It’s Friday and it’s a day off. So we’ll be indoors and clear out the spare room. I like this flat, when I first met Dagmar she lived on the 7th floor of a panelak a bit out of town. A panelak is the Czech version of an English tower block, but with one big difference, they keep them immaculate here! I think they call them this because they’re made of panels, even the inside walls are just bolted together.
About 8 months ago her mum’s oldest brother died and Dagmar inherited this flat where we live now. I only met this uncle once, he was in his mid 70’s and very very gay. He liked singing and had the kind of voice that would make my mum cry.
After he died, there was a bit of gossip about an ageing partner lurking around somewhere, but no-one seemed to have ever met him. Dagmar described her uncle the first time as an old poof, “ Dagmar” I said, “you can’t call them that now”. Her English teacher from a few years back had given them a lesson or two in not-so-politically correct language. Anyway, she dug out the meticulous notes she’s kept on the lesson and we had a right giggle.
Czech students are really keen on learning all the bad language and quite a few teachers devote a bit of time to teaching pre-politically correct language. People here don’t have the same restrictions as we do in
Anyway, I’m off at a tangent again. The flat, it had been obviously well kept. It has 3 bedrooms and a huge living room, the kitchen’s good and we spend a lot of time there.
I can park my car in the backyard of the flats now. There was an abandoned old Trabant in our space, we discovered that it had been her uncles. For those of you who don’t know, a Trabant is a 2 stroke engined car made by the East Germans in communist times. I suppose it’s like a petrol mower that’s still in the cardboard box it came in.
They chuck out loads of blue smoke and the funny thing is that they are really little, but when you see them around
We advertised the car for sale and strangley enough, along came this huge man with long shaggy thick hair and a big grey beard with bits of continental breakfast distributed evenly throughout. He gave us 2000 crowns (about 70 quid) and after a bit of a struggle, we pushed it onto the street, annoying a ding-a-linging tram in the process.
Then he towed it away with his son (no beard this time), who was driving an identical Trabant, even down to the green mould on the windows.
Oh yeah, the spare room, we’ll paint it and we’ll need to buy a bed from Ikea. But now time’s getting on, See ya!
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