Remembering Hannah

I am in a strange state of mind. I have returned to finalize the house sale. Unless things get delayed, which they might, this is my last stay in my home. I am already saying goodbye to places I have loved for years, and not just places.

As I walked through the woods with Helena, and again when I went alone up to the woods above my house, I found myself thinking a lot about Hannah who introduced me to the Czech Republic and all things Czech. I owe this whole Czech adventure to Hannah. I realised as I walked with Helena, that the route was one that Hannah and I had followed on my first walk in a Czech forest several years before I bought my house. The same was true of the woods above my home, where Hannah gave me my first lesson in mushroom collecting. Over the brow of the hill the woods drop down to the road to Lake Olsina, where Hannah had her cottage.

Hannah's main home was in Cesky Krumlov. She moved three times in that town, so everywhere there are reminders of her. Although she died in April 2011, those memories never used to bother me. I always took comfort from them. But now I am glad the willows planted on the island she fought for have grown so large that they curtain the view of her last home, where my memories are most painful.

Selling my Czech home seems like letting her down. When she was dying she worried that the little colony of Brits that had grown up about her would break up. I told her: no offence but I didn't just buy the house because of her and wasn't planning to sell up after her death. She was relieved by this. It mattered a great deal to her that I bought the house as a place to write poetry. She loved my poetry and wanted to encourage it. The visit I made with her to Prague in 1990 was the inspiration behind my poem for voices Fool's Paradise.

I was chatting to her son the other day, who told that his mother would have been delighted that my poetry had suddenly blossomed and that at last I have a book of poetry accepted for publication next year with Indigo Dreams (more of that anon). I know too that Hannah would have understood the fact that I now need to be in UK to pursue my poetry dream. And yet...