Of course some of the time was spent building up the Prague Belly.

It must be in the beer but this seems to manifest itself in something more round and pert than the normal five pint a night beer belly.

Maybe it has something to do with the typical Prague beer glass which is a bit like an old pint glass with a handle that has been pushed down by an inch so as to make it more rotund, more like a football strapped around your waist than a sack of potatoes.

it will take a few more visits to get used to all the etiquette that can be had around spending time in a Prague pub. the first of my problems was trying to ask for another pint only to be presented with the bill. There is of course no need to articulate the asking, all it takes is the catch of an eye and the tap of a finger on the rim of the empty glass, and as if by magic another full glass will be there.

What was pleasing this time was that despite the thick wads of tourist around the King Charles Bridge running up to the Old Clock Tower it was still possible to find places where time seemed to have stopped thirty years ago and they still hugged close to the smell of tobacco.

I managed to find the first of them around midday on Saturday. I had had my first pint walking through the market by the side of the river and I felt in need of a coffee. There were plenty of places that sold it but they all were all too close to the beaten track. There was no great aim a I wandered and at one stage I found myself back up round a corner to avoid a man who looked like he might have designs at shouting at me.

Having made my escape and walked back around the corner I found myself in front of a nondescript door stuck with old posters. I pushed it open and found myself in a bar of dour green and wood. music was playing softly and from somewhere bowls of soup were being brought out and put on tables. I was clearly an outsider but also felt that this was just what I had been looking for.

I got my coffee and sat down at one on the empty tables.

I was alone with the coffee. All the other tables were inhabited with clear glasses filled with shades of brown and gold.

It took me a while to linger over my coffee but once I had doe so and got over whether or not I wanted to pay a clear squat glass of beer was put in front of me.

By now it was about 10 minutes past twelve and suddenly I found myself in an environment that could quite easily take uptake rest of the afternoon.

One on the many highlights of a weekend in Prague came as I found myself wandering through a crowded food market set up along the side of the river.

It was 11.30 in the still morning but there were plenty of people walking along with a pint in their hands dispensed from one of the makeshift stalls. Inevitably I felt obliged to join them.

Having done done so I found myself having to juggle the pint with a camera in order to capture some of the activity surrounding a stall selling river fish.

Next to the stall was the back of a wagon on which had been perched a large dark green plastic container.

As an order for fish came in a man stepped on a footstool so as to be able to dip a net into the container. It was full of water and fish and it didn’t take much more than a twist of the net in the water before it came out wriggling with a couple of fish.

Once they were out they were tipped into a metal tray and given a sharp tap on the back of the head before being tipped into a second metal tray for weighing before being passed over to be gutted. It was all done so quickly there was hardly time to catch what was going on.

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For a while there was a possibility that the highlight of the week was going to be the arrival early yesterday evening of a Black & Decker Dust Buster. There is a lot of dust in the house that needs busting and this simple time saving device seemed to be the way to go about it.

Fortunately before the evening got too far advanced I remembered I had a second partridge down in the basement that needed eating. Partridges always come in twos. The first had been eaten last Friday stewed in white wine with a finely chopped carrot.

Last night’s partridge, after some rifling of pages in old Spanish cookbooks, got cooked with an apple.

The partridge was stuffed with a clove of garlic and some rosemary and went into a hot oven.

Whilst it cooked a finely chopped onion was browned in oil. I then added a plump apple taken from the garden, skinned, cored and cubed.

The garden is full of apples and another year seems to be going by with me thinking about buying a cider press but never quite getting round to it.

Once the partridge was cooked it was taken out of the oven and its juices added to the stewing apple and onion. It was left for a few minutes whilst I went back in the basement to find something I could set fire to.

I found a bootle of something the top of which had been sealed with sticky tape some 20 years ago. It did the job and produced some satisfying flames. Once they had died down I stirred in a couple of good slugs of cider and then finished off the bottle ( the cider – not the fiery stuff – otherwise I would still be down back against the floor!)

As the cider cooked down the partridge was tipped in to take on some of the flavour and I seasoned it well with salt and pepper.

I ate it with some fried potatoes and and handful of rocket. It was very good listening to Hannah Peel.

The only problem I had with last night’s grouse was a lifelong aversion to bread sauce.

I set about all the cook books in the house and all they could offer me was roast grouse with bread sauce. Most of them provided some reassurance that this would be the best bit of game bird I could hope to eat and a couple offered variations in the form of game chips but at the end of the day all of them insisted on the bread sauce.

There only other possible option was to make a grouse flavoured soup but this involved the use of a carcass and I was hoping to do some eating of the thing before that.

Having put all the cook books to one side I ventured out on my own.

This involved stuffing a clove of garlic, some thyme and sage into the bird and then layering it with ham. It was seasoned with salt, pepper and a dose of olive oil.

Once in the roasting pan I shoved three large mushrooms up against the bird.

It all then went into very hot oven for half an hour.

At this stage I took time out to fill up a glass and play some loud music.

Once the half hour was up the loud music was turned down and I took the bird out of the oven. All seemed okay. So I tipped over a ladle of flaming brandy and gave it five minutes to settle while I fried some bread.

It was all then a matter of assemblage.

The fried bread was put on the plate, followed by the three mushrooms and on top of this was perched the grouse surrounded by rocket salad.

It tasted very good.

The possibility of soup was usurped by a cat that had its own designs on the carcass!