November | 2016 | Sheep's Head Food Company

Today I got round to planting the garlic I had bought from Bantry Market more than two months ago.

I got to the stall on the last Friday of the holiday. I was grey and wet and I came away with a brown paper bag with about ten bulbs of garlic in it. When we got home it went into the basement and I almost forgot about it.

A few weeks ago I started to prepare for the planting by spreading a some bucketfuls of sludge from the bottom of the compost bin over part of the veg plot.

This morning I went down into the basement and spent time trying to find the brown paper bag. It had been moved as part of the general clear up for a party that took place last weekend.

Once the bag had been found the bulbs were split until I had a small bowl full of white and purple skinned cloves.

I planted them this afternoon six inches down for each of them fearful of squirrels that will no doubt be digging them up tomorrow.

Having done with the planting I went into the greenhouse and found a dozen chillies that has grown since last time I was in there despite the minimal care and attention they had received.

In the meantime we have been eating fish. Lunch was a soup made with white beans and smoked haddock and this evening we have had a fish curry.

We have spent most of the day listening to weird folk music and the snap crackle and darg of fireworks.

You could have been reading this and come away thinking that the highlight of a long weekend spent in Prague was any given time I was sat in a smokey bar with a small rotund glass of beer in front of me.

Whilst that might be close to the truth it is not quite the whole story.

Mid-morning on Sunday I found myself standing in front of the Memorial to the victims of communism. There was a gaggle of tourists taking pictures but they soon went and I was left alone for a while to look up at the fractured faces in metal.

I had been intending to go walking up amongst the streets under the castle and to test out the warning in the guidebook about taking photos outside the US Embassy. But as I walked I could see green paths leading up the Petrin Hill.

It was difficult to resist the temptation and so I turned left and headed up walking through apple trees. There were not many people up there although there was the occasional runner – probably just allowed out from the US Embassy.

As I walked up I would turn back every so often and more of the city was laid out in front of me.

There was still a morning light in the air and there was some chill left over from the night before, the chill had caught with the warm flow of the river and there was a faint mist that rose above the city and its buildings. If you were going to have to look back over Prague it was difficult to think it might be more beautiful.

As I got to the top end of the path on which was walking there was a graffitied covered bench that offered a good place to stop. I sat down and looked out over the city.

In the distance I could see in grey the church around which I had walked the previous morning and amongst the red rooftops the streets I had stomped looking for beer and good pork products. There was a stillness about it all and around me on the hill crows and the dirty pink flash of a jackdaw flitted through the apple trees.

I could feel myself settling into the bench and the view. There wasn’t much to disturb me for twenty minutes or so save to watch how the mist dispersed in the light.

Then another runner came past and I took myself off to walk under a limp American flag.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Later that evening I was able to find another good rotund glass of beer. It was in a half hidden bar across from the hotel. I was clearly an aberration stood at the bat but tolerated all the same. Some of the walls in the bar had been covered in old egg cartons presumably to absorb the thick fog of tobacco and the noise from the four men of indeterminate age sat by the door who seemed to be the recipients of a never ending stream of full glasses.