Holy Days and Holidays
At midday on Thursday I put down my pens and picked up a glass. I put the glass down again on Friday, with a hefty thump, at five in the morning. Such were the celebrations that came with the end of term, the traditional Czech Graduation Ball, and the inevitable descent into a basement bar. The inner Party Reptile reared its long slumbering head and turned its back to the wind. Make mine a double and go easy on the ice, barkeep. This is how the West was won!
Most of the music was dreadful modern dance crapola, not much improved by the resident bongo player. Quite how tunes are meant to be enhanced by a sound akin to a wet Frankfurter being slapped against a bucket I fail to fathom. It must be a young thing. However there were some gorgeous moments when the real records were dusted off. Hit The Road Jack? Satisfaction? Indeed. Another moment of timelapse: music out of time but not out of place. It could have been a scene from any day in the last thirty years in Britain, only the youngsters were better dressed and not up-chucking in the street or pool table pockets.
It took two days to recover but it was worth it, if only to prove that I can still keep going for seventeen booze-sodden hours. Never again though. Well, not until next year at least. Long before that there lies the serious issue of the Easter holiday; that annual celebration of the birth of spring, the rebirth of our Saviour, and the whipping of Czech lasses with sticks. Apparently they're meant to enjoy it and give you their eggs or something. Little tarts.
I'm not going away this particular break. Being away already it would make little sense. After coming to Prague for holidays on a regular basis it would be perverse (even more perverse than Easter whipping) to take the first opportunity to hop off somewhere else. I will even try to get round to actually doing stuff over the next two weeks. There is nothing quite like living in a city to help you see nothing of it at all. The urgency of a snatched and fleeting weekend break is lacking, and everything gets put off until another day. There's always time, so the thinking goes. Except when there isn't time at all, and you find yourself run out of town by death, destiny, or a dirty old man with a willow stick in one hand and his pride in the other. So, just this once, I will be here now and be elsewhere later. Fortune cookie wisdom for the lost generation.
Prague is, in many ways, an ideal sort of location for my favourite sort of deeply unfashionable vacation. Holidays should be nice and relaxing. The trend for "adventure" holidays, slum-surfing through the nastiest bits of the globe in search of "authentic" experiences, is symptomatic of a society that has too much time on its hands and too little bulk between its ears.
White middle-class kids who go hiking through tapestries of Warlord-governed badlands expect to be rescued when kidnapped. Their families also bitch and whine when they get eaten by crocodiles. Accountants that go to the Far East to find themselves are usually the sort of people that you wish would just get permanently lost. It's not like we don't have enough perfectly good Gods around here: leave the bloody tree-spirits to the heathens. Deliberately chasing discomfort these berks revel in getting sand in their pants, ants in their socks, a lifetime of malaria, and wooden carvings of things with too many heads. And this is meant to be fun. I'd rather go play with the dudes wearing mouse ears than share my environment with roaches the size of spaniels. I like my art hanging in a gallery, not hanging off some guy's nose. If I want to see primitive poor people I will go to Liverpool. On a cheap day return.
The only shots that a holiday should require are served in the airport departure lounge. Protective clothing should be available in packets of three. If a Visa is required it should be purely for the purpose of racking up a bar bill that you can't cover in cash. No outpost should be on a wilder frontier than the Ho-Jo on Eighth Avenue, and the water must be drinkable. Especially the fun fizzy water that goes in Scotch.
Given what lies in much of the world, staying put here is not a bad option at all. My wanderlust is in temporary submission. I haven't got to the stage of being edgy whenever I see an aeroplane. Then I know it will be time to fly again. The lure of the big blue will call soon, but the greens of spring are coming into their full glory this week. I can get some rest. Pagans, God-botherers, and whippy perverts alike can rejoice in the coming of Easter. For 'tis the season to be born, reborn, and whipped eggless.
