Lockdown Kaliningrad - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 292 [31 December 2020]
or Goodbye 2020, if I never see you again will it be too soon?

Published: 31 December 2020 ~ 2020 Memories are made of this

The End is Nigh! Well, you would think so from the aggregated hype bubbling furiously over the past 12 months in the cauldrons of the western media. Never before in recent history has the press had the opportunity to indulge itself in a Groundhog Field Day like the one that has been handed to them by the pandemic (or is that scamdemic?). But enough of the soothsaying and a tad more soothing-saying, if you don’t mind. The end is nigh for 2020: Time to reflect on the past 12 months.

My period of voluntary self-isolation began back in March 2020, and like most people I have evaluated the quality of my life during this epoch as a series of stops, starts and checks. However, on looking back I realise that although the impediment of coronavirus fear and its attendant restrictions have cast a long shadow over our social life, it never succeeded in inflicting a total eclipse. As my wife is fond of saying, “Humans can adapt to anything in time”, and whilst in my books I have committed the cardinal sin by steering clear of bars and other places where people tend to congregate, in retrospect 2020 was far from totally written off. Indeed, in spite of muzzle-wearing and fetishistic hand-sanitising, we did still have a life ~ we met friends, took several trips to the coast, visited art galleries and places of historical interest, entertained at home and, most importantly, used the extra time that we had at our disposal in the most constructive ways.

We certainly managed to get more done around the house and in the garden ~ especially in the garden. This is Olga’s pet project: converting what was a slab of inherited concrete into a proper, functioning outdoor area, where she can enjoy the flowers and trees, and I can enjoy a pint.

Years ago, in the mists of a different time, I worked on a magazine called Successful Gardening, from which I learnt that my greatest contribution to any practical endeavour in this field would be to make myself scarce, which is exactly what I did. So, I have to confess that the lion’s share of the work was done by my wife. Yet, I feel no need for excuse making. Gardening is a sport, and like any other sport, some you participate in; in others you are a spectator.

Where coronavirus is concerned, it is for my family and friends back in the UK that I feel the most sorry. The UK media has not had the opportunity to be this gory and ghastly in its coverage since Jack the Ripper terrorised Whitechapel. Not even brutal acts of terrorism, which are officially swept under the carpet by deflection techniques that focus on holding hands and candle-lit vigils, come close to the penny dreadful coverage that coronavirus receives. It would not be half so bad if 1 + 1 = 2, but nothing about the measures being taken to combat coronavirus in the UK ~ the draconian measures ~ seems to add up, and, as with Brexit, the country appears to be split yet again, and uncannily yet again, as with Brexit, the fault lines are political and a peculiar inversion of the status quo.

In complete contradiction to the overt emphasis placed at any other time on civil liberties and the evils of the so-called surveillance society, 1984 and all that, it is the left that appears to be screaming for lockdown, mask-wearing and any other hard and fast rules. Indeed, they do not seem to be able to get enough of it, and, with the illiberality that is customary with liberals, are spitting tar and feathers at anyone who is impudent enough to advocate liberty above home slavery. The megaphone message is: Do as you are told! Stay in! Don’t go anywhere, or we are all going to die!!.

Admittedly, there are a lot better things to do with your time than dying but is being bolted and barred in your home for what little there is left of your life it? The older we become the more precious life becomes, but so does living your life. It is the Bitch of having been born at all.

The problem, or at least one of the salient problems of getting old ~ and for some inexplicable reason we all tend to do it, get old, I mean ~ is that you reach the stage where you think you can hear each grain of sand dropping into the hour glass, and whilst it is normal on the push-penny arcade machine of life to brace yourself for the moment when inevitably your turn will come, when you will be bumped off down the chute, the media over the past 12 months has not missed a trick in reminding us that the man with the cowl and scythe is busier than he has ever been pushing coins into the slot.

No one can deny that there has been a lot of death about, and sadly we were not spared. Our good friend, Stanislav (Stas) died in November 2020. Immediately, rumours abounded that he had died of coronavirus, the majority of people having become so obsessed with the virus that it has become almost impermissible to die from anything else. Stas did not die from coronavirus. But he did die, and with his passing we lost a very good and much-loved friend.

Without doubt, one of the most perplexing things about getting older is that not only do you have to come to terms with your own mortality, you also have to come to terms with the loss off those who are nearest and dearest. Each loss tears a hole in the fabric of life that can never be repaired.

But enough of this morbidity. Like everything in life, what some people lose on the swings others gain on the merry-go-rounds, and whilst we can conclude that whereas it has been a troubled year for most of us, especially those on the frontline ~ doctors, nurses, paramedics and the rest ~ if you have the good fortune to be a mask producer, the director of a pharmaceutical industry, a media magnate, I do not suppose that Mr Coronavirus seems such a bad fellow after all, and this is without mentioning the increased yields experienced in the funeral industry.

Enough said: In a consummately original and unplagiaristic moment, my valediction for the year 2020 is that it was ‘the best of years, ‘t’was the worst of years’.

Think of 2020 as a painful tooth that needs to be extracted by the dentist: you might miss it, but you will certainly be glad it has gone …

Happy New Year
to One & All

Flowers in Olga Hart's Garden Kaliningrad

2020 Memories are made of this Mick Hart Woodoo Hairdressers Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad 2020 Mick Hart & Olga Hart Vintage Car

2020 Memories are made of this Mick Hart & Olga Hart

Olga Hart celebrates Kant's birthday Konigsberg

Mick Hart with relics Kaliningrad market

2020 memories are made of this

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 6 [25 March 2020]

Published: 25 March 2020

Day 5 of self-isolation and I am as happy as a pig in …. What is the expression? Ahh, straw. Of course, it is early days and there is a slight difference between five days and, how long has it been suggested in the media, 18 months? But I am confident that come what may I can do my time.

Self-isolating & Lockdown — (photo credit: publicdomainvectors

The hypocrisy inherent in that statement compels me to admit, however, that people like myself who have been working from home for years do have a distinct advantage. For us it is a way of life: self-isolating, social distancing, cuh, it is as easy as mugging somebody and blaming it on a deprived background. Over a period of time ‘working from homers’ cannot help but develop all of the essential skills isolators need to survive. We end up being Robinson Crusoes of our time, man; Friday or any other day, it is all the same to us.

Previous article: Diary of a Self-isolator (Day 1)

Self-isolating & Lockdown

I appreciate that the situation is somewhat different, somewhat more irksome should you by nature be a get-up-and-go, over-energised, gung-ho, physical-expending type or by vocation a manly man or manly woman doing heave-ho type of work. Self-lock-up, like voluntarily chastity, cannot be easy (they say it can be fun?) if you spend much of your life running marathons, getting sweaty down the gym, chopping down trees, digging holes or mountain climbing, but you do not need to run around your house with your chopper in your hand, tunnel your way out as if you are in Colditz or find yourselves climbing the walls, and the same applies to keeping fit and making your trainers pong. These things can be just as effectively transacted at home as in a posy, rip-you-off sports centre. OK, nobody is going to see you in the ridiculously expensive gear you bought to show off in, but if that worries your ego, why not just take a ubiquitous ‘selfie’ and post it up on Facebook.

I reverted to home workouts years ago during an eight-year spell when I was working a 70-hour week, when it was just not feasible, and when I certainly did not have the inclination, after rolling home late on an evening to look out my gym gear, pack it (forgetting your towel, naturally), travel to the sports centre, jump around, shower, pack up your kecks in your old kit bag and trundle all the way home. Home exercise saved an awful lot of time and made even more sense ~ it was a good way of saving money, too.

Admittedly, as on many occasions I elected to workout before I travelled to work, which meant dragging my sad and sorry arse out of bed at 5am (always difficult if you have had five pints of glorious ale the night before), it was difficult, but very good for self-discipline ~ Ouch! ~ although the combination of hard exercise, sleep deprivation and, if you are foolish enough to imbibe the night before, shock detoxification can produce an effect that is almost out-of-body. But there is really no need to follow my masochistic lead. Just choose a time of day when exercise suits you best ~ that is the beauty of working from home, indeed just being at home!

Keeping occupied whilst incarcerating yourself, or being locked down by the State, is another matter and depends on what you are used to and how adaptable you are.

“Be an opener of doors” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This blog, my diary, a biography that I am editing and a couple of other projects keeps me very busy. I have a Lada-load of books that I want to read and, when all of this becomes too wearing on the eyes and as Poirot was fond of saying, the little grey cells, I can always put my pinny on and pretend I am a housewife before the days of the gender wars.

To say that there is nothing to do and that ‘I’m bored’ is an alien concept to me. As my late friend Victor Rybinin the artist and historian said, “I can only imagine what boredom is!”. This is the internet age, dammit.

Self-isolating & Lockdown

We might live in the misinformation/disinformation age, but when you cut through the crap on the internet there is really quite a lot of good stuff out there. If you look hard enough, you can learn all sorts of new things. My ex-SAS friend, who is currently on lockdown in London (why not, he has been locked up everywhere else), is biding his time between unarmed combat training, learning how to make soufflés , and another chap I know, who once registered his employment as a professional burglar, has started a new business on eBay selling all sorts of home appliances, jewellery and things that he has collected over the years.

You meet a lot of interesting people when pub-crawling is your hobby, er although possibly not at the moment!

If the truth be known, that is the only thing that I am missing in this new isolation age ~ my weekly trip to the boozer. Somehow, it is just not the same, drinking with friends whilst on Skype.

However, being optimistic (very by the look of the news), come summer at least we can invite some friends around for a drink. My new social-distancing socialising plan is called relative socialising. How it works is that having disinfected ourselves and made sure that the wind is blowing in the right direction, we, my wife and I, sit on the terrace and drink ~ the terrace is on the first floor ~ whilst they, the guests, sit outside in the garden. We can hold conversations by shouting to each other over the railings and/or use our mobile phones if and when the mood should take us. This is also an excellent way of keeping your mind occupied and stopping you from reading Google News. If you do not have a terrace set-up like us but have two rooms, you could always knock a hole in the wall, fill the gaps with facemasks or, if you have been farsighted, bog paper, and with you in one room and they in the other converse through this homemade filtration system.

There is really no end to the things you can get up to whilst you are self-isolating or in government lockdown.

Yesterday, for example, I read on the Kaliningrad news website that there had been a substantial increase in the number of condoms sold in Russia since the outbreak and spread of coronavirus. It really is quite amazing what people will store in a time of crisis. I suppose with all this time on their hands, and elsewhere, some enterprising couples are making their own rubber gloves.

Tomorrow, Day 6 of Self-isolating, we brave the great outdoors!