Архив метки: Mick Hart in Kaliningrad

Sanctions Backfire as Brits do Bollocks on Social Media

“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 21^st 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 19^th 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!”

And don’t forget to broaden your horizons by clicking on the following link:

Katie Hopkins on Ukraine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uYet9IH0HI

Tucker Carlson, Fox News: The Pentagon is lying about bio labs in Ukraine: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-we-have-right-know-this

Image attribution
Rabbits out of a hat: https://www.goodfreephotos.com/svgfiles/final1506-magician-and-rabbit-in-hat.svg

1927 Bootleggers’ Cadillac is the Star in Kaliningrad Film

1927 Bootleggers’ Cadillac stars in Last Tango in Kaliningrad

Published: 22 February 2022 ~ 1927 Bootleggers’ Cadillac is the Star in Kaliningrad Film

A couple of days ago I wrote a post in which I recounted a recent interview about a forthcoming film in which I play the part of a wartime MI6 officer. Within that post I practised humility by confessing that the only reason I was interviewed and not the star of the film was because cars can’t talk, and even if it could we would have never got it up the steps and into the studio of Baltic Plus radio.

The star of the film Last Tango in Konigsberg, conceived and written by journalist, author, historian and screenplay writer Yury Grozmani, is a 1927 Cadillac.

Apparently, this particular model was designed for use as an ambulance, but the elongated, tall and rectangular shape of the body made it highly suitable for servicing hotels, representational functions in embassies and consulates and the final ride to the graveyard.

The current owner of the vehicle, a Mr Ivan Zverev, is a well-known collector. In addition to the Cadillac, he owns an excellent collection of household items from the German era and the Soviet period and is the founder and creator of the historical museum in the village of Nizovie, Guryevsky district, Kaliningrad Oblast.

According to Mr Zverev, bootleggers used the Cadillac to transport illegal alcoholic beverages during the prohibition era in the United States, which possibly explains the presence of several bullet holes in the cabin and the body of the vehicle.

I have it on good authority that the bootleggers had just such a car in Billy Wilder’s famous film, Some Like it Hot.

Technical spec
Make: Cadillac
Series: 314 (One of the ‘Superlux’ models)
Manufacture: Cadillac Motor Car Co, Michigan, USA
Date of manufacture: 31 December 1927
Engine configuration: V8
Engine size: 5173cc
Engine power: 80hp

1927 Bootleggers’ Cadillac — **Ivan Zverev at the wheel of his 1927 Cadillac**

Photographs reproduced by kind permission of Yury Grozmani

Königsberg in WWII Nazi Spies and a 1927 Cadillac

Last Tango in Königsberg, a film by Yury Grozmani

Published: 19 February 2022 ~ Königsberg in WWII Nazi Spies and a 1927 Cadillac

On the evening of 15^th February 2022, my good lady wife posted this droll comment on her Facebook page: “Michael Hart, who stars as Mick Donovan, а senior MI6 officer in a thrilling new film based in war-torn Königsberg, was given his first exclusive radio interview this morning at the Kaliningrad radio station Baltic Plus. Book early for autographs … “

And why not, indeed?

Possibly because I am not the main protagonist. The real star of this short film, which is being produced in Kaliningrad with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, is a 1927 V-8 Cadillac.

Königsberg in WWII Nazi Spies and a 1927 Cadillac

The film chronicles the extraordinary history of this vehicle, which is captured along with Königsberg and the East Prussian region a few hours after Königsberg falls to the Soviet army on 9 April 1945.

The Cadillac, which is discovered by an officer and two soldiers of the Soviet Army, has survived the Battle of Königsberg miraculously intact inside the garage of the bombed-out Consulate of the Argentine Republic.

The Soviet officer offers the car to the first Soviet Commandant of Königsberg, Mikhail Vasilyevich Smirnov, believing that he would be proud to use it as his personal limousine. It turns out, however, that the commandant is less than impressed. He takes one look at the war trophy and exclaims, “A car with wooden spokes! It belongs in a museum!”

The narrative then winds back to the 25 May 1943 to the offices of Britain’s S.I.S. (Secret Intelligence Service), better known as MI6, and the story proceeds from here to depict the part that the Cadillac played in a covert operation to create a rift between Nazi Germany and the Argentine government.

At the end of the film, it is disclosed that in April 1945, the Cadillac, together with any other possessions from the former Argentine Consulate General in Königsberg that survived the storming of Königsberg, was taken to Moscow.

In the autumn of 1946, as a friendly gesture by the Soviet Union to Argentina, some of the property of the former Argentine Consulate, including the Cadillac, was transferred to the Argentine Embassy in Amsterdam.

The Argentine Embassy sold the vehicle to a hotelier, who used it to transport customers, along with their baggage, back and forth from his hotel.

Later, the Cadillac became a museum piece, before passing into the hands of a private collector, where it remained for a quarter of a century.

In 2011, the Cadillac was sold to Mr Ivan Afanasyevich Zverev, a private collector from Kaliningrad, who brought the car back to the city where 70 years ago it had added a dash of style and class to events of intrigue and danger.

Mick hart at Baltic Radio Kaliningrad to discuss Königsberg in WWII Nazi Spies and a 1927 Cadillac

Our appointment at the radio station, Baltic Plus, today to discuss the film in which this car stars, The Last Tango in Königsberg, was an early-morning affair. We had to be dressed, motivated and on parade by 8am sharp. I have never had a problem with early mornings, except for falling to sleep at night before they happen, so when we arrived at the radio station by taxi, which is located quite a way from us across the other side of town, I was shell-shocked, bleary eyed and very nearly awake.

To be interviewed live on radio was a first for me, so whilst I was not yet among the living, the adrenaline had started to kick in. It was a double-edged sword, however, for I felt tired and inspired, excited and nervous.

Königsberg in WWII Nazi Spies and a 1927 Cadillac

We made it to the radio station in good time where we rendezvoused with Arthur Eagle (I have used the English translation of his name, because I like it!) and Yury Grozmani.

Arthur is now officially the President of the Kaliningrad Retro Car Club. He is an indispensable fellow. He wears a lot of hats, such as organiser, arranger, enforcer and promoter, sometimes all at once! He also does a great deal of the necessary ‘leg work’, upon which any club or organisation depends.

Yury, who is past President of the Kaliningrad Retro Car Club, continues, nevertheless, to play a large part in the club’s activities. He is a journalist, author and local historian, who can now add script and screenplay writer to his many professional accomplishments, since the film in which the Cadillac stars, Last Tango in Königsberg, was conceived, planned and written by him.

In addition to my two colleagues, my wife, Olga, was also present, dragooned into the fray to act as my translator. As with all radio interviews, we were working to a strict schedule, so my level of spoken Russian, although I am a good student who studies every day, would not, on this occasion, fit the bill.

Königsberg in WWII Nazi Spies and a 1927 Cadillac. Mick Hart, Olga Hart & Yury Grozmani

After some preliminary paperwork and pacing up and down, we were on! We filed into the studio, a small room, and took our respective seats around the table. The situation brought back best-buried memories of university seminars. The old, but not forgotten, intimidation spectre that had stalked me down the years, now, as I took my place in front of what resembled a hedgehog on a pole, which I presumed must be a microphone, jumped back into my apprehension and made itself at home.

As I sat there, trying to repackage myself as someone calm and collected, it occurred to me that there were actually people who loved this sort of thing. In fact, they thrive on it. Whilst I could never be one of them, I suspected that Yury might be. He is such a good wordsmith, a natural speaker, so much so in fact that it is virtually impossible to imagine him doing anything, such as having a shave or riding his vintage bike, without if not actually making a speech at least privately rehearsing one.

It did not surprise me, therefore, that no sooner had the radio presenter counted down the final seconds and stuck his thumb in the air, meaning that we were ‘on the air’, than Yury was away like a greyhound out of the traps.

He spoke at length, which is not unusual, and this gave me time to compose myself. If speech-making or addressing an audience is not your bag, it is never the easiest thing to do; but it is even more difficult when a translator is involved, because of the unnatural pauses that occur in the periodic hand-over from one speaker to another. True, these small intervals can enable you to collect your thoughts, but they can also help you to lose your drift. This, thankfully, never happened today, and by the time Yury had finished expatiating on the concept of the film and the source of his motivation, I was ready to do my bit.

I was not altogether sure whether I should be looking at the interviewer when he asked a question or straight into the mini camera glaring at me from above and behind the large hairy microphone. So, I hedged my bets and did a bit of both. The radio broadcast was live, with, presumably, the videoed version transmitted via the station’s website.

The questions put to me were not at all difficult to answer. I was asked what it was that attracted me to the project and was able to contextualise my answer within my obsession for history in general and specifically my interest in the 1940s’ period, as illustrated by the UK vintage emporium which my wife and I once owned and ran, where we specialised in 1930s’~40s’ clothing, both civilian and military, along with furniture from that era, military accessories, deactivated weapons and other vintage commodities. I explained that our involvement in this field also took us into the living history world of large and small 1940s’ events staged each year throughout the UK. Result: fascination with the 1940s’ era.

I was also asked whether or not I had any acting experience, and answered truthfully, not a lot, but that my wife was constantly telling me that my whole life was a drama.

There was enough time to delineate my role in the film and to mention how Yury Grozmani and I had met, which came about when he interviewed me in autumn 2019 for an article in his magazine. He was curious to know ‘why an Englishman had come to live in Kaliningrad?’

For a first-time radio interview, I think we did quite well. Mind you, there was a collective sigh of relief when it was all over!

With that out of the way, all that we have to worry about now is making the actual film!😊

Posts relating to Last Tango in Königsberg

1927 Bootleggers’ Cadillac is the Star in Kaliningrad Film
A Flm Set in Königsberg During WWII
How to Make a Film Based in Konigsberg

Posts relating to Königsberg

The Terrible Doubt of Weeping Flowers ~ Victor Ryabinin
A Trip to Fort Dönhoff
New Book Vintage Cars of Königsberg

Heard the one about Herd Immunity?

It’s just something I herd …

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 700 [2 February 2022]

Published: 2 February 2022 ~ Heard the one about Herd Immunity?

If I am not mistaken, and I often am, from what I can make out it seems as if it was announced on 31 January 2022 that the rule of restrictive access to bars, restaurants, museums etc, implemented under the auspices of the controversial QR Codes (Vaccination Passports to you in the UK) have been repealed in Kaliningrad¹. If this is the case, what a relief.

Herd the one about Herd Immunity? Canadian Truckers for Freedom

Support the Canadian Truckers’ Freedom Convoy
The funding platform for those stalwart truckers is: https://www.givesendgo.com/freedomconvoy2022
www.givesendgo.com

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]

Heard the one about Herd Immunity?

Before coronavirus and QR codes, it was not unknown for me to frequent the city’s bars, enjoy a beer or several and appreciate the presence of fellow drinkers and pretty women, all of which if it did not make me feel at least 40 years younger would make me wish that I was. In latter days, however, as a mature self-isolator, I have forsaken the city’s bars and taken instead to sitting in the attic with a couple of bottles of beer and the cat.

Yesterday, my wife informed me that she heard me singing in the attic to the cat, substituting the words of Elton John, who was warbling away on YouTube, for more meaningful wowling ‘meows’. As my old friend Leonard would say, “Yes, it’s come to this, and wasn’t it a long way down?” Ahh well, the one consolation has been that at least the cat appreciates it. If he didn’t, I’m sure that he’d have told me.

The cat was also pleased to learn that in the UK the brown man with a bald head revealed today (1 February 2022), in more words than it takes to say U-turn, that the British government had changed its mind about sacking half the NHS for not wanting to be vaccinated. Is this a sign that common sense is prevailing, or should we keep glancing sideways for the suspected imminence of a ‘more deadly Covid variant’?

Now out of the attic, nursing a hangover and with a ginger cat wearing two earplugs, I am also rather pleased that I am in Kaliningrad today (1 Feb 2022) and not attempting to cross the border between Canada and the United States, where Canada’s plucky truckers have had to convene a freedom convoy to ram the message home that they, and many other freedom-loving Canadians, have no intention of caving in to conscripted vaccination.

Well done, Canada! And just when I was beginning to think that the national idiom, ‘The Mountie always gets his man’, had begun to mean something else!

Support the Canadian Truckers’ Freedom Convoy
The funding platform for those stalwart truckers is: https://www.givesendgo.com/freedomconvoy2022
www.givesendgo.com

Heard the one about Herd Immunity?

Inspired by these reports, I wondered what the situation was in the new totalitarian state of Austria. Was it still threatening to tax people for not having the jab and was the resistance holding fast? I sat back with my self-isolator’s cup of coffee and flicked idly through today’s news, brought to me by the internet as we ousted the telly 21 years ago.

Well, now, what do we make of that? I asked myself, as I discover via the liberal-dominated media that all of a sudden Covid-19 has been ‘downgraded’ from a ‘socially critical disease’ and that Europe, like a feminist scorned, was ‘gradually opening up again’.

These admissions have not, however, prevented totalitarian Austria from following through with its threat to enshrine compulsory vaccination in law, an unworkable and quite frankly embarrassing gambit which the feudal state hopes to enforce by subjecting the country’s Great Unvaccinated to such stupendous fines that the only way to go presumably will be to resort to desperate acts. Time to get that dosh out of the Austrian banking system folks and into those socks under the bed!

However, bets are on that the Austrian government, which like Mr Trudeau in beleaguered Canada has underestimated the single mindedness of those who value freedom, already has in the pipeline a face-saving contingency plan, which, before the end of March ~ before the introductory phase for riot-igniting fines ~ will see a positive U-turn attempt to restore the country’s tarnished image as a democratic state. Of course, should another Covid variant pop conveniently out of the political woodwork, WHO knows what will happen?

Recent experience tells us that it would be sheer folly to allow ourselves to be lulled into a sense of false security! Indeed, those ‘gud ole boys’ at the WHO are already warning us that the situation remains unpredictable. Thus, WHO can rightly say if all this relaxation and semblance of normality is not just another example of the psychological warfare strategy of ‘soften them up to knock them back down’!

Now, I’m no conspiracy theorist. If I was, I would be naming that quarry somewhere in the Home Counties where some of my peers in England assert the United States staged the first moon landing. But I don’t mind telling you, and nobody else, that I am one of the few people who know exactly where it was filmed, because I have in my possession a photograph of the lunar landing which has a burger bar in the background which they forgot to airbrush out!

Herd immunity & Moon landing conspiracy theory

So, please send £10 via debit and/or credit card to Mick Hart at I am no conspiracy theorist {Iamnoconpiracytheorist.com} for your copy of the aforesaid photo.

In the meantime, Ginger cat, which song by Elton John would you like to hear next?

Meow!!

Oi! Mind your language!

Reference
1. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/98811-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-otmenyayut-qr-kody-pri-poseshhenii-tc-i-obshhepita

Image attributions
LP: Evan-Amos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/12in-Vinyl-LP-Record-Angle.jpg
Map of Austria location: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Austria-location-label/67794.html
Vaccination passports: https://pixabay.com/photos/covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-6553695/
Man behind bars: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Man-behind-bars/87242.html
Burger Van: https://www.freeimg.net/photo/595247/hotdogvan-burgervan-cafe-restaurant
Quarry: https://www.freeimg.net/photo/56882/stonequarry-quarry-mine-mining
Spaceman: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/92631.htm

Image attributions
Red truck: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-clip-art-of-red-truck-on-the-road/18710.html
Canadian flag: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Canadian-vector-flag/2900.html

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

Christmas in the Land of Vax

How was it for you?

Published: 3 January 2022 ~ Christmas in the Land of Vax

It was very hit and miss, as though they had taken a leaf out of the government’s ‘How to Pretend that we are Dealing with Coronavirus Convincingly’ manual, the question should the Sheep family invite their relatives, the Woollies, from Scotland to spend Christmas with them or should the Sheep spend Christmas with the Woollies in Sockland?

Christmas was closing in faster than a new coronavirus variant, and with the distinct possibility that Boris might do a U-turn on vaccine passports using Plan B (which some unpleasant people say stands for ‘Bollocks’), it was be damned if you do, be damned if you don’t, and be buggered if anyone from government to Abdul knew what was going on?

One thing the Sheep were sure of was that they had better decide soon before more authoritarianism was brought to bear in the name of beneficent government. Two new strains, mainly on credulity, and 300 additional threats to society, had already been detected in two 5-star hotels, The Grinning Boaters and The Froggy Freeloaders, located on the outskirts of Dover.

Following this discovery, as reported by Nigel Farage, Downing Street immediately issued a warning that Christmas parties, possibly Christmas itself, may have to be cancelled, whilst a silly old chap who works for The Grimstarnian, Jenkinspoop, had nothing better to do than sit at home in his face mask and write an incredibly banal and spurious treatise on the UK’s need for unlimited mountains of migrants, as if he had never heard of Brexit and had no idea why the Labour party had been wiped out in the last election. A possible reason for his renewed confidence in the Kalergi Plan was the recent news that the neoliberals had set the democratic seesaw in motion giving Labour a nine-point lead. ‘Stupid, yes! But not that Stupid Surely!’, Bongo wrote, who had obviously no idea of what it was like to live in a democratic country, although he had booked his hotel and was on his way ~ at speed !

It was little Amanda Sheep who finally brought the question on where to spend Christmas to a decisive conclusion, recalling that the last Christmas they had spent in Sockland had been extremely close to putrid.

The jokes in the Christmas crackers were atrocious: “Question: Where’s the smallest airfield in the world? Answer: Up a Scottish kilt, two hangars and a spitfire!”; Uncle McSock got so sloshed on cheap whisky that he ended up with his sporran on his chin; his wife Agnus ‘Haggis’ McSock insisted on forcing noise out of an instrument that was the equivalent of blowing up the arse of a tortured cat; and the whole evening descended into chaos when someone mentioned Bonny Prince Charlie in the same breath as Nicola Sturgeon. The only person who seemed to be enjoying himself, little Mac McSock, sometimes fondly referred to as ‘Plastic’ or ‘Flashing’, spent the entire evening of Christmas Day locked in his bedroom, practising, or so his mother said, for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Caber Tossing Championship. Little Mac desperately needed a smaller ego, almost as much as he needed greater magnification in the lenses of his spectacles.

Christmas in the Land of Vax a Scotsman blowing up a cat's arse

So, the Sheep remained in England (where else?), where things had gone from bad moral high-ground to sanctimonious worse-ground. Not only was it looking more likely that Boris and Sergeant Daftit were about to go Nazi on vaccine passports (conveniently given the blue light by Omicron) but had introduced more punitive measures in the interests of saving people so that they could spend the rest of their lives in mortal dread of ever going anywhere and seeing anyone again.

This course of action, Plan C (and, for the sake of proprietary we won’t divulge what the ‘C’ stands for, although it is obvious to the majority) has been launched in the name of Protecting the NHS, which by clever coincidence would seem to rhyme with ‘what a nasty mess’. In other words, the UK, like many other countries, seemed to be sliding reptiliously into vaccine passport dystopia. Not only would you not be allowed into pubs, restaurants and nightclubs without an electronic tracking vaccine passport, but added to the no-go list would be DIY shops, non-food store outlets, garden centres and sex shops ~ the latter prohibition would impact really badly on Simon Sheep’s Christmas present list ~ whatever would they buy granny now? (You see, she was a progeny of the progressive and permissive 1960s!)

Christmas in the Land of Vax

So, the Sheep stayed at home and in the tradition of the UK’s meek and tolerant had a ‘make do and mend’ Christmas as their forbears had before them. There are parallels to be drawn here, based on believing what you are told: One generation had gone to war believing that they were fighting to preserve their country (look at it today!); the present generation, who do not feel quite so entitled anymore, believe that in the new war between coronavirus and traditional freedoms our governments are fighting for us. Gullible and Naïve, the London department store, one street lower than Downing Street (is that possible?), were offering a multi-complex, multi-irrational, multi-cultural (am I repeating myself?) solution to getting into their store. Once, all you needed to do was open the door, but now it was lateral flow tests and PCRs (the only things missing are ‘I’ and ‘K’).

Before anyone could think of Christmas shopping, however, there was the house to decorate. Luckily the Sheeps were forward-thinking people. They had been first in the queue when coronavirus was announced and were fortunate enough to have a several bog rolls left from the 20,000 that they had stockpiled in the Great Panic Buying Bog Roll Bonanza of 2020, and big Boris Sheep, in between making plans from the alphabet ~ he would soon be on ‘Triple Z’ ~ recalling his days at public school, when he made enough Christmas decorations from his parent’s allowance to give Oxford the ring road it badly required, set about making paper chains out of used face masks.

The Christmas tree was an ingenuity stretcher, it almost made them wish that Christmas had been banned, as the leftist predecessors to the Religion of Woke wanted it to be back in the days of Sir Tony, but eventually Boris saved the day (sniggers and guffaws) with his Plan ‘Other Characters’ by suggesting that Keir Starmer come round and stand in the corner with his arms out ~ well he had to have some use. Then they dusted off their ancient decorations, including Ed’s Balls, draped the tree in sycophants and lush-living liberal lefties and stuck a great big gender-neutral fairy on the top. Good heavens, how he/she/it/other looked like Larry Grayson! ‘Shut that door!’ It’s too late Larry!

As the big day approached, with Big Pharma cashing in on the traditional uptake of the ‘day after’ pills, Big Tech on the volume of gadgets purchased, mostly during Black (whoops, you can’t say that) Friday, the Sheep family settled down for their second coronavirus Christmas.

As the whole family had been vaccinated more times than you and I have taken a knee, obtaining the components for the traditional Christmas dinner had been as easy as conning countless liberals to vote Remain and then later to remain in their houses.

Eating Christmas dinner with a face mask on had been a very messy business, especially whilst wearing a silly paper hat and a pair of rubber gloves, but at least the latter concealed grotesquely chapped hands from excessive hand-washing and the neurotic application of disinfecting wipes.

As the Sheep family live in Dover, shortly after watching the Queen of Coronavirus’s Speeches by Fool-Them-All Fauci, they retired to the lounge where from their bay windows they had the perfect view of the little boats arriving along the coast. Such heart-warming scenes to be sure! Scores of happy, smiling Christmas migrants gift-wrapped by the French and welcomed ashore by British policeman, who, if truth be told (but only by Sorryarse Fact Checkers!), were rather pleased to have been given this cushy detail, having spent most of the past 12 months either investigating mean tweets or bursting into people’s homes to see if the residents had their masks on.

After a nice glass of Dover Port, which gets more full bodied with every passing month, the Sheep family played ‘WHO Dunnit to Them’, a game by Public Health Charades, in which little Dick Sheep made then all howl with laughter at his superb rendition of a non-vaccinated white man banned from everywhere including his own country ~ they all had another booster shot after seeing that one!

They then watched WHO Dunnit on the television. It wasn’t a bad film, but the plot was so unbelievable, especially at the end where Herculean Plotdemic was about to reveal who the killer really was when thankfully a message popped up on the screen redirecting viewers to the true version of events and Herculean Plotdemic never got another job again, at least not in liberal-lefty lovie land.

They then watched the popular soap opera Coronavirus Streets, which was a touch boring as the entire cast just sat in their houses two-metres apart from each other, twiddling on their outsmart-them phones, and finished off with a quick game of pin the face mask on granny. By now they were getting tired, but fortunately the BBC were running a Dr Who Christmas Special (not to be confused with you know WHO!) and this programme certainly Woke them up!

At 7 o’clock the guests arrived. Only two out of 25 were allowed in, as the others hadn’t been vaccinated. Natural immunity and proven antibodies were no excuse. It was essential (for someone) that anyone coming into the house was vaccinated first, had a Visitors to Your Home DIY Vaccination Kit, played music from the Third Reich and wore small black moustaches, whilst the rest of the family chanted something from a liberal-left website about ‘Thank you for thinking of others and saving their lives for them’ at which everyone fell about for at least 30 proper seconds in a state of rapture bordering on orgasm. Little Dick hadn’t seen anything like this since Tony Blair was elected Chancellor and was then given a knighthood for turning the UK into a kebab shop.

The evening was not entirely ruined, however, as it was not snowing that heavily outside and the non-vaccinated, who were used to being outcasts, they had learnt to accept their place in the New World Order when smoking was banned in pubs and restaurants, accepted their lot cheerfully. Huddling up in the cold was no new thing for them, and besides it was a lot better than being pumped full of a biological substance that didn’t give young, fit, medically proven A1 footballers heart attacks.

Christmas in the Land of Vax

Every now and again, whilst partner dancing six feet apart, little Amanda Sheep would chuck a roast potato or some brussels sprouts at the non-vaxxers from the bedroom window, and her little brother Boris would serve them drinks through the letterbox, wearing rubber gloves, of course, and a hairstyle that he had got out of a Christmas cracker that looked like a face mask blown inside out.

After that they played hide and sneak: someone hid a coronavirus and the rest of the group had to look for it whilst telling the authorities on their mobile phones who had not had the vaccine. This game was as limp as vaccine-induced impotence, as hopeless as finding an ounce of sense in Boris’ haystack and even more ludicrous than trying to stop a virus with a face mask.

Christmas in the Land of Vax an Arse Mask — **Arse Mask ~ the bottom line in Covid protection. As good as face masks but you’ll crack up whilst wearing them!**

Pass the Covid Parcel was far more successful. It was understandable: half of the room wore red rosettes the other half wore blue. It didn’t matter if the music stopped or not, since nobody took any notice, they all kept humming the same tune whilst passing the parcel one from the other — quickly. The coronavirus version of musical chairs was much the same as pass the parcel. “Pass the what?” some wag cried, who was particularly good at inventing cockney rhyming slang. And then came charades, well no need to explain that one, the name speaks for itself, although there was something about Nightingale Hospitals, ‘now you see them, now you don’t’, that nobody understood, least of all those who established them, never used them and then dismantled them. Ahh well, it would make sacking unvaccinated healthcare workers easier!

The highlight of Christmas day was watching the anti-totalitarian riots in Australia and Canada, whereupon the entire family concluded that you would think that they would have something better to do, such as making Facebook avatars with ‘I have had my vaccine’ written in rainbow colours around them or having an interim jab between their twice-minutely booster.

Having to vaccinate at every tick and turn is inconvenient, especially when the nearest vaccination point is 5 miles away. However, using her discount coupon from The Grimstarnian’s Covid Virtue Signalling page, little Amanda Sheep trotted off to her nearest store, proudly presented her lateral flow test and returned home with Christmas stockings full of Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Testing Kits, the perfect companion to the Candle-Lit-Vigil Kits, which she had also bought using Virtue Signalling discount coupons from The Grimstarnian’s media website.

Then came the presents: Dick was chuffed with his map to the nearest vaccination clinic, ‘Oohh, it’s just what they’ve always wanted’; the elder brother, Boris, was given his own mobile vaccination centre ~ thus being assured of a job for life ~ he was even given a white coat with ‘I am a WHO scientist’ written on it and a Junior WHO Scientist Kit, the same one that the grown-ups had used to identify coronavirus with. Dad was content to receive a bumper pack of Bile Beans. He had been having a lot of difficulty lately adjusting to the latest propaganda ~ all those new stains! ~ and his Scrabble ability could certainly do with some kind of pill that claimed to cure everything.

Mother’s present was spectacular. She was given a brand-new bottle of vaccination paranoia tablets and a year’s free subscription to The Independent. She also joined Facebanned, a new social media site where account holders were routinely banned, blocked, barred, re-routed, suspended and eventually arrested for crimes against stupidity and for inciting logic and common sense.

Simon Sheep was given a New World Order coronavirus tie, with a Bill’s Gatepost chip inside. The beauty of this tie was that every time you thought or said something that you were not supposed to think or say the tie slowly throttled you. Thanks, Bill, you’re a brick (whoops, there goes that Windows’ spell checker again!).

At the end of the day they all had high temperatures, dry coughs and were feeling absolutely dreadful, although no one went so far as to say ‘like death warmed up’, but at least they could blame it on the Christmas alcohol. After all, it couldn’t be coronavirus, the whole family had been double jabbed and each and everyone had fitted themselves out with a strap-on mobile booster drip which, although physically inconvenient, saved an awful lot of time in running back and forth to hospitals and clinics — time which they could use to their advantage in practising social distancing and trying on their latest face masks.

Yes, it had been a lovely Christmas, and there was nothing to suggest that it would not be the same next year … and the next … and the next … and the next …

And whilst we are on the subject …
How to deal with a vaccinated family member at Christmas
Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!
The Liberal solution to anti-vaxxers

Image attributions
Sheep in Christmas hat: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=237328&picture=christmas-sheep-in-hat
Face mask: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/face-mask-protection-coronavirus-5031122/
Scotsman playing bagpipes: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/160000/velka/man-playing-bagpipes-clipart.jpg
Scared cat: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/rcjKpL6di.htm
Face masks: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/330000/velka/coronavirus-covid-19-face-masks.jpg
Back of terraced houses: Photo by Peter Hall on Unsplash; https://unsplash.com/photos/3gYyO8bN020
Buttocks: Author: OpenClipart-Vectors / pixabay.com: https://www.freeimg.net/photo/101285/anatomy-ass-bare-behind
Cat biting fingers: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/kTKnboxMc.htm

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

WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Polessk Kaliningrad

In the grounds of the Polessk Brewery, Kaliningrad, Russia

Published: 15 November 2021 ~ WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Polessk

In a post published on 8 November 2021, I wrote about the restoration of an old German brewery in the former German town of Labiau, now known as Polessk, located in the Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia.

The grounds of the Polessk brewery back onto the Deyma River (German: ‘Deime’). Contained within those grounds, facing the river, sits the dramatic remains of a wartime German gun emplacement.

WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Polessk Russia — **Polessk WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement Kaliningrad** **region**

This chunky, reinforced concrete, above-ground bunker or blockhouse, which ever description you prefer, is one of the few survivors of a battery of such emplacements, more than sixty in total, which formed an awesome line of defence along the Deyma River.

The emplacements date to the First World War but were recommissioned during the Second World War as part of the formidable East Prussian defence system constructed by the Germans in preparation for the Soviet invasion.

WWI/WWII German Gun Emplacement, Polessk, Kaliningrad

According to what I have been told, after Königsberg fell to the Soviets in April 1945, the concrete fortifications along the Deyma were systematically obliterated in order to ensure that should the tide of military fortune ever be reversed they could not be employed again.

Relatively speaking, the surviving emplacement is in sound condition. Although the back has been taken out, the living quarters and the gunnery room are virtually unscathed, and the inside still retains the reassuring feeling of immense solidity. Cramped, some might think horribly, the bunkers were not completely devoid of some semblance, albeit slight, of ‘home comfort’. The existence of a metal flue shows that at least provision had been made for a source of warmth and possibly the means by which to make a brew and heat up food. The reinforced metal door to the combat room has gone, but the giant iron hinges on which it used to pivot remain intact as do other metal fixtures.

The gunners’ view from the front of the emplacement, which now faces the reed bed on the edge of the Deyma River, is, in every sense of the word, a commanding one. In theory it should have offered the bunker’s occupants a strategic advantage against any attack launched from across the water but as history has proved on many occasions the notion of an impregnable defence system is purely that ~ a notion.

View from German Gun Emplacement Polessk — **View from the WWI/WWII German gun emplacement in the grounds of the restored German brewery in Polessk, Russia**

History board German Gun Emplacement Polessk Russia — **Plan of the wartime gun emplacement in Polessk, Kaliningrad region, Russia, including medals awarded for Soviet bravery during the East Prussian campaign**

History boards on and inside the emplacement detail its method of construction, describe its operational system and place its fortification principle in the wider military context of the WWII East Prussian campaign.

Mick Hart in Polessk, Kaliningrad — **Mick Hart next to the history board in the WWI/WWII gun emplacement in Polessk, Kaliningrad region, Russia**

So, when you visit Polessk Brewery stave off your irrepressible need to imbibe knowledge on beer production, and when brewing recommences your overpowering need to imbibe beer too, and take a few minutes or more to lap up the historic information and martial atmosphere redolent in and around this monumental defence post. It is an intriguing and poignant window upon German/Soviet military history.

History of military campaigns in East Prussia & the Brewery Polessk — **History of Soviet military action in East Prussia and the former Labiau Brewery, now Polessk Brewery, which is undergoing restoration**

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