Resumation

Um.


In a minute I'll tell you where I've really been. First however, I want you to accept this: I've been in prison.

On the whole, that'd be the only reasonable excuse I can think of for not updating for, oh, I don't know, three months.Two weeks. Sixty million years.

OK, now that we've established I'm not lazy, just a crook

Aside: I once heard that in the French elections earlier this decade the reigning centre-right presidente Chirác was facing a tough battle due to allegations of fraud. More worryingly, the far-right Le Pen was in with a chance of winning some seats. Chirác won a landslide with a campaign using the tagline "Vote for the crook, not the fascist".

just a crook, I'll give you the real deal. First off, I sat my third-year exams in Oxford. Then i went home to the shire for a few days and went out of my mind. Then I went to Cardiff and got my results from a BT internet kiosk and yes, ha ha, they're fine, thank you. I also saw R.E.M. play the Millennium Stadium and picked up the fine shirt I'm wearing as I type this. Then I went to Bognor Regis for twelve hours, then I went to the Czech Republic. Now I'm back in Devon, and I'm losing my mind. Again.

The REM show was, to quote Ben Whitehouse, "awesome". For one thing they played "Exhuming McCarthy", which is pretty gratifying to someone who actually owns albums they released in the early eighties. They also played one unheard track, called "I'm gonna DJ" which includes the typically Stipean couplet:

Death is pretty final
So I'm collecting vinyl

Prague, my holiday destination, was pretty damn good too. It's the first time in my life that I've taken a photo of a price. There's a Tesco in central Prague- yeah, I know- and they sell a beer there which is two and a half Czech crowns for a half-litre. That is the equivalent to a pint that costs six pence.
Sixpence.
Americans, let's call that ten cents, or what I believe is known as a dime. A beer? That'll cost you a dime.

To be fair, that's in a supermarket, that's before tax (another fourteen pence per litre) and that's probably for a beer made out of tapwater and brake fluid. Still.

Sixpence.

In the pivovars and restauraces of old Praha, you're paying 30 crowns a pint anywhere, which is 75 pence. For perspective, my local in Oxford is the Cricketer's Arms and there I will pay £2.90 (120 crowns) for Budweiser Budvar.

Talking of perspective,I suspect I've been talking rather a lot about beer and not very much about, say, the calm of Kalovo Namesti, the central-European charm of the Stare Mesto or the wonderful views from Petrin Hill. Those were all excellent, but I have facts and figures to tell you about beer. So.

When I said Budweiser just then, I was performing a little act of cultural guerilla warfare because I of course meant the type of Budweiser that comes from the town of Budweiss, as opposed to Ohio. Anyone associated with the American brand Budweiser should probably know that the brewers of Budweiss aren't happy about that whole trademark thing. The same goes fro the brewers of Pilsen, as in Pilsner Urquell, the beer which has dethroned Budvar as my lager of choice. Both, however, must now fall behind my new favourite beer. It's name is Velkopopovick´y Kozel Cherny Pivo, or in real life Kozel black. My people call it Goat Beer.

As an aside, you might have heard that English and German belong to the same linguistic group and you might, like me, have accepted that on an intellectual level but been basically unconvinced. If that's the case I recommend a trip to the Czech Republic. This country is comprised of Bohemia and Moravia, and it has a significant German-speaking population. The town names I just used, Pilsen and Budweiss, are the German names. I will now proceed to misspell them horrifically in Czech.
Plzen
Cheské Budêjovice

I rest my case.

No doubt I'll go on about this more in future posts. As regular readers will appreciate, it ain't like I got a whole lot else goin' on down in the shire.

Also: The Svichkova is delicious!

I shine like the sun