940s’ Königsberg. Shot in the grounds of Königsberg Cathedral, in the East Prussian countryside and at Waldau castle, whilst the mood of the film and its retrospective authenticity owes a lot to the imaginative screenplay and the cinematographic convention of producing it in black and white, good casting throughout ensures that this silent intertitle movie delivers impact and holds one’s attention from the opening scenes to the end credits.
The plot goes something like this: Whilst walking, a young woman, Agnes, (actress Ekaterina Zuravleva) accidently drops a postcard informing her friend that she is content living with her rich aunt. A young chap picks the card up and reads it. Realising that the young woman comes from a rich family he returns the card to her, flirts and hands her his business card. He visits the castle several times where Agnes lives, but her austere aunt sees through the deception; she realises that the man’s intentions are not honourable; he is not in love but is after their money. Agnes, however, refuses to heed her aunt’s advice to stay away from the man. Driven to breaking point by her aunt’s controlling nature, a violent altercation occurs following which Agnes kills her aunt, takes her money and her jewellery and flees from the castle in the company of the man about whose perfidy she has been warned. On the way to the ‘promised land,’ the man kills her. He gives her a long red scarf to wear, which flows from the open car window and wraps itself around one of the wheels (an allusion to the death of Isadora Duncan, the 1920s’ American dancer). He places her body on the side of the road, is met by a female accomplice and they drive off together gloating over their ill-gotten gains. As they do so, they appear to be planning another hoax, which may be why there is talk of a possible sequel.
Waldau Castle and film noir make a perfect partnership
Not unlike the male lead, the scheming opportunist who wheedles his way into the life of the young woman, I, seeing an opportunity to have my photograph taken with Michail Gvozdenko, the lead male actor, was happy to pose with him next to a film publicity poster. You might infer that I would have been a lot happier had I been standing next to the actresses in real life, but if horses were wishes beggars would ride. As it was, I was pleased to ‘get in on the act’: any man who can wear a trilby in such a way that he would pass unnoticed on a 1940s’ street is someone whom we should all stand next to, at least once in our modern and sadly less elegant lives.
Michail Gvozdenko did an excellent job of convincing us, in or out of trilby, that have Hanomag will seduce. Whether this is true or not you will have to ask the actor, as the Hanomag car that features in the film, which, incidentally, has original Königsberg credentials, is owned by the actor himself. Of course, it does help if you are smooth, suave and sophisticated and always carry a business card!
Some of the costumes and props used in the film are on display at Waldau Castle, together with the medieval-style wall bed in which the deluded and cheated Agnes bumps off her aunt before being heartlessly despatched herself. That’s no way to treat an antique wall bed even less so an ailing aunt, regardless of her readily purloinable fortune. As for the death of Agnes (sigh!), as Leonard Cohen would say, “I came so far for beauty, I left so much behind”.
“It’s all bollocks!” Brits shout. But they don’t know whose …
Published: 9 March 2022 ~ Sanctions Backfire as Brits do Bollocks on Social Media
Frustration and impotence of western leaders attempting to punish Russia for its military operation in Ukraine has boiled over into social media. Brits, in particular, appear to have taken a direct hit from WMS (Weapons of Mass Stupidity), either that or perhaps they are simply reacting badly to something in their vaccines. Meanwhile, enlightened, tolerant, liberal EU states, weary from months of doubling down on authoritarian Covid measures, turn to Russia instead in a concerted attempt to cancel its culture.But not everything is bad news, at least Russia has gone and banned Facebook.
I must say that I could not have picked a more historic time to be in Russia since perestroika.
Only a couple of weeks ago, I was writing from the perspective of a ‘Self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad’, now I find myself in the peculiar position of being an Englishman in Kaliningrad sanctioned by the West.
Following Russia’s special military operation to ‘demilitarise and de-Nazify’ Ukraine, protect the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) from alleged increasing aggression and Russia itself from the threat of nuclear weapons, my wife, Olga, asked if she could copy something I had written in my diary pertaining to these events and post it to Facebook (that’s Arsebook to me). At first, I thought not, for I knew that by doing so we would unleash a barrage of banalities and insults from the UK’s armchair Arsebook experts, those who presume they know everything but in fact know bugger all.
However, the Imp of the Perverse got the better of me, it came to pass and before you could say Russophobia my prediction had come true.
The comments incited by my Facebook post ranged from off-topic, anti-Russian hysteria to amusing expletive-laden tirades or, where the commenter was seriously lost for words as well as articulation, good old-fashioned personal abuse. One astute fellow, who must surely have a master’s degree in political analytics, put: “Thank you for writing so much, but it’ all bollocks.” 😁 Well, I say!
You’ve got to value a response of this kind, if only for its effortless nature and the potential universality of its application. I have read and heard the same summation used in a variety of analytical contexts, such as in the critical acclaim of the works of Johannes Brahms (‘It’s all bollocks!’); the paintings of John Constable (‘It’s all bollocks!’); the poetry of John Keats (‘It’s all bollocks!’) and the essays of Kant (‘It’s all bollocks!’).
Thus, should you be told that your Arsebook post is ‘all bollocks’, not to be confused with ‘It’s the dog’s bollocks’, which has entirely different and inverse implications, not only will you have the satisfaction of knowing that you share the honour with some of the world’s most accomplished people but also that your opponent, who has nothing constructive to say, has put his mind, such as it is, to bed and wrapped it up in a big white flag. Ahh, the incomparable joy of Arsebook one-upmanship, or should that be ‘up yours’!
Sanctions Backfire as Brits do Bollocks on Social Media
To be honest, writing anything above three short sentences on Arsebook is counter-productive if not resoundingly futile. The platform is full of people with lots to say about nothing, usually in impoverished English, which races away from their keyboards before their brains are properly engaged.
For example, no sooner had I posted my take of the situation in Ukraine on Arsebook than some opponents to my views decided to jump into their time machines. Returning to the 21st century a split second later, they then proceeded to make half-baked connections between past events in Soviet history and the current situation in Ukraine which, by time and circumstance, had no bearing whatsoever on the current state of affairs and made me wonder if, in their desperation to make such connections, they had not wilfully set out to short circuit the world of reason.
But at least comments of this nature require some imaginative flair, which is more than can be said for run-of-the-mill insults.
Facebook personal insults can be fun. However, whenever I am confronted by them, I have to put myself on a short leash (It’s just something I do at the weekends.) or risk even the faintest trace of diplomacy evaporating in an irresistible eagerness to lock horns.
The upside of personal abuse on Arsebook is that given time it eventually reveals that certain unpleasant something about the Arsebook ‘friend’ that you always suspected but could not quite put your finger on. Now you can use your boot! Goodbye Arsebook ‘friend’!
In my previous post I wrote about unfriending people on Facebook as a last resort. To that I should have added, except in circumstances where the level and frequency of stupidity becomes a burden on one’s time and intelligence, at which point san fairy ann is essential. As an adjunct, particularly joyful is when someone who you have longed to unfriend announces that they are unfriending you. Thank you, Lord! Thank you! Come to think of it, I wonder why I never opened a Facebook account myself, just to ‘make friends’ to unfriend.
For the present, and possibly for a long time to come, Arsebook issues and its petty little world have been put on the back burner or even taken off the boil. In response to the sweeping, and in most cases backfiring sanctions, imposed on Russia by the West for its special operation in Ukraine to ‘de-Nazify and demilitarise’, Russia has given Arsebook the big heave ho. Isn’t it amazing that what you always knew you could live without you can? This applies to most things liberal.
According to the West, the sanctions that it is feverishly unloading on Russia will mean that we who live here will have to do without a lot of things. Most Russians of a certain age are no strangers to hardship, and even I, brought up in that materialistic nirvana the UK, started life with one stern tap, no hot water and an outside bog, so although it may be hard it may also be nostalgic.
On a day-to-day basis watching the sanctions as they are announced is a lot more entertaining than watching BBC news, even though the lack of credibility shares some common ground. Joe and Bojo throwing a tantrum as they take back their lollipops because no one wants to suck on them in exchange for vassal status has a certain pathos, don’t you think? Especially when you factor in the value-added knowledge that those who make the sanctions are effectively sanctioning themselves. Such is the way of the global world created by the globalists.
However, you’ve got to hand it to the double act, the rabbits that Joe and Bojo are pulling out of the sanctions hat is a wonderful way of distracting from their recent and ongoing failures.
As for the sanctions themselves, most of those rabbits are old hat, which is possibly why for the Russians the act contains few surprises.
Those sanctions that fall into the economic warfare category, ie sanctions relating to the banking and finance industry and threats about cutting one’s SWIFT off are only to be expected as is anything to do with Big ‘Gates’ Tech, as these are the standard stockpiled weapons of the neoliberal globalists. (However, let this be a salutary reminder to any country out there who is thinking of joining their club: he who sups with the globalist should indeed have a very long spoon!)
But this is typical grist to the mill. The more interesting sanctions are those, which after years of implanting Russophobia into the composted minds of the West, have grown in psychological stature to a point where they can be used to suffocate and to cancel culture. Or so the attentive gardeners would like to kid themselves.
I am talking here about those sanctions that are aimed at cultural organisations and at talented individuals, which, in recent days, have seen Russian sportsmen ostracised, top-draw Russian musicians sacked and even Russian cats barred from international competitions for not choosing their place of birth more carefully.
In New York scheduled performances by a famous Russian opera singer were cancelled because she refused to withdraw her support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. A simple case of extortion.
In Italy, the celebrated 19th century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky narrowly missed being removed from the University of Milano-Bicocca’s syllabus, and would most certainly have been had not the Italians taken to social media and called on the head of the university (I believe his name is Dick) to back off and go and grow a pair! “It’s all bollocks!” I hear the Brits shout. No, it’s called cancel culture.
If Russians seem surprised by this behaviour, it is not surprising because they live in Russia and not in the West. The English, what is left of us, are no strangers to cancel culture; it is what globalist governments do. They socially engineer societies in such a way that the indigenous culture (in the UK white culture) is systematically trashed in preference for third-world imports. Take note! If they can do it to their own people, then they will certainly do it to you, especially if your cultural values run counter to their freak show and its carnival stalls of woke.
Ironically, sanctions in a globalised world are unreliable tools of oppression. Their effectiveness depends ultimately on their ability to penalise without incurring penalty. Unfortunately and ironically for the globalists, a good many of the sanctions that they are implementing will have, and already are having, a boomerang effect. The obvious one, refusing Russian gas, is already translating into higher energy prices in Europe and especially in the UK at a time when the income of the average Brit is squeezed right down to the peel.
There are many examples of backfiring sanctions, which I am sure will come to light in the measure and fullness of time. For now, however, my personal favourite is the projected world shortage of fertiliser.
“It’s all a load of bollocks,” bellow the brainwashed Brits!
“You won’t be saying that,” I say, “when all you are left with is bullshit!”
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