The Czech Few

This week a number of ceremonies are taking place to celebrate the contribution of the 2500 Czechs who flew with the RAF against the Nazis. A fifth of these men made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of Europe and their homeland. Those who came back were first greeted as heroes, but then as enemies when the Communists took control. Independently-minded defenders of freedom had no place in the Communist future.  Some fled the country once more. The former pilots that remained were imprisoned. After prison their lives continued to be ruined by their spell in the RAF - they remained under suspicion and supervision and they and their families were persecuted, denied access to good jobs and education.

Last year this memorial to their bravery and sacrifice was erected on a small park opposite the Malostranska Metro Station. The statue was funded by contributions from the British community in the Czech and Slovak Republics. A formal memorial was unveiled this week at Prague's castle. Sadly only one former Czech RAF pilot survived long enough to attend the event.

My first winter in the house 4

On my first morning in the house I put my nose out from under the two duvets on my bed. The woodstove had long since gone out and I discovered my blanket had even frozen to the wall. I reminded myself that the next time I stayed in the house we would have central heating. I got up quickly, lit the stove and climbed back into bed for thirty minutes until things warmed up a bit. Then I put the kettle on and made some porridge (very British and very good for cold Czech mornings).

My next five days revolved around the needs of the stove and not allowing it to go out. This meant that I could only leave the house for a maximum of a couple of hours - enough to walk through the snow to the nearby town of Horice Na Sumave but not a lot further. It also meant regular trips to the stable to chop wood and bring it in. I now realised why Czech houses in the winter are surrounded by walls of chopped logs. I also realised how rubbish I was at chopping it and I hoped none of my neighbours saw me. My day was determined by the length of daylight, for although I had electricity the night sent the temperatures plummeting and after a while it made more sense to go to bed. In other words I no longer had control of my time - the pace of my day slowed and I found it, despite everything, relaxing. This is how it would have been in some previous age.

Occasionally my day would be disturbed by visitors. The local carpenter came over regularly to chop wood for me, to plane the door down so it fitted more snugly and to measure up the windows, which he was to repaint and repair for me (although not necessarily in that order). He would ski over from Horice, carrying his tools.

I also had visits from a Czech lady, whom my puppeteer friend had introduced me to, who was helping me with translation and negotiating with Czech lawyers and civil servants. She was shocked by the conditions I was living in: "I admire you - you are brave." She could have added "mad", and I could see it in her face as she looked around the room.

On one day she drove me into Cesky Krumlov to sort some house insurance and to return the landtax form. This latter was a good example of Czech disorder in matters bureaucratic. In all sorting the landtax must have taken several hours of speaking to different officers, only for us to go back to having to do what we were told to do in the first place. Ironically after all that, the landtax (the Czech equivalent of the community charge) amounted to less than £10 a year and probably cost more than that to collect. One Czech I know commented when asked what killed communism - "It strangled itself". Here was why. Afterwards the lady took me to a restaurant near the castle carpark, where she made sure I had a large hot meal. Then she drove me back to then house and my routine.

The Plague Column

The many tourists that throng the Town Square in Cesky Krumlov often ignore the large column set to one side and surrounded by statues. They may sit on its steps and take photos of each other, some may even photograph the column, but most have no idea what it is and what it commemorates.

It is a plague column set up to remember a plague epidemic that hit the town in the early 1680's. At the top of the column stands the Virgin Mary and around it there are saints who traditionally offer protection against the plague. This was not the first time the town had devastated by the plague, the town had also experienced the terrible impact of the bubonic plague in 1585.

It reminds me of an early introduction to Czech culture I had back in 1982 before I met my Czech puppeteer friend. I picked up a book of poetry in a second-hand shop and started to read. It was Ewald Osers' translation of Jaroslav Seifert's book The Plague Column. I was enchanted and bought the book. At the time it was not officially published in communist Czechoslovakia and was only available in covert samizdat versions. The poem is a personal journey by an old man through Prague. What I love about it is the way it moves from the present to the past, from the general to the personal. The plague of the title is not simply the bubonic kind, but a comment on the political plague that Seifert's beloved country was enduring at the time. But this is far from a political commentary, but a personal love poem to that most beautiful of cities.

Seifert received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1985, he died a year later. He did not live to see the crowds filling Wenceslas Square first call for and then celebrate the end of the pestilence that was communism.

Seifert was a brave man and a true poet. The last lines of The Plague Column read:

But I make no excuse
I believe that seeking beautiful words
is better
than killing and murdering.