A Deception of Words

When I tell anybody about my move to Prague there are two responses that I can always count on. With the surety of a sunrise, and with the regularity of an atomic clock, I will receive an immediate self-invitation to come and stay with us and a prediction that I must be looking forward to the beer. It appears that even the most dimwitted geographical dullard knows two things about Prague: They want to go there for a cheap holiday and there's good beer to be found.

I will make no comment about the self-invitations apart from stating that if I wanted you close to me do you really think that I would move a thousand miles away? But the beer… the beer is a different story.

I usually concur on the boozy issue without hesitation, and this is for two reasons. The first reason is simplicity. As the time for movement gets closer I can feel myself withdrawing further and further inside myself. There's too much going on inside my head to be able to formulate a rigorous and concise account of my motives on the hoof.

Q: So Tony, how would you describe your feelings as you plan to move to another country, another culture, and another educational system? How would you encapsulate your hopes, your plans, your dreams, your preparations, your long-term aspirations, and your future? What does the emergence of democracy from Communism mean to you? What role do you have to play? Where does the balance lie between embracing the future and clinging to the past? Do you have your fears, or do your fears have you?

A: I'm only here for the beer.

It's cheap but it works. Tell them what they want to hear… maybe what they expect. It saves talking for too long and it saves any degree of emotional exposure and vulnerability; two things that either scare or bore the average enquirer. Gina tells me that I should work on my social skills. Sometimes dismissal is the social option.

Of course the other reason that I tell the interrogation that I am looking forward to the beer is because I am. The Czechs started brewing the stuff hundreds of years ago and they still make the best beer in the world. Deliciously frothy it abounds with rich flavours and textures that make the bland camel urine produced elsewhere in the world seem unpalatable by comparison.

Beer is very much a cultural entity in many parts of Central Europe, but nowhere more so than the Czech Republic. Records of brewing go back to 1088 and the founding charter of the Opatovice monastery in East Bohemia. It is nice to know that, as far as the records show, most religious sorts were the same drunken hypocrites then that they are now. In 1842 the Czechs discovered lager when a group of brewers in Plzeň fiddled around with their equipment (we're back to the religious habits here) and produced a marvellous golden concoction. Pilsner Urquell and Budvar (not to be confused with Yankee yak-wee "Budweiser") are still going strong and are regarded as two of the finest lagers in the world.

The Czechs not only make good beer but they drink it as well. To be precise they drink more of it than anyone else in the world. Give or take a few pints the "average" adult gets through 330 litres of the stuff every year. That's roughly 600 pints. Given that there must be a few lightweights around that means that your average properly drinking Czech is probably heading towards 800. Two a day, every day, and a few spares for special occasions. That's proper beer drinking, that is.

Proper drinking is something that is sadly missing in England. Heavy boozing has been taken over, and given a bad name, by the binge drinking crowd. The yobs, the teenage slappers and the small-tackled rich kids from the City may raise Hell on a Friday night but they don't have a clue about drinking. Vomiting Bacardi Breezers into the gutter while some stranger gropes your arse is not what real drinking is about. I resent it, mainly because it gives us decent, hard-working alcoholics a bad name.

Not for me the quick hit, the alcopop and white cider existential blast into next week. I prefer the slow burn. The sensation as the first drop hits the nervous system with a welcoming warmth. The loosening of ideas and the transient states. No matter is real but does it really matter? The sense of smug satisfaction as the bottles empty and stack up on the table. One by one they slip down the throat and into the mind until it can't feel the pain anymore. Tell some jokes. Share some fears. Or if alone, as I have been more often than not, light another cigarette, dig out the favourite record and fix one more shot for the road. Ah yes, the road. So bloody long and so frightening to look down. Even more frightening to look back along.

I've cut down a lot in these latter days. I tend to drink when I write and a few years ago I had a lovely regular little contract that meant I was writing a bottle of gin a day. Living in a bedsit in Earls Court, that was the closest thing that you could get to a garret without having an infestation of mice, this was merely how existence played itself out. Luckily the contract ended and so did my tempestuous affair with the old juniper kicks of Mother's Ruin.

And so, reformed character that I am (i.e. still alive), I will enjoy the Czech beer with moderation. I will stick to the local dosage levels as it does not pay to stand out in a crowd. If I drank any less they'd make the obvious assumption: that I am an alcoholic. Nobody has satisfactorily defined this term for me; a general consensus is than an alcoholic is someone who drinks more than you do. Or at least an alcoholic is someone you want to disparage when they don't know how much you glug yourself. Me… as long as I buy my booze from the Sunday Times Wine Club rather than from the local paraffin salesman I reckon that I'm doing okay.

So here's a toast to the hard drinking Czechs; the producers and consumers of these fine brews. With chaser of history and a cocktail of identity we down these glasses, grateful that we no longer have to have a silly haircut and be buggered by the visiting Friar in order to get our beer. Of course all this social boozing does have its down side. Life expectancy in the Czech Republic is not what it could be, and it is more than possible that their beloved beer plays a part in this, alongside the dumplings, the salt, and the fags.

What to do? I have Chemistry degree after all and I know full well the price that comes with heavy drinking. The question is whether to pay the price without counting the cost. The jumbo sized bottle of Pilsner Urquell that I am currently downing may or may not hint at my resolution on this one. You just can't beat that hoppy taste and that warm glow. Maybe the answer I gave earlier is not the whole truth, for words can be deceptive and people only hear what they want to hear. Could I be laughing on the inside at my answer? Maybe what I am telling my inquisitors is something more than they realise; a truth that lives deep within and that I can only face after a glass or seven. Like you, like them, and like us all, I'm only here for the bier.