...and now, in an unprecedented move: one month on one page:

Prague/Cesky Raj

The bus to Cesky Raj was VERY BAD INDEED if only because I was beginning to want to go to the loo *before* we got on, tried to go to the look in the bus station and the damn thing was closed. Aaargh. Also, sadly, Tod's lovely old leather suitcase handle broke. Oh. Balls.

Can I just say for a moment that NATO are behaving like a bunch of brainless pricks? God, it feels so close here. You can sense it in the air. Someone was shot outside the American Embassy I think it was. God. There's all this graffiti all over the place as well "Nato=Nazi". I don't fucking blame them. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the situation Yugoslavia wise, we're talking about a Slav nation joining NATO and almost exactly a week later, they're expected to back a war against another Slav nation. Uh? Plus, it's not as if Czech doesn't have a prety sensitive history when it comes to invasions and the West, and I'm not just talking about this century either, it's perennial. I don't know. We're watching CNN in horror, quite frankly.

Managed the bus stop directly outside Turnov station and on to the local train to Hruba Skala I think it was. The locals looking at us like we were just fucking freaks - which was fair enough, we are around there. Anyway, so this is the funny bit. Hruba Skala coming up. Through the train window we can see the edge of this amazing pine forest and brilliantly, Trosky castle in the distance (scary as hell!).

We get off the train. The "stop" consists of a hut. 6 people get off the train and walk away up a dirt track. Blazing hot afternoon, something like 4pm. The "station" master has gone inside the hut, very obviously. We can't see any rock outcrops or cliffs or hotels. A man is walking along the dirt track that walks across the railway. I walk up to him holding the Time Out book open at Hotel Zamek.

-Er, excuse...
-No, no, no

He shakes his head, and leaves me standing in the middle of the road holding my guidebook out in to thin air, like a right idiot. Why did I say an English word! Damnation. But what a fucking incredible reaction!

Next stop - small shop by "station". A queue of people. Stone faced elderly Czech ladies stand waiting in silence. The queue gets to be. I say, in pathetic Czech "Hello, excuse me, I'm English. Where Hotel Zamek, please?" Then to say thanks, I said "Please" by accident, after she had started talking German at me (?) and came around the counter, showing me out of the shop and pointing up the road. "Drei kilometres" "Drei?" "Ya" "Prosim". Doh. Except, two in Czech sounds suspiciously like 3 in German, and of course I was trying to listen for Czech words - so I thought it was 2.

Bear in mind that the suitcase is bust and Kai gamely is carrying it on his shoulder, and I'm carrying to the two shoulder bags. A long, long walk, on a hot afternoon. Up a hill. Up a very big hill. Now, I've got cycling muscles in my legs, not walking muscles, and don't get me wrong but I really don't think that walking up a park hill in Prague on my first day really counts for much. I wasn't carrying two heavy bags for one thing. Poor old Kai, he was in ruinous state.

The pine trees began, after we'd walked through a village on a hill, with an incredible church (a la Prague sgraffito, weird statues n'all). The hill continued to climb. We disturbed two small deer on a slope, the pine trees were continuing to loom in all directions. The road S-bends up the side of a huge rock, and as we turn the corner for about the third time, we see the chateau, I mean hotel, I mean castle, I mean I don't know how to describe it looming about another 50-75 feet above us, on top of a rock, through the trees. Blimey.

The concierge type lady was a seriously Communist influenced middle-aged woman with the face of a block of stone, I'm telling you. She spoke to us in German exclusively (what the fuck is this? I mean- do they all think that English people automatically speak German or something?) and whilst telling us that the breakfast was served between 8 and 10, we heard that the restaurant was open from 8-10, and that for Vegetarian food, we should go to the Hotel Stekle next door (another gorgeous chateau, more Vienna stylee, basically). What she was actually saying is that we should eat at the hotel Stekle because the Hotel Zamek restaurant was closed.

So the Stekle kitchens closed at 8.30.we were in there drinking a pint, thinking - yeah, we're fine, just toddle over to the Zamek's food place. Pitch black outside, walk out, not a soul around, something big rustles through ivy alongside the bridge to the Zamek - and doesn't stop rusting! Scary! The restaurant turns out to be closed! Fuck! We go back to the Stekle, and plead in pathetic Czech/German that we need some sandwiches or something. No go hose. Oh, Jesus. All we had to eat was a cinnamon and raisin bagel each. Cold. No butter. Dry. We were sad.

In bed by 10 however, given that everything seemed to be shut. Oh - I mean, I say "everything" - like there was a any fucking thing to shut in the first place. I was going to say, we seemed to be the only couple in the hotel, until we worked out that there was another couple *and that was it*. Bonkers.

I think I've run out of steam here. I'm spending so much time writing backwards, that I've lost the idea of the fact that it's supposed to be bloody current. So, I shall summarise some stuff.

1. Prague in itself is weird. Too much American stuff, frankly. Public transport system - fantastic. I read a lot of history while I was there, courtesy of Time Out, and a history of Prague during the time when Kafka was alive and since he died (very interesting and useful standpoint as it turns out). So, because of all the history, I felt very odd about all the archly beautiful and more than slightly threatening Baroque Catholic splurges, statuary… all that stuff. All a bit freaky if you ask me. When I've bothered to scan in the photos, you'll see the difference in colour between the sandstone statues in Prague and the ones in the countryside (ie: some are black, and some are sandstone coloured. Can you guess which will be where?). Anyway, the architecture was amazing. I love architecture in other cities. How people build the things in which they live out their lives.
2. I got one of the new jobs I was looking at. It's with, uh, a small internet company in central London. More - much more of that later, I assume.
3. Giving in my resignation letter I was nearly dying of panic attacks, btw.
4. Sky News have asked me to pundit for them on Mondays about once a month. Fucking weird, I know.
5. I had a dream where someone told me off for prefixing too many verbs and nouns with extraneous words. "Fucking" being an obvious one. Although it was just a dream, I've been thinking about it a lot. 'Kin weird, eh?
6. We have put an offer in for a flat, and it has been accepted. BLIMEY. More news on that as it arrives.

More apologies for lack of updating.

Here's a list of occurrences.

1. Mercury Rev: blinding, emotional walls of sound - like the Cocteau Twins in their heyday. They beefed up the more, er, "whimsical" tracks on the album a lot - sounded really good. Beautiful.
2. Emotional crises. Do I fancy someone else? Answer - probably yes. Reason? God only knows. Three years down the line, perhaps? Sounds reasonable. *However*. Be calm. It doesn't matter. I love Kai, nothing's changing. I'm allowed to occasionally have an involuntary spasm. As it were.
3. Something else maybe happening!!!!!!!
4. Still no fucking house. Major fuck ups in that direction, but we went to see a, oh-such a gorgeous flat on Hailsham Avenue, I fell in love with it, but because of all the delays with Kai not having seen it and having to make a separate appointment, we lost it completely. I saw another lovely one, and he still hasn't got it together to make an appointment to see *that* one either.
5. I have to tell you. This moving/buying a place stuff is unbelievable. There have been times in the last couple of weeks when I've felt very angry. At the beginning of this week I started thinking that I ought to move out and just buy a single bedroom place somewhere. Sheeshhhhh -grinds your teeth.
6. Went to see "The Thin Red Line", and it blew me away. Tears pouring down my face during the film, and as the credits started to go up,I don't know - I think I felt the need of a good cry anyway (check above) and the intensity of it all wiped me out -I was weeping like a child for a couple of minutes. Incredible. I can't remember having that experience in a film for a long time. Kai needless to say couldn't understand it and thought it was boring as hell. Not very good timing for any major fucking differences in psyche, really.
   Cait's quick-ish capsule review of how I felt…. Well, yes, you have to put up the white flag to the cry of "self indulgent!!!!" because it obviously was, but,knowing that, it was as close as you could come to an expression of emotional intensity on film. Well, maybe not but my initial reaction was to think of it as an impressionist essay about the human condition on a micro, intense, causal/existential level. Looking so intensely at such a short period of time, with all it's banalities, and boring waits, as well as the intensity of moments in a hellish scenario like that. Although he focussed on the memories of only a couple of the men, each of them had a huge roundness of character as a result of the (the really indulgent bit) voice-overs.. On a much larger and more expansive level, it seemed to be looking at the action from twenty feet up, almost as an animal in the trees alongside all the other animals that were in the film. Viewing the continuity of life and of human existence. The carry on, the endless newness of the moment but put in to context the tiny slip of time that such moments in the film represent. And meanwhile, the sloths keep moving, the birds keep singing and those huge ancient trees keep growing. If the camera were to return two years later, all traces of these horrific events would probably be gone. And he focussed all of these feelings so emotionally, so beautifully. It was extraordinary.
7. Er - that's about it. We moved offices - big deal. This friend of Carl's is currently an hour late for going out for drinks as I'm writing this, and I'm going to be taking about communities at the ICA in about a month (erk) so *that*'ll be fun.

The new office lights are so bright they hurt my eyes. I'm in pain. My eyes are feeling the strain of the lord. The light, anyway.

Bought new old bike. Feels nice. I like the guy in "Axles". I think he gave it me cheap, because what with all the locks, I'm *sure* it was only about a fiver more than he said it would cost on it's own last week. Start cycling in tomorrow.