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Konig Power Kaliningrad Tribute band to Deep Purple

Konig Power Russia’s Ultimate Tribute to Deep Purple

Kaliningrad’s Konig Power had the pleasure of Mick Hart listening, dancing, and drinking to their Deep Purple tribute. How did they rate his performance?

12 November 2023 ~ Konig Power Russia’s Ultimate Tribute to Deep Purple

I’ve learnt the hard way never to expect too much (Out of life, Mick? Please let me finish.) from tribute bands.

I learnt this lesson in particular during my Rushden Bowls Club years. Not that I have ever played bowls, mind, even if by age I was qualified then and am more-so qualified now. For us, the Rushden Bowls Club was a handy venue from which to run antique auctions and, occasionally, 1940s’ concerts and dances. However, since the club also functioned as an entertainments hosting centre, we were sometimes in the right place at the right time to catch several tribute band performances.  

Needless to say, the professional quality of each band veered from downright dandy to downright dastardly. When they were good, they were good, and when they were bad, they were very, very bad.

Sadly, one or two ‘sank beneath the water like a stone’, and whilst this did not happen often, when it did it had you asking, “Why did I spend good money to listen to a bunch of wannabees butcher the songs of my favourite band, when I might just have easily stayed at home and listened to the real thing courtesy of YouTube?”

The answer to that rhetorical question is that the ‘real thing’ on YouTube is not the real live thing, and when the real live thing is not available, we go for the next best live thing, which, in case you haven’t guessed, is the tribute band.

And so, we come to a recent event, not staged at the Rushden Bowls Club or anywhere vaguely near it, but at Mr Smirnov’s Badger Club tucked away on the Kaliningrad outskirts. Would admission be dependent on the wearing of badger-head codpieces?

Konig Power Russia’s Ultimate Tribute to Deep Purple

The night in question was the 4th of November; the tribute band in question was Konig Power and the band they were representing was Deep Purple.

As all you know-it-alls know, Deep Purple is an English rock band formed in the late 1960s. Together with British bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they made a name for themselves as the ‘Holy Trinity of hard rock and metal bands”. Deep Purple started out as a psychedelic/progressive rock band, but later moved out and moved into hard rock and some say heavy metal. In its lifetime, the band has undergone numerous line-up changes and nuanced shifts in its musical style but has always maintained its place at the summit. The recipient of numerous accolades and coveted music awards, including, after an uphill struggle (which some believe was motivated by institutional cronyism) induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Deep Purple, like their ageing peers Mick Jagger and his Rolling Stones, may not be as young as they used to be, but the pioneers of heavy rock continue to shine the light for new wave bands to follow.

A bit of heavy rock trivia
Deep Purple toured Russia on a number of occasions. It did so from 1996, and in February 2008 appeared in concert at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow.

During the 1970s (My, doesn’t that sound a long while ago!), when heavy rock was in its infancy, I cannot claim to have been a celebrant of it. I was certainly into heavy rock, as I was working in demolition, demolishing disused U.S. aerodromes built in England during the war, and I was also into heavy metal, as I was selling it on the side.

However, at some point during my early teens I turned away from commercial pop, having stumbled upon what is known today as psychedelic and progressive rock.

Bands like Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, featured on the periphery of my new frontier in music, but my inclinations ran more to the likes of Pink Floyd (strictly in their earliest incarnation), Emerson, Lake and Palmer and other truly progressive bands. Then, in 1971, a close friend and collaborator pulled out of his record collection a white album with nothing on the cover but a facsimile handwritten scrawl.

The artist’s name and the name of his band sounded rather silly (which appealed to me immensely), and I certainly had no knowledge of them. Had I missed them on Top of the Pops? That album was the Fillmore East. It was recorded live at the Fillmore in June 1971, and the band that was playing that venue was Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention.

I played the album  and was immediately hooked. I hadn’t heard anything like it, because there had never been anything like it, and there’s never been anything like it since. Having played it more than sufficiently to drive my parents to distraction and annoy the neighbours no end, I then raced out and bought, in rapid succession, Freak Out, 200 Motels, We’re Only in it for the Money, Chunga’s Revenge and another half-dozen Zappa albums at £2.20 a pop from Peterborough’s Woolworths. It was an Overnight Sensation; Zappa had converted and, some admonishingly said, thoroughly perverted me.

So, onto this recent tribute concert, where I was going not, as I have intimated, as a dyed-in-the-wool Deep Purple fan but as an open-minded listener with a knowledge of and interest in heavy rock and heavy metal music.

The night before the gig, I had a nocturnal gig of my own ~ insomnia, which ended in a dose of Nytol.  Throughout the day of the concert, I was not up too much. It was all I could do to scan one of my old hand-written diaries, the 1976 edition, for storage in the ‘cloud’. It is an ongoing and laborious task, scanning the pages of diaries (I am sure you do it all of the time.) but the upside of it is, it does not entail much mental effort.  So far, I have scanned diaries spanning the years 1971 to 1976; only 25 years to go before I catch up with the time when I swapped my pen for a keyboard.

The point is, just in case you think I’ve forgotten what the point is, that my insomnia had left me with a not unusually dull and heavy background headache, which Nytol had exacerbated: just the thing one needs, I thought, when attending a heavy rock concert! But, to quote my old friend Frank, “I was born to have adventure …” So off we went, headache and all.

On our way to the Badger Club, we stopped off at a nearby bar where I sunk a pint of beer. It seemed to do the trick. Doesn’t it always? I cannot for the life of me begin to understand how non-drinkers get over their headaches!

Konig Power

The Deep Purple tribute band that we would witness this evening goes by the name of Konig Power. The line-up consists of: Yuri Koenig, vocals; Viktor Markov, guitar, solo and backing vocals;  Dmitry Isakov, bass guitar; Alexander Nazarov, keyboards; and Alexander Kazbanov, drums.

Konig Power Russia's Deep Purple tribute band. Group lie-up.

Yuri Koenig, lead singer and founder of the band, may be Russian but he sings his Deep Purple cover songs in perfect English. Before launching into his act, Yuri came to our table and in conversation revealed the sixteen or seventeen tracks that the band would be playing this evening. They must have been among Deep Purple’s most famous hits for, with one or two exceptions, I seemed to know them all.

During our conversation, Yuri revealed that as well as Deep Purple, he was a lifelong fan of the Beatles. This did not surprise me any, as the greater percentage of Russian folk over a certain age seem to have a perennial soft-spot for the mop-top band from Liverpool.

My sister was a Beatlemania victim. I suppose in the Beatles’ hey days it was hard to be anything else. Youth culture at the time was simplistically split into two cult camps: you either went with the Beatles or favoured the Rolling Stones. I leant towards the Stones, but my favourite ‘commercial’ rock band of that era was neither of the big two, it was the third spoke in the music scene’s wheel, the one and only Kinks, and out of that 60s/70s trio, it remains so to this day.

None of the groups that I have just mentioned fall into the generic category occupied by Deep Purple.

Deep Purple’s music is heavy rock, and if any of you reading this are unsure as to what that is, ~ maybe because you have suffered the inconvenience of having been born too late, when there is little more to listen to than rap-crap mediocrity ~ it is heavy and it rocks.

The opening chords of Konig Power left no doubt in anyone’s mind what brand of music it was. The ‘heavy’ passed like a shockwave through our bodies and the building in its entirety actually, physically rocked.

Konig Power Kaliningrad Deep Purple TRibute Band

Indeed, so heavy, strident, loud and utterly surprising was the initial amplification that had  my badger’s head codpiece not been properly secured by a pair of lady’s suspenders, I would have run the very real risk of losing it. It could have shot right off! As it was, I discretely adjusted it just in time to hear Yuri cry what he had no need to cry, “I want to smash this wall!” He very nearly succeeded, with the help of my flying codpiece.

My codpiece was not the only victim of the band’s explosive intro. The dramatic opening chord seemed also to have blown away Smirnov’s leather outfit, for, having put away his pipe ~ I didn’t know he smoked one? ~ he appeared from the back rooms of his TARDIS looking every bit the caveman in a short-sleeved furry waistcoat open from chest to midriff. Aleks is one of those alpha guys. He has a hairy chest. My shirt was well done up.

The first track of the evening was Deep Purple’s signature tune Smoke on the Water, based on the 1971 fire at Montreux Casino*.

Understandably, it is a powerful song, requiring a lot of clout from the vocalist, and for guitarist Dmitry Isakov a tightly scripted performance to live up to a guitar riff which has gone down in rock history as one of its most memorable.

*Do you not believe in coincidences?
Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water song is reputed to have been inspired by the burning of Montreux Casino in 1971. My favourite band is The Mothers of Invention. My favourite album is The Mothers of Invention live at the Fillmore East, recorded in 1971. The casino burnt down as a result of a Mothers of Invention fan firing a flair gun during a Mother’s of Invention concert. I wasn’t there. I have an alibi. On the night in question, I was sitting quietly at home playing roulette and blackjack whilst listening to my Fillmore East album. I think I was wearing flared trousers and smoking a cigar.

This, then, was the moment of truth. It was the first track of the evening. Deep Purple’s headline song, the one that would sort the tribute men from the boys.

Success! I am pleased and relieved to report; Bravo!; and a standing ovation! Konig Power had not disappointed. We could settle in for the rest of the evening. Yes, I will have a glass of vodka.

It has to be said that lead singer Yuri Koenig excelled himself. He has a good, strong, voice, with a flexible range and tempo and had no difficulty in oscillating between the low growling guttural notes and clean, high-pitched screams which characterises the Deep Purple sound.

A vital clue as to how he reaches those high notes could, I quietly ruminated, be the very tight trousers that he was wearing. They looked like a pair once owned by the Bee Gees. I didn’t say a word. However, you, being less diplomatic than I, might have been tempted to say, “Pardon me for asking, but were you ever awarded the Badger’s Head Codpiece with Two Golden Globes?” I’m rather glad that you were not there.

Guitarists, Dmitry Isakov and Viktor Markov gave dazzling displays of nimble fingers, which were expressively more than capable of drawing perfect musicianship from the instruments they were wielding. I tried to work out how they did it, how they were doing it so well and doing it so rapturously, but just like seasoned magicians with professional cardsharp skills, if it wasn’t simply down to their fingers, it must have been up their sleeves. Their extraordinary and excellent playing hit the spot like it ought and certainly contributed to ‘smashing’ Yuri’s wall, as though smashing walls to them was second nature.

A heavy rock group without drums a-rockin’ is almost as inconceivable as a globalist without tentacles. Manning the drums this evening was Alexander Kazbanov, who effortlessly, or so it seemed, brought it all together in an assured style and with a classic sense of timekeeping that his alter ego, Ian Paice, could only have applauded.

Whether his keyboards colleague, Alexander Nazarov, wanted to or did distort the sound of the organ he was playing in emulation of his Deep Purple counterpart, the legendary Jon Lord, is not for a novice like me to say, but the rhythm he produced rode along with the heavy rock beat without becoming lost in it, either utterly or partially, adding, not subtracting, and holding its own quite comfortably within the epicentre of the storm of sound.

In fact, there was nothing to complain about in the band’s rendition of the band they loved to play, and nothing by way of syncopation that failed to fit the tribute bill.

Whilst Konig Power paid homage in the best and most professional way to every Deep Purple song to which they treated us, by far the most accomplished in my opinion was the last song of the evening, a reprise of Deep Purple’s signature tune, namely Smoke on the Water. Already sung and sung well, beyond the level of prosaic competency, the striking difference between the earlier rendition and this, the evening’s sign-off track, was the well-appointed inclusion of Mick Hart guesting on chorus vocals.

Mick Hart with Konig Power's lead singer Yuri Koenig singing 'Smoke on the Water'

Although it could be argued that Konig Power had no need to add this particular cherry to the icing on their cake, all I can say in response to that is stand by Wembley Stadium, and yes, if they ask me nicely, I’ll sponsor a toilet door . I’ll even throw in a photo of me as well.

You know, it’s true what they say about fame: it can quickly go to your badger’s head!

Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Pardon me for badgering you

Badger Club Kaliningrad a Bohemian Night on the Tiles
Made in Kaliningrad Exclusive Badger Underpants
Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House
True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

Aleksandr Smirnov's Gothic art, Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House

It’s Gothic! But what kind?

1 November 2023 ~ Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House

There’s no spires, towers or turrets silhouetted against a full-moon sky above an impossibly craggy, precipitous cliff top, no sinister Baron Frankenstein or bat-metamorphosising sharp-toothed count, no film-set outsized lightning rod rising from the roof poised for that life-giving thunderbolt to kick-start the borrowed heart and incite the cadaverous limbs of a grizzly patchwork embryo ~ at least, I don’t believe there is. But remembering where we are, within the eternal shadow of German Königsberg, there’s more than a whiff of the Hoffmannesque both in Aleks Smirnov’s chimney sweep image, as fabled in German history, and his Badger Club/studio complex.

The Gothicism that forms the basis of Mr Smirnov’s public image (some would say his soul) and suffuses his club and art is a meeting place of invocations, each containing the traceable elements of folklore, legend, superstition, witchcraft, dark-side sorcery, imaginative tall-tale flights and dream-like childhood fantasy.

His grotesque artistic compositions, sometimes risibly ironic, often tormented and twisted, always enigmatic, are an intercopulation of various Gothic sub-genres that attain apotheosis in the legend of the Green Man and the anything-goes enchanted forest.

Aleks Smirnov’s world, let us coyly qualify that and say Aleks Smirnov’s ‘artistic world’, is a meeting of the ways; a rum place wherein the fantastic, unsettling otherness as explored in TV programmes like the 1960s’ Twilight Zone, 1970s’ Thriller and in fictional tales that you may have heard of, featuring  bespectacled Harry What’s-His-Face, come together with Freudian fantasies to hold each other as if they are one.

Kaliningrad Gothic

It is not by chance or accident that Alex’s art is skewed by snatches or glimpses of something half-seen, sometimes almost invisible. For example, wall plaques of barely discernible faces blurring into and partially erased by stylised foliate overlays; mythological creatures, devoid of detailed features, ill-defined in form, swooping bat-like from daubed textured ceilings; the cruelly twisted disfigured face masks that impel you to put them on but more quickly to take them off;  the sack-cloth and ashes hessian gowns, lightly touched by tapestry and the heavier hand of superstition that dwells in ancient lore and in Little Red Riding Hood subterfuges, which help to conveniently explain away the dangers that lurk in dense, dark forests in terms of ghosties and goblins; the clumsily grandiose over-the-rainbow other-world helmets and repertory theatre gilded crowns ~ indeed, everything you’d expect to find in a parallel world of magic and sorcery, you’ll find in the House of Smirnov.

Aleks Smirnov art Kaliningrad

And yet, viewed from another angle (and there are plenty of those in Smirnov’s art) could they be distorting props taken from a surrealist film set, or things of which we never speak but which, both in our sleeping and waking hours, exists in each and all of our minds? Like the mirror of life itself, the shapes that we are permitted to see in Mr Smirnov’s visions are a cradle to the grave experience where “more of madness, more of sin and horrors the soul of the plot”.

But the madness, if it exists, is not opaque. The House of Smirnov has many mirrors. And the sin is hardly original: pleasure is what pleasure does and has been doing since time immemorial. Like everything in the Chimney Sweep’s lair, it may be in your face, but you can only ever really see it through the spectacles of your senses. It is a kind of delicious confinement and is all the more enticing for it!

As for horror, if it exists, then this is the vaguest face of all. Now you see it; now you don’t. It is easy to look in the mirror when you’ve prepared yourself to see someone else, but which side of the mirror is throwing the reflection? As with E.A. Poe’s mysterious Usher, the House of Alex Smirnov, could well be Smirnov himself.

Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House

Personality is everywhere, and it runs through almost everything. Like a phantasmagorical current it links the disparate parts. Every shadowy, half-complete (or so we are led to believe), vague, ambiguous, ambivalent emblem, be it cast in the form of a bronze planished wall plaque, painting of a symbolic nature, surrealistic sculpture or just a gnarled, tormented, piece of driftwood rescued, sanctuarised and, once resuscitated, displayed in the most unaccountable place: never before has juxtaposition been so content and connected.

Olga Hart with Singer Songwriter Andrey Berenev

At first such apparitions appear disjointed but thematically and psychologically a river runs through it all. It is as naturally unnatural as nature itself is truly unnatural, but it carries you into the Green Man vortex as effortlessly as a nursery rhyme: ‘If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise’.

Obfuscating, sometimes suffocating, nature, whether human intrinsic or external organic, plays out its co-existence to interdependent extremes. It is the bogey man of sin, of guilt, stalking hapless generations trapped in the conscience forests of Nathaniel Hawthorn’s mind. It is the temptress lying in wait inside her soft, inviting, secret garden.

Kaliningrad Gothic

As in every game of chance, there is only one winner and that is the House, and this is no more certain than in the House that Aleks built. Whoever we may be and wherever we may be, victims are not spared, not even in Aleks’ toilet, especially not in Aleks’ toilet.

Draw back the crude and heavy, the clumsy wooden rustic bolt, pull back the fairy-tale door and off you go down Alice’s rabbit hole. It is not a WC, unless WC means Wonder Closet; it cannot be called a lavatory, more laboratory of thought; and it is anything but a rest room, a testing room, perhaps. In the strange, dramatic, dynamic department, an awful lot goes on in there, where functionally it shouldn’t.

Gothic in Kaliningrad Aleks Smirnov's toilet

Quiet in place but oppressively loud in colour, spacious but confining, placid but somehow caught in motion, the only way of escaping is to obey the laws of natural contractions. Relax. Take a deep breath and let them push you headlong into the magic of the sweet little garden that lives beneath the wash basin. This illuminated scene, seen through moulded windows, begs for someone to come inside. Could England’s Alnwick Garden ever be more beautiful, more graphically serene, more wantonly irresistible? Could it take you gently by the hand and lead you up the garden path as Aleks’ garden does? 

Secret Garden Aleks Smirnov Toilet Kaliningrad Kaliningrad Gothic

Mr Smirnov is no mad scientist, and neither is he a bewinged count from an exotic fictious realm. He is a fabled German chimney sweep returned to Earth as artist. His residence and his club are not so much a turreted chateau or multi-faceted castle overlooking a bat-infested tarn but a playful topsy-turvy take on Germany’s Gingerbread House.

Seen from outside, preferably at night, when cold and invaded with rain, the arched and crooked windows filtering light through panes of contrasting hue call softly to your childhood memories the ghouls and goblins of the Brothers Grimm, whilst below in the cobbled courtyard, headless female mannequins dressed like predator tarts prowl the streets of your later life reminding you of all the places where you said you’ve never been.

Gothic in Kaliningrad Aleks Smirnov Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad Gothic Mannequin Aleks Smirnov Kaliningrad
Mannequin Aleks Smirnov Kaliningrad

The sinister woodland theme, wherein do dwell all kinds of elves and ghouls, replaces the streets beneath it. First, Aleks will put you in the club and then, if your luck is in, take you to places you’ve never been.

A tour of the chimney sweep’s backrooms, replete as they are with myriad props and costumes, all in form and nature an epitome of the bizarre and grotesque, is a Masque of the Red Death moment. Within these bewitching antechambers, space ought not be compromised but the walls have a habit of closing in and the light, which filters, falls and falters in the taints and tints of the backlit panes, formulates the kind of seduction that Mother Nature would never condone, least not without a spiritual condom.

In the company of sweeps and badgers, you are given the chance to be anyone, everyone if you so desire, even those in your wildest dreams who you never thought you would be, which includes yourself if you want it that badly. Remember that classic scene in Patrick McGoohan’s Prisoner: “We thought you would be happier as yourself …” It’s all part of the grand plan, the eternal trick, the fairy tale; the who is deluding who; the question where have I put myself? The self.

Aleksandr Smirnov, Olga Hart

Aleks Chimney Sweep Smirnov’s self is who he would have you believe he is and who you want him to be. It really is nobody’s call but your own.  However, accepting limitations, it is futile to look for Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker or any one of those Gothic guys and gals. He could never be that archetypal. And the place where he works, where he drinks, where he dreams is It. Here, there is no Baron Frankenstein, no graveyard afterlife embryo waiting perchance on that shard from the heavens to turn the crank on the sleeping heart, no long-toothed fiend in a bat-like cloak, no orgasmic sigh from the pit and the pendulum, but for all that Mr Smirnov isn’t and for all his art and habitat is, even with gaps, it’s Gothic.

Let’s call last orders, blow out the candles and say Amen to that.

Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Where it’s at

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Mick Hart Sir Francis Drake Kaliningrad

Sir Francis Drake an English Pub in Kaliningrad

Why Sir Francis Drake decided to move to Russia

Updated 23 October 2023 | published 6 April 2023 ~ Sir Francis Drake an English Pub in Kaliningrad

“Would you like to go to an English pub?” Asked in England, this would be a completely pointless question should it be directed at me; but asked in Russia’s Kaliningrad 22 years ago, when the city was little more than a one-bar town, I was waiting for the punchline.

In 2001, going out for a drink in Kaliningrad meant either calling in at the subterranean snooker bar at the front of the Kaliningrad Hotel (big hotel; the only one) or taking a table in one of two restaurants that were lingering on from Soviet times. So, it was hardly surprising when Olga asked me, would I like to go to an English pub, I thought the question a trick one.

It was the name of this English pub that put me to rights: in the UK we have King’s Arms (we don’t know which king); Richard III (found under a carpark in Asian Leicester); the Lord Nelson (not yet suffered the ignominy of having his statue tossed into the drink by loony leftist agitators); we even had Jack the Ripper once, until, at the behest of the feminist mafia, the original name Ten Bells was obsequiously reinstated. And yet, whilst a whole host of famous-named pubs spring readily to mind, such as the Black Rod in Basingstoke and the Big Black Cochrane in Shepherd’s Bush, sometimes referred to as the BBC, I cannot recall ever frequenting a Sir Francis Drake in England.

Sir Francis Drake in Kaliningrad

In the small, secluded outpost of Russia, the Sir Francis Drake established itself as the first of Kaliningrad’s English-themed pubs. It occupied, and still does occupy, a fairly non-descript building in a built-up area some distance removed both from the old town centre, the district once dominated by the Kaliningrad Hotel, and its more typical town-centre successor: the area in, around and containing Victory Square.

The Sir Francis Drake locale is an unlikely place for an English pub or any pub for that matter. It brings back memories of streets in London excluded from exploratory pub-crawls as possible places of ill repute ~ assumed publess, therefore pointless.

Mick Hart and Olga Hart in the Sir Francis Drake bar in Kaliningrad 2001
Mick and Olga Hart in the Sir Francis Drake English-theme pub, Kaliningrad 2001

Thus, if on my maiden journey to the Sir Francis, I had expected to find something approximating to a typical English hostelry, which I didn’t, I would have been disappointed. Nevertheless, the owners of the Sir Francis Drake had shown good sense in singling out their establishment and attesting to its themed credentials by erecting by its courtyard gate a proper, hanging English pub sign complete with full-length portrait of the famous man himself, the eponymous Sir Francis in all his 16th century glory. That sign, and what a tremendous sign it was, has long since gone, replaced by a less traditional but self-explanatory clipart-type image, depicting a foaming tankard of beer.

Mixed fortunes

The Sir Francis Drake, as might be expected, has passed through various hands since the days when my English brogues first pitter-pattered across its threshold, and its changing fortunes tend to reflect the grasp successive owners have had of what it is that makes an English pub successful and how best to replicate that success.

For example, shortly after my first visit to the Sir Francis Drake, the bar’s courtyard, a small, paved drinking area or hard-surfaced patio adjacent to the entrance, acquired chairs and tables at which, on days when the weather was clement, people would sit and drink. Fast forward two or three years, and all had gone to seed: half a dozen rusting metal chairs around a wonky table completely spattered with bird shit huddled under a ragged canopy, which was dirty and leaked profusely in more than several places but was good at dragging mosquitoes in during the height of summer, did little to boost the passing trade, which simply kept on passing.

Within the bar, the fairly formal atmosphere that once had dwelt there with noble intent, but which in itself was as like to anything lurking in an English pub as nothing is to something, had packed its bags and gone, fled, vamoosed, hurried away, leaving in its wake a tired and tawdry desolate feeling, a non-existent menu and a middle-aged lady behind the bar unarguably more accustomed to propping herself on her elbow and dragging on a fag than she was to serving customers. She pulled me a pint of beer (Good Heavens, it was Charlie Wells!) and rustled me up a bowl of soup: I drank my beer; ate the soup; and left.

It was to coin a phrase one of those “I am going outside and may be gone for some time,” moments, and thus it came to pass; until many years later fate decided to bring me back from Kaliningrad’s blizzard of bars.

Sir Francis Drake Pub Kaliningrad

The rediscovery of the Sir Francis Drake coincided with house hunting. We were looking for a property to buy and whilst engaged in this quest had set up camp in a rented flat nearby.

The nearest watering hole to our place of rest was a small craft-beer bar, a new concept to Kaliningrad that had just begun to be trialled. It was a superbly spartan venue but had more beers than a bootleggers’ lock-up. Serving food would have spoilt its image, but to entice my wife to remain in a bar until they kicked me out, I had to ensure that my usual pub diet, which was normally limited to crisps and peanuts, could cunningly be augmented by something approaching a proper meal. Women can be the strangest of creatures.

The closest bar to the foodless establishment was the Sir Francis Drake, and although our last encounter was enough to make us shy away, that the outside area was again presentable and since through its large arched windows a thriving clientele could be seen eating as well as drinking, we decided to bury the hatchet. (That’s an age-old expression, in case you’re wondering, not an ancient Königsberg ritual.)

The bar’s interior had not, and has not, hardly changed a jot since I first clapped eyes on it in May 2001, which is all to the good, since in the UK so many pubs, particularly village pubs, have suffered to have their original appearance, and with it original atmosphere, systematically destroyed by the boardroom boys in suits; those little-minded £-men, whose vandalism ironically demonstrates the feeble knowledge they have of how to sustain a pub and make it pay, an ignorance only equalled by their utter lack of consideration for conservation and history. One day it might just dawn on them that the two go hand in hand. The Philistinism by which they run, and by which they ruin their pubs, is only matched in idiocy by the quick-change con men masquerading as interior designers, whose cack-handed, ill-conceived and badly applied cosmetic surgery scars and robs each pub they touch of the richness of its unique character, charm and personality. The result for the pub is certain death, albeit sometimes a lingering one.

Olde world beams in Kaliningrad bar

Kaliningrad’s Sir Francis Drake is not steeped in antiquity and thus has less to fear than those that are, but its continuity of almost three decades is something of a novelty, something to be proud of, especially in an age that boasts that the attention span of your average phone junkie is Dwarf from the North in stature and Liz Truss in longevity.

Limited by its size (referring now to the Sir Francis Drake, not the Midget Beyond the Midlands) as much if not more by the props at its disposable, nevertheless, with its heavy portcullis-type doors, panelled walls and dark wood beams, the bar continues to cultivate a pleasing and passable, if not strictly genuine, impression of a traditional English tavern or something that could or should be, and we’d like it no less if it was. 

Now, if the Sir Francis Drake had been a genuine English pub, that is to say located in England, it would no doubt have got off to a reasonable start, but inexplicably over time, with no respect for theme or atmosphere, it would be out with the conforming styles and in with the girly-wirly lilacs, other pithy boutique pastels, a mish-mash of pale wood furniture raised on big block legs, inconvenient high-backed seats and, just for good ludicrous measure, a bar looking more out of place than anything that your imagination, even without an addiction to Gold Label and pickled eggs, could conceivably contrive.

I have personally witnessed, back in my days as a beer magazine and pub-guide editor, bars constructed of oak dating to the nineteenth century and period pieces from the 1950s manufactured in plywood kitsch, torn away and replaced with nasty pallid harlequin bricks or MDF veneer, materials which, even devoid of taste, you would not wish on an outside bog in Wigan, let alone install in a pub in Wigan or anywhere else for that matter.

So ten out of ten for the Sir Francis Drake for retaining its integrity and for showing the Brits that it can be done.

Less ten out ten, however, for not repelling the TV invasion. If the UK’s Sir Francis could see off the Spanish fleet whilst playing a game of bowls, thus consigning Spain to a fate of idle siesta-prone work-shies, surely Kaliningrad’s Sir Francis could have thwarted the millennial plot to inundate every last drinking establishment with an armada of flat-screen TVs. (We are talking tellies, not transvestites (which to your way of thinking is the lesser of these two modern evils?)

The Sir Francis Drake 2022

In all fairness, bars, wherever they may be, need to do whatever they can to bring the punters in. Nowhere is that more crucial than in the beleaguered pubs of England, which sadly in more recent decades have fallen foul of a political class that puts ethnics first and tradition last (But what of the Conservatives? What are they conserving? The answer is themselves.)

The Sir Francis Drake hasn’t much space, not enough in fact to swing a Spaniard in, but it has done what it can to cram as many people as possible into the space it’s got. In 2018 and 2019, at a time when we frequented it most, getting a seat on the off chance was a risky business indeed. Whether that is the case today, I cannot really affirm, since, at the time of writing the Sir Francis Drake is under new management, making its present popularity difficult to assess, whereas its erstwhile popularity was never in any doubt: want a table? Book in advance. So, book we always did, and just to play it safe we booked in April of this year.

Mick Hart expatkaliningrad

The best tables in the joint, hence those that are snapped up first, occupy two elevated platforms on either side of the entrance. They cater simultaneously to two innate desires: the need to be seen and whence to see from ~ an exhibitionists’ and voyeurs’ dream hermaphrodite in fulfilment.

The 2018/2019 management, who probably threw in the beer towel during the mask-wearing coronavirus years, were without question, Sir Francis Drake’s most loyal and its most trusted friends.

Throughout their tenure they maintained and retained the integrity of the historic premise, even down to preserving the framed and glazed biographical timeline of the life of Sir Francis Drake, an absorbing document in many ways and one that inevitably showcases the achievement for which he is best remembered, the annihilation of the Spanish fleet, a military-geo-political triumph that paved the way for Britain becoming the greatest naval power on Earth and in the fullness of time the greatest empire.

Biographical Timeline in English-themed pub Kaliningrad

No less spectacularly, the same management also introduced a revolving selection of imported beers and lagers, authentic tasty pub-grub served by tasty female bar staff and young blokes behind the bar who looked as if they knew their stuff probably because they did. It’s amazing how many don’t.

Whilst all the other important fixtures and attractions remain intact, sadly Sir Francis Drake’s superb bar staff and their faithful if rather cliquey friends, who were the mainstay of the clientele, have, like the remnants of the Spanish navy, long since drifted away. People come and people go, but legends live on regardless.

Beer menu bar in Sir Francis Drake Kaliningrad

The last time that I raised my glass in the legendary Sir Francis Drake, September 2023 was drawing to a close. At that time, the menus, both food and drink menus, left over from the previous management were looking somewhat jaded. The beers advertised did not match the available brands, and the foodies who were with me voiced similar reservations with regard to the dishes advertised and the quality of the meals. The service was good, however, and the folks behind the bar efficient, warm and friendly. Thus, the latest report for Sir Francis Drake, which reads nothing like anything that has ever been written about its eponymous hero, is:  ‘Has the ability … could do better … look forward to improvements …” Or have I simply taken these words from a long succession of my old school reports?

Let’s not search for the answer. In the Mick Hart Guide to Kaliningrad’s Bars, the Sir Francis Drake still rates highly ~ seven out of ten at least!

Epilogue

There is no question that the honour of laying the last word of this post should have gone to Sir Francis Drake himself, but, unfortunately, he is unavailable for comment.

Suspecting treachery among the UK’s ruling classes (yet again), I urged him to make all haste to Dover and there play bowls as he did before in Plymouth. If anyone can stem the French Armada and save us from the migrant hoards, Sir Francis is that man. But he must not tarry in his God-given task.

For even as we speak, the UK’s woke-finder generals are busy rewriting slave-trade history, liking and wanting nothing more than to besmirch and depose our national hero as an excuse for the great unwashed to tear his statue from its plinth and toss it into PC Pond. Then they will take each of the pubs that they say his name dishonours and rebrand them in the language of Woke. On t’other side of Hadrian’s Wall, it will be Humza Yousaf King of Kilts, and way down south in London town, Sound-as-a-Pound Sadiq Khan, that Diamond Asian Cockney Geezer. Cuh, would you Adam and Eve it! Is it any wonder that Sir Francis Drake cried “Bowls!” and hurried off to Russia?

Bars in Kaliningrad
4 Great Kaliningrad Bars, Mick Hart’s Pub Crawl
Badger Club Kaliningrad
The London Pub
Premiere Bar
Dreadnought Pub
True Bar

Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Mick Hart and Inara Eagle outside True Club, Kaliningrad

True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

True Bar makes its debut on the Kaliningrad music scene

16 October 2023 ~ True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

Invited to the opening of a new music venue by singer-songwriter Andrey Berenev, the 14th of October 2023 saw us, my wife and I, rendezvousing with our friend and drinking collaborator, Inara, at a café close to the venue.

I wondered what type of music the bar would be playing; would it be underground? The music venue is. It is located on Krasnaya street. You can’t miss it, not because you can’t miss it, but because it has three notable landmarks: a café on either side of it, one of which we assembled in, and opposite an arts and crafts shop selling imaginative artwares inspired by the city’s alter ego Königsberg.

True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

The entrance to the bar lies in the forecourt that it shares with this shop and one of the two coffee shops. As it is below decks, you won’t see a building, just an elevated entrance, with the club’s name and logo attached to the wall. The place you are looking for is True Bar.

For the past two weeks, after a warm and sunny autumn debut, the wind has been howling, the rain has been pelting and the temperature has taken a turn for the worse. We were spared the rain on the evening of our visit to the new club, but the wind had not relented, and each gust was bitterly cold.

As we had arrived early, we hid in the arts and crafts shop for a while, and when we emerged discovered three or four young people waiting at the entrance to the bar. My wife, Olga, and our friend, Inara, were chuckling at the possibility that tonight’s venue would be exclusively for them ~ ‘youngsters’ ~ and that we would be the oldest patrons there. I made a mental note of this, whilst the track from Fred Wedlock played in the background: Would there be concessions at the bar for OAPs, sometimes know as OFs (Old Farts)? I was glad that I was wearing reasonably young person’s clothes. Do you think there’s a chance he missed them?

The bar was a bit behind schedule in opening, which meant that our small group of prospective clientele was growing by the minute. It was reassuring to note that among our fellow shiverers, one or two people of a more mature age had joined the throng, including singer-songwriter Andrey Berenev, who had invited us this evening. This was the first time I had met him in person. You may recall in my former post, The Badger Club, Olga had gone to the venue alone, and I had written about the club having been inspired to do so by her account of that evening and from the photographs she had taken.  In a manner of speaking, however, Andrey had met me; he remembered me from Victor Ryabinin’s funeral.

When at last access to the bar was no longer denied to us, we shot downstairs like ferrets down a drainpipe.

True Bar Kaliningrad

The main staircase, which is a bit dim, so don’t go there in your carpet slippers, descends to what for me was a most welcoming sight indeed, the bar itself.

Behind the bar in a Kaliningrad club
I suppose that does mean we are pleased to see you?

A second staircase takes one down to the club floor. There is no stage, as such. The performers perform with their backs to the upper deck, the small bar area, which is big enough to serve as a viewing gantry. Every inch of the club area is utilised. Including the lower staircase.

Mick Hart with the menu in True Bar Kaliningrad
Perhaps not the usual vegetarian response to pigs ears on the menu

The club seating is a simple ‘homemade’ series of backrest slat benches arranged in pairs either side of a solid table. It’s what it is; and it works. People come here for the music and the atmosphere, and, of course, to drink; everything else is secondary.

I have used the word intimate already, and it gets more so when you want to go to the toilet. I’m not suggesting that you have to share the loo, but to get there you have to single-file between two lines of people: those spread out against the bar and those leaning over the balcony. As I said, one of the leading features of the club is its unconditional intimacy.

Aleksandr Smirnov with Mick Hart and Inara Eagle at a club in Kaliningrad
It’s amazing the fun you can have with cheese straws and vodka

I wondered what the sound quality would be in the club and was pleasantly surprised. The ceiling slopes down high at the ‘stage’ end and low at the other, which is not peculiar as the club sits below a vehicle ramp. My mind kept playing tricks with words ~ it often does. Here, was the word ‘garage’, and there the word ‘music’. I got the impression that the bands were none too pleased with the Vox amplifying system, but the general acoustics seemed fine to me.

Olga Hart at Kaliningrad music club
Olga Hart: an esoteric experience

As I mentioned earlier, I had not met Andrey Berenev before and neither had I met Aleksandr Smirnov. The latter made what can only be called ‘an entrance’, when he suddenly appeared dressed in his all- leather, self-made, signature ‘chimney sweep’ outfit.

From that moment onwards, all female tats, short skirts and shimmering stockings, as questionable and nice to view in that order, were instantly upstaged by Mr Smirnov’s imaginative rig, which, I am appalled to admit, made my red cravat and waistcoat look inexcusably tame. The only other gentleman in the room whose appearance attracted attention was he who was wearing a fawn-toned trench coat, carefully amalgamated with a sharp side-parting hairstyle, sixties tie and tie-clip. It’s not every day you meet JFK’s double.  

Clubbing in Kaliningrad

True Bar scores high on the atmosphere chart but would benefit from a dimmer switch to bring the sheen from the lighting down to a level more in keeping with its underground ethos. In every other respect, as they were fond of saying in the roaring 20s’, ‘the joint was jumping’.

From the appearance of the first band to Andrey Berenev’s song, which he had written with Aleksandr Smirnov in mind and to which the flamboyant and charismatic chimney sweep took to the floor with relish, the atmosphere was beyond electric. If you like it lively, you got it!

Andrey Berenev takes to the 'stage' at True Bar, Kaliningrad

True Bar is a true bar. Maladits! I say in my very best Russian.

Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Kaliningrad Toilet Door sponsor Mick Hart

Kaliningrad Toilet Door is a thing of Beauty

Sponsored by Mick Hart

12 October 2023 ~ Kaliningrad Toilet Door is a thing of Beauty

Has it ever crossed your mind that one day you might be famous and, if so, in what capacity? Many dream of fame when they are young at a time when the reason is unimportant. This is one of youth’s luxuries: the dream of fame for fame itself.

But fame can strike at any time, when you least expect it, in the most unexpected way and for the most unexpected reasons. Take me [Frank Zappa: “Take me, I’m yours …”], for example, how could I have possibly predicted twenty years ago, when I was 14🙂, that fate would have me knock on the door of fame, or would have had me knock on the door of fame had there been a door to knock on.

When I was young, I staked my claim to fame, or so I would have them believe, on the publication of my first toilet wall. What an imagination! Yet even I, as fanciful as I was, could never have envisioned that it was not a wall but a toilet door that one day would consign me to the annals of posterity.

I can hear you asking, although you are rather faint, how such an extraordinary set of circumstances ever came to be and, considering its phenomenal nature, have I thought of contacting The Guinness Book of Records? Answer, in reverse order, I shall wait for them to contact me, but, whilst we wait in suspense together, the very least I can do is let you in on the noble act to which my fame is owed.

Kaliningrad Toilet Door

Not so long ago, the president of the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club acquired a property which the club could use as a base for its activities and as a classic car museum. An historically interesting building, which, in the days of German Königsberg, had been used as an aircraft parts repository for Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe, it was otherwise perfect in every sense for what the club required, except in one respect ~ an important one, I thought. For this public venue where people would meet, attend lectures, be taken on tours and, if they so desired, could hire for private parties was lacking in one essential ~ it had no toilet door!

It is monumentally inconceivable that during the Third Reich’s reign the bog in the Luftwaffe building would have been doorless. I have it from a reliable source, a man who’s devoted his life to toilets ~ he majored in them at Cambridge ~ that, to quote his words verbatim, “They made very good doors those Germans did, and very good toilet doors!” We are left to conclude, therefore, that in the days when defeat was imminent, as well as destroying their vital papers, either the Germans destroyed the toilet door or hid it where no one could find it. We cannot put it past them. It is a typical Gerry trick, I’d say; the sort of thing they went round doing just to be awkward and spiteful.

However, to give credit where credit is due, the fact that the door was missing had not escaped the notice of the club. And it was patently clear to everyone that something had to be done about it, not the absence of German decorum but the absent toilet door. Then came the question, what exactly?

Mick Hart & Olga Hart at the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club
In the Club

As with all complex organisations presided over by reams of committees, reliant on detailed reports from antithetical think tanks and subject to the dislocation of interdepartmental interests, the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club faced a difficult dilemma. The knock-on effect, or no knock-on effect, as there was nothing to rap one’s knuckles on, of having no door to your toilet became one of those gritty [spelling correct] seemingly endless issues, destined to be shuffled about from one desk to another, until at last worn down and out by the suspenseful acrobatics of over-careful toilet timing, it fell on me, to coin a phrase, to roll out an initiative. “Why don’t I buy a door,” I said, “and have someone fill the hole with it!” The motion was passed unanimously.

Job done, you think. I can tell you that it wasn’t. Where would we find that fix-it person now Jim was no longer with us. He fixed a lot of things did Jim, including over-generous posthumous payouts for a herd of out-of-the-woodwork women now minted in their retirement years.

When, at last, we did find someone ~ and, of course, at last we did ~ it felt like every toilet trouble wherever it was in the world was nought but a poof in the wind. The handyman he fitted the door quicker than Brand got fitted up ~ he certainly knew his angles from his elbows ~ and before you could say ‘engaged’ or ‘vacant’ or ‘here’s another perfect example of a bum-wrap by the leftist state’, the club was no longer one door short of a toilet.

Some of you may feel that the saga of our toilet door was all a storm in a Portacabin, whilst the rather less polite amongst you might think it a load of c..p! And I am willing to concede that some of the visitors to the club may miss the thrill of sitting there whilst a friend or colleague stands guard for them, but I have to say from my point of view, it all looked rather cheeky. Bringing a bottle to an event is something not unheard of, but come on, really, deary, deary me, bring your own toilet door!

As the intelligence of my philanthropy leaked out far and wide, eventually reaching St Petersburg, my friend and colleague, Yury Grosmani, writer, author, journalist and latterly film producer, flushed with excitement at the news, immediately reached for his keyboard and wrote this moving tribute to me, which he posted on VK:

Вообще, музей без туалета, а равно как и музей с туалетом, но без двери, заведение абсолютно  бесперспективное. Очень приятно, что известный журналист, писатель, а теперь мы уже знаем, что и киноактер,  Мик Харт, выступил спонсором такого важного, нужного и благородного дела. Теперь музей АвтоРетроКлуба имеет на одно преимущество больше, чем самые известеые музеи мира. Например, на дверях туалета  Британского музея такой таблички нет. Лично подтверждаю! А у нас она есть! Передаю слова огромной благодарности моему другу и коллеге МИКУ ХАРТУ 🇬🇧🇷🇺👍

And now in English:

“ [computer translation] In general, a museum without a toilet, as well as a museum with a toilet, but without a door, is an absolutely hopeless establishment. I am very pleased that the famous journalist, writer, and now we already know that film actor, Mick Hart, sponsored for such an important, necessary and noble cause. Now the AutoRetroClub Museum has one more advantage compared to the most famous museums in the world. For example, there is no such sign on the toilet doors of the British Museum. I personally confirm! And we do have it! I convey my deep gratitude to my friend and colleague MICK HART 🇬🇧🇷🇺👍

Whether I fully deserve this accolade, I will leave that up to you decide. As for the British Museum’s pitifully Mick Hart plaqueless status, there may be some truth in this; I can neither confirm nor deny. But should that august establishment ever find itself taken short by the urgent need to have one, then I’m the man for their big job.

For my own part, now that the door is up and the paperwork is done, I am happy to rest on my laurels, content in the certain knowledge that although my simple toilet door has not converted this lowly loo into anything close to a cistern chapel, it fulfils the function, as nature intended, to stop the things that shouldn’t come out from coming out of the closet. Small things in life, perhaps, but if by my private motion I have achieved some good in the public realm and in the process of doing so prevented the club’s reputation from hitting the skids big time and going down the pan, then per angusta ad augusta. It is just something we often say (as well as going ‘ahhh’) in the world of toilet-door sponsorship!

Note: The door sponsored by Mick Hart is available for viewing, and not least using, at the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club Museum. To avoid disappointment, advanced booking is advisable.

Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Some other stuff without toilet doors in them

Three Kaliningrad Babushkas in a Bread Shop
Panic Buying, Shelves Empty
Tracking World Vaccination with the Prickometer
Harry & Meghan the sad case of déjà vu

Hermann Brachert Museum Plaque, Kaliningrad region

Herman Brachert Museum Königsberg Sculptor

A unique museum in Otradnoye, Kaliningrad region

8 October 2023 ~ Herman Brachert Museum Königsberg Sculptor

Otradnoye [German: Georgenswald] is a small, unspoilt seaside enclave on Kaliningrad region’s Baltic Coast. It sits, relatively obscurely, on a wooded escarpment between the region’s two main resorts, Svetlogorsk (German: Rauschen) and Zelenogradsk (German: Cranz).

Otradnoye is worth discovering for its wonderful woodland walks, late nineteenth and early twentieth century German architecture and its small but white sandy beach (now smaller still, since a couple of thousand boulders have been netted there to tackle coastal erosion).

Herman Brachert Museum

Another reason for visiting Otradnoye is to acquaint yourself with one of its most famous and charismatic former occupants, the German sculptor Herman Brachert (1890~1972), whose home and studio has been faithfully preserved as a biographical record of his life and as a museum for his works of art.

Herman Brachert, who originated from Stuttgart, worked in Königsberg and the Königsberg region for 25 years. From 1933 to 1944, he lived and worked in the country retreat of Otradnoye.

The Brachert’s family home was built in 1931 by architect Hans Hopp. It was renovated in 1992 and became a museum the following year.

Much of Brachert’s work perished during World War II and/or was destroyed in the postwar years. Even so, the museum contains more than 700 exhibits, more than enough to be highly representational of the concepts, materials, forms and compositions with which Brachert is associated.

The museum’s curators continue to track down original Brachert items, aided in their quest by photographs, letters, documents and diaries from the sculptor’s family archive. Fortunately, Brachert’s wife, Maria, was an accomplished photo-artist, and many of her photographs are included in the museum’s display.

Brachert family photographs. Herman Brachert Museum.

Herman Brachert Museum

Herman Brachert  was particularly adept in the creation of small items, as evidenced by the museum’s collection of plaques and medals, arguably the most valued being the 1924 medal to the 200th Anniversary of the Unification of Königsberg. He also worked with plastics and jewellery.  

The quality and detail of his work also shines through his larger projects, of which perhaps the most impressive, or at least most loved, is the figural sculpture Carrier of Water. This forlorn but beautiful woman rising from her knees clasping a pitcher of water upon her head is said to be the Goddess of Fate.

Carrier of Water, Hermann Brachert, Sculptor
Carrier of Water. Herman Brachert Museum.

In the winter of 2000, I made the lady’s acquaintance. She was quietly and gently decaying beneath the snow-capped trees of Svetlogorsk’s Larch Park.

Two years passed before a rescue party came and whisked her away to St Petersburg, where, at the State Hermitage Museum, under the direction of artist-restorer VN Mozgov, she was lovingly restored and later transferred to the Brachert Museum.

Another favourite among the Brachert exhibits is the goddess Demeter. A two-third figural composition of a young nude woman, produced by Brachert in 1939 and donated to the museum by patron of the arts BN Bartfeld, Demeter is said to personify strength, equanimity and feminine beauty.

In addition to free-standing figural sculptures, Brachert was also an expert in the field of bas-reliefs, fine examples of which can still be seen upon the surviving buildings of Königsberg. 

Mermaid bas relief
Bas reliefs Brachert, Konigsberg
Herman Brachert Large bas reliefs

In 2015, the Brachert Museum acquired two rare plaques, dating to the early 1930s, produced by students from the Königsberg School of Arts and Crafts, where Herman Brachert taught.

Herman Brachert Museum

The exhibits of the House Museum of Herman Brachert echo a golden era of Germanic sculpture and architectural embellishment, many strongly influenced by the Art Deco design concepts that were prevalent during the 1930s.  

The same artistic principals resonated throughout the interior design of the Brachert family home. Structurally, the house is uncannily presented in almost every architectural detail, and though the fixtures and fittings that graced the original abode have long since disappeared, it is yet possible, using numerous family photographs within the museum’s collection, to see exactly what the interior looked like when the Brachert family lived there.

Brachert's room as it was when he lived there in the 1930s

One photograph in particular [see above] opens a poignant window into the past. Stand next to this photograph and look towards the far end of the room in the direction of the Carrier of Water, and you can easily reconstruct the entire room as it appeared during the Brachert era, locating with pin-point accuracy every piece of furniture and even Brachert himself sitting at his desk.

Female nude sculpture, Brachert, East Prussia

For time travellers, this is one of those ‘hairs standing up on the back of your neck moments’. A similar sensation can be replicated by gazing upon the portrait bust of the great sculptor himself.

Hermann Brachert, Sculptor, Konigsberg 1930s

The bust’s likeness of Brachert is so finely executed that his features seem to come alive before your very eyes, inviting you to think, ‘Here, indeed, is a man possessed of singular intellectual depth and charismatic intensity.’ He has the face of someone you would have liked to have known in person.

During their time in Otradnoye, not only did the Brachert’s have a modern country home nestled above the Baltic Coast, but they were also the fortunate owners of a large and pleasant garden, which follows the fall of the land to the edge of the wood beyond. Poignant photographs in the museum’s collection reveal the Brachert family in their natural setting: a woman leaning casually out of the ground-floor window and a boy with a sleeping dog, sitting and laying respectively, upon the garden terrace. Today, the garden is a quiet oasis, a green and tranquil backdrop for a cornucopia of widely differing sculptures, donated over the years by various artists.

Herman Brachert home in Otradnoye. Herman Brachert Museum.
Former Brachert home as it is today [October 2023]. Herman Brachert Museum.

Wandering recently through this exotic landscape, I wondered perchance would I meet again with my old friends Lenin and Stalin. Eighteen years ago, on a very wet and very cold day in January, I thrilled to the sight of them languishing incongruously in a hedge at the side of the Brechert Museum. Sure enough we were reunited, but now they had a proper station among the other exhibits. The plaque, which shows the ensemble before it succumbed to distress and decay, presents an ennobling tableau.

Lenin & Stalin statues in the grounds of the Brachert Museum
Plaque Lenin and Stalin statue in Otradnoye

Plaque (above): ‘Lenin and Stalin in Gorkah’. Fragments of sculptural group, constructed in 1949, were discovered during building work in Svetlogorsk. Donated to the Brachert Museum in 2003.

Skull sculpture in the grounds of the Brachert Museum, Otradnoye
Skull sculpture in the grounds of the Herman Brachert Museum by Evgeniy Dolmator and Gregory Bogachuk, Moscow, Russia (2016). A symbol of the continuity of life and a reminder that life should not be wasted.
Olga Hart with bull in Brachert museum garden

The House Museum of Herman Brachert

The House Museum of Herman Brachert showcases the work of a highly talented individual who produced legendary sculptures and architectural plaques in a wide range of materials and on scales both large and small.

In spite of Königsberg’s fate, examples of Brachert’s work live on, reminding us of the important role he played in the architectural heritage of the city and its provinces. In all, he was the progenitor of more than 20 outstanding sculptures made in and for the region of East Prussia.

Whatever material Brachert worked in, his breadth of imagination, elaborate detail and the innate energy of his compositions, exerts a signature brilliance.

I will stop just short of using a word like genius as through frequency of use it is fast becoming an unsustainable concept, and besides far too many of us today are deserving of the appellation. Perhaps, we should simply say that Herman Brachert, Königsberg sculptor, is the exception to our rule.

Mick Hart & Daniel Hart with Brachert's Svetlogorsk sculpture, Nymph
Mick & Daniel Hart with Brachert’s bronze Nymph statue, Svetlogorsk (2004)

Svetlogorsk, on Kaliningrad’s Baltic Coast, contains a number of Brachert’s works, the most celebrated being his bronze Nymph statue, which is framed in a giant shell surrounded by different coloured mosaic in a prominent place on the sea-front promenade.

(Above:) This gatefold advertising leaflet for the Herman Brachert Museum was produced in 1992, making it a collector’s item in its own right!
The calligraphic script featured on the front page is the work of our friend and artist Victor Ryabinin.
Victor introduced us to the museum in the winter of 2005, to be precise on the 12th January 2005, as written in his inscription to us by hand in memory of that occasion.

Posts relating to Victor Ryabinin

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Victor Ryabinin Artist Four Years Out of Time

Posts relating to Kaliningrad’s Baltic Coast

The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast
Amber Legend Yantarny is a jewel in the coastal town
Architectural surprises along the Zelenogradsk Coast
Amazed at the Museum of Skulls and Skeletons in Zelenogradsk
Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk

The Main Thing

The Herman Brachert Museum caters for individual and group excursions. It plays host to exhibitions by Kaliningrad, Polish, and Lithuanian artists as well as from the collections of Russian and foreign museums, and has established itself as a favourite venue for concerts and creative plenaries.

House-Museum of Herman Brachert
Svetlogorsk, pos. Otradnoe, Tokareva Street, 7

Web: www.hbrachert.ru

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brachertmuseum/?fref=ts

Opening times
September–May: 10am to 5pm
June–August: 10am to 7pm

Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

A Birthday Fairytale

A Birthday Fairytale with Love

Dedicated to You

1 September 2023 ~ A Birthday Fairytale with Love

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A YORSHIK, who lived in the fifth dimension and worshipped Beautiful Nature.  Although she could be prickly, she was not a nasty Yorshik. She loved the fields, gardens, flowers, lakes, suns, skies and trees ~ most of all she loved the trees.

One day, whilst walking by the side of the lake in the footsteps of the Teutonics, she espied a tree that she liked very much. It was an old tree, a tree that had stood for centuries. This tree had seen so much of life and of countless people’s lives.

How many people have admired this tree? thought the Yorshik.  How many people have sketched or painted it? How many people have written poems about it. How many people have sat beneath it ~ daydreamers, lovers, people in need of shelter, people in need of support, people in need of a tree?

Whenever Yorshik found a tree, especially a great old tree like this one, she felt the need to hug it. She would throw her arms around the tree and say, “I long for the day when your inner strength will be my strength also.” And the trees that she hugged would hug her back, and each would sigh with happiness.

And so, she hugged the mighty tree before her. But the tree neither hugged her in return nor sighed a happy sigh. It clung to her. It trembled, and its sigh was a groan of fear and despair.

“Whatever is the matter, tree?” asked the Yorshik.

“They are coming to cut me down tomorrow,” sobbed the tree.

“But why?” Yorshik asked. “You are so big and strong and healthy!”

The tree it sobbed some more until regaining its composure, said: “Because I have a fairy in my boughs.”

Yorshik looked up and sure enough, sitting in the branches of the tree, there was a fairy.

Fairy up a tree

Yorshik had seen many things, such as flowers, hedges, clouds and trees, but never a fairy before. She had, of course, seen drawings of fairies but never of one so round.

“What?” Yorshik asked the tree, “has a fairy in your branches got to do with cutting you down?”

The tree sniffled: “The fairy has cast a spell, and tomorrow at daybreak the men will come with saws and axes, and I will be cut down.”

“I didn’t want to cast the spell,” then spoke the fairy in a quavering voice, “truly I didn’t. But I am trapped between Heaven and Earth, and if I place my feet voluntarily on Terra-Ferma, I shall be forced to exist in a limbo state for the rest of all eternity.”

And now the fairy was crying, too.

“But if the tree is cut down,” the fairy sobbed (and the tree let out a wail) “I shall descend to earth, but not by my own volition, and I will be saved.”

The fairy was weeping, the tree was weeping and Yorshik was at a loss for what to do.  She could not bear to see the tree cut down, but neither could she bear to imagine the fairy trapped between Heaven and Earth in a state of immortal torment.

A Birthday Fairytale with Love

She thought and thought until she could think no more, whereupon, in a paroxysm of despair, she threw herself on the ground and hugging the trunk of the tree, implored and prayed to the Gods for an answer.

As she prayed, her tears fell to the ground, and the tears of the tree and the fairy followed, mingling together until they had formed a stream that trickled into the lake.  At that moment, the clouds, which had settled upon the sky, parted, and a ray of sunlight soft and luminous travelling from the Heavens landed gently at the point where the river of tears held hands with the lake. Still embracing the tree, the Yorshik watched the light as it danced upon the water. She followed its vibration along the beam, into the sky and back to the water again.

At the water’s edge, where a moment ago no one had been, she thought she saw a figure, the figure of a man. She could not be certain of this, because her eyes were so full of tears; they had become twin ponds from Königsberg.

She peered again at the water’s edge. Sure enough, there was a man. His detail was lost to her, but she could feel the warmth of his presence and the kindness in his heart.

“Who are you?” the Yorshik asked.

“I’m an artist,” he replied. “I have come to paint a picture of you. To paint it upon this tree.”

And setting down an easel, this is exactly what he did.

When he had finished the picture, which seemed to be of a moment’s work, he turned to the Yorshik and smiling said: “Don’t worry, Yorshik.  Don’t fret. Everything in this universe has its finite place and everything will fall into place when the time is right for it to do so.”

He had hardly finished speaking, in a voice like balm to the Yorshik’s soul, when a second beam of light breaking through the clouds momentarily dazzled her, and when she could see again, the artist he had gone.

A Birthday Fairytale with Love

It was then that she saw his painting on the tree. She gasped in amazement. Her likeness was so lifelike, the colours so strong, so vibrant, altogether alive and everything so beautiful that she felt as if everything good had been given to her forever. And even the fairy and the tree, on beholding the artist’s magic, forgetting guilt, regret and fear, also forgot that they should be crying.

Spoke the fairy from the tree on high: “I cannot let this kind old tree that has given me hope and shelter, and which now has such a beautiful picture of Yorshik painted on it, be cut down. Tonight, I shall climb from the branches myself and take my chances as predetermined.”

It was a frightful night for Yorshik. There was a full moon that shone through the crack in the bedroom shutters and danced around in her half-sleep in an endless succession of mutated forms and apparitions most ghastly. She felt the bite of the woodman’s axe and turned away from that horror only to be confronted by the dreadful sight of the screaming fairy descending into a fiery hell.

No sooner had dawn broke, than, with bleary eyes and in a cold sweat, Yorshik scampered from her woodland house and hurried towards the lake and the tree. She was so afraid of what she might see, and even more afraid of what she wouldn’t, that she thought of running backwards, but very few Yorshiks have reverse gear, so she had to proceed as always and make the best of a very bad job. At least it wasn’t foggy.

As she rounded the corner where she knew the tree would be, if indeed it would be, she took her hands away from her eyes and, rubbing the bruises on her body, which, unfortunately, one tends to get when one attempts to run with their eyes closed, stared at where she thought she’d see nothing, or perhaps just a pile of logs. But Saints preserve and Hallelujah, the tree it was still standing!

Alas, of the tree-bound fairy, however, there was not the slightest sign.

Falling to her knees by the side of the tree and hugging its mighty trunk, the Yorshik cried: “You are safe, thank the Gods that you are safe, but what has become of the fairy? I cannot bear to imagine the pain and the suffering which, through her most noble act, she has brought upon herself!”

But why was the tree not crying! Heartless, ungrateful tree! The heartless, ungrateful tree was smiling!!

“Shh, shh,” said the tree, “Do not cry! Be still! Dry your eyes! Look at the painting, Yorshik! Look at the painting!”

Bewildered, understanding not, but drying her eyes as instructed, the Yorshik did as she had been bidden and looked towards the painting. At first, she could see nothing but herself, as a reflection might see itself on the opposite side of the mirror. But when she rubbed her eyes again and took a second look, there, in a moment of joy and rapture, she saw in the painting by her side the fairy smiling back at her. The fairy was alive! The fairy was alive!

And above and around the Yorshik in the painting on the tree, and above and around the Yorshik kneeling on the ground, not one but a host of fairies danced and laughed, embraced and sang and loved.

This time when the Yorshik hugged the tree, the Universe hugged back, and since that day to this, no one in the world and anywhere else beyond has ever had to suffer the pain of being alone again.

A Birthday Fairytale with love

Post links
An Autumn Walk in Kaliningrad
The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast
Englishman Chilling in Zelenogradsk with a Bear and a Beer
Kaliningrad Green and Adorned with Flowers

Image attributions:
Scenery Bats & Tree: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-illustration-of-scenery-with-bats-and-tree/14960.htm
Zombie: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-graphics-of-zombie-with-an-exposed-brain-and-axe/21889.html
Bed: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Child-in-bed/58663.html
Tree: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Tree/89793.html
Fairy on Crescent Moon: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Fairy-sitting-on-a-crescent-Moon/63695.html



Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Mick Hart with frozen peas in Bedford

Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket is No Woke

“I don’t see it like that!”

All it took was a bag of frozen peas left on the end of the checkout conveyor belt, my public spiritedness and up went the balloon. And it was high drama at the local supermarket.

1 August 2023 ~ Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket is No Woke

I had just arrived at the local supermarket checkout with my week’s shopping ~ six bottles of beer, a can of cheap beans and a pound of liver, which I will need to replace mine if I carry on drinking like this ~ when I espied a lonely bag of frozen peas beached on the metallic rim at the end of the conveyor belt.

There was only one person in the queue in front of me, an elderly black lady.

“Are these yours?” I politely asked her, nodding towards the peas.

“No,” she replied, in a strong Jamaican accent, then, whistling through her teeth, asked “Why do people do such things?”

“A sign of the times,” I replied.

I began to unload my purchases from the basket to the conveyor belt, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

A lady, unusually large for the time of year, one of those scarred for life by the coronavirus Plandemic who cannot escape from her facemask, was asking me: “Are these your frozen peas?”

“No,” I answered. “I asked the lady in front of me the same question.”

A public-spirited person, ie me, then sought to bring the lonesome bag of peas to the attention of the foreign gentleman manning the checkout (‘manning’, we are not supposed to say that, are we?’).

“It’s OK,” he said, in a strong foreign accent, “Lady has gone to get something.”

That told me. But hardly had he finished speaking than he began to take a peculiar interest in something at the checkout opposite. He continued to look in that direction, calling as he did so, “Lady, lady, your things here!”

I looked where he was looking. The ‘lady’ to whom his comments were addressed, presumably she who had left the frozen peas, was standing in the opposite queue. She was big and black with a face resembling something that Buffalo Bill Cody would have been familiar with. Just then we, the elderly black lady who had spoken to me earlier and who was in the process of paying for her goods, glanced at each other. A second earlier she had turned her head to look at the culprit who had abandonned her frozen peas. The elderly lady seemed embarrassed. Hurriedly stuffing her last purchase into her bag, she scurried off, leaving me to mull over her question, “Why do they do it?” Why, indeed?

The foreign white gentleman manning the checkout was still appealing to the foreign black lady’s responsibilities, trying to get her to take the frozen peas back to the refrigerator, but whilst the peas were rapidly thawing, she was frozen within her ignorance.

“They [the peas] will defrozen,” called the checkout man, “defrozen, and then we will have to throw them in the bin.”

At long last, the ‘lady found her voice: “I don’t see it like that,” she retorted.

Now there’s an answer for you!

Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket is No Woke

It was evident by now that the checkout man was flogging a dead horse, buffalo or something. He got up, strode down to the end of his conveyor belt, grabbed the peas and headed towards the fridge.

“It’s all happening at Fiddles today,” said I. “Such drama!”

The mask-wearing woman looked the other way, just in case her mask was not as foolproof as they had made her believe. The little middle-class lady standing behind her ~ and you don’t get a lot of them in Fiddles, come to think of it, you don’t see many of them in Bedford town centre ~ sniggered but did not utter a word.

The white checkout man from who knows what country strode back, resumed his seat and staring into the middle distance said, with an expression of incredulity, “Lady got same products but leave these, why?”

“Cuh,” I chimed, “It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

And it didn’t, particularly as he was white and the frozen-pea leaver was black.

I half expected her to suddenly burst into a tirade of, “Yu wacist! Yu wacist, yu are!” and dash from the shop.

She would then complain online to her friends, who would then alert the authorities, who would then contact Fiddles’ management and demand an apology. The Guardinistan and the BBC would get wind of the situation and commence a campaign on the black woman’s behalf, reporting that she had been so terribly traumatised by the outrageous request to return the peas to the fridge that it had caused her to lose her self-esteem, not to mention her self-respect, and that, as a result, she could no longer go to the supermarket unless she was accompanied either by her grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews or nieces, preferably all of them together, which is why they are currently bobbing about in an inflatable dinghy on the English Channel, soon to dock at Dover from whence they will be V.I.P. driven to a nice five-star hotel, providing there are any left that are not already full.

Frozen Peas in Bedford

Shortly, a solicitor, one of those who specialises in just these sorts of cases, would volunteer to represent her. Her case would go to court. Naturally, the LLJUK (Liberal Left Judiciary UK) would award her compensation ~ a frozen packet of Fiddles’ peas for life to be delivered every week by hand by Fiddles’ CEO and in addition, and just for good measure, a handout of two million quid.

As for the white foreign gentleman, who had been totally out of order for calling the woman’s attention to the bag of peas she had ditched, he would be sacked forthwith, and his bank, The Cashless Globalist Inc., would immediately close his account Nigel Farrage-style, and wouldn’t that serve him white! What would he do? Where would he go? No lifetime’s guarantee of frozen peas for him. How would he survive in an overpriced country dominated by profiteering supermarkets, greedy utility companies, extorting financial institutions and totally in-the-pocket-of-George-Sorryarse MPs? There would be nothing for it but to turn gay, join the British Army, sue them for being beastly to him, or perhaps not beastly enough (pass the mascot, ‘Woof!’), and leave the service with his own compensation.

It’s not what you do; it’s the way that you do it … and in the UK that’s a fact!

Pass the peas, please!

Frozen peas in Bedford

Links to ….

Three Kaliningrad babushkas in a bread shop
Secret Weapon in Kaliningrad
Russia’s love of cakes differs from the UKs‘
It’s that man in the Russian hat in Bedford!

Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Woke UK Banks

Woke UK Banks Need to be More Accountable

Nigel Farage Warns Don’t Bank on it!

10 July 2023 ~ Woke UK Banks Need to be More Accountable

You don’t have to look very far in the UK to find another pitiful example of Woke, or political correctness as it used to be known. The media landscape has more examples dotted around its internet sites and corporate TV outlets than there are small boats of smiling immigrants disembarking on Dover’s shores. But you may have been surprised to learn that Nigel Farage, no less, has been singled out for special treatment by the western globalist banking cartel, which has withdrawn his banking facilities.

Woke Watch PC UK!

WOKE WATCH UK!

Now, picking on a high-profile figure like Nigel Farage at a time when trust in the UK political establishment is at an all-time low is probably not the smartest thing to do. Of course, we cannot say without a shadow of a doubt that Farage’s banking difficulties are ideologically motivated, but when you delve a little deeper suspicion begins to accrue. And if the smoke is not without fire, then someone in the world of banking has really gone and shot themselves in their ideological hoof.

Woke UK Banks

According to Mr Farage, the bank, with whom he had been a customer for years, suddenly and without explanation, closed down his account. So go and open an account elsewhere. Well, this is what he tried to do, but the first bank he approached refused him, the second bank refused him and so on and so on and so on … (Nigel Farage YouTube).

Katie Hopkins, who is very good at grasping the nettle of truth, because she has learnt the hard way, reviews the ‘noise around Farage’ in the context of her own experience and the experience of others like her (Katie Hopkins, YouTube).

It is obvious from Katie’s videos and the commentary that accompanies them that there is a firm and growing belief among UK legacy Britons, who are far from happy with the ‘liberal’ status quo, that the UK’s answer to the Chicago Outfit, the super-rich elite, syndicates with other globalist lynchpins ~  political establishment + corporate media + partisan judiciary + banking institutions ~ to exert their collective power, and whilst they casually talk the talk of democracy subvert it to its lowest level by robbing those individuals of whom they are afraid of the right to freedom of speech and by depriving and dispossessing them of their socio-economic existence.

Katie Hopkins, who asserts that she was turned into a ‘non-person’ by the machinations of the powers that be, acknowledges the many unsung heroes of Britain’s growing Resistance, the ordinary people with no public voice, who have fallen foul of the cancel culturists and their ideological programme.

Woke UK Banks Need to be More Accountable

So how credible is it that Nigel Farage woke up one morning and found himself in bed with Katie and Tommy Robinson? Providing the closing of his accounts are ideologically motivated, which by all accounts ~ and closed accounts ~ it appears they may have been, then sadly the answer is incontrovertibly. We know stranger things happen at sea. Just think of the Royal Navy escorting rubber dinghy after rubber dinghy daily into Dover.

Now, as everybody knows, none more so than the liberal left, Nigel Farage is not a man to provoke. He is the man who took on the EU octopus and beat it single handedly. Look out naughty banks! Another irony is that closing down his bank account could not have come at a less propitious moment for the woke-obsessed establishment.

Breaking News!

For hot on the heels of the Farage story, came the sensational revelation that a clergyman living in Yorkshire had suffered a similar fate. The vicar’s (There’s something so delightfully English about ‘vicar’, don’t you think?) building society whipped away its welcome mat from beneath his reverence’s feet simply because he was straight talking ~ perhaps because he is straight? Believing naively in the corny old mantra that he lived in the land of free speech ~ hadn’t the political establishment and BBC been telling him this for years? ~ instead of holding back like many people do (We are not supposed to say that, are we?), he criticised the building society of which he had been a client for years, for promoting gender issues.

Woke UK Banks

For this unforgiveable sin, he was promptly given the bumsrush. He was stripped of his pieces of plastic. The bank pulled down his accounts and, finding himself in Queer Street, a very unpleasant place to be, almost as bad as Radio 3, he was given a proper defrocking, if only in the financial sense. When the Mail Online latched onto this, it and its readers went ballistic, and then, as usual, they made some tea and quietly went back to the crossword.

Seven across: Every shirt has a silver lining, even a lifted shirt.

The dual plights of Mr Farage and the vicar of Wake-up-Call, serve to remind us yet again of the financial tsars central role in pushing the pseudo-liberal agenda. 

It is bad enough that all of us are expected to change our avatars to the colours of the Ukrainian flag, when most of us have no idea where exactly Ukraine is or what we are changing our avatars for. What next? Compulsory membership of the Fudge Packers’ Union and mandatory Gay Pride jabs? Thank heavens for the prophesy that Pride comes before a fall and that still strong countries like Russia are determined to make a stand, acting as a bulwark against the rising tide of Western woke.

As the political elite and banking institutions push us towards a cashless society to achieve their tripartite goal of surveillance, tracking and control, the daunting realisation that it is no longer politicians but super-rich globalist bankers who run our western countries and who are sufficiciently confident and arrogant enough to go way beyond cancelling culture to rubbing you out completely, is a sobering thought indeed.

The time is coming fast when the only way to thrive and prosper in UK Plc is to sit on a sunbed for a week, wrap yourself in a blanket, grab the latest hi-tech phone, jump an inflatable dinghy and steam across the channel with the aid of the Royal Navy to be given a nice, free comfortable room in a top UK hotel.

No need to hurry; no need to rush; no need to have a bank account as the trip is all-inclusive. And the offer is ending no time soon.

Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Oh Hokey Wokey Cokey
Woke and Hypocrisy: it really is God Save the King!
Woke Watch PC UK!
Colston Woke Statue 4 Scratch the Itch of History
Keep Woke out of Football!

Image attributions
Credit card: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Golden-Credit-Card-Vector/2843.html
Parrot: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Stylized-Parrot/44695.html

Further reading
British building society admits closing accounts …
Banks free speech blacklisted accounts …

Russian big and unpredictable

Russia Big and Unpredictable You Cannot Help Love It

News just in

25 June 2023 ~ Russia Big and Unpredictable You Cannot Help Love It

The Master of Understatement prompts me to comment that the past two days have been the most dramatic 48 hours in recent Russian history. Over here as distinct from over there, the first I heard about the ‘spat’ was when my brother tuned into the internet to check whether he could sue the Fat Busters company for having sold him an expensive tub of tablets that guaranteed to relieve him of 20 pounds in weight in a week but which so far had only succeeded in taking 20 pounds out of his wallet.

Russia Big and Unpredictable You Cannot Help Love It

I don’t have a television set, wouldn’t give one house room, literally, and although my brother has one, he uses it sporadically, as he finds the adverts disturbing (think about it), so, we glean our news mainly from the internet.

This ia an electricity pole
Some statements are obvious

On 24 June, I received an email from Olga with two video links to what she described as ‘a mutiny in Russia’. She wrote that she was with two friends watching President Putin’s address on TV to the nation. There was an uneasy irony in the parallel that she drew, the recollection that the last time that she had listened to such an address it had been in the company of the same friends back in the 1990s. She noted that then it had been a different president and that the speech was slightly different, and ended on the foreboding note, “Whatever awaits us next …?”

Russia Big and Unpredictable

Whenever a big story breaks, I read news from around the world, preferring not to rely on corporate western media, and then after reading several news bulletins or articles on a specific topic, draw my own conclusions. I did note that the UK media was not crowing as much as one might expect. Had the ‘mutiny’ so-called been favourable to the West, it would have been a different matter, but it was obvious in the absence of champagne corks popping and from the general sense of restraint and reticence percolating throughout the media that a possible outcome to the Russian scenario was not one that they favoured. As I wrote to Olga in the second of several emails that day, for the West it really looks like a case of ‘Be careful what you wish for!’

Bedfordshire countryside view
Bedfordshire by night

On Saturday evening, we took a walk across the fields enroute to the local pub. It was a warm night. The sun was low in a clear sky, a burning orange ball, and, with no cloud of which to speak, from the high plateau on which we were situated, we were offered a magnificent sun-drenched view out over a rural landscape that coined the immortal lines, “England’s green and pleasant land.” Descending from the corn fields, we passed through a typical English village, replete with manor houses and cottages so old and established in time that they looked as though they had been planned by nature rather than built by the hand of man.

Jacobean house in England
Manor House in English Village by Mick Hart

On the bend, just outside of the village, the local pub was a picture: thatched roof, traditional pub sign, neat and tidy gravelled car park, a small, grassed garden with tables to the front and to the rear a naturally undulating beer garden backing onto open fields.

Sitting there, sipping at our beers, as the sun went to rest and the lights from the pub came on, I became conscious of a surreal distance greater than distance itself between my experience in the here and now and that of my Russian friends.   

I ruminated quietly over the emails that Olga and I had exchanged earlier this evening. I had read an article in the British press in which responding to someone asking if the UK government was urging all British citizens to leave Russia the reply was, we have been instructing British citizens to leave Russia since the outbreak of the troubles in Ukraine.

I wrote to Olga: “Did you know that the UK government has been advising British citizens to leave Russia? No one told me. Anyway, there’s no point in you celebrating. I shall still come back whatever the situation. I’m too old to let it bother me and, besides, it gives me something to write about.”

It was an odd feeling, most bizarre, but I felt as if by being in England I was missing out on history?

However, I knew that there would be at least one bright spark in the pub who given recent events would weigh in with: “Well, so what do you think about Russia now!” The reply I gave couldn’t have been more obvious: “I leave Russia for five minutes and look what happens!”

Copyright © 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

POST LINKS

By Volga to Yantarny
Moving to Russia from the UK
It always snows in Russia

Image attributions
The News: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/The-news-sticker-vector-image/15689.html
Teddy Bear: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Teddy-bear-toy-vector-clip-art/8873.html