Dear Mum and Dad,
the past week has been fairly empty. Milena fell ill on Friday, failed to turn up on Monday morning to pay everyone, promised to pay everyone on Wednesday, has now disappeared, due to some emergency, until next Monday. I have been left without any real indication as to what I should be doing. She’s probably come down with Yuppie Flu due to overwork. Perhaps she will do some more efficient delegation when she gets back to work.
I’ve been staying in to watch the football. The teams I picked have all performed disastrously. Tim, another of the English teachers, will come round this evening to cheer on our lads against Egypt.
My visa will allow me to leave the country and return with no problems. I can’t buy the plane ticket myself. Could you do it according to the dates etc in my last letter. London-Prague & Prague-London. 14th July & three months later. I will try to phone you this weekend. My letters seem to be taking a long time to arrive. I usually post them on Wednesday or Thursday.
Some pictures have been taken of the furniture and I will pass them on as soon as I can. I think you will have to count on expensive export taxes and transport costs1.
I haven’t much more to say. The weather has been very hot, into the eighties yesterday, but there was a thunderstorm last night and today is quite cool. I’m just off to do some shopping. Don’t believe what the British Press write about queues for food here, those in the supermarket are no longer than those in Tescos on a Saturday lunchtime and the checkout girls are just as efficient, even without those electronic eyes to read the prices. The longest queue I have seen in Czechoslovakia was at one of the newspaper stands in Mustek Metro Station. There is a lack of variety in the foods. No breakfast cereal; coffee is expensive; the vegetables wouldn’t be sold legally in England; the choice of fruit is monotonous although just now limes are in the shops and are as common as lemons; more exotic fruit, pineapples, mandarins, comes in tins; there are a lot of tinned goulashes; quite good packet soups; the Czechs have very sweet teeth and buy a lot of cakes, sweets, biscuits; the Czechs also love tea, Havel became addicted to Earl Grey whilst in prison and several of the Letters to Olga expound the virtues of tea; they drink both coffee and tea without milk; there is meat in almost every dish.
My Czech is improving, I can now count up to ten.
Toby
So began the saga of buying and exporting a piece of Czech country furniture. A painted chest — still in the family’s possession, because no-one in England ever wanted to buy it.