Suddenly I am busy! I went to meet Ian at Heathrow early on Friday and we crawled for a little around the M25, but generally the driving wasn't too bad and we made it up to Cambridge. I'd booked a pretty little B&B which we had minor trouble getting to, because the road on the directions was dug up, but we drove around a bit and found it in the end! It was worth it - lovely plush room and the woman running it photocopied us a page out of the A to Z and highlighted the route we had to walk to get to Kat's.

So that's where we went, and had a very alcohol-fuelled evening. Well, everyone else did. I had two mojitos and then decided best to be safe rather than sorry.

Saturday we had a lovely breakfast - with a huge fruit salad - sat on these really interesting chairs with huge tall wooden backs, still half like a tree, that we were told came from Thailand. After that we moseyed gently into central Cambridge, had coffee and read the paper on the lawn in the sun, and then Kat, Toby and Tom came along and we got a punt and went up towards Grantchester.

Ian, this time, finally cracked punting; he's not as professional as Toby but he's much better than me! Tom and Toby went for a swim; Ian was thrown a frisbee from another punt - I don't think punt frisbee is somehow going to take off! I did a little bit of punting, and a little bit was enough!

Back to the car via ice-cream and then Ian and I drove off to see the Sinclairs. Ian was somewhat worried, "Are they old? Are we going to be drinking tea all evening?" To which my reply was: Do you not know my family by now? We arrived no trouble and Ian was given a cold lager and chatted with Rodney and David, and Patrecia and I went through several G&Ts and yakked a lot in the kitchen. Ian was his natural charming self and the evening went by very fast, and very well-fed.

On Sunday we left after breakfast and went up for a walk by Rutland Water and watched all the little boats out sailing. Ian got friendly with some sheep. We went home via Northampton, as Ian felt the need to drive past the ward we both were born on - and then as we'd got that far I went and showed him the house we lived in when I was little. It is being all extended!

And now I think a lazy week is in order.

* posted by nat 8:25 PM

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Owwwwwwwwwwwwww!

* posted by nat 1:47 PM

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Perhaps it was not a good idea to walk to Sarka.

For some reason, I had got it into my head that it wouldn't be very far; only one or two bus stops from Dejvicka, after all, even if it was up a hill! So I had a raspberry croissant and read Dnes outside the little cafe, and due to sitting in the sun I was sunburnt almost before I started.

Perhaps the strappy top was not a good idea, either. But it was such a lovely day!

So off I trekked up the hill. And realised after, oh, half an hour, that two bus stops don't mean very much when the bus doesn't really start stopping until after the end of the tram line. So it was twelve tram stops in the sun - the glorious, hot, sun - and by the time I got there I was baked like a lobster. So good to see trees!

Sarka is pretty - the rock outcrop, the stream, the woods. I walked all the way round, and apart from the summer sunbathing complex which was packed, saw hundreds more butterflies than people. It was lovely. Except I was red.

At the weekend, Katka and I packed up ropes and sleeping bags and went and stood on the motorway slip road until Jana and her boyfriend Mira came and picked us up. Then we collected a Zdenka a little furhter up the road, and another man up in Usti, and went up to Labske piskovce, which are a wonderful set of rock formations just on the border, where people go to go rock-climbing. Or most people, anyway. I went to sit on the floor in the sun and watch the others rock-climbing. There were nice walks. Butterflies. Cheese shoelaces. And wild blueberries carpeting the woodland floor, so I was perfectly happy. We also found wild raspberries, and plenty of well-laden blackberrry bushes, so hunter-gathering went well. On Saturday evening we stayed in the pub with all the other climbers and drank good beer - and then piled out into a field and slept in the long grass under the stars, waking up in the morning all warmed up in the sun, with plenty of time to forage for more handfuls of blackberries for breakfast, washed down with red wine. And then it was back to more climbing - or sunbathing and book reading, for me - before we went for a swim in a small lake in a village called Ostrov, and had ice-cream before driving back to Prague.

Tomorrow I am going to meet Bara!

* posted by nat 9:58 AM

Friday, August 03, 2007

This is my 1000th post, and here I am in Prague!

It is very pleasant to be back in a country that does 25C and above! The other bits of arrival were less fun, discovering that a bus ticket is now 20kc, that Ruzyně airport has grown a whole new terminal (although there was a long lost bastion of Communism working in the transport office who gave me looks of pure evil when I bought said 20kc ticket with a 1000kc note - also I was confusing him with my constant failure at Czech grammar. Not to worry!

I took the bus to Dejvická going ooh new airport, new main road, new hypermarket, ew! and slummed up the road to Katkaś flat, feeling more comfortable in the buildings of neglected grey, aging vomit-yellow and disagreeable pink, only there was nobody in so I had a frappé and a makový šnek at a little cafe and sat in the sun and read Dnes while everybody smoked all over me and I did not care. After ploughing through the newspaper, I tried the flat again.

Aha, the buzzer was not working.

I gave up and walked up the hill to Hradčany. On the way I collected two Brazilian tourists and dumped them on the right road on the other side of the hill. Several places have had new coats of paint, and the castle gardens are suddenly open - although that may be that I haven´t been here in summer for a while, but I am sure they were never open before - and when I got to looking out at the view across Prague, there are whole new areas of building going on, and some skyscrapers that I am sure were not there before. And there were a lot less people.

The candle shop is still there: the soap shop has gone. Malá Strana is more put-back-together although there are still a few houses on the main drag up to the castle that are covered in scaffolding. Beer prices seemed frightening even allowing for being in the tourist area. I avoided the boat tour people and dived over Karlův Most and turned north up to the Rudolfinum to avoid the tourist route.

One thing Prague does seem so far is a little cleaner. And a lot quieter. I even got a seat straightaway in the courtyard in Literární Kavárna without having to wait. Not that many tourists make it in there, but still.

Katka rolled in twenty minutes late in a little dress and high heels and wondered why she was putting herself through the law firm jobs of hell. And then, in an attempt to pretend we are not grown up - we are good at this - we fought over who would pay the bill, wandered across Staroměstké Náměstí in fits of giggles, and rode black two stops on the tram so we didn´t have to climb back up the hill. We sat on the floor up in the penthouse - okay, top floor! - apartment and shared rolls with cheese and not-quite-ripe plums, getting home just before the thunder came on and the heavens opened, and Katka spent twenty minutes freaked about how her computer power cord had stopped working before we thought to check that actually, it was not plugged in.

The room is very Katka-style: the desk is a wonderful old sewing machine rescued from the attic, two mattresses on the floor, and a clothes rail from Ikea "which I hate actually, it is like an institution", and has climbing rope looped over one end. There are three large sunflowers in a huge jar, and an ice-pick on the floor that has not yet found a home. At least one quarter of the floor space is covered in papers and folders, overflowing from another attic-find, a set of shelves cleaned up and painted. There is a glass goldfish bowl with pretty pebbles but no fish. The apartment is all huge rooms and lovely wooden floors but as is typical, the only sink is the one in the bathroom, which means the bathroom doubles up as a scullery. The windows look straight onto the gutter, good to sit in the sun, but not so much of a view.

And as the sun is out, and I have until seven-thirty when we shall meet, as Prague people do, at the horse, I am off out! I have a week of galleries, sun, and walking to do, and several hundred kavárny to work my way around. Mmm, food.

Although, as I said to Katka, I am not sure knedlíky really work any more, if thereś no gravy to mop them in.

Oh god, said Katka, you are still suffering from the effects of that famous zabíjačka!

* posted by nat 9:38 AM

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

What is it with this job that invariably the evening before I go away someone dumps a load of last minute work on me?

Argh!

I do not care!

Off to Prague tomorrow - I haven't been in over five years. Spent today looking at exchange rates going "What has happened?!" Apparently there are a lot of changes. Gosh.

*Slinks off without doing work. Ha!*

* posted by nat 5:37 PM