www.eoghan.cz

21st September                                                                                     

Maybe it was the autumn sunlight while I was out collecting conkers with Sean that brought on the nostalgic mood. Googling a few names from my misspent youth threw up two old chestnuts from the Northampton music scene. "Uncle" Eric Whitehouse has restarted the Beer Parlor Jivers and is still providing useful employment to keep young (and not so young!) muso's off the streets and Sean Grew, the King of Jimmy's End, is still as much part of any Northampton Irish club as the Guinness soaked bar towels. Great to hear them both again! Julie Clements appears in both videos but no sign of Smike (Mike O'Byrne).  I'll keep searching. He's probably just late again.

25th August

Dance Like an Egyptian

As we got back from the T-Com Fiesta in Bratislava earlier than expected I managed to catch some of the annual Šumperk International Folklore Festival. It seemed a little mixed-up this year. The Bulgarians danced like Serbs, the Serbs like Russians, and I've no idea what the Russians were up to (but then who has?). The Egyptians then pulled spectators from the crowd for a street conga. Are they pulling our legs or is it that old Czech tradition that lores were made to be broken!

Mexicans doing an eight-hand reel

28th July

Just back from our holidays.

Karlštein looks exactly like the cut-out models you can buy in most stationers here. Inside you can see......two more models of Karlštein! Why? No idea. There's also a collection of darkened paintings of Charles IV's family- a shifty bunch of characters as ever I saw - as well as various saints and  Charles' four wives. Yes, four! To lose one is unfortunate, two is careless, but three seems downright suspicious. You can also see the toilet where Charles placed his royal bum and possibly had some of his greatest ideas. I can just imagine it.

Wife IV: What do you want for breakfast?

Charles IV: We need a bridge over the Vltava, but how to stop it sinking?

Wife IV: Eggs?

Chas IV : A bit unconventional but it might just work!

(Kristina tells me that archeologists have proved that the story about building Charles' Bridge on eggs is a myth. Unfortunately she's not old enough to know what a killjoy is).

The guided tour is a classic example of the dullest history lesson ever, and I should know! Tourists released from this self-imposed detention can then indulge themselves on the road down from the castle with fantasy swords or plastic trinkets and food  from the scores of souvenir shops, restaurants and even an Erotic City sex shop of all things! I don't know if this is to renew the ardour of courting couples after such a passion- killer of a tour, or if they sell medieval bondage-wear for the S&M crowd who actually enjoyed it.

On Saturday we played at Vyšehrad. If you've already seen Prague's Old Town and want to get away from the crowds, pickpockets and the smell of fast-food Vyšehrad is a delight. It was from this fortification, which is now a park, that Queen Libuše looked out over the Vltava and proposed a "golden city reaching to the heavens"-Prague. (And it's taken Zdenka twelve months just to persuade me to redecorate the hall!) The auditorium, tucked in between the ancient ramparts, is very atmospheric and the backstage view over the city and the river must be one of the finest in the world.

Slapy Dam was the traditional holiday destination for Praguers. If you expect it to be like Blackpool or Bray though you'd be wrong. It's quite up-market: Expensive holiday homes, yachts, beautiful scenery and maniac drivers of SUVs. The campsite was full of Dutch caravaners, complete with garden furniture and satellite TV. On a romantic whim I thought I might spend a night beneath the heavens watching the shooting stars. My Dutch neighbour, however, obviously thought Zdenka and the kids had kicked me out of the tent. Taking pity on me he arrived with an inflatable mattress and offered to let me sleep in his awning. It took some effort to persuade him that I actually wanted to sleep outside. As dawn broke over my dew-soaked tormented form, still trying to find a comfortable position in a sleeping bag that kept slipping down my carri-mat, my romantic soul was still trying to be upbeat, delighting in the mists rising up from the lake. My legs, back and shoulders, however, were taking sides with the Dutchman. I now know why there is no Scandinavian equivalent of Lough Derg.   

24th July

Hey where did that month go? Bottlewash has been in recess. I had my parents to visit, Radek's been doing up an old house he's bought and Ondra's been doing the last of his exams.

We'll be in Prague on 4th August at Vyšehradské Keltováni  probably playing around 3pm. There'll also be a surprise appearance in Staré Město on Saturday (28/7) at Anenská pouť ( A pretty girl talked me into it!) So if any of you Šumperaci want to drag yourselves out to see us, or if any of you in Poland want to make use of the new border crossing, we'll be deeeeelighted to see yez all.

27th June

Bye bye Blair!

After a long time standing in the hallway he's finally made it out of the door. Amongst the many to praise him was Ian Paisley. Interesting that after all their time together TB is now thinking of changing from Protestantism becoming a Catholic. I'm curious to see whether, after a few years tackling the Middle East problem, he'll end up as a Muslim or a Jew. After trying to get his head round that lot though he could end up as a complete Scientologist.

19th June

Passed!

Zdenka and I both had exams yesterday so we've spent the last two weeks living like students. Now the show's over and so it's time to tidy up all the books, papers, bottles, pizza boxes, CD cases, dirty clothes and crockery and return the stolen traffic cones. All that for a certificate you could just as easily knock up in Microsoft Publisher in half an hour. Oh,…  and a rubber stamp. We’re in the Czech Republic! Life would come to a standstill here if we didn’t have rubber stamps!

After the exam, with an hour to kill in Ostrava, I sheltered from the rain in the nearest restaurant and ordered  Nachos. It came in a small frying pan with knife and fork. Imagine trying to use cutlery to eat crisps topped with a spoonful of chillied Bolognese sauce and you’ve got it. I gave up and used my fingers and followed with a couple of beers to extinguish my burning mouth. Not a good idea before a three-hour bus ride!

Anyway, I’ve got the Czech qualification that the school insisted on, so now I’ll be able to speak to my students in Czech and won’t have to keep pestering them with English, as I usually do in English lessons!

 4th June                             

Šumperk was alive with flags, costumes, music and pageantry this weekend to celebrate the town's history. Ironic really, because the original German population, who established the town in the 13th century, were all kicked out after WWII for being Nazis (They had German names and spoke German so they must have been Nazis!) 

One famous episode in the towns history were witch trials. Here, in the 17th century, enhanced interrogation techniques were successfully used to gain confessions and useful information leading to the capture and elimination of men and women actively practising witchcraft. If there was some doubt, and it might appear that they were innocent victims wrongly persecuted, masks like these could be used to clarify the situation. Just put the mask on and check. Does he look like a devil? Yes! Burn him!

Of course we've come a long way since those crude medieval times. We now have waterboarding, stress positions and sensory deprivation and there's also no need to waste time with senseless court trials when they're probably guilty anyway.                                        

Is he a terrorist? Just pop on the hood.......... ....                                                                             

29th May            

The final year of Czech high school is traditionally a rite of passage. At the 'ribbon ball', in the Autumn, the class teachers give their students ribbons printed with Latin and Czech inscriptions. in the Spring local shops host themed displays with photographs of each class. Maturita, the final exam in May, as the name suggests, represents the passage into adulthood.

The idea of a 'maturity' exam has always tickled me. Would you fail if your voice hadn't dropped or if your jokes were too childish? And would all the girls pass and the boys have to take it again when they reached forty? And would I ever be able to pass it? And would physical appearance also be appraised? (Well, actually it is, but not officially and it's not supposed to interfere with the marking!)

The funniest thing of all is that the future of this exam is currently being decided by our politicians, who constantly call each other names and make rude gestures at each other behind their portfolios.

21st May

Another thing I love about living here. On warm summers evenings like this you can sit in the pub garden and see the the moon and the Evening Star (Venus) above you and then, when its time to go home the sky is crowded with stars and you meet hedgehogs on the way home. At least that's where I think they were going.

13th May

I stayed up with Kristina to watch the Eurovision Song Contest, which even she had to admit was not really worth it. Our own entry, Kabát, didn't make it to the final at all and the Irish entry, Dervish, managed to look like dancing leprechauns. The winning entry, Serbia, looked like a women's encounter group, and most of the others looked like circus acts. 'Fly the Flag' was British Airways' version of the Quick Fit Boys and the Ukanian entry looked like escapees from Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. My personal favourite was the Hungarian entry; a simple Blues song , well played and well sung, without the fireworks and lasers and the rest of the razzamatazz. They didn't win but hats off to them anyway.    

I bought a boomerang for Seán but it doesn't seem to work. I took it back to the shop but they say it's non-returnable! Why didn't they tell me that before I bought it?

8th May

Czechs love dressing up! This year's Beltine (30th April-1st May) I felt like an extra on a film location. The evening started with David Neckar on the highland pipes leading his kilted cohort into the Celtic folk village in Letovice. There Irish and Scottish dancers mingled with ancient Celts, Roman soldiers fought with Gauls and exotic eastern maidens performed a fire dance. After finishing there we drove to the Greater Moravian folk village in Velehrad and more people dressed as Skots, Celts, Great Moravians and who- knows-what -else. I seem to remember a giant  chicken trying to join us on stage at one point - but maybe that was just a hallucination after too much drink and too little sleep.            More pictures of Beltine 2007 on the Bottlewash home page 

23rd April      Summertime and the livin's easy...

Like most of Europe, summer has come early to this corner of Moravia. not only are the trees in bloom but the fountains are also in operation and the pub terraces are out. For the next six months or more I will be stealing time whenever possible, especially when other people are working, to sit outside cafés sipping espresso and imagining I'm a tourist. I just love it! It's the kind of lifestyle millionaires would be jealous of.

 The great thing now is no longer feeling guilty. The first couple of years here I used to have a recurring nightmare in which bowler-hatted officials from the Ministry of Education would arrive in Šumperk, tell my headmaster not to believe whatever nonsense I had told them and that I should be teaching Class 3A back in Kettering. They would then drag me kicking and screaming back to England. The sheer relief when I awoke. So now here I sit sipping coffee like Ronnie Biggs while my colleagues back in England struggle on.  Now that's what I call career development!

18th April

Dervish have the dubious honour of representing Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest. The video is a bit twee but generally pleasant pop-diddley ala Corrs, Bewitched, Stockton's Wing. These are not whirling dervishes though, but more like the moving statues of Ballinspittle.

The Czech entry, on the other hand, is  growling heavy rock band 'Kabat' (Coat in English). Their lyrics can be mildly humorous at times if you understand Czech. If you don't, well they sound like the aggressive rantings of a drunken mob of football hooligans. It's hard to imagine them having much appeal across the continent but if they won...... now that really would be a miracle!  

9th April   And so this is Easter..........                                                                     

Easter is a great irony. It's deeply pagan and yet it's celebrated most of all by Christians. Read the account of the crucifixion in all four gospels and there's not an egg in sight! Here in the Czech Republic girls decorate the eggs to give to the boys when they come to beat them on the backside with a stick made from plaited springy willow stems. If your seven years old it's a brilliant excuse for hitting your sister! Otherwise this is either a peculiar Czech fetish or a blatant ancient fertility ritual! Not that there's much difference between them. In this day and age isn't this hugely irresponsible? Aren't there enough of us on the planet already? Isn't the world population spiraling out of control? Maybe now is the time to start initiating some INfertility rituals. How about an annual day of hot baths and cycle races! And bottles of gin for the ladies.   

First prize in the competition for least convincing cover versions of Beatles songs goes to...........      

       28th March

"Bridge" magazine for English learners has a supplement about Ireland this month. In an article about Newgrange it claims that this megalithic mound represents the belly of Mother Earth. A kind of a tomb with a womb (or vice versa). At the winter solstice Father Sun sends his shaft of light down the passage to make the Earth fertile and fruitful in the coming year. So what they're saying is that Newgrange is just a monumental shag!!! Some archeologists even say the entrance is shaped like female genetalia!! (It seems Neolithic man was only interested in sex and food! - pretty much like our students). Good thing St. Pat stepped in to put a stop to such depraved carry on!

22nd March                                                                                                    

I was sorry to miss the Otis Taylor gig here last week. I have an MP3 of his song about a black man falsely accused and hanged for the death of a railway brakeman, complete with recorded train sounds. If your actually on a train while your listening it's really scary! Even more so if there's a dead railway worker lying next to you. Otis' problem though was a dead audience in front of him. They didn't take much to "trance-blues". An audience raised on bluegrass and art-rock is more entranced by fast licks, or at least something you can dance to. They get nervous if you go more than four bars without a chord change! Apparently, he surveyed our old soviet style Culture House with a look of  "What the 12-bar-riff am I doing here?", while gradually his audience disappeared off to the bar. Prague guitarist, Luboš Andršt however, a regular visitor to Šumperk, gave the crowd what they wanted.

 Expectation is the key. People don't want "the real thing"; they  want what they think is the real thing. When I played with Happy to Meet  people often enthused over the "Irish music" we played when most of it actually wasn't! (But don't tell anyone, will you!) 

19th March

From relative anonymity the Czech Republic is overcoming international indifference enough to make a few enemies. The reason? Radar!  The Russians are upset by plans to build an American radar base here (Probably just a wind-up. The Americans don't even know where the Czech Republic is anyway). In addition, Czech radar systems are to be used to track and tax British motorists. (Not a wind-up!) I suggest we forget the Americans, keep our own radar system and track and tax foreign missiles as they pass over.

We played a cracking St. Pat's gig at Zach's Pub in Plzeň. Great people and the lads were in fine form.  Probably the smallest stage I've ever played on and the only place here that serves a full Irish breakfast - if you can face it, that is!             

 11th March

Some things you may not have known about St. Patrick:

He wasn't Irish, his surname wasn't Guinness and there is no supporting evidence to show that he played the Uillean pipes and got regularly paralytic. He did however manage to successfully explain the Trinity using a shamrock leaf after previous failed attempts by St. Andrew using a thistle and St. David using a daffodil! Is the fact that shamrock only grows in Ireland just a coincidence or was he a botanist as well, or did he have a background in marketing? He is also credited with ridding Ireland of snakes, having presumably trained beforehand in New Zealand, Iceland and Greenland, which are also snake free! 

Radek was too ill to play on Friday so Ondra and I were left to soldier on. Alena stepped in to accompany us on bodhrán and some mad Limerick hurling players provided the cabaret - a parody of Riverdance, though to the uninitiated it might have been mistaken for two drunken eejits making arseholes of themselves. 

We were back in force on Saturday to play support to Irish rock band Aslan, who turned out to be pretty good. Radek managed to survive the evening on drugs. ....prescription drugs for gastric flu that is, as I had to explain to the disappointment of Christy Dignan, Aslan's lead singer. He's quite a captivating performer. His songs are full of the anguish of  teenage sexual yearning and playground bullying, which, from the look of him, he appears to have spent years trying to block out by substance abuse. All put together with dance moves learned from old clips of Ian Dury. 

4th March

I shouldn't have wrote about the weather last week. the very next day it snowed! Since then we've been on the slippery slope between Winter and Spring, sometimes moving forward, sometimes slipping back.

The countdown to St. Pat's has already begun. We had a rehearsal on Friday to blow the cobwebs off the "Irish Groove" arrangements. Mr. Yamaha is an unyielding, uncompromising, dictatorial bastard but he still holds the rhythm better than any Czech drummer I've worked with. Still, it was pretty tense and, to make matters worse, the little fellah's given up the booze for Lent! (At least until his friends and students can organize a petition to persuade him otherwise.) I can see why those Muslims are at each other's throats. Instead of dropping bombs the Yanks should be handing out free pints and shots. If they all got totally off their faces they'd be hugging each other and swapping camel jokes and the whole Middle East situation would be solved.

I once tried giving up alcohol for Lent myself and spent three weeks in the Welsh wilderness as well, as an assistant shepherd. It wasn't the Virgin Mary that appeared to me in dreams though, but a large, cool, black, glistening, creamy pint. Since my Road to Damascus my faith in the gargle has been strongly reaffirmed and I now follow it with the fanaticism of the true convert.   

25th February 2007        

      It's amazing to think that last February the streets here were lined with shoulder-height ridges of snow. This year there's not a flake in sight and the first flowers are appearing. The council cleaning trucks have also been out sweeping the gutters and scrubbing the pavements, two months ahead of schedule.

All week people had been telling me how they were looking forward to our concert in Zabreh. This was a surprise to me because we weren't booked to play in Zabreh!  Radek and I went along to have a look anyway. Two of my previous bands were booked to play there, though it turned out that Happy to Meet were not so happy to meet and Celtic Cross were there to replace them. Celtic Cross are now not so cross and seem to have got over their split up. The third group playing were three great musicians from  Prague, one of them  my old friend, Rene Starhon. Rene doesn't seem to age at all, just his spliffs get longer. It's got to the point now that when he plays low whistle he doesn't know if he should suck or blow, and keeps trying to light the end of it! According to the publicity Tom English (Great name for an Irish man. No wonder he left!) was supposed to be playing with them. Rene said this was the first they had heard about it but it did explain why the organizer had insisted on speaking to him in English over the telephone. The lads are also playing in Plzen for St. Pat's so a mighty late-night session is expected after our gig at Zach's Pub.

There was a meeting of residents from our block of flats this week. Finally they are submitting an application for insulation. Not all residents agree with it yet and it's not certain whether we'll get the loan this year but that didn't stop them having a half hour argument over what colour to paint it! It brought me back to the days of those long Ceolthas committee discussions over what should go in the sandwiches at the next ceili. A few of the old women  had a letter prepared demanding that the cherry trees be cut down because the fruit makes a mess on the path and the children climb in the branches. They also want to cut down the pine in front of our flat because it could be dangerous in hurricanes and the aubretia ( in Czech "Golden Rain") because the children play there. What kind of miserable childhood did these people have? Will there be any greenery left when they're finished?     

Quote of the week comes from one of my students.

Student A: What do you do in your free time?

Student B: I have no free time.

Student A: Do you work? What do you do?

Student B: I study and relax.

w.irishmusic.cz

     Bottlewash Irish Groove

We've been thinking of putting together a rockier version of BB for bigger venues for some time but it's been difficult to find the right people and to support the expansion financially. The solution was MIDI- Radek and Ondra can use their expertise on bass and drums to get just the backing we want. The great thing about a drum machine is that you only have to punch in the arrangement once!