haonowshaokao

Back in old Praha after a 22 hour coach journey, and after two days feeling like I’ve finally caught up sleep-wise. Almost everyone from the last year has either turned up or will be in the next few days and taking it easy will be a little hard.
There are 12 people staying in our house – six Croats, two Norwegians, one Czech, one Kiwi, one Canadian and me. I’m sleeping on the landing.
New Year is upon me and I can’t wait. We had a preparatory night out at the Roxy last night and Thursday is new year part two, at the most packed house in Zizkov.
My new years resolution is to give up smoking. Which I’ve done already so it’s just keeping it up really.

Everyone else is doing this, I might as well.

This Monday afternoon I embarked on what turned out to be an epic struggle to buy two bed legs, two planks and a screw. These were the items broken due to poor workmanship and violent sex on the various beds in our house.
To get to the only known IKEA in Prague I had to first get to Zličin, requiring a ten minute tram ride then two metro trains to the silent dead end of the line. On arrival at Zličin, I was disappointed to find that the free bus to IKEA Lisa had told me about was nowhere to be seen. After a five-minute search I gave up and, on spotting the shopping complex on the horizon, made the understandable mistake of thinking I could walk there.
One path appeared to go in approximately the correct direction, so naturally I took it down to a brick wall with a long disused gated staircase to the flyover above. It was all I could do to continue to walk along the side of the wall (later a barbed wire fence) that led me into a frozen workyard at the back of a factory, and no way through.
Back at the staircase I discovered a fairly obvious (though wildly seedy) subway, which led me to an area reminiscent of any service station in England. Slip roads and garages everywhere, but not so much as a pavement for pedestrian me. Dodging my way across an empty car park I found that IKEA was now only fifty meters from where I stood, but on the other side of a motorway. There was one bridge, but it was a long way behind me.
Tired and hungry, I went into KFC and sat by the window staring at IKEA, determined that it would not beat me, and picked the gherkins out of my burger.
Refreshed, I was able to begin my journey afresh and made it to the bridge over the motorway, where two free IKEA busses flew past me. From then on all I had to do was run across two motorway sliproads, strut across some flowerbeds and the McDonald’s drive-through they were protecting and make my way across the immense car park to the gleaming doors of IKEA.
Inside thousands of people were lining up to buy identical poorly fabricated self-constructed beds and wardrobes. At the end there was a bloody-mined troll at the helpdesk who told me they didn’t have any bed legs for me (‘they’re too old’) but who did have two planks and a screw. Though I did admittedly forget to ask for two planks and only got one.
Yesterday I rebuilt my bed in the dark with some putty and an adjustable spanner. I am now the DIY god and naturally all must kneel before me and tremble in fear.

As of yesterday there was a thin coating of the above substance on the cars of Zizkov. Inside the Blind Eye snowballs flew as fast as the movements of the giant guide dog humping a hippy from behind. A six foot eight naked Czech screamed ‘two candles!’ and ‘de do prdele!’ at us. An American kid explained to me how the word ‘is’ should be eliminated from the language and replaced with ‘seems to me to be’. It seems to me to be the case that he should have a snowball in his face too.
I love this freezing fucking cold city.

I was trying to get to sleep by lying in bed listening to the world service last night when an interview started with an American woman who, due to a car crash or something, had damaged her speech centres and couldn’t stop talking in a faux-cockney/Australian accent. She was getting really upset about it, almost hysterical that nobody would take her seriously. All in a faux-cockney/Australian accent. Then Rory Bremner came on and praised her brave struggle, but whilst doing impressions of George Bush and Tony Blair. And she got tearful and started thanking him / Tony… in a faux-cockney/Australian accent.
I couldn’t get to sleep for an hour after that as I thought my brain was going to explode.
Then today, tired from nothing at all, I attempted to cook and eat some food, but even this simple task was rendered impossible by the beast that is Jacques. I despise him and hope he dies very very soon. It’s taken me a long time to come to this decision but now I’m pretty sure he actually enjoys being an absolute godforsaken arsehole.
Any suggestions on how to kill him?
Anyone who doesn’t know him will think I’m laying it on a bit thick here. I’m not.