The House Gnome

This little fellow came with the house. He was here when we took possession of the place on that bright sunny November morning in 2005. He has stood watch over the approach to the front door ever since. In winter he wears a hat of snow, in summer his paint fades and blisters still more. At times he has guarded more than that. Keys were left under his feet and the person who was to retrieve the key was told that “our little friend has the keys.” When I leave this house for the last time, I will leave it under his watchful eye. Like those ancient household Slavic gods (the Domovoy), you can't easily part a gnome from his house.

Wolves or not

A friend and I were laughing recently about our mutual friend, Hannah, who always denied that wolves could be in the Czech Republic. But then she always denied that anything bad could be from the country. Even if she had a flu it was because you had brought it from England.

Wolves had been hunted to extinction here in the 19^th century, indeed there is a memorial in the Sumava to the last one. The big bad wolf of the fairytales was banished to the forests of other countries. And yet, the memory of wolves lived on in folk memory. I felt it distinctly in the darkness of the forest I viewed from the window of that night-bound train in Easter 1990. I felt it as I lay in a bed piled high with duvets on those freezing nights of my first stay in the house. As I heard the pad of snow dropping from the broken roof I thought of wolf padding through the drifts at the rear of the house, the following day my imaginings were reinforced by fox prints enlarged by the melting of snow. Maybe that is why the first book I wrote here was called Mother of Wolves.

The big bad wolf is now officially back. He was first seen, caught on a trip-camera near Vyssi Brod barely twenty miles from here. Wild creatures do not respect lines on maps and once the physical barrier of the Iron Curtain had been removed it was only a matter of time before the wolves' wanderings brought them into the Sumava Forest and beyond. It seems only right that EU freedom of movement should extend to this beautiful animal, if not in future to Brits.

Sumava - The Sound of the Forest

I have been listening to a delightful radio programme on the BBC called Susurrations of Trees - susurration is the English word for the sound trees make. The programme does not just explore the sound made by different trees, but also the different words we have for those sounds - psithurism for example is the sound of the wind in the trees. Of course the Czechs also have a word for it, but they go one step further their largest forest is called the psithurism - The Sumava (pronounced shoomava). My home is on the edge of it; the little town where I catch the bus is called Horice na Sumava. 

The Sumava extends over the border with Germany, where it becomes the Bayerischer Wald ( the more mundane Bavarian Forest). This huge forest is the most extensive (over 54,000 hectares) in central Europe and has the nickname the Green Roof of Europe or sometimes the Green Lung of Europe. And I love it.

I have spoken in earlier posts of the importance of forests to the Czechs, that it has a role in the Czech mind that is equivalent to the sea to the British. Sometimes when I walk in the forest and a wind gets up I feel this connection strongly. The psithurism of the trees is so like the sound of waves that I could close my eyes and I think myself back on a British shore.

Dreaming Of Houses

I sometimes dream of houses; I did last night. Hannah used to take the Jungian line on house dreams that they are not about houses but about the dreamer, with the various floors representing the dreamer's different levels of consciousness. I just note that they tend to happen when I am busy organizing something about my Czech house, not that the house in my dreams is my Czech house.

When I was buying and reconstructing the house, I dreamed a lot about squeezing through a crack and finding new attics - huge and full of lovely beams. Later I dreamed I was going round and round a house, still squeezing through cracks but into hidden staircases and secret corridors.

Last night I had a different dream. I dreamed that I was sitting with Eliska, and we were talking about how lucky we were to have such nice lovely neighbours. I referred to the ones who had bought and done up the other half of my house. This is interesting as my real house is detached from the neighbours'. Maybe my dream talk was of the potential buyers of my house, who are keen to develop the barn which is attached to the house. I understand their enthusiasm, I too had big visions for the barn and ran out of money. It is one reason I was happy to accept their offer. We will see if their and my dreams come true.

Blogging

One wonderful thing about my life in this country has been this blog. I don't think I fully realized its importance to me until now. Writing the blog was my first step towards starting writing again. Hannah knew that and encouraged me.

Now as my stay in this country draws to a close, I have a wonderful record of my experiences, thoughts and feelings. My parents both enjoyed reading the blog. Much as they would have loved to they were too elderly to visit my Czech home, but the blog allowed them to share my adventures. And then of course there is you, dear reader. I thank you for all your support and feedback. I hope you enjoy the blog posts to come, because even when I leave the house, I will continue blogging about the Czech Republic. I have a list of blog-post topics I have yet to cover. The list of titles extends over several pages in my notebook! And of course I will be visiting Czecho regularly.

This blog is important in another way. I am working on a collection of poems about my love and experience of the Czech Republic. This is separate to the collection I will be publishing next year with Indigo Dreams. I have written approximately half the collection and am working on more poems. Without this blog triggering memories and feelings I doubt I could write the new material. Watch this space.

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...

Mosquitoes, midges and other biting insects

Olsina Lake

As I was lying in bed the other night I watched a battle taking place above my head. Mosquitoes that had escaped from the cellar when I was fixing the pump now bounced over the ceiling. Whenever I turned off the light, their whine came closer and closer as they homed in on my scent. I knew I was in danger of waking with itchy red bites. Fortunately the ceiling was being patrolled by a number of thin legged spiders and harvestmen and I watched as they pounced on passing mozzies, the predator become prey.

I remembered evenings at Hannah's cottage next to Lake Olsina. I loved Hannah's cottage. Its position was idyllic, with the lake encircled by the steep hills and deep forest of the Boletice. But you always pay for such divine pleasure and in Olsina you pay with blood. As evening drew on there would be so many mosquitoes rising from the lake that the sound was thunderous. There was another danger at the cottage, horseflies. I remember Hannah commenting on what a beautifully marked fly had landed on her trousers, only to yelp as the fly's sharp mouth parts bit through the thick fabric.

The forests have their own pesky insects, most dangerous of all being ticks. These small insects, barely visible as they wander on your clothes and skin, will swell up as they suck your blood and be buried head first in your skin. As they can carry Lyme disease and encephalitis, I always spray myself with DEET-based insect repellent. I do that in the UK as well, as disease-bearing ticks have spread there too. Another annoyance are the midges that rise in clouds and bite any exposed skin. And finally there is a small black insect, which looks like a spider but has wings. I have not been able to identify it, but it has a sharp bite and is often a problem when I am mushrooming. Any suggestions as to its identity are welcome.

Anyway back to my bedroom ceiling, although the spiders were doing a good job, the number of mozzies was too much for them, so I resorted to chemical controls – sliding a tablet into the plug-in mosquito killer. Turning off the light I settled down to an unbitten sleep.