Oh, Christmas. Today Squire is at a "concentration camp" (survey says:
this will never not be funny) and so Friar and I were at odds and ends
as to what to do for about thirty seconds before we decided we would go
to the pub and play Scrabble. But Domov was noisy and Severka was full
of reservations and even Sklipek (which I love but Friar does not as
the owner is a little too Uriah Heep for his taste) was fully booked.
We tried Pisek and Prokop, too, with no tables empty. We tried the
herna down the street but they had a big screen TV and a jukebox (two
strikes) and we were out. Havran was rejected for their tendency to
open the doors and windows and Hawaii has nasty low tables and the
weird wine store doesn't have a bathroom and there we were. Seriously:
10 pubs walking distance from the house, and I felt like Mary and
Joseph. FINALLY we decided to go to the new(er) wine bar and maybe get
a couple bottles and just go home, and LO,there was room for us in the
inn, so we sat at a moderately uncomfortable table and played Scrabble
(I killed) for 3 hours while they brought us glasses of tramin and beer
and the wine bar owner's grandchildren played semi-obnoxiously
underfoot and the radio played, and I swear I am not making this up:
Queen, Joanna Newsom, Nik Kershaw, Joan Jett, Support Lesbiens, and
Depeche Mode. I mean, this is what I remember right now. It was three hours of bizarrely awesome music.
I hate the winter with more unreserved passion than I have ever loved
anything, and I am frankly unbearable from basically November to March,
and it is merely December. I don't know how anybody manages to like me
right now; I imagine it's like how I managed to like Squire when he was
two years old except that I do not have sweet baby fat that you can
kiss while I'm sleeping. I'm sorry I'm an asshole, really I am.
BUT! I am counting my one two three to seven blessings this week, and let
me tell you: ten pubs within walking distance? TEN. WALKING. I am sorry
but that is awesome. And I love love love the mix tapes that Czech
radio makes for me every day, and I'm sorry every day that I don't talk
about how my control freak tendencies have met their match in the stuff
that gets RADIO PLAY here, because really: Nik Kershaw and Joanna Newsom? FIND me a radio station that will do that in another country.
And so that's that. Tomorrow we're going to the cottage, because with
Squire in absentia we simply don't know what to do with ourselves other
than the same thing we usually do.