Letter from London: 1 of 2015

My dear family & friends

We’re in 2015 already – whatever happened to 1989? I am reminded of a T-shirt slogan from many years ago: “Stop the world – I want to get off.” Although my favourite T-shirt humour is still: “Fuck Google. Ask me.”

But that’s not why I started writing this. My point was rather to say that you can find the pictures of our short stay in France over xmas in the usual place here.

This is the link to the top directory to all my web albums, if you’re interested.

We had a really interesting few days. It was the first time we had taken the dogs with us on vacation in Europe, and we enjoyed their company. They haven’t expressed any opinion one way or the other as to their French sojourn, so far.

It also wasn’t really one of those “sit back and laze around holidays” because I am genetically pre-programmed to do and see as much as possible when going somewhere new. So we drove around quite a lot. Among my pictures you can see maps of where we went each day. I’ve got Google Location Reporting set to “On” on my mobile phone, so I can always see exactly where I’ve been. The maps in the album are essentially screenshots of that location history.

We had a bit of a disconcerting start to our time in France. Within five minutes of driving off the Eurotunnel train at Calais, we were considerably  surprised to see someone on the roof of a truck travelling at around 80km/h. My first thoughts were: “What is that dickhead doing on the roof of that truck?” He then proceeded to swing himself over the side of the trailer, and kick and slash his way through the tarpaulin on the side of the trailer. We did the most logical thing under such circumstances – slow down and take pictures (which you can find in the album.) The truck driver was desperately begging passing motorists to call the police. Which I dutifully did. Except the Emergency Services operator didn’t speak English, and I don’t speak French. We never did see how the episode ended.  Perhaps more importantly, I sent the pictures to the Daily Mail – but they didn’t seem terribly interested either (or maybe they weren’t interested in my suggestion that they pay me for the pictures.)

Instead of annotating our days, let me pick out a few experiences.

We really enjoyed the xmas market in Amiens (despite the persistent rain.) The stalls sported a wide range of interesting handicrafts and goods. The whole ambience was really festive. We bought saucisson and a cured ham, and I found an xmas present for Lucia – a sort of a pendant thingy used to secure a scarf around her neck.  I was struck by how different the Amiens market was compared to any of the xmas markets we’ve experienced in England which I find to be quite boring and over-commercialised. My neighbour David explained it to me like this: There is no real tradition of xmas markets in the UK and councils simply use them as a revenue earner, charging very high rents. The result is that the ambience is quite soulless, and goods on sale are just the usual over-priced tat.  It’s such a pity.

On xmas day we did some serious driving from our apartment in Le Tréport to Sword Beach near Ouistreham, where British and Canadian soldiers landed on D-Day 1944 – a round trip of 500km. I got to see the Pont de Normandie over the River Seine near Le Havre.  I’m a bit of a bridge nut, and this one falls into my all-time must-see bridges. It’s a cable-stayed, humpbacked bridge – a true feat of engineering, a marvel to behold and beautiful.I still want to go and gawp at the Millau Bridge.

Just over the bridge, one comes to the town of Hornfleur. If ever we get to do something like this again, this is where we’re staying (on the assumption that we’ll be able to afford it, of course.) It’s ancient, quaint and beautiful, set on a hill around a small fishing harbour. There are plenty of sandy beaches for long walks with the dogs, and the drive along the corniche to Trouville-sur-Mer is quite beautiful. I noticed that there were quite a few gîtes and other accommodation advertised along the road which all looked magically alluring (although, I suppose, that magic rather depends on price – it may turn out to be more like witchcraft.)

At the far end of our drive, we walked the dogs along Sword Beach which stretches five miles from Ouistreham in the east to Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer in the west. I found it quite hard to get my head around the fact that people had fought to the death over this lovely strip of sand 70 years ago. It really is just a fantastic beach – albeit one dotted with concrete machine gun bunkers.

Continuing on the theme of war, we also spent half a day exploring Dieppe which is just 28km from Le Tréport.  The history buffs among you will know that the Dieppe Raid in August 1942 was an unmitigated disaster – and it’s not difficult to see why. The town is surrounded by high chalk cliffs on either side of the Arques river – and those cliffs are dotted with the remains of concrete machine gun bunkers that made it easy for the Germans to defend the town. But on the flipside of that disaster, it taught the Allies that any invasion of France would require overwhelming force on ground that could not be easily defended. And so it was that the Allies landed 156 000 soldiers on the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944.

But my abiding memory of Dieppe is a little more prosaic. It was freezing on the morning we visited the town, with an icy wind blowing in off the Channel that hunted down any gaps in your clothing with malice. The first port of call was a cafe/bar/tabac on the waterfront for a warming cappuccino – dogs allowed. While my back was turned ordering our drinks at the bar, Lucia was busy wrapping her scarf around Edgar (alias: soft dog), and then she topped the look off with her knitted woollen cap. (See pictures.) Shortly afterwards a table of locals came and sat down next to us, happily taking note of Edgar’s jaunty look. But they really fell apart laughing when Lucia removed the hat and scarf – and dressed herself with them once again.  Now ... given their reaction, it struck me that they appeared to think that such a nattily dressed dog was normal. Umm ....

My final point of interest comes from our drive back to Calais on our way home. We chose a route which would take us up the coast to the mouth of the River Somme, before cutting back to the motorway – just for the hell of it. What we discovered was the town of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme. It too is just lovely. It has a medieval town with a church and walls dating back over a thousand years, surrounded by a more modern (18th century) town running along the river at the mouth of the Somme.  It also looks like a place where I could spend a lot more time – a beautiful town, sandy beaches around the corner, and lots of interesting places relatively nearby. My point is – this is definitely something to consider if you’re looking for a place for a short stay break just across the channel.

And that was our xmas.

Happy New Year to you all
Love, light & peace
L

Letter from London: 3 of 2014

My dear family & friends

Of all the things I miss the most, I miss my motivation. Second most - is hair.

I’ve been meaning to write for yonks, or, at least, put pictures up on the web for you to see what we’ve been up to (assuming you’re interested) - but there has always been something that comes up – like a snooze, or daydreaming, or shopping, or walking the dogs, or cleaning, or ironing, or doing the household accounts, or mowing the lawn, or building stuff, or fixing stuff, or battling with technology. The truth be told, I can spend days battling with technology – which usually means that I’m trying to get something for free.

I’ve been adding pictures to a web album for most of this year – I just haven’t got around to sharing them. Here they are. 

The result is an album of nearly 200 pictures. Please believe me, you are in no way expected to through them at all. They are up on the web for your interest – if you’re interested.

You can find all my pictures in the usual place here.

I think the easiest thing to do, having not written for so long, is put the standout events down in bullet-form instead of wracking my brain to weave a story.

Shall I start with the things that annoyed me?

I’ll start with today. I’ve got the flu for the second time this winter. Very annoying.

More annoying were the useless garbage collectors who split a refuse bag in the street this morning, strewing  food, rubbish and dog pooh bags across the road ... and then fucked off.  Why does this annoy me so badly? We pay Ealing Council £150 per month for council “services” – including garbage collection. For my South African friends, that’s around R2,775 per month, or R33,300 per year. For that kind of money, I expect a little more attentiveness to the task at hand. What I don’t expect is to sweep this shit up myself (see last three pics in web album), especially when it’s not my garbage bag adorning the street.

I really hate British Summer Time (BST). The sun sets at around 15h30 and it’s dark by 16h00, especially if it’s cloudy. Apart from anything else, this completely upsets my beer schedule. While my internal clock says that it’s time for a beer – because it’s dark – propriety says that I still have to wait for a couple of hours. Very annoying.  The early darkness is also just depressing – thank goodness we are only five days away from the solstice when the days will start getting longer again. I yearn for 29 March next year when the clocks go forward an hour, heralding the arrival of late sunny, summer afternoons.

I’d also like to hit the bastard who drove over my hat a couple of weeks ago. I was up in Ealing doing some shopping. It was a windy day, and my hat blew off as I crossed the road at a traffic light. I turned around to chase after it, but the traffic lights turned against me. Now, as a driver, I would have allowed the hapless, hatless fellow to retrieve his hat – but not the dick who was first in line. He accelerated away hard, almost running me down – and driving over my hat. Why? It’s an expensive hat, and I spent hours cleaning it with spray-on dry-cleaning fluid trying to remove the oil and rubber.

iOS8 has annoyed me badly. Tech nut that I am, I updated Lucia’s and my iPad minis immediately. By the time I realised that our iPads had become slow and moribund, Apple had stopped “signing” iOS7 – so I couldn’t go back. Apple has released two “updates” since then – but only for stuff that stops earning them money. I can’t compare our iPads to Android tablets, because I don’t own an Android tablet. What I can say is that my two-year-old mobile phone – a Samsung Galaxy S3 – is significantly faster than my iPad in virtually everything. From being completely enthralled by my iPad, what it could do, and how neat it was – I now feel a sort of wary “deflatedness”. I’m still waiting for the fix that will sort out the wifi problems from Apple. The iPad is such a neat device – why is Apple so intent on pissing its’ customers off?

Still on things tech, our Hewlett-Packard “home theatre” computer gave up the ghost. This is the computer that sits in my home-made entertainment cabinet under our television. It does our music, films, radio, and everything else to keep us entertained. The power supply unit gave up for the fourth time – and took the graphics card with it, again. It’s difficult to say whether the computer was struggling with the demands I heaped on it, or whether there was something inherently wrong with the design. Given how much it had already cost to keep it going over the years, it seemed like a much better idea to buy a new computer.

So, we bought a new computer – an Acer, and I went through the motion of updating all the Microsoft software, and setting it up to work how I wanted it to. To cut a long story short, the computer failed two days later – either a BIOS or motherboard failure. No problem, call the helpdesk. Or should I call that the roadblock desk. The Indian gentleman at the roadblock desk was only intent on declaring the failure to be entirely my fault, and that I would have to pay for the repair, notwithstanding any warranties. 

After a bunch of Googling I eventually found the address for Acer’s head office in the UK, which is around the corner from one of my favourite Portuguese coffee shops near Heathrow Airport. So I wrote a 2000 word letter of complaint, took it to the head office, and demanded to see the managing director. I never did get to see the managing director, but I did get a promise that a customer sales representative would call me that day. The phone rang as I walked in the front door. Angela, with a beautiful Welsh lilt to her voice, scored lots of brownie points for giving my name the correct Welsh pronunciation. She also expressed her “horror” and deep regret at my experiences at the hands of Acer’s Indian call centre. She noted that Acer has a five-day “dead on arrival” policy, and that my computer should have been replaced with no questions asked. She offered me a refund or to replace the unit immediately.

I took the replacement – the only problem being that they would only send out the replacement unit once they had received the faulty unit. That’s standard practice. So, I got back in the car, and took the computer to the head office near Heathrow. That was a Friday afternoon. The replacement unit arrived at 08h15 the following Monday morning – and it’s working like a dream.

But that leads in to the next annoyance – the car. As I was driving home from Heathrow, the engine management light came on in our car, a Honda CRV. The problem turned out to be a failed “Lamda sensor”, which sits around the catalytic converter - £380 to repair. A couple of weeks later, one of the brake callipers seized - £500 for everything. Then this past week I had to MOT the car – the yearly health check required to licence your car in the UK. I won’t list all that was wrong, but the bill came to nearly £1000. On top of that you still have to pay the yearly registration/licence fee - £288. Bloody hell!

Talking of money and finance, my next gripe is with lazy journalism. We have recently seen a raft of scare stories in the tabloids and on television about the threat of rising interest rates, and that homeowners mortgage payments could double in the next two to three years. Bullshit! Doubling mortgage payments would bankrupt about a third of the population – which would, in turn, bankrupt the mortgage lenders, that is, the banks (and the funders of the banks – your pension fund.) Consumption expenditure would also virtually cease – because all our disposable income would be spent on servicing debt. I don’t know how we are going wean the world off the cocaine of low interest rates – but nobody has come up with an idea that I believe would have any reasonable chance of success. 

I remain fundamentally convinced that we haven’t yet seen the “real” financial/economic crash. There is a cesspool of debt out there that will NEVER be repaid without debasing the currency. Take the UK. Current sovereign debt – that is, the physical amount of money that the government has borrowed (from your pension fund) – is fast approaching £1,5 trillion (£1 500 000 000 000). Unfunded liabilities (the amount that must just be paid out of tax) – government and social pensions, healthcare, benefits, etc, etc – are actuarially valued at around £4,5 trillion. That’s a total current debt of around £6 trillion. To pay that off, the UK economy would have to grow at 20-30% a year for the next 50 years, or so. That’s not going to happen. Like the age-old Chinese curse – we are living in interesting times.

VPN (Virtual Private Network): Earlier this year I emailed all my South African acquaintances about the joys and benefits of using a VPN when connecting to the Internet. Precisely ONE of you took me up on my offer. Let me restate my rationale:- above and beyond all, if you connect to the Internet on any device (computer, tablet or mobile phone) using a wifi hotspot without using a VPN, you are asking for trouble.  You risk having your digital persona stolen, and your bank accounts cleaned out. On the plus side, using a VPN allows you to log on to the Internet as if you’re in another country – in other words, instead of being stuck with DsTV you could enjoy the full benefits of all UK television (or any other country) via the internet. Your internet service provider also can’t “shape” your connection – that is, slow you down. And if you (or your children) are an “illegal” downloader, your ISP can’t see what you’re doing. (All they see is encrypted data.)  I use HMA (HideMyAss). 

Finally, I've been somewhat exercised by the Sydney hostage drama over the past two days. As the drama unfolded, the Sydney police chief was quoted on all the news channels as saying that they were prepared to wait for as long as it took to resolve the situation – or words to that effect. Now, maybe it’s just because I’m a South African, but the same news footage also showed several occasions where the hostage-taker was plainly visible with no hostages in the way – why didn’t they just shoot him? If the cameras had such a clear view of the hostage-taker, surely the police snipers had much the same view. Without any facts to corroborate my musings, I wonder if the police hierarchy was being just a little bit too politically correct. In my view, you pull a gun, you die ... at the earliest opportunity.

I am reminded of the St James Church Massacre in Kenilworth, Cape Town, in the early 1990’s. Some dimwits from the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress stormed the church one Sunday evening and opened up on the congregation with AK47s and grenades because they’d heard that it was a “conservative” church. They didn’t understand the difference between political conservatism and religious conservatism (particularly of the Calvinist brand.) St James Church was probably one of the most politically liberal churches in Cape Town with a completely racially integrated congregation. My point is, the killers only turned around and ran away when one of the members of the congregation pulled his own gun and started shooting back at them. Now, who takes a gun to church???

I have another reason to remember that event so well.  I had ridden past the church on my motorbike just minutes or seconds before the carnage started. I heard nothing; saw nothing. My girlfriend at the time, Cor-Lené, and I had had dinner with my mother at her home just down the road. It was a dark and stormy night, and we had kitted ourselves up in our rain gear before leaving my mom. We decided to stop off for a warming coffee before I dropped her at home. But, Cor-Lené’s mother was a journalist at Die Burger, and was on shift that night. She heard of the events at the church within minutes, and immediately called my mother. Remember, these were the days before cellphones. Oh, dear. While Cor-Lené and I were leisurely sipping away on Irish Coffees, our mothers were panic dialling everyone we knew.

Okay, that’s enough ranting. What of the good stuff?

We had the most fantastic summer, and the winter, so far, has been mild - to say the least.

Lucia was thrilled to have her mother stay with us for six weeks in July and August. I won’t even try to list all the outings – there are more than enough pictures in the web album to cover our adventures with Ann.

We also had Lucia’s first-cousin-once- removed (that is, her cousin’s son) stay with us for a couple of days on several occasions. Marc (Moir) was on his gap year, working at a private school in Devon, and we provided him with a London base, usually when he was travelling to or from somewhere around Europe. He was a most delightful guest. Marc, you’re welcome any time.

We had a barbecue at every opportunity – I keep a stock of charcoal and fire-lighters easily to hand. One of the great joys of summer is standing over a fire with a beer in one hand and a book (on my Kindle or iPad) in the other. I usually barbecue chicken or lamb chops, mielies (sweetcorn, for everyone in the UK) and onions. I’ve learned to use our Weber Grill as it was intended – with the lid on.  Just before I put the lid on to start cooking, I heap handfuls of herbs and woodchips directly onto the coals which gives the meat the most deliciously aromatic flavour.

We’ve had a good few picnics. Hyde Park is lovely for that, especially in spring when the trees and flowers are bursting with colour.  The typical picnic comprises gourmet sandwiches, crisps, olives and a beer, or two. Getting to Hyde Park with the dogs is relatively easy – we either catch the train to Paddington Station, or the tube to Queensway or Lancaster Gate.  The dogs get a lot of attention on the train, especially from tourists who can’t whip out their cameras and start taking photographs fast enough. I get quite a kick out of it. Poseur!

I actually love walking around the busy parts of London with the dogs (not that I do it very often) --- because everyone gets the hell out of my way. Walking in London without the dogs is an obstacle course of dodging people every step of the way. I stay away from central London for special events and at busy times if I possibly can.

At the weekend, our days usually start with walking the dogs down on the river. Most frequently we walk at Kew or Richmond. If we go to Kew, I park the car on the Chiswick side of Kew Bridge, and then we cross the bridge and walk along the Thames before cutting through Kew to Kew Village, ending at Cafe Torrelli for cappuccinos. There are a number of rowing clubs in the area and there are always plenty of people sculling up and down. 

If we go to Richmond, I park at Richmond Lock and Weir. We walk along the river before cutting through Richmond Palace and across Richmond Green, and then up Mount Ararat Road to the Richmond Hill Bakery for – you guessed it – cappuccinos. Sufficiently revived, we circle back to the river and along the Thames Path to the car.

I’ve also been making batches of biltong with Tony, one of our South African neighbours. He’s got power in his shed, so the biltong box I made several years ago is now stored there. Our all-in cost is usually about £23/kg, compared to about £45/kg at the various South African shops dotted around. Waitrose charges around £66/kg, when they have it available. Our biltong is actually really good, made to a very secret, age-old recipe ... I found on the Internet.

My Portuguese friend from Leamington Spa, Helder, helped me acquire a Portuguese satellite box which I wanted to help improve my Portuguese. I can read the language quite well, but I still struggle to understand the spoken word. Helder also helped me reposition our second satellite dish (the one I used with the satellite card in our old home entertainment computer), while Lucia, Sandra (Helder’s wife) and Catarina (their daughter) went off to the Science Museum. The only problem was that it started drizzling while they were away and we were up on the roof. The rain made the roof tiles quite slippery, leaving us stranded up there in the rain. We eventually worked out how to get down without killing ourselves, but it was a hairy experience. (I suppose we could have called the fire brigade, but I’m dead on certain that we would never have lived that one down.)

If we ever win the lottery, we’re moving to Portugal. Hopefully this will come before we reach retirement age. My sister, Barbara, and brother-in-law, Terry, live in the hills on The Algarve, and I envy them their life tremendously. If there is anything that I miss from SA, it is the bright, sharp sunshine and blue sky. Portugal has got plenty of that.

As you may recall from a previous letter, we had lovely holiday with Barbara and Terry in April. In terms of other travel, I’ve had three daytrips to France, taking advantage of cheap ferry or Eurotunnel deals. The first was with Lucia for my birthday, then with an old army friend, Julian, and, fairly recently, by myself to go shopping. (This link is a clever Google thingy as explained in a previous mail.) The trick is to load up with cheap booze and French specialities which more than pay for the expedition.  It really saves on grocery bills – which seem to rise ever higher. I put all our expenditure into a spreadsheet and graph it all to see where we’re spending our money and to keep control of our budgets. Our grocery expenditure for the first 11 months of this year is already 5-10% higher than our grocery bill for the whole of 2013. Scary stuff.

We had planned on going to Portugal for xmas again, but we couldn’t find house-sitters and kennelling is just too expensive for three animals. Instead, we’re going to France for five days and taking the dogs with us (which adds another £30 each way on the Eurotunnel shuttle). The neighbours’ children, Gina and Louis, are going to take care of Tigger while we’re gone. The length of stay in France is limited to five days due to one of the pet passport requirements. There is a particular de-worming tablet the dogs must take no more than 120 hours before they return to the UK. So, our neighbour, David, the vet (Gina and Louis’ dad), will give the dogs their pills and stamp their passports in the evening before we leave. French vets charge a lot of money for this service – because they can.

Lucia found a delightful looking house in the seaside village of Le Tréport, just north of Dieppe, which is in easy driving distance of Abbeville, Amiens, Rouen, Le Havre and the beaches of Normandy. It should be fun – I’m looking forward to it.

Now for some matters of interest.

I watched some of the Pistorius trial with interest. My personal opinion was that he knew exactly what he was doing. At the same time, without any corroborating evidence (you really need an eye witness in these cases), it was always going to be difficult to convict him of murder. I thought the sentence was inadequate.

I was perhaps more intrigued by the Shrien Dewani case. Right from the word go, I thought the taxi driver was lying through his teeth. Perhaps it’s just prejudice as a result the brutal murder of my Aunt Eugene in 2006 (which was probably one of the biggest factors in our decision to leave SA). But still, I find it extremely unlikely that someone would walk into a foreign country and – within 30 minutes –  ask the first black person he came across to find him a hitman. It seems that most my correspondents in SA disagree with me.

We had our own crime drama at the bottom of our garden for several weeks. Many of you will have heard of the disappearance and murder of the 14-year-old Alice Gross. She disappeared while walking along the Grand Union Canal, which is a just a few hundred metres down the Brent River from our house.  The river is the boundary to our property. We watched the police floating up and down the river in rubberducks, stripping away every piece of spare foliage and ground cover, and doing a fingertip search in the water (see pics).  Yellow ribbons adorned every tree, lamppost and railing for miles around until they found her body buried in the river right where she disappeared. What I couldn’t understand was why the police focussed the search here – until I read in the newspaper that it was the biggest police CCTV operation since the 7/7 bombings. Quite simply it is impossible to get off the canal towpath in this area without being captured on CCTV somewhere. They were even able to identify their prime suspect from the same footage. 

Such is our life in London. We love living here. We love the parks, and the streets, and the galleries, and the concerts, and the myriads of things to do. We have some really lovely neighbours – in fact, I have never felt such community among neighbours before. We never walk around looking over our shoulders. We have electricity all the time. Our broadband download speed is around 75Mb/sec and there is no data cap (we regularly do 100-150Gb/month). We had a bit of a problem with a drug dealer down the road, but community action got the police to take such an interest in him that he took his business elsewhere.

Let me leave it there.

Have a very merry xmas everyone

Love, light & peace to you all

Llewellyn

Pics on Google+

Letter from London: 2 of 2014 --- A Daytrip to France

You can find the pictures in the usual place here,
If you prefer Google+, you can find them here.


I went on a day-trip to France with my friend Julian Curtin. I met Julian many years ago in the army when I was working as a waiter/chef at the Castle in Cape Town. Julian and I went to the same school in Johannesburg, KES, although he only joined the school after I left for Cape Town and Rondebosch Boys High School - so I never met him at school.

This was my second such trip to France in as many weeks. The first was on my birthday a couple of weeks ago. I had been wanting to do this for a long time. So, as my birthday approached, I searched the Internet for the best ferry deals from Dover to Calais. I discovered that you really can get a return from Dover to Calais for as little as £19 on MyferryLink.com (the remains of SeaFrance.) This compares to about £70 or £80 on the channel tunnel from Ashford in Kent. The journey is 90 minutes by ferry, and about 25 minutes on the channel tunnel, according to Julian.

The first trip, on my birthday, was more of an exploratory experience – just to check things out, so to speak. But, it gave me the desire to do it again soon - and Julian was free and up for it.

I chose a Wednesday, because Wednesday is Market Day in Boulogne-sur-mer – some 35km from Calais. My idea was to buy lots of cheese and charcuterie from small independent sellers at the market. This is what it's like at Portuguese town markets - but it wasn't really like that.The French markets are far more focused on fresh produce. The market had the most dizzying array of colourful fruits and vegetables - five different types of plum, the most fragrant lemons, and more variations of peppers and tomatoes than I care to count.

It was fun. The first stop was at a restaurant on Place Dalton coincidentally called “Chez Jules” for a reviving coffee on the market square. As for shopping at the market, we only bought some melons and plums – we did the real shopping much later at the huge Carrefour hypermarket in Calais.

You can mostly follow the rest of our day in pictures.

First, we strolled around the old city and the ramparts of the ancient walls, followed by lunch in the Old Town Square.

Then we drove back towards Calais along the Coast Road, stopping at anything that grabbed our attention.

Our first stop was at the immaculately manicured Terlincthun British War Cemetery just outside Boulogne-sur-mer. Too many of the graves were dedicated to soldiers only “Known Unto God”.

Next was a fortified artillery position that formed part of the “Atlantic Wall” built by the Germans during WW2 to defend against the anticipated invasion from England. Now it's covered in graffiti and used for raves and musical concerts. That really appeals to my sense of cosmic justice.

Next stop was Cap Gris Nez – or, in English, Cape Grey Nose. It's the closest point to England on the French coast and is littered with old machine gun bunkers, now tipping forward under their own weight in the soft sand.

Our final destination was the huge shopping centre next to the channel tunnel terminal at Sangatte, just outside Calais. The Carrefour Hypermarket there has a dizzying array of goods and produce. Without a written shopping, list it was difficult to decide what to buy and what not to buy. We ended up buying plenty of chacuterie and  cheese …. and lots, and lots, and lots of beer and spirits. Alcohol is a vastly cheaper in France. Let me put it this way – Gordon’s Gin, Lucia's favourite tipple, costs about £20 per litre in England. But, in France it's more like £14 per litre. By four of those and you’ve just paid for your ferry fare.. It's even cheaper in Belgium.

Anyway, shopping done, we headed back to the ferry port at Calais for our journey home. We joined the ferry as the sun was setting on the most beautifully calm and peaceful evening. We didn't have any asylum seekers riding in the boot of my car, so far as I know.

This link link is a short visual story of Lucia’s and my day-trip to France and Belgium on my birthday.

The link directs you to something that Google does without specifically being asked to. Specifically, I use Google auto backup for my pictures - which are also all geo-tagged. But, I also use Google location tracking on my mobile phone – a great idea if your phone is ever stolen. Google then somehow uses your pictures and your location history to create a visual story. I suppose it is quite freaky, but I do find the technology absolutely mind blowing. Besides, my mobile service provider, my credit card supplier, my bank, GCHQ, the NSA and, probably, the KGB, know where I am anyway – at least Google offers me some real value in return.

It's been over six months since I put any pictures up on the web. They are there – I just haven't shared them yet. I wanted to share the link with some commentary of our life in London which I haven't done for so long. I will get around to it.

I hope you enjoy these links to my pictures.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn


Link to photo albums
Link to albums on Google+

Letter from London: 1 of 2014

My dear family & friends

We went to Portugal - again - for 10 days. As usual we stayed with my sister and brother-in-law, Barbara & Terry, at their home in the tiny village of Espargal in the hills above the Algarvean flood plain.

We could not have asked for better weather or a more relaxing vacation. Every day we were greeted with blue skies and temperatures in the upper 20s and low 30s. If from my pictures it appears that we did nothing but go to the beach, lounge next to the Algibre River, and go to coffee shops - - - you would not be far wrong.

We relished the warm dry heat of the Algarve that is so similar to that which we are used to from South Africa.

You can find the pictures in the usual place here.
If you prefer Google+ (which I just can't get used to), you can find them here.

Unfortunately, after a wonderful break, our return home was not as happy.

We arrived home from Portugal at 23h30 on Tuesday to find CharlieBrown - our black & white cat - in a very poor way. It appears that the problem of crystals in his urethra had recurred, and he had gone downhill very, very fast. I took him to the emergency vet at 01h00 and, after a short discussion with the vet, had him put down while I stroked him and told him that we loved him. I brought him home and laid him on the kitchen floor so that Tigger, Edgar & Hazel would know that he was gone. We buried him at the bottom of the garden next to the river the next morning and planted some bulbs and seeds on his grave. Needless to say, we are so very sad at this turn of events, and we miss him.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn


Link to photo albums.

Link to albums on Google+

Tigger & CharlieBrown

Letter from London: 1 of 2012

My dear family & friends

You can see the pictures in the usual spot at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

My sojourn in Prague began with a bang in the middle of the night. I left my suitcase next to the automatic teller machine in Prague airport and walked off. I got on the bus and, after about two stops, realised I was travelling a bit light. By the time I got back to the airport, after retracing my steps, the suitcase was surrounded by police, bomb squad and airport officials who were all very fucking unhappy with me, but I really didn’t care – I was just too overjoyed to be reunited with my luggage. I wanted to hug my suitcase, but the policemen wouldn’t let me do so until I had produced my passport, given them my address, proof of my address, and (I suspect) generally given them a look of contrition. They never did get the look of contrition.

All the while I was sending Lucia – who had caught a morning flight to Prague for work – panicked text messages. By the time I had all my luggage and was allowed to leave, it was approaching midnight and Lucia insisted that I catch a taxi to the apartment we were staying in. The taxi ride cost £20 against the £1 it would have cost me using public transport.

The apartment, which Lucia found for us on the Wimdu website, was right in the heart of the old city. We had the “suite” which was more like a loft apartment. It had a big open room downstairs and a mezzanine level for beds. Well, when I say mezzanine level, I mean a sort of roof space no more than five feett high at the apex of the roof and then slanting fairly sharply down. My head and the ceiling became quite well acquainted over our stay. Despite this drawback, it was a lovely apartment and I would recommend the apartment block to anyone considering going to Prague.

We were up early the next morning because this was a working trip for Lucia and she had to get to the office which was a few streets away. We listened to the sound of bells wafting in the open window over a breakfast of cheese, ham and bread rolls.

It took me quite a while that Tuesday morning to shake off the events of the night before – I have never done anything quite so stupid.

My first task for the morning was to get a local prepaid simcard for my mobile phone with a big data allowance. I’ve become a heavy data user while travelling. You can never get lost with Google Maps because it uses GPS to pinpoint your exact location. If there’s an interesting sight or building, Google Earth will once again use GPS to pinpoint your exact location and, nine times out of ten, will tell you what you’re looking at with a link to Wikipedia. And, if you want to know more about what you’re looking at, you can just Google it. Google Translate is an absolute gem of an app which enables you to get by without speaking a word of the local language. You just type in what you want to say and show the shop assistant (or a member of the bomb squad getting ready to blow up your suitcase for that matter) the resulting translation.  I also have a clever little application called JellySMS which uses the Internet to send text messages anywhere in the world at the local rates of the country to which you’re sending the SMS. And the Skype app allows you to call anyone anywhere in the world at vastly reduced rates.

My second task was to find the Brazilian restaurant which was recommended to us as a possibility for watching the Portuguese matches in the Euro 2012 football championship. I found it relatively easily, but all of the staff were Czech apart from one lone Brazilian chef who didn’t know of any bars or restaurants where the Portuguese of Prague gathered. He suggested I try the Brazilian Embassy around the corner.

I had more luck at the Embassy from a very helpful consular assistant who called a pal to find out the name and address of a new Portuguese cafe which had only recently opened its doors for business. I traipsed across the city to the Cafe Oliveira which was on Mánesova, a bourgeois (according to my Rough Guide) boulevard of beautiful art deco apartment blocks. The cafe was a small hole-in-the-wall type place but, having ascertained that they would indeed be showing the football, I strolled off back in the direction of the city centre to go and look at Prague.

My trusty Rough Guide was both good and poor. It was excellent at informing me about where to go and what I was looking at, but poor in that it only gave the Czech names of the sights and areas. Let me ask you: What would you rather read about - Náměstí Republiky or Republic Square?

I spent the rest of the day just walking, taking arbitrary turns when I saw something interesting. The city is like a giant art gallery in and of itself. Down in Wenceslas Square (which is more a wide boulevard than a square really) I had lunch at a cafe which comprised two old trams and rows of outside tables. Rather unsurprisingly it’s called “The Tram”. The square is lined with the most stunning Hapsberg era art deco architecture and a few dull buildings from the communist era. It appealed to my sense of humour that the big communist department store is now a branch of Debenhams, and another has been converted into Marks & Spencer. Around the corner, the Museum of Communism is right above McDonald’s and next door to a casino. Nice.

The top of Wenceslas Square is crowned by the imposing National Museum which was the focus of the 1989 demonstrations which brought down the communist regime. In November 1989 750 000 people – nearly three-quarters of the population of Prague – crowded in to the square demanding change. On the day I was there, a few protestors with big flags and banners and a loud sound system were trying to gain support and sympathy from passersby not very successfully. I’m guessing that they were protesting the economic situation given that there were several “Occupy” sites dotted around the capital also trying to rouse some sympathy and action from the populace.

At the bottom of the square stands a five-storey Bata shoe store. Much to my fascination, my Rough Guide reliably informs me that Tomáš Baťa was Czech. I didn’t know that. All I ever knew about Bata was that they made my school shoes. For my South African friends – anyone remember Bata Toughees? I still remember the jingle and tag line from the radio ads in the 1970s: “(B)ring Bata your feet and we’ll wrap them in comfort, comfort for the whole year round.” The shop proved quite handy a couple of days later when my sandals broke.

Walking around Prague that afternoon I learned a few rules. First, Czech’s don’t have the same regard for pedestrian crossings than they do, say, in the UK. Getting across the road is more a question of who has the bigger balls – you or the driver? Second, trams have absolute right of way. Given that they are fairly large and heavy vehicles made of iron and steel, this is understandable. Third, the Czech’s don’t like it when you cross against the light even when there is nary a car in sight.

Perhaps the biggest soundtrack of Prague for me is the ticking of the pedestrian traffic lights. It’s a slow tick when the light is red, and a triple time tick when the light is green.

Aside from the traffic lights, I was most surprised at how full of music Prague is. There are buskers everywhere, open air concerts in the courtyards of many state and city buildings, concerts in many churches nearly every night (although the ensembles seem to play much the same pieces of music), and often the sounds of students or children practising the piano, or violin, or guitar, or clarinet wafting down from open windows. I suppose that shouldn’t have been surprising in the city that gave us composers like Dvorak and Smetana, where Mozart tickled the ivories of the city’s organs, and the hometown of the Princes Lobkowicz, one of whose ancestors was Ludwig van Beetohoven’s principal patron, and to whom Beethoven dedicated his third and fifth symphonies.

That first afternoon, my walk took me from Wenceslas Square down to the Vlatava River (Moldau in German) at the Legii Most (The Bridge of Legions), past the Karlův most (Charles Bridge) – perhaps the single most recognised icon of Prague, the Mánesův most (Manes Bridge), and the Čechův most (Czech Bridge) where I stopped for a beer and to watch life go by on the river to a soundtrack of trams running over the bridge.

One of the few things that I find disappointing about London (and the UK in general) is the lack of riverside cafés – more like complete non-existence. All over Europe you’ll find cafe after cafe lining the banks of its rivers as they wind through whichever city, frequented by tourists and locals alike. The atmosphere is always relaxed and laid back with patrons sipping a coffee, a beer or a glass of wine, and perhaps tucking in to a pastry or a sandwich. All the UK seems to have is the odd, usually dull (although there are some exceptions), expensive pub.

After a beer (or two) I wandered through the old Jewish quarter(Josefov)  towards the MillwardBrown office in Klimentske. Right next door I passed the Bulgarian Institute which was preparing for a concert by a fourteen-year-old violinist, accompanied by a pianist. It was free and there were free drinks afterwards, so I went to the concert which turned out to be most pleasant. Lining the walls of the storefront concert room were pastels by Bulgarian artist Georgi Jelezerov. No, I hadn’t heard of him either, but if I had some spare cash burning a hole in my pocket I wouldn’t mind hanging a few on the wall in my home. Lucia still wasn’t finished work by the end of the concert, so I strolled back to the apartment via Republic Square and the grand art deco concert hall that is known as the Municipal House. Outside, I stood listening to a group of eight French buskers who played everything from The Kinks, to the Beatles, to French and Spanish folk songs. I don’t easily give money to beggars and buskers, but I gave them a bunch they were that good.

Diagonally opposite the Municipal house is the Palladium Shopping Centre which is easily the best shopping centre I have visited – ever. You would hardly know that it’s a shopping centre from its facade – it just looks like one of the art deco buildings. But step inside the doors and it leads into the best layed out, the best dressed shopping centre, with just the right blend of shops that I have ever visited. To my mind it completely blends into its surroundings, unlike the brutalist architecture of most shopping centres.

For dinner Lucia and I had pizza at a Bohemian, Italian hole-in-the-wall jazz cafe right next to a medieval cathedral.  The keyboard and double bass jazz combo were really good. Lucia expressed some surprise that I liked jazz. The problem with jazz is that it actually represents so many different genres (which usually sound like discordant squawks to my ears) that it’s impossible to say whether you like it or not. This fell into the category of good jazz by my definition.

Interestingly, Prague has one of the biggest Italian expatriate communities in Europe, and it has the Italian restaurants to prove it – they’re everywhere. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the outnumbered “traditional” Czech restaurants. The only more numerous type of shop in the city centre is probably the hundreds of tourist traps selling Czech crystal tat to tourists. We passed one on the way home pumping out Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us” (the only decent song he ever wrote) at 11 o’clock at night.

On Wednesday morning, I awoke sneezing and  spent the rest of the day trying to combat the effects of sever hayfever. First, I returned to the bookshop I had spied out the previous day on Wenceslas Square to replace the Marco Polo map of Prague I had lost the day before. The Neo Luxor bookshop – over five floors – is easily the biggest bookshop I have ever visited. I wondered if the Kindle hadn’t made it to Prague yet. The size of the shop would certainly seem to indicate a significant thirst for knowledge among the Czechs.

 With my new map in hand, I strolled back across the city and then across the Vlatava River at the Bridge of Legions to Kampa Island and Malá Strana (Lesser Town) which sits below Prague Castle. It’s an incredibly picturesque area set on a slope up to the Castle. It’s narrow streets are a melange of churches, museums, galleries, concert halls, adverts for musical events, restaurants, cafes, trams, buses, a few beggars and thousands of tourists. The Czech parliament and senate are housed in two of the old grand palács. I felt a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of attractions. It would take many weeks, possibly months to see everything.

Around one corner I came across a workman high up a ten meter ladder painting the wall and cleaning the gutters of a hotel sans any sort of harness or safety equipment. His head was protected by a baseball cap. English “’Elf & Safety” would have had a collective heart attack.

I stamped up the hill to the castle district, which is more a series of palaces than a castle per se. It didn’t quite have the bustle of the district below with no trams and few cars, but it was still buzzing with hordes of tourists.

First port of call for me was a cafe in the Schwarzenberský palace for a cappuccino and something to try and calm my hayfever. My sister’s solution is always to gargle with Bagaçeira (the Portuguese version of grappa) – she swears by it. The only other patron at the cafe recommended that I try Becherovka, a Czech firewater made from grain alcohol and steeped in spices. I forgot the gargling bit (which is possibly why it had no effect on my hayfever), but I felt good.

The exterior walls of the Schwarzberg Palace are an excellent example of sgraffito decoration – I had to look it up on wiki. Essentially you plaster a wall with several layers of different colour plaster and then carefully scrape away the layers in a geometric pattern (or trace a picture) to create a multi-coloured wall. There’s a lot of this around Prague.

Outside the gates to the “castle” I watched the changing of the guard with soldiers trooping around in their sky-blue uniforms designed by film maker Milos Forman. As a counterpoint to the “friendly” uniforms, the event was watched over by Ignaz Platzer’s Blood-curdling “Battling Titans”, two gargantuan stone figures wielding club and dagger about to inflict fatal blows on their victims.

After that, I joined the midday throngs in the palace compound, elbowing my way around the sights and into St Vitus Cathedral. I quickly (and easily) tired of that and paid the equivalent of £5 to climb the cathedral bell tower which afforded panoramic views up and down the Vlatava River and all around Prague with its red roofs, big green parks and communist style apartment blocks in the distance. Below, the square outside the cathedral was littered with tour guides holding up identifying flags, umbrellas or giant plastic flowers for their followers. (The identifying flags rather reminded me of my days in the army and the drills for fire and movement: every time I see one of the flags, I want to give firing instructions the light machine gun crew.)

After descending the tower, I took myself for lunch at the Poet Cafe in a much quieter, green corner of the castle where I decided to head back to the apartment – I’d had enough hayfever for one day and my head was pounding despite several doses of ibuprofen. I crossed the river at the Manes Bridge and strolled along the riverside under a row of linden trees where young lovers clogged the park benches.

In the evening, two of Lucia’s colleagues, Grace from Italy and Tomas from Germany, joined us for dinner and football at Cafe Oliveira. (The match was Portugal against Spain which Portugal lost on penalties much to the dismay of the Portuguese customers.) The four of us made our way to the cafe on the Prague Metro. It feels like it was designed by the KGB – it’s almost devoid of advertising and has very little signage to tell you where to go. (If you don’t know where you’re going, you shouldn’t be there in the first place.) Unlike London transport, however, it is spotlessly clean – and that goes for the trams and buses as well.

The big screen was in a crammed little room and the air soon became thick with cigarette smoke, but it had an amazing atmosphere. (That’s one thing the Czechs can do: ban all smoking in enclosed public places – we’ve got quite used smoke free restaurants and pubs.) Dinner comprised petiscos: olives, cheese, bread, chouriço, lupins, toasted sandwiches, two bottles of wine and a couple of beers – all for the grand total of £30.

The cafe had such an amiable crowd as well, with everyone enquiring from everyone else where they were from and why they were there. We met a young fellow studying international relations in Prague (probably headed for the diplomatic corps), an oil trader from Angola, a middle-aged pharmacist, a slim and svelte blonde American who spoke perfect Brazilian Portuguese (but with an over-riding American accent), a gay Brazilian girl and her partner (the partner didn’t like me, I suspect because I was yelling loudly at the television), and sundry others who gave us the warmest welcome. It was such a pity Portugal lost.

The next day, Thursday, I spent most of the day riding trams. I like to do this, to get to know the city and get the feel of the city, if I can. I bought my day ticket at Republic Square and got on the very first tram that came by – the number 14. I rode it out to the terminus, and then got on a different one and rode that one until I got to a major tram intersection, and then got on another one again.

The first thing that becomes clear is that Prague has gone up rather than spread out like London or Johannesburg or most cities in the “new world”. One passes apartment block after apartment block right out to the periphery. As you move further out, the apartments become more plain – none of the art deco, baroque, or rococo of the centre – just plain blank walls of the 20th century. At the extreme you get to the communist built apartments which are not really bad looking at all, but something that could simply have been built anywhere.

Alongside the river on one journey I came across a large outdoor market, the Penny Market, so I hopped off the tram to investigate – but it was mostly the Eastern made tat you can find anywhere in the world, although it was in lovely surroundings. Right next door was a warehouse complex with a huge advertising hoarding announcing this was “Showpark”. I thought it would be some sort of cinema or other entertainment complex, but on closer inspection I discovered that it fell more into the “other” category. I looked it up on my mobile phone and was guaranteed that this was the “the largest adult entertainment complex in all of Europe.” I disagree – Amsterdam (where the wares are on public display) wins that one hands down, although I am reliably informed that the Reeperbahn in Hamburg is a close contender.

At around lunchtime, I caught a number of trams which took me to the base of Petrin, one of Prague’s larger green spaces set on a hill to the side of Malá Strana. I took the funicular, built for the 1891 Prague Exhibition, to the top of the hill, and thence ambled to the one-fifth replica of the Eiffel Tower (built for the same Expo) where I lunched on Klobasa (Czech sausage) and a beer. The park is lovely – although it is surrounded by the bustle of the city, it is quiet, green and shady. The stillness is broken only by the sounds of birdsong and church bells. It’s a wonderfully calm space.

Back on the trams in the afternoon, I continued to explore the city – this time with a little more activity on the trams themselves.

First, I was sitting on a tram in a daydream, and suddenly this very big bloke in jeans, with muscles bulging out his floral t-shirt, was at my side shoving some sort of badge in my face and making some demand of me in Czech. My first thought was that the police were still pissed off about my suitcase at the airport. But no, they were ticket inspectors, and I happily showed them my day pass. They continued their inspection of the rest of the passengers, and then just sat down for about four stops, then jumped up again to badge the new arrivals. This time they found some fresh bait in a group of rather older Swedish or German tourists who scattered off the tram in all directions at the next stop with the ticket inspectors in hot pursuit. The last thing I saw as the tram pulled away and around the corner was some old dear walking a lot faster than her prescription walking stick would suggest.

And then, later, out near the more upmarket suburb of Bílá Hora, I had a minor altercation with another passenger. I was sitting happily in my seat with my legs crossed looking out the window at the passing sights, when another older man got on the tram. If I can try to paint a picture in words: he looked like a mean mouse. His clothes were dowdy, more reminiscent of the communist era, he had on very big glasses that seemed to cover half his face, his hair was greasy and his shoulders were slumped. He looked like some minor communist party official who was bitterly disappointed that he no longer got the respect that he thought he deserved was his right – almost glaring at everyone in defiance as he walk down the coach. He walked with a walking stick that he didn’t need other than to bash people as he did to me. I couldn’t believe it – he walked past me and whacked my foot as if it was in his way (which it wasn’t) and took the seat in from of me. I was completely stunned for a moment, at the same time noticing a group of teenagers sort of hiding their eyes and sniggering, and then reacted – I thumped the back of his seat as he sat and told him to fuck off and show some manners. Unfortunately I don’t think he spoke English. And then we just sat there.

In the early evening, I went to a concert by the Old Prague Music Ensemble at St Georges Basilica in Prague Castle. The programme included works by the likes Smetana, Dvorak, Vivaldi and Mozart. The ensemble was adequate, but not brilliant. The £20 ticket for the 70 minute programme seemed expensive, but the venue was fantastic. My sandals broke as I walked there, and then I still had to flop all the way back to the apartment afterwards to change for a work do with Lucia’s company at a cocktail bar around the corner. At some point during the evening I looked at my phone to get the score in the match between Germany and Italy in the other Euro 2012 semi-final. I couldn’t believe my eyes to see German was losing. One of Lucia’s new hires in Prague, Martin, quickly took the opportunity to invite me to another bar around the corner so that we could watch the second half.

We awoke late on Friday morning after a long, hot, sticky night. I took the morning slowly, filling in time until Lucia could join me at lunchtime for the rest of the weekend. I went to the giant Bata store on Wenceslas Square and bought a lovely pair of replacement sandals for around £40.

Just before lunch, I met Lucia at the apartment and we caught a combination of the metro and trams to the funicular at Petrin. We had a lunch of Klobasa, Czech pork steaks, bread and beers at the copy of the Eiffel Tower. Lucia relished the quiet calmness of the park after a hectic week of work – we put our feet up, sat back and took things slowly. After lunch we wandered through the extensive rose gardens and then along the “Hunger Wall” down towards Prague Castle. We wandered a short way down the hill in the park so that Lucia could lie against a tree in a yoga pose to try and cool her feet.

In the castle district we first wandered into the Strahovs Monastery. Although it houses one of the largest ancient theological libraries in Europe (£10 entry please), we headed straight for the terrace cafe to enjoy what is probably one of the best views of Prague. The cool drinks were expensive, but we viewed the price more as rent.

Afterwards we sauntered down the hill to the castle precinct itself. What a difference it makes to go later in the day – it was so much more pleasant without the crowds. We almost had St Vitus Cathedral to ourselves, and then bought tickets to see the Old Royal Palace, St Georges Basilica and “Golden Lane” – a narrow alley of tiny houses built into the walls of the castle. Apparently Franz Kafka wrote one of his early books as a resident in this alley. (There’s a lot of emphasis on Kafka around Prague.)

Having taken our fill, we wandered back to our apartment via the castle vineyard set into the hill down from the palaces, across the river at Manes Bridge where we sipped a few beers at the cafe and watched people and boats go by.

For dinner we went to the Cuban restaurant/cafe/bar (more precisely “La Bodeguita del Medio”, which is apparently quite famous) where we supped on a dinner of Mojito’s and Chicken Paella. The food was okay, nothing wrong with it at all – but I hate paying for something I can do so much better.

If anything, Friday night was even hotter than Thursday night with the thermometer staying up in the high 20s.

Saturday was our first full day together and Lucia let me be her guide. First stop was shoe shopping at the Bata store. I left Lucia to peruse the wares while I went down to the coffee shop I’d been at the previous day for cappuccino. The waitress recognised me immediately and told me that I hadn’t paid for my cappuccino previously. I could have sworn that I’d paid her colleague, but given my recent track record for forgetting and losing things, I wasn’t going to argue. Then when it came to pay and leave, the same colleague told me “not to worry” and that “it had been sorted out”. Having worked in a bar/restaurant for five years of my life, and having seen every skulduggerous and nefarious thieving trick in the book, I am prepared to lay money on the fact that he was ripping his colleague off.

As we headed off to begin our day of sightseeing, we past an American family walking the other way – the mother declared loudly that: “It sure ain’t Copenhagen.” My immediate, silent response was: “No you twat, it’s Prague,” but I’ve spent a long time trying to think about what she could possibly have meant. Did she think Prague was shit, or that Copenhagen was shit, or was she just making an innocuous general comment? And, if she thought any of them were shit, why did she get on an aeroplane in the first place?

Our first stop was the Riding School of the Wallenstein Palace where the Prague National Gallery was hosting the works of Jakub Schikaneder. No, I hadn’t heard of him either, once again, but I was really taken the giant posters dotted about the city advertising the exhibition. It showed what looks like an old man standing on the Charles Bridge through the haze of the setting sun on a cold winter’s day that really appealed to me. That, and the fact that various websites described him has the most important Czech painter of all time, was enough for me to make a date with Lucia at the gallery.

Let me qualifying my comments by stating that Lucia said it was the highlight of her trip. Much of the paintings were quite dark. Certainly they showed a robust social feeling often depicting women in hardship, old age and poverty. They show the hard life of the peasantry under the old European monarchies. There was a whole series of contemplative paintings showing priests in prayer and reflection. But there were also very bright pictures, usually views out a window or door. His grasp of painting light and shadow was superb. His speciality seemed to be nocturnes – paintings made in the half light of the setting sun: a couple walking arm in arm, a crowd on a quay, a carriage waiting in front of a grand house. If I ever win the Euromillions, and should some Schikaneders come available on the auction market, I would definitely be a buyer.

I even recognised one of the paintings – Lucia said it looked like something from a chocolate box, and she may well be right. But just because some capitalist fucks stole his picture to sell their chocolates doesn’t mean it isn’t any good.

After the exhibition, we headed down the road towards the centre of Malá Strana looking for somewhere to have lunch and chanced a beautiful tree-lined courtyard set with cafe tables. I have no idea what the trees were, but their flowers filled the courtyard with the most divine scent – so we plonked ourselves down for a sandwich and a beer.

Afterwards, we wormed our way through the narrow, cobbled, twisting streets looking for the museum of musical instruments – which we didn’t find because I was distracted by the Rough Guide’s mention of the John Lennon Wall. It’s simply a wall that the youth of Prague started tagging after John Lennon was assassinated in 1980. Call it what you will – rebellion against the Communist regime, or simply the rebellion of youth against adult authority – it has become a shrine. It looks like a complete mess to my eye (there is nothing Banksy-like on this wall), but it seems to have kept the graffiti artists mostly away from the rest of Prague – and that’s a good thing.

Around the corner is the Museum Kampa (on Kampa Island), a gallery of surrealist and “spiritual” art that is highly rated on TripAdvisor. Among its more famous exhibits are works by Goya and the sculptor František Kupka. We were keen to go, and went to the ticket desk – BUT, that was where things turned sour. Adult admission is about £9 each, but family admission (two adults, three children) is around £11 – and you’re not allowed to buy a family admission without children. I’m never one to take such discrimination lightly – it’s either gross discrimination on families without children, or simply a tax on tourists. They say it’s to encourage children to go to galleries, which may well be true, but the Museum Kampa was the only gallery or museum we came across in Prague that charged a discount on the adult price for a family entry. So, after arguing strongly for several minutes while I let the queue behind me grow, we departed, but it left a bitter feeling (probably the only negative of our entire stay in Prague.) So, if you ever go to Prague, don’t go to the Museum Kampa – in fact, write to them and tell them why you’re not going.

We dithered about what to do after that. It was extremely hot – apparently the hottest day in 65 years – and we were feeling a bit washed out. We eventually took a tram to the top of the palace gardens of Prague Castle and meandered through the coolness of the tree-lined paths. In the middle of the gardens is a house which was built for the President of Czechoslovakia during the communist era. It’s just a shit (big) modern house really, and looks entirely out of place. Leaving the gardens we wandered back down through the castle precincts (popped in at a photo exhibition of pictures by Jan Reich) and the castle vineyard to the Villa Richter, a restaurant where we shared some more beers and a cheese platter gazing over the city. Afterwards we dragged ourselves back to the apartment in the still searing heat. For dinner we went to a Lebanese restaurant in the Palladium Shopping Centre, although I’m not sure I should actually admit that we went to a shopping centre for dinner.

Back at the apartment we tried to find sleep with all the windows wide open. In the morning (Sunday), I found Lucia on the sofa under the window complaining that she hadn’t slept at all. We both took cold showers and dressed for another day of exploring. We had breakfast at a cafe next door to the “Spanish” Synagogue which was our first port of call. The synagogue doesn’t look like much on the outside, but the interior is breath-taking – the gilded Moorish interior deliberately imitating the Alhambra. My Rough guide says: “Every available surface is smothered with a profusion of floral motifs and geometric patterns  in vibrant reds, reds, greens and blues, which are repeated in the synagogue’s huge stained-glass windows.” I concur.

The synagogue now houses a graphic history of Prague’s Jews from the 1781 Edict of Tolerance right through to the Holocaust. Most of the Jews in Prague died in Auschwitz after being moved to the ghetto in Theriesenstadt.

As I was looking at an exhibit on the revival of the Jewish community in Prague, I heard a bearded kantor next to me say to a Jewish tourist: “I’ll say a prayer for you.” He then sang the most beautiful and haunting prayer. The synagogue fell silent and you could have heard a pin drop apart from his voice. Me – a confirmed atheist – put my hat on as a mark of respect. But then he went and spoiled it all, when he was finished, by holding his hat out to all and sundry saying: “What, this is a free concert?” I shouldn’t have bothered with the hat.

Outside we passed Švejk Restaurant named for the main character in the book “The Good Soldier Švejk” by Jaroslav Hašek. It was a book I bought when I was still a teenager (because I like the cover), and is one of the few books in my (extensive) collection which I’ve never read. I started a few times, but just got bogged down in the philosophy. But it’s one of the books which define Czech nationhood and you find cartoon motifs to The Good Soldier Švejk all around Prague.

We only had one other tourist item on our list for the day – the Lobkowicz Palace in the castle district, not particularly because I knew its history, but rather because it was something that you should do in Prague. It was only in the gallery/museum that I learned the history of the Lobkowicz family. Most notable is the fact that one of the Lobkowicz princes was Ludwig van Beethoven’s principal patron, paying him a stipend to continue composing. In one of the rooms, surrounded by ancient musical instruments, they have the actual, ORIGINAL score of Beethoven’s third symphony, the Eroica.

The rest of the palace is filled with the most stunning art, paintings, decorative arts, musical instruments, original musical scores and weaponry. I was amazed to discover that the Lobkowicz’s actually own the Canaletto painting of the “Lord Mayor’s Parade” on the River Thames which was the blueprint for the recent Diamond Jubilee Parade for the Queen.

Recent family history is just as interesting. Everything was confiscated by the Nazi’s when they invade Czechoslovakia in 1938 and then given back after the war, only to be nationalised by the Communist regime in 1948. The family then escaped to America and finally claimed it all back under the Restitution Act after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. That said, I have a bit of a problem with restitution: 1) it perpetuates the inequities of feudal Europe as so emotively illustrated by Schikaneder, and, 2) the communist government of 1948 was a legally constituted government supported by at least half the populace thus representing the will of the people at the time.

But let than not detract from the palace – TripAdvisor rates the palace a rare 5 out of 5, and we agree.

In the museum shop afterwards Lucia and I had the opportunity for a good laugh at the expense of some more Americans. Among their wares they had large posters, postcards and key rings depicting “The Lord Mayor’s Parade” by Canaletto . In a very broad American accent a tourist asked the shop assistant: “Is that the Vlatava?” to which the assistant truthfully answered: “No, it’s the Thames in London.” Says the American: “Oh, what a pity.” It makes me think of the well-worn proverb: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Before dinner that evening, we switched our apartment for a hotel as Lucia would be staying on in Prague (for work) once I took my leave on Tuesday morning. Dinner was a hurried affair (at a rather good Czech restaurant) so that we could find a bar with big screens showing the Euro 2012 final between Italy and Spain. We found a nice-looking Italian bar/restaurant around the corner from the hotel which was packed with Italians. As it turned out, it was quite awkward really as Spain dished out a 4 – 0 drubbing to Italy. But we certainly enjoyed the match.

 Monday was my last day in Prague. I walked to the Prague Fortress (Vyšehrad – literally High Castle) about four kilometres away, bordering the southern tip of the “New City”. I wound my way through the streets and boulevards simply marvelling at the architecture, once again. The fortress has more legends and myths attached to it than any other place in Bohemia, and it has emerged into a symbol of Czech nationhood. There is little left of the palaces that once adorned its ramparts, and it is now simply a large green open space sitting high above its surroundings and affording an awesome view up and down the Vlatava.

Part of the symbolism of the Vyšehrad arises from its cemetery which shields the remains of Czech art intelligentsia. Only the great and good lie here – there are no soldiers or politicians, and not even the Communists managed to muscle their way in except on artistic grounds. I took my photograph in front of the mausoleum to Antonín Dvořák and then the simpler grave of Bedřich Smetana.

I tried to get in to the neo-Gothic church of Saint Petr and Pavel next door which hides Art Nouveau murals on every surface inside, but the Rottweiler on the door kept slamming the door in everybody’s face without explanation. This somehow deemed it beneath her to converse with the paying (tourist) public. Luckily a nun came along and I more-or-less stood directly in front of her to enquire what was going on and when we might get in to the church. She made the queries of the Rottweiler in Czech who glared at me menacingly while begrudgingly answering the nun. My smile of thanks didn’t quite echo with my thoughts.

I didn’t feel like hanging around until two or three o’clock and so went to a cafe in the corner of the castle for a coffee and slivovitz under the trees while I decided what to do next. I could have gone back across town to the Žižkov Television Tower – the highest structure in Prague – which was allegedly built to jam West German television signals in the 1980s. It has the distinction of being voted one of the ugliest structures in Europe.  Apparently the Praguers call it The Rocket because it looks like a rocket standing next to its launch gantry. Look, it’s not art deco or baroque, but it has its own charm to my eye. I’ve seen many more shit buildings that I would pull down first – the Birmingham Central Library would be number one.

But I’d already got my bird’s eye view of Prague from the bell tower of St Vitus Cathedral, so I scratched that idea. Then I remembered the posters I’d seen for the KGB Museum in Malá Strana, looked it up on my phone (a four out of five rating from TripAdvisor), and decided to go there. I walked along the River until I got to Zofin Island which houses a concert hall and various operations renting out pedal boats, rowing boats and the like. I hadn’t had lunch yet, so I thought it may be a place for a sandwich and a beer. Some “pleasure island” this – it was littered with drunks and drug addicts, one lot doing lines of cocaine right in front of me right out in the open. I moved on.

The KGB Museum (essentially two rooms high in Malá Strana a couple of doors away from the American Embassy) could have been good – but the owner kept dashing between guests trying to give the same story to everyone instead of doing a tour every fifteen minutes. He kept on saying “one minute, one minute” and then dash off for five minutes to lay his patter on somebody else. Eventually, I’d had enough and just left – but it was a real pity really because he had a good story to tell and some truly fascinating objects to illustrate it along the way.

As I walked down the hill I stood for a while watching the police road block that searched every single car that simply wanted to drive past the American Embassy.

Back at the hotel, I packed my bags for an early morning departure. In the evening, Lucia and I went back to the terrace of the Villa Richter for dinner with one of Lucia’s Dutch colleagues. Over our meal we watched the lights of Prague switch on as the night set in. Afterwards we walked back to the hotel and got soaked in the most terrific thunderstorm.

At the airport I wondered why the why the word “Bohemian” had come to mean some sort of artist or writer living an unconventional lifestyle because there is nothing particularly unconventional about Prague. So I looked up the etymology and derivation of the word – and discovered that it derives from a French misunderstanding of where gypsies came from. So, actually it started out as a bit of an insult, but today is worn as a badge of distinction by those whom we refer to as “Bohemian”.


Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Royal Leamington Spa: 1 of 2010

My dear family & friends

We made it to Portugal in the end, but only just. We might have figured that there was going to be a problem given the severe weather warnings for England, but we crossed our fingers and started out for Luton Airport at 3AM one morning a week before Christmas. We drove into a blizzard on the M1 just past Northampton which turned the roads to slush and made driving conditions hazardous. We were glad to be in the CRV. The car was showered with bucket loads of water every time we passed an eighteen-wheeler truck, reducing visibility to near zero. We passed dozens of abandoned cars as we approached Luton Airport – their owners having decided to trust their feet rather than their cars. I found a space to park the car in a three foot snowdrift right at the entrance to the medium term parking lot where I had prepaid our parking for two weeks. I thought it was very lucky that we should get a parking so close to the entrance. It was only when we got back that I discovered that I had parked my car diagonally across several disabled parking bays. But so did a bunch of other people.

There was chaos in the departures hall with all the early flights already having been cancelled. We felt smug that our flight hadn’t been cancelled. Easyjet checked us in, and we passed security into the departure lounge. First we browsed around the shops and then we waited and waited. I took some pictures of aeroplanes covered in snow. (See pictures in the usual spot at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones/.) I suppose I should have guessed there was a problem because there was absolutely no activity on the airport apron. But I didn’t. Eventually some snow ploughs and tractors came out to clear the apron and runways, and flights were called over the public address system. What I didn’t know was that the flights were being called so that people could go and fetch their luggage on the way to being told to fuck off. All the luggage was unloaded in the arrivals hall, flight by flight. I asked one Easyjet official why our flight had been bumped off the Departures Board, and the bastard lied to me. He said that our flight would be called shortly and that there was no problem. When I realised that there were no planes leaving, I persuaded Lucia to ask the same official what was going on. He told her that our flight had been cancelled. (So, why did the ineffable pratt lie to me and tell Lucia the truth?)

I sent a text message to Barbara & Terry in Portugal with the bad news, and we went to fetch our luggage in the arrivals hall and go back through passport control. Terry searched the Internet for alternative flights while we reclaimed our luggage. And this is where we got fucked. All Easyjet flights up to xmas were full because of the threatened strike by British Airways staff (which never materialised after BA had successfully applied for an injunction against the strike.) Easyjet simply ditched those customers whose flights had been cancelled. You could get a refund (with difficulty), but you were certainly not going to get to your destination on Easyjet before xmas. The best flights Terry could find were on Monarch Airlines from Birmingham to Faro the next morning. Lucia and I sat at Costa Coffee in the arrivals hall while I connected my computer to the Internet via my cellphone and booked the tickets from Birmingham (at great cost.)

We left my car at Luton (on the [correct] assumption that we would be able to drive home on our return) and caught the bus to Coventry, and then a train to Leamington Spa. We took a taxi home and arranged with the driver to pick us up at 4AM to take us to Birmingham Airport. And that’s how we eventually got to Portugal. It wasn’t cheap. I still don’t understand why Luton Airport got snowed in when Gatwick, Stansted and Heathrow managed to keep their runways open. I can tell you what I saw – and that is simply that the “workers” (fuckers) were doing nothing long after the snow had stopped. I wish a pox on them all.

While we cooled my our heels in Leamington Spa overnight, I tried to get a discount on the apartment we had booked in Lisbon given that we would only be spending two nights in the apartment rather than three. The agency, travellingtolisbon, wasn’t interested in my appeal. They didn’t seem to realise that we actually had a choice of whether to honour our reservation or not. I don’t understand why someone would risk losing a reservation and guaranteed payment because the rules say you can’t give a discount once the booking is made. They would rather have lost €200 than have kept a client. How do people get to be so dumb? We eventually decided that we would go to Lisbon for two of the nights we had booked because we really wanted to see the xmas lights. As for travellingtolisbon, they gave us a complimentary bottle of port and promised a 10% discount on our next reservation, but I won’t go back to them. Their efforts to lose a repeat customer were successful.

We landed in Faro a day late in bright sunshine with the temperature touching 20C. We shed layers of clothing on the bus between the aeroplane and the terminal while listening in to the chatter of our fellow travellers. One person wanted to know if she needed her passport to enter Portugal. She was completely serious. I suggested to Lucia (in Afrikaans) that such people should not be allowed to own a passport. In the queue for passport control another genius (who should never have been given a passport) told his family they had to join the “Other Passports” queue because the six “EU” queues were only for American citizens. I heard someone else suggest that the Portuguese must be Welsh because they were also Celts. I could only shake my head in horror.

When we emerged from baggage claim, Barbara and Terry whipped us off to Faro beach for coffee and medronho (meh-dron-yo), Algarvian firewater, and then to Loulé railway station for our journey to Lisbon. The apartment was well appointed with fantastic views (see pictures) over the old business district down to the Tagus and the great bridge of 25April. It used to be called the Salazar Bridge after the fascist dictator who ruled Portugal with an iron fist for nearly 50 years. We strolled around the old business district in the early evening gazing at the xmas lights. We decided that they were much better in 2006, the last time we were in Lisbon for xmas. But they were still good, much better than anything on offer in the UK. We ended the evening at a small family restaurant in the Bairro Alto (High District) sharing a bottle of red wine and some classic Portuguese dishes.

On Sunday morning we went to meet my sister, Barbara, whom we had persuaded to join us for a night in Lisbon, at Entrecampos railway station. We were nearly late because it was Sunday and all the ticket offices were closed and we had to use the Lisbon transport ticket machines. The machines had an English button, but it didn’t really help. I chose to use the Portuguese which I understood well enough. We chose our tickets and put €20 in the machine. The machine gave us our €20 back. Then I tried my credit card, but that wouldn’t work either. On closer inspection I eventually realised that the machines would only accept €10 notes and less. We didn’t have any €10 notes so we emptied our pockets and purses to harvest all the coins we had and only just made the fare with a few 10cent coins to spare.

We took Barbara back to the apartment (with which she was duly impressed) via a famous pastry shop, the Confeitaria Nacional. We absorbed the view from the apartment over pastries and coffee before heading out again in the late morning. We wound our way down to the riverfront and caught a tram to the old docks under the great bridge of 25April where we sipped at beers in the bright sunshine. We followed the riverside walk to Belém for more pastries and coffee, and then to famous Mosteiro dos Jerónimos for a xmas concert by Os Violinhos, The Little Violinists. The orchestra is made up of students from the Lisbon Academy of Music from around five to fourteen years old. You can be certain that many of them will be playing in the great orchestras of the world in a couple of years’ time. Like most concerts in Portugal, we had to put up with people walking around and making a noise, but it was fun anyway. Outside the monastery the bright sunshine had turned into a heavy downpour of rain and we had to run for cover at the tram stop. Back in the old business district we hugged the walls to avoid the pelting rain and made our way to dinner in the Bairro Alto again via a few tram journeys. After dinner we chose a taxi to take us back to the apartment rather than brave the rain again.

In the morning we checked out of the apartment and left our luggage with travellingtolisbon while we went exploring again. We visited Mae d'Agua first, the giant reservoir in the middle of Lisbon which sits at the end of the Águas Livres Aqueduct. The aqueduct was built in the mid-1700s to bring the city its first clean drinking water and, quite amazingly, survived the giant earthquake of 1755. From there we wondered through the Rato (rat) district to the park in Principe Real (for more coffee and firewater), before cutting through the Bairro Alto to an art and handicraft shop that Barbara had found in one of the local newspapers. I satisfied myself taking pictures of the Bairro Alto while Lucia and Barbara pored over the wares in the shop. With our shopping done we retrieved our luggage and caught the bus to the Park of Nations (Parque das Nações) where we caught a train back to Loulé in the early evening. On the promenade next to the Tagus I tried to explain the difference between a suspension bridge and a cable-stayed bridge to Barbara as we marvelled at the Ponte Vasco da Gama, the longest bridge in Europe. Well, that’s what Wikipedia says. I think I lost Barbara.

On the train back to Loulé I was completely absorbed by a young woman (let’s say university age) who wiggled and dipped and jived in her seat for the FULL three-hour journey as she listened to music on her computer. I absolutely drew the line when she started singing out loud and HORRIBLY off key. I clapped my hands and glared at her. England would have been proud of me.

We were nowhere near as adventurous at Barbara’s and Terry’s home at Espargal in the Algarve hills. We tried to get to the beach at Praia do Garrão every day (see pictures), no matter the weather. Lucia and I are beach people in our souls and the hardest part of living in Leamington Spa is that we are about as far from the sea as you can get in the UK. Edgar and Hazel would have loved to have been with us, but they have a couple of months to go before they can travel around Europe with us at will on their Pet Passports. Barbara and Terry have more than enough animals to keep us busy. I was particularly exercised by Bobby their latest addition who is a semi-feral dog and very nervous. I used and tried many of the Dog Whisperer’s techniques (National Geographic channel) on him with some success. Terry might argue differently.

I loved walking barefoot on the beach again, no matter the weather. My long-term goal in life is to live by the sea. We envied the owners of the million pound mansions at Vale de Lobo (Wolf Valley) which had an uninterrupted view of the beach and the coastline. At the end of a long walk it was our habit to retire to one of the beach restaurants for a coffee or a beer, and to gaze out to sea and reflect on life.

If it wasn’t the beach, we were probably out walking the dogs with Barbara and Terry in the hills that surround their house in between bursts of rain. The Algibre River was rushing fiercely towards the sea at the bottom of the valley. It’s a dry river bed for most of the year and this was the first time we had seen it in flood. Our walks invariably ended at the Café Coral for coffee and pastries in the village of Benafim on the other side of the valley.

We stayed in most nights next to the fire rather than venture out to a restaurant in one of the surrounding villages. Café Coral cooked a special veal dish (blanquette de veau) for Barbara on the night we arrived in Espargal. I managed to send a glass of red wine flying off the table and into Lucia’s lap as I tried to mime swimming across a snooker table. Oh, don’t ask.

The day before xmas I cooked two batches of Coq Au Vin for an expatriate xmas dinner in Espargal held at Barbara and Terry’s house. The theory was that it would be easy to warm the dish when the guests arrived. Unfortunately we weren’t helped by the electrics, which decided to play silly buggers with our preparations on xmas day, dimming the lights, paralysing the microwave and sending the oven into a hissy fit. We made do. I prepared way too much Coq Au Vin which we were still eating for the next two nights. In fact, Barbara only finished the last of it long after we had left.

Another 20 kilometres into the hills of the Algarve is the village Monte Ruivo (Red Mountain) where our favourite medronho distillery is located. Medronho (meh-dron-yo) is made from the distilled fruit of the strawberry tree (arbutus unedo) (which is entirely different from the more common garden strawberry.) We ventured to the village through a storm which left tree branches lying in the roads and flattened road signs. At the distillery medronho man was hard at work stoking the fire of his copper still. A steady flow of clear liquid poured out the other end into a bucket. I bought four bottles which we wrapped in bubblewrap for the journey home in our suitcases.

The time to leave came all too soon. After checking our luggage in we sat on a bench outside Faro airport breathing in the warm fragrant air and feeling the sun tingling on out skin. Back at Luton airport outside London the temperature was 1C and the weak sun made no difference whatsoever. There was a joyous reunion with Edgar and Hazel when we went to fetch them and the cats at the kennel the next day. Edgar smothered us in kisses and Hazel ran round and round in small circles.

And that more-or-less brings us to where we are now. We visited Julian, Sandra and Chloe in Tonbridge (south-east of London) on Saturday, and on Sunday we went to Anne and Richard for Anne’s birthday do over lunch.

Here in Leamington Spa, it’s been snowing the whole afternoon and the ground is covered in a layer of white.

That’s it for now
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn