Published: 29 September 2021 ~ Beware of the Babooshka!
It was an extremely hot day when my wife decided that as I had made the mistake of buying a new lawnmower, perhaps now would be a good time to cut the lawn. “Why whinge?” you ask. “There is nothing so easy as cutting a lawn. Modern, electric-powered lawn mowers cut lawns as if they were made for the job.”
“Ah, yes,” I concede, “but there are lawns and lawns.”
The lawn in question was big and, as it had not been cut for a year, it was intolerably overgrown and full of long, brown straggly things.
Nevertheless, not one to walk away from a challenge when there is the promise of beer at the end of it, I set to with a vengeance.
About four hours later and three-quarters of the way through it, I was just looking back over what I had done and secretly congratulating myself, when a stout and redoubtable babooshka came marching down the road.
As she drew level with me, she stopped, peered over the fence and gazed intently first at the lawn, then at the mower and then at me.
“I’ll bowl her over with my scintillating grasp of Russian,” I thought. So, I call out, merrily.
“Strasveetee [Hello]!”
The babooshka looks but says nothing.
Perhaps she was spellbound by the conquistador job that I was doing.
When she finally did say something, it sounded short and to the point. I asked my good lady to translate.
“What did she say?” I asked. I suppose I was expecting to hear a compliment.
“She said, “‘You don’t do it like that!’”
“Don’t do what, like what?” I asked
“Don’t cut lawns like that!”
Well, really, had I been in England I would have put her right and no mistake: “Listen to me my good woman, I’ll have you know that I’ve been mowing lawns man and boy …”
But that was just it. I wasn’t in England and, if I had been, would an elderly lady address me like this?
Certainly, in days of yore, when I was a nipper, they would have done. But that was then and now is now. Grandmas in the UK no longer dispense worldly advice and criticism, they are too busy nightclubbing and looking for dates on Tinder.
Having said her piece the babooshka went on her way, and I continued to cut the lawn the way that I always shouldn’t have done.
This was the same babooshka, incidentally, who had sworn blind that our statue was black when, in fact, it is bronzed-brown (I repeat the incident from my former post, Hippy Party on the Baltic Coast).
We were standing on the pavement at the end of the garden admiring the newly painted statue when who should appear but the friendly village babooshka.
“Hello,” we regaled her, cheerily.
“Why have you spoilt him?” she snapped.
I knew she could not have been referring to me, so she must have meant the statue. Before we had chance to reply, she had exclaimed: “He’s black!”
I shot a glance at the statue. Heavens, should we be taking a knee?!
“No, in fact, he is bronze,” I curtly corrected her.
Olga bent down and picked up some litter from the side of the road and placed it inside the rubbish bag we were carrying.
“Huh!” the babooshka tutted, “Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time!”
A few days later, without me, I am sad to say, my wife ran into her again.
“Hello,” Olga greeted her.
“You haven’t done much, have you?” came the oblique reply.
Who remembers Albert Tatlock from Coronation Street?
Olga asked for clarification.
She got it: “The house. You haven’t done much to it. All you’ve done is painted the statue black!”
Who remembers Nora Batty from Last of the Summer Wine?
My wife attempted to turn the tables adroitly, innocently remarking on the nice sunflowers that she had observed in a neighbour’s garden.
“What’s the use of them?” the babooshka asked, and before Olga could think of nothing in response, went on to say, “Those sunflowers are in my relative’s garden. Look at it. It’s full of potatoes, but she hasn’t looked after them properly. They’re all overgrown. Spent too much time on those sunflowers, I suppose.”
See end of post for image attribution
The next time my wife bumped into this ray of golden sunlight, she was caught by the philosopher as she was running to catch the bus.
“What are you running for?” the merry babooshka asked.
“To catch the bus,” Olga explained. “The last time I almost missed it. The driver left earlier than he should.”
“Well,” retorted the babooshka, “sometimes he gets here early, so he leaves early.”
“But he shouldn’t!”
“Why not, he can do what he likes. If he’s here early there’s no point in him sitting about. He wants to get on.”
“Yes,” my wife argued, “but there is such a thing as a timetable.”
“Timetable,” the babooshka snorted contemptuously, “what’s the point of that when he’s here early and doesn’t want to wait?”
“But people will miss the bus,” exclaimed my wife.
“That’s their problem, not the bus drivers,” concluded the babooshka.
Beware of the Babooshka!
Sometimes the most important and valuable things in life can pass you by, and when we are reminded of them we should be eternally grateful. For example, if it was not for this babooshka, it would never have occurred to me that I had spent the greater proportion of my life cutting the lawn like I shouldn’t have done; that our bronzed statue was black; that there is no possible excuse for growing sunflowers; and that impatient bus drivers had better things to do than to adhere to timetables and pick up passengers.
It is surely food for thought that I have reached the age that I have but still have much, so very much to learn.😉
An ex-colleague of mine, whom I have not heard from since his wife became a diversity manager, submitted this essay to me, ‘Tracking World Vaccination with the Prickometer, saying, “I think you should put this on your blog.” At first, I thought it might be something from The Guardian, so naturally I ignored it. But curiosity, not being the sole province of our cat, Ginger, mugged and got the better of me. Two paragraphs in and I was thinking, “Hmmm, this is rum stuff.” So, I did what I always do in times of trouble (they would make good lyrics for a song), I contacted my old friend Lord Wollocks.
“Ha!” he snorted, having read it in less time than it takes to enter Britain illegally, “You know what you can do with this …”
“Wollocks!” I reproved.
“Put it on your blog,” he continued. “Heaven knows, I, and most of my class, come from a long line of pricks. Take my second cousin, The Duke of Megan Merkel, at last removed …”
I got the point. At that moment, our next-door neighbour’s boy, Little Tommy Goodsense, who had been eagerly listening to my conversation from behind the Truth, chipped in, “Mr Rart …”
He’s got a bit of a lisp, bless him, and cannot pronounce his ‘Hs’. When he says WHO, he usually says ‘WO!’ ~ he’s an intelligent child.
“Mr Rart. If it says ‘Freedom of Speech’ on the can, then it should do as it says. Just because they say that Freedom should wear a muzzle does not mean that Covid masks really work.”
“They, Tommy, Who are They?”
But before he could answer, Tommy had seen the light and had quickly emigrated, taking his Noddy books with him.
I realised, of course, what it was that my ex-colleague was getting at in writing and sending me this post. He knew that I was contemplating having it done to me later this year. He knew, in other words, that I was a potential prick, and like the British education system he was out to take advantage of me.
“I’ll show him!” I thought. “I’ll post his manifesto and let that be a lesson to him!”
Tracking World Vaccination with the Prickometer: Chapter (& Verse)
The race to see which country would develop the vaccine first is over; now it is the race to see how many will get the prick in each country and which country can claim that theirs is the first to be full of pricks.
Dr Force-It, whose name is synonymous with prick, vows that all Americans will be pricks by the summer of 2021 and mumbled something about ‘open season on something’, which will make anti-vaxxers think twice before bending over indiscriminately. If all goes according to plan (but whose plan is it?), even if some Americans do insist on remaining prick-free, herd immunity could be achieved by late summer: ‘baa, baa’.
In order for us to understand how well their plan is working, we are indebted to Big Pharma for providing us with the world’s first Prickometer, a cunning tracking device sponsored by the NWO (New World Order), which will please some and confirm the suspicions of others. Already the Prickometer shows that in most European countries pro-pricks are on course for a majority, but what does this mean for the prick-resistors?
Some of us flew to the UK to find out, where we were forced to stay in hotels for two weeks costing us almost two thousand quid a person or be promptly sent to prison. The rest of us travelled by small boats and inflatable dinghies across the English Channel, were bussed to five-star hotels, and each offered a free prick along with British citizenship. We turned the latter down on the grounds that it might affect our benefits.
Whilst we discovered that the Prickometer was a useful tool for persuading the majority to continue to be the majority, its big carrot has been let down by its even bigger stick, which, although it rhymes with prick, is seen by some as a back-passage way of enforcing mandatory pricks. We refer here to the controversial Prick Passports, which Hatty Mancock has refused to rule out, but which prick-resistors feel will soon be used to shaft them.
But what does this mean exactly for society at large, or rather, before total lockdown, the society that used to be at large?
It means that pricks with Prick Passports will be allowed to roam the globe at will (no change there then!) whilst conspiracy theorists and those without a prick will have to content themselves with sneaking out in the dead of night for illicit trips to Skegness or bumming around in Brighton.
Opponents to the scheme worry that once Prick Passports are introduced, it will pave the way for including them for pubs, clubs, restaurants, museums, art galleries, various regions of the UK and hopefully McBidens, in which case the best that prick-resistors can hope for will be to sit at home doing distance holidays on the liberal-left censored internet.
Whilst some are determined to avoid a prick at any cost, others are crying out for one. Take this woman from Scunthorpe (she wished someone would) Mrs Northgob, who having received her first prick free, courtesy of Big Farmer (blast Gates and his spell checker!) went on to equip herself with several different identities: she just could not get enough pricks! And can you blame her? With so many to choose from, Big Pharma has ensured that one-size-fits-all is simply not an option.
But sailoring is not as plain as first it might appear.
A spokes-it for the UK Outrage Industry claims that every ethnic minority no longer under the sun, because they are all living in Britain, are victims of prick discrimination. They are disproportionately short on pricks.
“Give them an inch and they’ll take a yard,” sneered someone who was feeling particularly inadequate ~ he was waiting for Labour to make a come-back.
Leroy, currently doing a 10-inch stretch for procuring illegal pricks, said that it was simply a case of supply and demand, m’lud, and if white bois won’t help white chicks, it might be a dirty job, but someone had to do it!
An International Commission of Inquiry, costing the tax-payer millions, has been convened to look into allegations that the ‘Parades R Us’ community were short of pricks, hadn’t had a prick in months, wouldn’t know what a prick was even if it was offered to them, had had more than their fair share of pricks or could not decide whether they wanted one or not.
Alice Quimby, spokes-something or other for the dating agency Snatch, said that she was personally chuffed that none of her members were prick-oriented. She boasted that they had it licked, the system, that is, and then, just before she got the hump, she adjusted her strap-on ~ seatbelt ~ and before driving off on speed added that her friend Dilis de’ Doe had summed it up in a nuthouse when she said the whole world had gone arse about face.
Terry Twinky, owner of Tinker Tailors the Men’s Infitters (Alterations Made, Shirts Lifted), took umbridge at our suggestion that some of his lads considered themselves above pricks, whilst others in his sister company, sometimes referred to as his sissies’ company, Fudge Packers UK, downed tools and aprons at the mere mention of having a prick.
“I’ll have you know,” he hissed, “that my members have bent over backwards to meet the demands of this government and what have we got for it? Nothing! It was never like this when Jeremy Thorpe was in power!” Upon which, telling us in no uncertain terms that he would not bandy his wotsits and mince his words with us, he turned the other cheek, and walked away like the words he would not say.
Meanwhile on the streets of London, there have not been riots. According to the Indefensible, peaceful pro-prickers who were simply having a nice day out showing off the new banners they had made whilst living with their mums and claiming benefits, had been provoked by right-wing statues and anything vaguely phallus-like. Heckled by Far Right, White Supremacist, Nazis, disguised as two old ladies chanting ‘No more Pricks’, and then sighing loudly, the largely peaceful protest descended into a mild anti-Christ of all riots, about which Theresa May later opined it was ‘highly likely that the Russians dun it’.
Nelson (certainly not Persondella) was the first to get it in the neck ~ or somewhere.
An innocent bystander, who was later jailed for 5 years because it was discovered that he had once voted UKIP, said that he was “horrified”. “One minute, Nelson had been up there, proud and erect on his column, and the next he was sent crashing to the ground. In the ensuing impact, Nelson’s coat tails whipped up and what happened next was just too shocking to report … “
A man named Hardy (I think that’s how you spell it?), said “It Woke mine up!” He is now helping police with their inquiries ~ into people saying mean things on Twitter whilst terrorists roam the streets.
The only other witness, Churchill’s statue, was unavailable for comment since he had been boxed up and moved for his own protection and what had replaced him hadn’t got the intelligence to understand the question.
It was reported in The Gonadstan that the suggestion that the extreme left group Anti-Prick had fomented the violence was baseless, not least because the British establishment, which most likely funds and supports it, denies its very existence. The Gonadstan went on to say that pro-prick supporters had been provoked by something which Nigel Farage was doing, which was sitting outside a public house drinking a pint of beer whilst wearing his tweed cap, looking far too British for his own good and anyone up from Dover.
The British government, its well-paid advisers and members of the shadowy government, unassisted by the House of Frauds, immediately did one: they consulted the Prickometer.
But can the Prickometer help? The answer is no. There is little chance that Nigel Farage will suddenly vote liberal.
So, what does the Prickometer tell us? Well, the Prickometer tells us how many pricks there are per 100 population, the total number of pricks in any one country, the percentage of population that has had at least one prick and those that enjoyed it so much that they have gone back for another and then changed their Facebook avatar to something under a rainbow and had an orgasm. In short, the Prickometer is a reliable source of which countries are swallowing the official coronavirus narrative and which countries are a head ~ according to our expert Dick ~ of other countries in boasting more pricks than others.
In short, the Prickometer tells us that never before in the history of the world have there been so many pricks.
“Never before in the history of the world has so many pricks been administered by the machinations of the few” ~ Sir Wokeston Chapelhill
WHO SAID THAT!!! DOWN WITH HIS … STATUE!
Note: We have had to substitute ‘prick’ for ‘jab’ as ‘jab’ is the registered trademark of World Exploitation Inc.
I was sitting in the office of our antique shop. It was a bright, sunny afternoon one Saturday in June. A couple whom we knew as being members of the 1940s’ crowd had just parked their 1935 vehicle on the small forecourt out front. I greeted them as they entered the shop, and they said to me, in a disappointed tone, “We have just heard that the shop is closing; that you are selling up and moving.”
I replied in the affirmative.
After saying how much they would miss the shop and us (which was nice of them), they enquired where I was moving to. Over the past six months I had become an expert at answering this question. Turning away to place an advertisement on the shop’s ad board, I casually replied, “Russia.”
Nine times out of ten, on hearing this, the astounded party would cry: “Russia!”. And some even fell back a few paces, as if thrown from the bombshell I had just dropped.
On this occasion I was deprived of my fun, as the people concerned turned out to be the one in ten: they expressed no astonishment on learning that I was planning to leave ‘our wonderful democracy’, in fact they empathised with me, sounding envious that I was ‘getting out whilst I can’, and saying “we don’t blame you” and “we would like to do the same.”
Mick Hart & Olga Hart in the Vintage & Antiques Emporium
But I did not decide to leave the UK and give up the country where I was born and everything I had ever known simply because it would furnish me with a first-class opportunity to laugh at the way the UK media brainwashes people.
It is true that my wife is Russian, and some people when apprised of this fact took it for granted that this is why I wanted to move to Russia, the logic being that had my wife been Martian I would want to move to Mars or, even more irrational, had my wife come from Wisbech I would want to move to the Fens. She hadn’t, and I didn’t, and I wouldn’t. Would you?
There was, of course, a bit more to it than that.
Moving to Russia from the UK
My wife, Olga, moved to England in 2001. In Russia she had been a qualified teacher of English with 10 years’ teaching experience, but as we know, or are led to believe, educational standards in the UK are far superior than those in any other country, so her qualifications and teaching experience was immediately rendered null and void.
Being a worker not a shirker, within two days of arriving in England, Olga set out to find gainful employment, no matter what it was, and after a couple of weeks managed to obtain the envious position of waitress at d’Parys Hotel in Bedford. Not bad, we thought: from qualified teacher with 10 years’ experience to table servant in two weeks: Welcome to the UK!
Nevertheless, it was a job — a thankless job. No sooner had she started than she fell foul of a bossy young lady with a rank inferiority complex and seriously challenged people skills, whom I would eventually christen ‘Fat Arse’ ~ for reasons that would be quite apparent to you had you been acquainted with her ~ and by extension (heaven forbid!) d’Parys then became known to us and our close circle of friends as DeFatties.
Incidentally, this rebranding of the hotel almost caught us out when my seven-year-old stepson, who liked to be taken to d’Parys for chicken nuggets and chips, blurted out one Sunday afternoon, “I like it here in DeFatties!!”
“DeFatties?” asked Olga’s bemused manager.
“Er yes,”I quickly replied, “Daniel calls it that because I always say that we are off to d’Parys for chicken nuggets and fatty fries, instead of saying chips, and although he’s doing well with his English, he does tend to confuse his words a little.”
But I digress.
During this period of her induction into the side of British life which immigrants rarely anticipate, Olga did manage to find temporary work with an agency that needed tutors with foreign language skills to act as a guide and mentor for overseas students. She juggled both jobs and eventually migrated her waitress skills to what was then d’Parys’ sister enterprise, The Embankment Hotel in Bedford.
The Embankment Hotel, Bedford, UK (December 2019)
Whilst labouring here, in addition to working towards her UK Citizenship ‘exams’, she was also studying for a postgraduate degree at Luton University, and in the meantime landed her first education post in the UK as an advisory teacher for EMASS (Ethnic Minority Achievement Support Service).
This meant that she would have to give up her job in the hotel trade, an outcome which my stepson Daniel heartily disapproved of. His mother becoming a ‘teacher’ was a definite step down from hotel waitressing, with its chicken nuggets, fatty fries and often free ice cream.
Although the EMASS job was a demanding one, Olga enjoyed it. As she said later, she felt as if she was actually doing some good and although it was not that well paid, most importantly, she liked the staff and got on well with her boss.
It was about this time, as Olga passed her QTS (Qualified Teaching Status) exams, that I asked her, whilst she still had chance to change her mind, was being a full-time teacher really what she wanted? I had visited a couple of schools in Kaliningrad, Russia: once to collect Daniel from primary school and, on another occasion, to pick up some documents from the Russian equivalent of a UK comprehensive. On both visits I had been struck by how well behaved and polite the children and students were and how attentive and orderly they were in class compared to their British counterparts.
I was not without experience of what British schools were like. I had a near brush with school culture when I left university. Not having the faintest idea of what I wanted to do in life, I fell prey to what in those days was standard career’s advice, which was to dragoon you into teaching. Reluctantly, I went through the motions, which included three-days’ ‘teaching observation’ at a school of one’s choice ~ I chose The Ferrers School, in Higham Ferrers, Northants*.
This brief introduction was enough to convince me that by not pursuing it further I would escape a career worse than death, and that, remember, was back in the 80s, when although British schools and life in Britain generally was all going terribly wrong at least it had not gone so utterly wrong as to be irredeemable.
But, in spite of all my remonstrations to the opposite, Olga ignored my pleas, held her course and set sail into the Poe-like maelstrom of UK education, reasoning that this was her job, this is what she had been trained for and this is what she wanted to do. Besides, she enjoyed teaching and enjoyed being a teacher.
Illustration for Edgar Allan Poes’ A Descent into the Maelstrom by Harry Clarke (Attribution: Harry Clarke, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Soon after qualifying she landed a job at the now no-longer-in-existence Harrowden Middle School, Bedford, and soon after that she stopped enjoying teaching and stopped enjoying being a teacher. This was the UK: being a teacher in the UK was nothing like being a teacher back home in her native country, Russia.
There are so many accounts that I could narrate to you about my wife’s experiences as a teacher in the UK, but I will leave that for a later post. Suffice it to say, it was every bit as bad as I had described it and worse, and it was no coincidence that the first school at which she worked, Harrowden, soon earnt itself the sobriquet of ‘Harrowing’.
If you are familiar to any degree with the UK education system you will not consider it to radical of me to say that UK schools and universities are little more than political indoctrination factories. The educational equivalent of ‘from the cradle to the grave’, but in this instance from primary school to university, the principal function of the education system is to inculcate, without fear of question or second thought, the dubious doctrines of so-called liberal progressiveness, particularly with regard to socially engineered and politically correct enforced multiculturalism and, in more recent years, gender engineering.
This, let us refer to it as political paedophilia, filters down from the top, through the career school heads and the ultra-left liberal staff to be consolidated by the biased nature of the texts and writers studied and reinforced by a daily helping of liberal-leftism from the BBC.
At the time that Olga was teaching, the BBC was head-over-orgasm in a tawdry sycophantic fantasy with Barack Obama, pulling out all the stops to cast him in the unlikely role of the Patron Saint of Democracy. When he was ousted in 2017, Trump was immediately framed as Bogeyman Number Two, just behind Vladimir Putin. Although Olga was unwilling to take an active part in this political grooming of youth ~ and refused to point blank ~ she had to endure considerable bullying before her case was heard, viz that she was there to teach English not enforce political views and corrupt the minds of the young.
Be careful whose sweeties they are and who you accept them from!
There are many other problems associated with working as a teacher in the UK, such as inflated bureaucracy, unnecessary paperwork, unpaid overtime etc, but these ills are universal to a good many other jobs and professions. However, one that is exclusive to teaching, and which stems from the same invasive fungus root of ‘liberal progressiveness’, is the continual round of daily abuse that teachers have to contend with both from feral pupils and their belligerent parents.
Every single day in my building, there are egregious acts of student misconduct going unchecked. Teachers are losing hope that things will ever get better, and we are tired. We are expected to be therapists, social workers, substitute parents, punching bags, and outlets for student rage and verbal abuse. Teaching is only a small percentage of what we do anymore.
Once again, I do not intend to expatiate on this here but will leave that subject for a later and more detailed post on the parlous state of the UK’s education system, in which I shall provide specific examples of incidents that my wife experienced whilst teaching.
After 20 years on the frontline of Britain’s schools, my wife had had enough. It was time to call it a day ~ get out. In many ways, this was a great pity, as teaching had been her life. In the UK, in addition to her teaching qualification, she attended and successfully completed many professional development courses and received numerous compliments and accolades from the heads of the institutions in which she had taught, from members of the teaching staff and also from pupils.
The rewarding element of teaching ~ so sad that UK’s schools are the victim of a pernicious ideology
Throughout her career, she had seen many teachers come and go, both long serving and new: some who had been ‘dreaming of escape’ for years and just could not take it anymore; others, fresh from college, who lasted less than a week before making the brave but timely decision to embark on a different career.
As if an Orwellian education system, lunatic skewed political correctness and state-sponsored delinquency was not enough, another baptism of western malfeasance awaited my wife.
In the time that she had been resident in England there had been several anti-Russian campaigns prosecuted in the extreme by the UK’s media, but in her last three years of living there the establishment and its media’s attempts to trash all things Russian and stir up rampant Russophobia had gone into overdrive, having obviously been prioritised by those who control our governments.
It was no coincidence then, and it is no coincidence now, that the anti-Russian Blitzkrieg had been launched at a time when both the British and American public’s trust in the neoliberal way had resoundingly hit the skids. The last thing that an imploding democracy needs is its 5-year cross-tickers looking elsewhere for the national, traditional values that no longer exist in their own back yard. And UK politicians would do well to remember that making history is a considerably less stable proposition than valuing and celebrating history, not to mention rewriting it or simply giving it away.
At last, incensed by the liberal propaganda machine and suffocating political correctness, Olga broached the subject to me of getting out ~ of leaving the country.
So, did I agree to go just because I am a fine husband and devoted to my wife? It would be so easy at this point to say yes, and by doing so pedestal myself as a martyr to feelings other than my own, but the truth is that it took almost three years before I, too, decided that I had had enough of the liberal canker that was so malevolently blighting the land that I loved. English born and bred, a legacy Briton with roots ~ my grandmother’s brother fought and died for his country in the First World War; my two uncles also fought in the Second World War, and my father’s brother, who was a Major in the Second World War, was awarded the Military Cross (M.C.) posthumously) ~ it should not have been an easy decision to make, and it wasn’t.
In the interim, whilst I was weighing my decision, I used to joke that the next time I went on holiday to Kaliningrad I would ask for political asylum on the grounds that I could no longer live under the oppressive liberal yoke: open borders, anti-social behaviour, ethnic-linked but never officially admitted-to crimes, increased internet censorship, and all the other politically correct baggage ~ the petty, ridiculous, meaningless stuff that is blown out of all proportion and which saturates our daily life, such as should we have a female Dr Who? how many women are there in the UK’s board rooms? not enough black actors on television, should same sex couples be allowed to adopt children, LGBT issues, gender issues, race issues and aarrrrggghhh!!
And then comes Brexit, with its liberal-motivated back-stabbing, double dealing, wriggling, writhing shiftiness and utter contempt for democracy — the liberal leavers screaming (and don’t they just!) that we must have a ‘people’s vote’ in the name of democracy when by the democratic process that is exactly what we had, it was called a referendum. (Apropos of this, it amused me recently to see the headline in one of the UK’s extreme left newspapers which claimed that if Trump was not impeached it would be a ‘threat to democracy’. Talk about ironic!)
Even though Democracy ~ battered, bloody, tarnished, sullied, bribed, threatened and subjected to all manner of shameful legal illegalities ~ would eventually break free from its criminal leave abductors, thanks primarily to Nigel Farage, by now my mind was made up. We were sailing on a cultural Titanic. It was time to leave the sinking ship
There were some who asked, “Why not got to Spain?” and “Why not go to France”. I suspect my reply was somewhat too obtuse for them: “The EU ~ NGOs ~ Merkel”.
And now, when fellow Brits ask me ‘do I like living in Russia?’ I play their game. Knowing what they want to hear, I reply, in a suitably pained tone: “Why did I do it …?” And as a triumphant smile begins to dawn on their faces, before they can say I told you so I quickly conclude my statement with, “ … leave it so long, I mean. I should have moved ten years’ ago!”
Next (when I have time to write in between beers) ‘What I like about life in Kaliningrad’
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Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 310 [18 January 2021] or Business as Usual
Published: 18 January 2021
There is no lockdown in Kaliningrad, Russia. In fact, I think I am right in saying, and I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, that there is no lockdown across Russia, and it would be deceitful of me if I did not say that when I see what is happening back home that I breathe a sigh of relief that I left the UK when I did.
I am not talking about the numbers, the figures, the statistics the doom and gloom wreaked by the UK media’s representation of how bad the virus is supposed to be, but about the lack of transparency, unambivalent information and, of course, the notorious punitive measures which no one in authority seems able or willing to say are actually making a difference, apart that is from ruining people’s livelihoods and subjecting many it seems to psychological and emotional duress.
No Lockdown in Kaliningrad, Russia
Here, for better or for worse, things continue to be pretty clear cut. We wear our masks, some of us reluctantly and others with zealous intent, where we are told that we are supposed to wear them ~ some of us ~ and we try to avoid large crowds and crowded places ~ some of us ~ and some of us self-isolate.
Bars, restaurants and shops are predominantly open as usual. Hospitality outlets appear to be implementing a table-distance rule, and some establishments close early. Masks are required inside public places, such as in shops, the working environment and on public transport. Also, when I travelled by train last week from Kaliningrad’s main railway station, I was subjected to an electronic temperature check before passing through the security gates.
I am able to report that among our social circle we know about eight people who have had coronavirus, both here and in the UK, or, to rephrase that for accuracy, have had a seasonal respiratory illness that has been classed as coronavirus, and, I am glad to say, whatever it is they have had, they have had it mild.
So far, I know of no one here, in Kaliningrad, Russia, who has had the vaccine and only my mother, in the UK, who is no spring chicken, and a friend of ours around the same age also in the UK, who have had their first jabs.
No Lockdown in Kaliningrad, Russia
The situation here regarding voluntary take-up of the vaccine, and not just the Russian vaccine but any vaccine, is no different than it was when I wrote about it last month: lots of recalcitrants and one or two wait-and-sees. Me? The jury’s out. My wife? No.
So, for the time being, at least, its Carry On Mask Grumbling and keep on taking the homemade vaccine: a combination of quality beers and vodkas. Come to think of it, I must be about due for my follow-up treatment.
Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 239 [8 November 2020]
Going down the Pandemic ~ or just when you thought it couldn’t get much worse …
Published: 8 November 2020
With all the gushing, fulsome and hypocritical talk in the western media of a ‘new dawn for democracy’, clearly it is time to steer clear of Google News for a few days until the gloating and rhetoric subsides, and the ‘New Management but Business as Usual’ sign resumes its rightful place among the beer cans and spliff ends of yesterday’s party aftermath. As sure as the Devil finds work for idle hands, he is sure to find soundbites for delusional minds. Best to keep busy.
My wife, Olga, and I are busy translating and editing a book from Russian into English about a young Russian soldier’s experiences as a prisoner in Austria’s notorious Mauthausen Nazi Concentration Camp, known at that time as the Bone Grinder. Not exactly bedtime reading, but it serves to remind us that the privations and hardships endured by the wartime generation puts our gripes about lockdown and the associated inconveniences of Covid-19 firmly into perspective and underlines the difference between the Grim Reaper’s mortality harvest now compared to then as one of existential proportions ~ a difference on the scale of a sniper’s bullet and the bomb that they dropped on Nagasaki.
I am not saying that the situation is good, far from it. You may be of the opinion that it is not good that ‘Healing’ Joe Biden is the new incumbent in the Whitey House, but it is one of those awkward things that we have to live with, and when we think of it in relative terms, coronavirus that is, not the resuscitation of globalism, we would do worse than recall Phil Collin’s words, “Hey, think twice. It’s another day in paradise.”
With summer having waved goodbye and taking with it further opportunities to socialise outside, in, as we have been led to believe, the relative coronavirus safety of pub gardens and on bar decking areas, and with the media everywhere ramping up second-wave horror stories, the imposition of lockdown in the UK and here, in Kaliningrad, self-isolation, or at best cautious socialising, is back with a vengeance.
Vaccines’ healing powers better be better than Biden’s
So, what do you do? Your mother who is about to turn 80 has been looking forward to celebrating this significant milestone in her life with friends at a restaurant. Arrangements have been made, but as the date approaches, one by one her friends shy away, taking the view that discretion is the better part of valour, that there is clear and present danger in social mixing. This is the coronavirus conundrum for older people, is it not? The older you get the more precious time becomes? So do you go for it, regardless? Get out there and live life whilst you can or allocate the time you have left for hiding in the house? It is, to say the least, a difficult trade-off.
The media repeatedly tells us that the infected world is on the cusp of vaccine roll-out, but what does that mean, exactly? A recent article in The Moscow Times1 claims that “The share of Russians unwilling to vaccinate against Covid-19 has risen to 59% in October from nearly 54% in August, according to the Levada Center pollster.” The same article makes the claim, “almost half of Russians would never vaccinate against the coronavirus regardless of whether it’s produced in Russia or another country.”
They are not alone. People in the UK who I know personally are on the same wavelength. When I spoke to a friend recently, a retired biochemist, a scientist, aged 81, he said that he had never been vaccinated for anything and would not be now. Mind you, I suspect that he owes his longevity more to a frugal diet of muesli and oily fish than to his lifelong avowal of the risk of medication-taking and his strict regime of non-medication use, but then on second thoughts …
Vaccines’ healing powers better be better than Biden’s
In an article from The Lancet2, it is affirmed that “Vaccination is widely regarded as the only true exit strategy from the pandemic that is currently spreading globally.” But, “Hold Hard!!” as my auntie used to say (unfortunately, and I am not sure why?), as we read on we find, “… we do not know that we will ever have a vaccine at all. It is important to guard against complacency and over-optimism. The first generation of vaccines is likely to be imperfect, and we should be prepared that they might not prevent infection but rather reduce symptoms, and, even then, might not work for everyone or for long.”
Having read this, you could be forgiven for believing that the vaccine has about as much chance of warding off coronavirus as Biden has of ~ according to the liberal media ~ healing America’s rifts, which the ideology that he represents ironically created. Why else did so many Americans vote for Trump initially and continue to vote for him now?
The vaccine vote still hangs in the balance, but not wanting to take it or, conversely, dying to take it (so to speak) is not a Russian phenomenon, it is global not Russian roulette.
Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s
What we need now is a plethora of articles elevating science with the same degree of shameless enthusiasm as that used to hoist Joe Biden to a level that he does not really deserve. Or do we?
The tone of the liberal media on Biden’s election victory has Biden cast in the image of a crusading saintly Other, ordained by the deity and sent to earth, his divine mission being to restore the neoliberal globalist vision of an incongruous imperialist democracy. If Trump was the pantomime villain that kept oons of leftist scribblers in feverish employment during his term in office, and how entertaining their toil has been, Jo Biden is the Second Coming, America’s last great hope for the salvation of a dying doctrine, everything and nothing that stands between the meltdown of the melting melting pot.
On every American dollar you will find the words, “In God We Trust”. With Uncle Joe Biden about to be installed (they need a couple of days to attach the strings), these words could take on an entirely new and ominous meaning.
Over here, the Almighty is held in no less high regard, but it is also generally believed that vodka cures everything.
For the time being, at least, I think I will stick with that!
References (Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s)
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/11/02/mistrust-grows-for-russias-coronavirus-vaccine-poll-a71929 [Accessed 8 November 2020]
