MY CZECH VILLAGE

Some of the people who were kind enough to post comments said they wanted to see pictures of where I lived. Here we go, though not without a digression – I am, after all, a wannabe writer, or is that a writer manqué?

Anais Nin is remembered, and quite rightly too, as a writer of erotica, which she apparently got into on a fixed-rate-per-page basis on a commission from Henry Miller, who’d been offered the gig by a wealthy perver…sorry, connoisseur. But she did have other sides to her, including a lovely little story about how she helped a bewildered fellow-traveller lost at a major airport, which concludes, as far as I can remember, with the reflection that ‘everybody should have a Turkish grandmother’.

That’s rather the way I feel about Czech villages. I’m fortunate enough to live in one and often think the world would be a better place if everybody could. Of course, this is the opinion of a man of fifty. When I was twenty and knew very little about anything I would doubtless have found the idea of nothing much happening from one year’s end to the next stupefyingly boring, but bitter experience has taught me to cling to it like a limpet to a rock. And here are some of the reasons why…


Here is 'downtown' at the height of its rush hour frenzy - the throngs, the traffic, the urban vibe - eat your heart out, Manhattan.


This is our church, captured as a storm threatened.


A water feature - the kids play ice hockey here in winter but otherwise it just slumbers away.


One of our two pubs - sadly, Colonio-Cola has reached even this far, but please note the Gambrinus sign (an excellent Czech beer) flying above it - very symbolic.