Desk Calendar

I just had to share with you my desk calendar for 2015. It was half price in an art and stationary shop in Cesky Krumlov. At less than a £1 and featuring a photograph of a different mushroom every week I just had to have it!

I do have a worry about it though. It's okay now when there are no mushrooms to be had, but come the beginning of the mushroom season I suspect I may have to hide it, so that I am not tempted to grab my basket and disappear into the forest, leaving my work undone.

Jan Palach Day

At a time when the issues of democracy and freedom of speech are very much in mind, it was appropriate that I took time last week to walk to the top of Wenceslas Square in Prague to view the memorial to Jan Palach, the student who set fire to himself as protest in 1969. His act is often seen as a protest against the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring, but he claimed to the doctor who treated him that instead "It was not so much in opposition to the Soviet occupation, but the demoralization which was setting in." In other words it was a protest against the absence of protest over the loss of democracy.

I know this is not the first time I have blogged on this subject. You can read more about Jan Palach in a previous post here.  But it is a subject that consistently moves me, asking as it does what I would do to defend democracy in England. I am struck by how demoralized I sometimes feel about the state of British democracy and how much I feel that my voice is not heard. But how far would I go to defend it, I do not know. 

Being in the Czech Republic, with its recent history of political suppression, and speaking with Czechs who remember not only what it was to be unheard but also to know that speaking could cost them their liberty, makes me remember how lucky we English are to have had the concept of personal liberties enshrined in a charter exactly eight hundred years ago.

The Mark of Three

Wander around many Czech towns at this time of year and you might notice on lintels and doors the letters K, M and B written in chalk as above. Sometimes the letters come with the year and sometimes you will see several sets of letters dating back several years. You may wonder what these stand for. Perhaps it is a sign that the electricity meter has been read, you think, or some sort of building work. Perhaps it is a sign like those one used to see in English villages - a coded message from a tramp or hobo, gypsy or fellow inhabitant of the road, that this is a house where the inhabitants are generous.

In fact of those options you would be closer to the truth with the last - it is a sign that the inhabitants have been generous. But the visitors were not down-at-heel beggers, but three kings. Twelfth Night in the Czech Republic is known as Three Kings Day, because on that day children (and adults) dress up as the three kings - Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar (in Czech Kašpar, Melichar and Baltazar) and go around the streets asking for donations to charity. When the householder has put their donation in the tin, the "Kings" write the initials K M and B above the door. What do the initials stand for? I have heard different answers - one simply that they are the initials of the kings' names and another that it stands for the words: Christus mansionem benedicat (Christ, bless this house). Of course both answers could be true.

Introducing British Christmas to Czech Children

My neighbour teaches English at our local primary school. She is not a qualified English teacher, but her English is good and a lot better than anyone else around and she has the greatest qualification, i.e she knows how to enthuse her pupils. So it was perhaps inevitable that I would be asked to talk to the children. She had been teaching the pupils various words to do with Christmas, but she needed a real Brit to talk about the differences between Czech and British Christmases.

I wasn't sure that I would have much to say, but of course as she and I chatted over her kitchen table the differences became clearer and clearer. It is strange to see your national customs through another country's eyes. So much that seems to you completely normal is at best novel to them and at times downright strange. And so I found myself walking into the school that I had walked past so many times on my way to the local minimart.

 The first thing I told the children was that we don't celebrate St Nicholas' Day (see my previous post), instead British children wait for the arrival of Father Christmas on Christmas Eve. The children were delighted to hear about Father Christmas (Jitka had taught them his name) and the need to leave a glass of sherry and a carrot for the reindeer, but didn't understand how he could come down the chimney. Czech houses have chimneys but they are fed by wood stoves not open fireplaces, so I showed them a picture of a fireplace in a British house. Then some bright spark asked if all English houses had fireplaces and I had to confess that they did not, but somehow Father Christmas still managed to get in!

I had brought my kindle tablet into the classroom and played the children a track of church bells which I had downloaded from Amazon and which, as it happens, was recorded at a small town near my English home. They were amazed by this. It is hard for someone so used to the peel of church bells as I am (my family home was 200 yards from the church ) to understand that this normal sound is something extraordinary once you step outside the UK. In the Czech Republic you seem to have either a carillon playing a tune or a simple tolling.

I talked about Christmas dinner which of course led into a discussion about what a pudding is. There is a Czech word - pudink - but it is for a blancmange type dessert.  And as for setting fire to it, well that caused some comment. Another area open to misunderstanding is Christmas crackers. In the Czech Republic if a child sees a cracker they think it is a cardboard container for sweets. There is no crack to be had, even if you pulled it. 

The final and, I presumed, weirdest British custom that I told them about was pantomime. I expected them to be surprised by men dressing up as women and the leading boy being played by a girl, but they took it all in their stride. Maybe it's because they are used to grown men dressing up as angels. I soon introduced them to audience participation and had them shouting "she's behind you" and "Oh yes she is!"  And so with a principal boy's slap to my thigh I congratulated them on their English and wished them a merry Christmas.

And so I will leave you with the same wish and this - a Czech advert about another difference between the English-speaking world's Christmas and the Czech one. They eat carp as their main meal not turkey and they buy the carp live, which means the man of the household has the duty of dispatching the carp on Chritstmas Eve:

Christmas Celebrations in the Czech Republic

I am in Britain and it feels very strange. Normally I am able to have two Christmases - the Czech and the British. That is because the Czech Christmas starts with St Nicholas Day on the 6th December, when the squares and streets fill up with people dressed as angels, devils and St Nick himself. Excited children are asked by the three whether they have been good or bad over the year and are given their rewards (usually) or punishments. The shops are stocked with chocolate or marzipan versions of the three interrogators. In the Czech Republic Christmas lasts for weeks ending on 12th Night or Three Kings Day (more of the latter in a future post).

Last year I was in Prague for St Nicholas Day and found myself travelling on a tram filled with children and their parents heading for the city's squares. Also on the tram and travelling with the same purpose were a number of the seasonal characters. Actually there were more devils than angels and more angels than saints, but then the devil always has the best (and warmest) costumes and it was bitterly cold. A group of students sat at the end of the carriage half-heartedly sporting plastic red horns and facepaint, which could have been picked up in any supermarket. But some people take the business seriously. For part of the journey I sat opposite a man in the most impressive devil costume. His horns had formerly adorned the head of a ram. His clothes were made of leather, fur and sheepskin and his boots (in which he was presumably hiding his cloven hooves) were traditional leather Czech ones. The age of the boots hinted that this costume had been decades in the creation, an inheritance perhaps. The contrast with the students couldn't have been greater. 

The Scottish Referendum Seen From the Czech Republic.

I have frequently observed that being a Brit in the Czech Republic makes me understand my own nationality better. It is a combination of distance and being around people who see things differently, who find remarkable what I have taken for granted, that makes me look again at my country. And thus it is with the Scottish Referendum.

Yesterday I was sitting with a Czech outside a cafe in Brno when she asked me what I thought about what was happening. My answer was that it was up to the Scots to decide their future and as an English person it was not my place to interfere. She leaned forward with a disbelieving smile and said "But what do you feel?"

My response was one I have until now not expressed anywhere publicly and that is that I hope with all my heart that they say no. "My grandmother," I added, "would be turning in her grave, as we say in English."

"We have the same saying," she replied.

This grandmother was Betsy, who proudly displayed the family tartan on the mantlepiece. She was proud of being half Scot and half English and 100% British, I explained. I added that what I found so difficult is that like her I consider myself to be British first and foremost and that being English came a poor third after being European and possibly fourth after being a Gloucestershire girl.

What being British means for me is being part of a union of different races, countries and cultures. We retain our differences and respect (indeed love) those of the others in the union. But the sum of the union is greater than the parts and as a result we have been able to achieve so much more as a country than we should have. It is the principle of diversity writ large and enshrined in my country's identity. It is part of my identity. It is a principle and an approach to community that has constantly informed my work of community regeneration. And it hurts like hell to see it under threat.


I can't quite understand why it hurts so much. As a believer in community democracy I should be supporting self determination, shouldn't I? But for the Union to lose one of its founding members is to tear out a key thread from the diverse tapestry. The Scots have done so much, given so much, that to lose them would I fear make everything else come apart. As I said to my Czech interrogator I am afraid of what will follow.

In response she shook her head in sorrow. Like so many Czechs I know, she grieves for the reborn Czechoslovakia which was strangled in the cradle. "It was bad," she said, " for both of us, but worse for the Slovaks. I feel sorry for the Slovaks. You know Slovakia?" I have not been there. "It is beautiful, more wild than here, mountainous, further away. They had more problems." The two nations both paid economically for the split, but the Slovaks more than the Czechs. "They lied to us, the politicians. We still do not know the true cost of the separation. So many things had to be paid for - new money, new offices."

But it is not really the economic loss that counts, it is the loss of what might have been. A relatively small European country became two even smaller ones, dictated to by German and other foreign investors and in the case of  Slovakia by the powers of the Eurozone. For the Czechs there was another less easily defined loss - one of identity. Even now they do not know what to call their country - they dislike "The Czech Republic," sometimes using Czechia or just Czech instead. In this I can see my problem as an English woman: I don't actually know what my country will be. I would like to think it will be the Albion of William Blake, but I fear that is more likely to be the England of Nigel Farrage.

"They lied to us, the politicians..." Indeed they did and indeed they do. The Velvet Divorce was agreed by the Czech and Slovak leaders without any form of referendum. The divorce was amicable, despite some arguments over gold reserves and the division of the military. A divorce is a good analogy and in the British case one partner is leaving the other, with all the anger, pain and insult-throwing that tends to come from a one-sided divorce. I would like to think that if the Scots vote yes, our respective leaders will sit down and negotiate a deal which works for both sides. But I don't believe it will happen. Already we see the peevish posturing and lies of politicians on the question of the £.

When the Czechs and Slovaks divorced both economies were hit and that was not when the world was recovering from a major recession. Fortunately because of how the politicians stitched up the divorce, the people of both countries were able to blame their politicians for their economic problems and not each other. The Czechs, when polled about which other country they would choose to live in, opt for Slovakia over any other.  But in the British case - one country will have voted on the subject and one will not. If England goes into decline as the consequence of a yes result, would the love many English bear for Scotland survive the divorce?

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I have just blogged about it here:Zoe Brooks Books & More: The Cover as Writing Aid: