Time Lapse in Praha

Those wise souls who know more than I do about Physics will tell you many interesting things about time. For instance, time is apparently curved. So curved in fact that everything that you did in the past will one day come right round and bite you on the ass when you aren't looking. Also time is relative. To the thirsty time-traveller, deep in the bowels of the Prague 9 Steak Bar, time appears to go by very quickly. Indeed, fifteen minutes rapidly turns into about five hours. To the irritated lady-friend, sitting at home with dinner burning in the oven, this seems like a very long time indeed. I'm sorry darling. Blame Einstein for the fact that I got pissed. Again. Time is also a dimension in itself, and this explains why it is hard to walk in a straight line after fifteen minutes in the Steak Bar. A four-dimensional mind finds it hard to cope with a three-dimensional street, especially when there are lamp posts and missing cobbles.

Teaching is an exercise in the relativity of time in that it can make you feel both young and antediluvian at once. The dates of birth that you read on the registers never fail to shock. I am positive there are many typing errors for surely nobody was actually born in 1995? People didn't get born in 1995. They sat examinations and discovered booze and Prog and other good things.

These kiddiewinks hold "eighties" themed parties and think it "retro". As anyone who remembers the eighties can attest, they were complete shite and not suitable for reliving even under the most drunken circumstances. Even the bong-addled "flower power" days, complete with drippy peace-creeps, were more fun than the age of the Yuppie. Your mobile was a brick, your broker was a dick, and that was the eighties in a nutshell.

Also, there are so many points of reference that get lost in the haze. When the Live 8 concert was staged I could not comprehend that to my pupils the original Live Aid was not an event but a piece of history. Hardly anyone that I teach in Prague was alive when the Wall fell, and even those who were on this Earth were but babes in arms, unaware that they were at the centre of a revolution. As such they belong to a different world, and at times place me very much back where I belong, with my Yes records and my bad ties.

And yet, despite the fact that all this should make me feel old, it makes me feel young instead. There is much that is bad about youth. Their attitudes stink, they need a wash, and they really need to do some work. Does that remind you of anyone? Look in the mirror, roll back the years with honesty, and such a strange existence suddenly wraps you up in an embrace of self-familiarity. Their music is dire and their clothes are atrocious but their dreams are the same. In those dreams is the fountain of, if not eternal youth, then a prolonged innocence.

I notice it more as they get older. They become people in their own right and adopt their hopes and aspirations of Universities, careers, and whole new lives. There is the same indecision and worry that we all knew so well. They are too young to realise that it is all a bloody mess anyway and the best that you can do is hold on, roll the dice, and look good as all Hell breaks loose around you. Most of them do yet realise that you can lose everything and still win in the end, and that when you take a fall it is just the fates pointing you to a fun and sleazy basement bar.

I will, in a few weeks time, be saying farewell to my Upper Sixth. Although I have only taught them for a short time I will miss them incredibly. They are heading out on their Big Adventure and will never return. Even if they come back to Prague it will be a different place and a different time for them. They will be different people. Childhood's end approaches.

I watch them worry and prepare. I watch them plan. I am reminded of a boy with big schemes and big dreams. He didn't know what he was going to do but he was going to do something. I relive every moment. I cherish the fact that some things that are memories to me are history to them. For every good band that they missed there were a hundred lousy things that they escaped. Especially around these parts. Their leaders were even madder than Maggie!

I remember well the dread feeling of the spring blossom, for with that came summer examinations. Those warm and dusky evenings were not yours and yours alone, but merely a backdrop for study and revision. It was calculus, not cocktails, that stole away the hours of the day. They have youth on their side, and they will know a future beyond my life just as I know a past beyond theirs. But still, I look at their notes in class, and it is all I can do to stop myself falling to my knees and thanking God that I will never sit another examination again in my life.

And, if you actually believe that, you will never understand how relative this world really is.

The Real Deal?

Sometimes Praha can seem a very long way from London. Sometimes it appears that the two cities are separated by nothing thicker or more opaque than a highball glass of gin. Odd moments span the miles, like the girl passing sweets around at school and offering one to me. And so it was that I ate my first Werther's Original on this side of the old Iron Curtain. We won the war kiddo, and now we take the spoils. Or at least the toffees.

Eurovision has arrived in the Czech Republic, and over the weekend the nation excitedly voted for its tune of choice. They all sucked, but sadly none of them sucked quite enough to be a possible winner. I paid little attention to the music, being transfixed instead by the host; a sixty year old slapheaded bloke dressed like an Australian prostitute and scooting around the stage on a Segway. The Czechs may have a lot to learn about salad preparation but they have nailed the spirit of Eurovision at the first time of asking. I have no doubt that with the Eurovision Song Contest will come the Eurovision Party, although one can only hope that this phenomenon is halted before it crosses the border, in the same manner that a windshield halts a fly.

Another flick through the channels on my idiot-lantern threw up (I use this phrase deliberately) the post-hockey dessert of "Deal or No Deal" - Czech style! For those readers who are lucky enough to have never seen this mindless tripe, the show in the UK consists of an unemployed moronic fatso with a box sweating a lot, while some other unemployed moronic fatsos open more boxes. These boxes contain values of money, ranging from approximately bugger all to more money than the fatsos can understand because they ran out of body parts to count on after 21. Chief fatso has to decide whether to keep going in the hope that his own box contains mucho wonga, or quit when offered a tempting sum by some unseen puppeteer who communicates by telephone. It is good family entertainment, if your family is a bit simple.

At least a show that is terrible to start with is incapable of losing much in translation. The Czechs did their usual trick of improving upon the British version, replacing all the miscellaneous lard-bucket box-jockeys with hot chicks in black dresses. There was also a big red button, but I couldn't work out what it did. My secret hope that pressing it would nuke Russia is probably unfounded but maybe some TV executive can take the hint. "Reds or No Reds"? Where's the Gipper when you need him?

I can't complain, and I won't. For every unfortunate and undesirable dose of prattishness that seeps into this world of Central Europe there are a hundred good things. The freedom to criticise TV schedules is but one of them. And so to those who complain about the Golden Arches that occasionally span these streets, and the Kentucky Fried Mouse Sanders-shacks, I give no time or succour. I will not hang my head in shame at the global footprint of the Dollar nor will I wish it gone. Everything has a cost and the price that is paid now is far less than the tax on humanity that was levied when the Rouble shouted loudest.

The good cuts deeper than the bad. On Sunday we took a walk up to Hradčany, the elevated Castle District of Prague. The skies were blue in the way that they can only be in the first days of spring, when the Sun still hangs low but now brings warmth in its rays. Across the city the uneven red tiled roofs, that trademark vista of Central Europe, almost sparkled in the light. Trees showed signs of life, the first daisies popped up to pester the lawns, and the sight-seeing throng was gloriously moderate in its presence. Up on the hill there are plenty of tourist traps to take your Pounds, Crowns, Euros, Dollars, or whatever other bumwad that you choose to carry in your wallet. Hawking their wares and pushing menus into the hands of prospective punters they will no doubt do good trade.

Not my scene though, for amid these cash-supping "authentic" experiences sits U Černého Vola - "The Black Ox". A small and simple pub, that serves beer and snacks at genuinely authentic Prague prices, it sits in the shadow of the Castle and beautiful pilgrim magnet Loreta. It is the perfect place to guzzle cold mugs of Kozel and feast on fried cheese or cut meats. The long wooden benches are crowded and the waiter busily scuttles around delivering more cold ones where required. I couldn't find an English menu. I didn't want to.

Deal or No Deal? That is the question. A deal with the Dollar, the Pound, the Euro? Deal with the Devil, some would say. But amid the flashy imports on television, and the American fast food boulevards, the real authentic Praha survives. Ironically it survives mainly in places that do not tell you that they are "authentic". And so the Dealer can walk away from the table and go for a drink at U Černého Vola. The price is worth paying and he can be comforted by the cold thrill of the beer, and the reassuring snugness of an ace tucked inside his shoe.