Tag Archives: Englishman Self-isolating in Kaliningrad

Running out of kitchen cabinets in the UK

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 365 [14 March 2021]
Anniversary of self-isolating in Kaliningrad

Congratulations to who, exactly? To WHO? Today marks my first anniversary of self-imposed self-isolation ~ of sorts. Three hundred and sixty-five days of watching where I go and who is standing three hundred and sixty degrees front, sides and back of me. Have I passed the test? And, if so, for whom and for what? And what should my reward be? A diploma in philanthropic consideration for my fellow man (no sexism intended) or a degree with honours in credulous compliance. Let History be my judge! And, of course, be yours as well!

Quite frankly, apart from this milestone, there is not a great deal to report about coronavirus here in Kaliningrad, Russia, certainly not about lockdown as there isn’t one. Everything in Kaliningrad appears to be functioning as normal and the only concession that I can see to coronavirus is the mask-wearing thing. And even then, I have noticed that the percentage of people wearing muzzles, as my wife refers to them, has diminished in the past few weeks.

A mask-wearing enforcement policy continues to operate on public transport, as I witnessed a couple of days ago, when a thoroughly inebriated fellow, who had been celebrating International Women’s Day (no gender discrimination here in Russia!), refused to put on his mask whilst travelling by bus. The young bus conductor did his level best to prosecute the law thanklessly handed down to him, but vodka is a wily opponent and the recalcitrant drunk would eventually fall off at the stop of his choice, still maskless but no less gracious, for even in his triumph of the common man over authority he chose not to stick up an offensive finger but holding up two thumbs saluted International Women’s Day as the bus full of masks roared off.

Running out of kitchen cabinets in the UK

Whilst almost everybody that I have spoken to here in Russia are of one mind: they consider lockdown to be a step too far, I cannot help but feel that Western governments do not approve. Not that anybody here cares a fig about them, but it is a point of interest that whatever the West prescribes the presumption is that the world should follow, even if its example runs counter to the common good. But that is the way that global liberalism works: in their language it is ‘intervention’ but you naughty cynics might want to refer to it as globalist interference. In the UK, it is not enough to say, “We don’t do lockdown!” because you have no choice. And even were you to add, “because there is no real proof that lockdown really works, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it does more harm than good”, you still do lockdown because this, presumably, is the democratic way?

It is the epitome of irony that given the official mortality figures for coronavirus in the UK, lockdown has become, at least for liberals, not just a law but a religion ~ Woe betide anybody who questions its logic or the controversial efficacy of sticking a piece of cloth on your face.

Western authorities are sensitive to the fact that many of the methods chosen to combat coronavirus have no empirical evidence with which to back them up, which accounts for their pique when other countries try different approaches that are no less effective than their draconian measures and arguably equal or better.

Thus, we find in the world’s press recently an unsavoury little piece in which it is claimed that the coronavirus situation here in Kaliningrad is far in excess of what it is claimed to be.

The article to which I refer was published by a media enterprise which checks out on mediabiasfactcheck as ‘Left’:

“These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy.”

This is the same media source which suppressed information about the coronavirus situation becoming so appalling in the UK that the Co-op was running short of coffins.

I can report that I have been in touch with one of my brothers, who is a carpenter and cabinet maker by trade, and he has verified this shortage. Apparently, a UK government department asked him to convert the fitted kitchens, which he has been making in his living room, into caskets. Lockdown prohibits him from using his workshop so he has to work from home, and anyway because of lockdown no one has jobs and cannot afford to buy kitchens. As he has not sold anything for 12 months, he is only too keen to comply, but I am yet to be convinced that a send-off in a converted kitchen cupboard made from MDF complete with plastic handles will ever catch on. No doubt we shall hear more in due course from the reliable leftist media source that I mention in this article. (I have withheld the name of the media outlet so as to protect the gullible.)

These are the coronavirus case figures for Kaliningrad, 14 March 2021, since the beginning of the pandemic*:
29,294 cases of coronavirus identified in the region
26,863 people have recovered
328 deaths.

*Source: https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/94160-za-sutki-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-ot-koronavirusa-umerli-pyat-pacientov [accessed 14 March 2021]

Feature image attribution: Lynn Greyling. https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=84918&picture=cupboard-with-old-iron-amp-kettles

Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s

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.”

I am sure those migrants think so, those that are escorted across the English Channel first by the French Navy and then by the British, and when they land at Dover are chauffeur driven to 4-Star hotels. Home and dry, you might say! But it is not such plain sailing for the rest of us.

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]
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32175-9/fulltext

Self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 189 [19 September 2020]
The thin dividing line between caution and common sense

Published: 19 September 2020

Reckless, lax, less cautious, or a simple case of resumed normalcy? How should I describe the shift in my attitude to coronavirus, having, at the time of writing, completed my 189th day of ‘self-isolation’?

Self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad

When self-isolation first started it was as it sounds, exactly that. My wife and I stayed put, only venturing out into the great beyond when necessity dictated, ie to go shopping. One hundred and eighty nine days into the isolating regimen, and we are not so punctilious. We still proceed with caution but have ceased to follow the caution-code to the letter.

For example, in our early self-isolating days before going to the shops, we underwent a countdown checklist as rigorous as any practised by Lancaster bomber crews prior to take off on their way to Berlin.

Facemasks x two ~ check. Hand wipes ~ check. Large shopping bags ~ check. Rubber gloves ~ check. Irvin flying jacket ~ check. OK, perhaps not the latter, but you get the picture.

This has all been steadily shelved. We do still take our masks with us but only because some shops, government offices and other such places demand that they are worn. We do not wear them in the street, and we no longer don them when we travel by taxi.

Taking a taxi in itself is another example of altered traffic-light syndrome, as we scale down from red for danger to amber for caution. Time was once when I would no more get into a taxi than climb into a hearse, but that time has long since passed. My initial return to this convenient mode of transport would not be countenanced unless my facemask was sternly in place, and we would ride out the duration of the journey with our faces poised before the open windows and wipe our hands thoroughly with disinfectant wipes as soon as we alighted. Now, we are happy to taxi-it sans masks. We still leave a window or two open and shoot each other a tight-lipped smile whenever our driver coughs or sneezes, but we are nowhere near as paranoid.

In days of yore when the coronavirus menace first hit, masked-up and ridiculous-looking, we would enter the local supermarket as if invited to a radiation-leak party. Once inside, we tore around the shop grabbing what we wanted as if our arses were on fire and religiously observed the one-metre distancing tapes at checkout.

Prior to Mission Shopping, and as part of our checklist ritual, we would first decide which of the two supermarkets we were going to shop in. We are lucky to have two supermarkets close to our abode, neither large but one smaller than the other, and as the smaller supermarket, which is also the more expensive, is always more empty than the other, for the sake of presumed safety and expediency, ie quickly in and more rapidly out, we always chose this shop. Now, however, as self-isolating veterans, we observe this rule no more, shopping in each supermarket as mood or necessity suggests.

Another precaution that has been downgraded from a stage 10 emergency situation to about a four and a half is the strict rule that we originally applied to quarantining our shop purchases.

On arriving home, flak damaged but yet intact, we would extract only those items from our shopping bags that we immediately required, for example food items for lunch, or which needed, because of their perishable nature, to be stowed away in the fridge. All food packages would be washed or wiped prior to opening and those destined for the fridge would be placed in the fridge isolation room ~ the chilling compartment (aptly named). The rest of the commodities remained in the bags and were placed in the hallway to the attic, where they would remain until safe the following day.

Now, Olga seems to ignore this ritual almost completely (she is more ~ considerably more ~ of a coronavirus skeptic than I), whilst I sometimes remember to ‘handle with care’ and sometimes do not.

In earlier times, on our return from wherever, one or other of us would take care to thoroughly disinfect the door handles, keys and anything else we had touched. We would wash our hands as soon as we returned, disinfect and then wash our hands again. We continue to wash our hands as though a liberal has shook them (cannot imagine that ever happening), but the attendant ritual has been more or less dispensed with.

On the social distancing front, the ironclad code of no fraternising with the suspect-contaminated has also been downplayed, and we have gone from no guests and social gatherings to selected guests and small social gatherings. Admittedly, these occasions have mainly taken place in the garden and not indoors but, as I believe I mentioned in a previous post in this series, maintaining prescribed social distancing measures quickly proved impractical if not impossible, and whilst we do not go around hugging and embracing as if we belong to France ~ when France was France ~ we are considerably less conscious of the risks of social interaction than we were six months ago.

Self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad

Possibly ~ no, not possibly, definitely ~ the greatest alteration in our Covid-19 bunker mentality is that slowly, but surely, we have permitted ourselves the luxury of dining and drinking out. We are not entirely comfortable with this arrangement, and, indeed, it just happened rather than was planned.

The momentous first post-coronavirus café/bar occasion took place during a day trip to the small seaside resort Otradnoye. Olga wanted to swim and the most comfortable and convenient place to wait for her was in the outside area of the pop-up summer café, a party tent that services the food and beverage needs of the sand and sea clientele. We had a pack of antiseptic wipes on board and used these like a clumsy juggling circus act to decontaminate the beer bottle. We had also taken the precaution of bringing with us our own plastic cups.

The second bar/restaurant experience was when we travelled to Svetlogorsk to celebrate our 19^th wedding anniversary. This was an indoor job, because the hotel staff would not allow us to dine and drink outside. At the time I thought it quite high risk, even allowing for the fact that Olga and I were the only patrons, but neither of these two events was as adventurous as our most recent outing when we ate and drank in the company of about 100 people or more at a beach-side restaurant in Zelenogradsk.

Once again, we refrained from sitting inside, choosing instead a table on the upper tier of the two-tier decking system facing the beach and sea. I believe, if my memory serves me right, that a pack of antiseptic wipes came into play but more by force of habit than with respect to coronavirus hygiene protocol.

Self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad

In a few days’ time we have a relative from the UK coming to visit. As a matter of course, she will have to undergo a test for coronavirus at one of Kaliningrad’s clinics the day after she arrives. If she gets the all clear, we will no doubt push the boundaries back still further by going to a restaurant and, as the autumn chill sets in, we will be dining inside ~ That’s one small step for mankind, one giant leap for a Covid-19 self-isolator.

Englishman Self-isolating in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 42 [30 April 2020]

Published: 30 April 2020

Are you familiar with that old British expression, “The pot calling the kettle black”? Case in point: Since entering the new Coronavirus Age, the British media claim that vodka consumption has substantially increased here in Russia. What the UK’s self-appointed temperance league failed to mention (and having worked in the media, I have to say that most of them are alcohol sodden (mind you, they may all be too PC for that now!)) and what has subsequently emerged in a BBC article* (no less!) is that Brit’s consumption of supermarket-bought alcohol has shot up during lockdown by a whopping great 31%.

Previous articles:
Article 1: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 1 [20 March 2020]
Article 2: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 6 [25 March 2020]
Article 3: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 7 [26 March 2020]
Article 4: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 9 [28 March 2020]
Article 5: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 10 [29 March 2020]
Article 6: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 16 [4 April 2020]
Article 7: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 19 [7 April 2020]
Article 8: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 35 [23 April 2020]

As to whether there is any truth in the purported rise in vodka sales here, it is quite possible that the UK media has only part of the picture (not that that has ever seemed to bother them). An anecdote related to me last week told of mystified traffic police, who, having stopped a number of cars to ask the occupants where they were going (as part of the social distancing rules) and in the process discovering a strong smell of vodka, breathalysed the drivers only to find that they were sober. Apparently, the vodka was being used not for human consumption but as disinfectant!

Ha, a likely story, I thought. But then it seemed to make sense. With so much adverse publicity accruing over the dubious effectiveness of this and that disinfectant, and Trump wanting to inject us all with it, what could be more logical than to fall back on something you can trust! I was straight out and buying my extra two bottles!

Whilst there is no direct evidence to suggest that consumption of the national beverage has been coronavirusised, I have detected among our immediate neighbours what I consider to be a far more invidious addiction seemingly catalysed by the rules of social distancing, and that is an obsessive predilection for D.I.Y..

They are all at it! Apart from me. I am too busy indoors disinfecting. But there they are in their gardens digging, sawing, hammering, shattering the tranquillity of early-spring with the high-pitched rasping noise of angle-grinders and the dentistry whine of high-powered drills. Cement mixers rumble, new garden fences clank and rattle as they are bolted into place, old tiles and other neglected items are noisily removed and stacked; indeed, such is the energy expended, both in physical labour and ardour, that it is enough to make you reach for the bottle and disinfect again.

Even we had six new trees delivered and planted, but I think we got away with it, leaving payment at the backdoor and shouting merrily to the tree planters from the safety of our terrace-balcony.

Englishman Self-isolating in Kaliningrad

The man next door, whose garden has resembled Steptoe’s yard for the past 12 months, possibly more, appears to have developed one of the rarer symptoms of coronavirus, which the Daily Express expressly discovers on an almost daily basis. Why else would he cut down a tree that should never have been cut down, put up a plank to replace the tree because his cat used to climb up it and, what I really found hard to accept, removed the bog that had been lying around incongruously in his back garden?

This toilet was the sort of romanticised novelty that I had not beheld since the days of my early youth. I had been brought up in rural surroundings, in those halcyon days when villages were still villages, before that is the second-home buyers and city commuters moved in; when villages were populated by British-legacy stock, folk born in Victorian times whose families, generation after generation of them, were born in the village, lived their lives in the village, died in the village and were buried in the village graveyard. Every one of these people was a country character, and every other house in which they lived was characterised by a tin-roofed shed at the far end of the garden. Admittedly, the ubiquitous outside lav would normally be enclosed, inside four walls and with a roof of sorts, but this only strengthened my case for the retention of a toilet most unusual in mode and manner.

Englishman Self-isolating in Kaliningrad

In deference to those save-the-planet groups who, like the dinosaurs before them, used to rule the world, before that is the world decided it could stand up for itself and swept them off the streets, I like to think of this toilet as the environmentalist’s bog of choice. Lying abstrusely on its side and out in the open, it was such an inspiring sight that had I not been disinfecting I could almost have taken up easel and canvas and captured it for posteriority.

On the other side of us, the place I call ‘the commune’, rum goings on are keeping us guessing. For 14 months or so the back garden owned but unfrequented by our rock-music-loving neighbour, fondly referred to by us as Greengrass, was little more than a neglected patch of scrubland. Then, in an alarming development, a gaggle of Greengrass’s confederates, hitherto unknown to us, began gradually, very gradually, to hack down the undergrowth, clear the extraneous material and dispose of all the junk. In the process of doing so, the wilderness was turned into a place where weary cowboys can bivouac.

A camp fire was lit and, with the help of Mother Invention, makeshift seats were quickly assembled ~ a couple of planks on four piles of rock ~ and with the timely assistance of some disinfectant our auxiliary neighbours ~ seven or more ~ set about celebrating the art and science of coronavirus distancing.

Since then these rawhides have helped the neighbour at the end of their Ponderosa to put up a new fence (the irony of this did not escape me) and in a sinister development, which has given credence to all kinds of ‘there goes the neighbourhood’ theories, are constructing something around their camp fire which could be anybody’s guess, from a Russian version of Stonehenge to an outside toilet from Wigan. My money is on a coronavirus air-raid shelter, the idea being that should the Big C continue to threaten the populace with more of the same social distancing, then the entire city could protect itself by getting together in there.

Englishman Self-isolating in Kaliningrad finds outside toilet drinking den — **A Social Distancing Vodka-Drinking Shelter** (Photo credit: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/)

Reference
*https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52329679

“If coronavirus has taught me one thing about the human condition it is that the less sense it makes the more sense it makes.”
~ A man with an outside toilet