Well, it’s been a long and difficult year; with the help of my father-in-law, we renovated the rear of our home and installed a new open-plan kitchen, turned a dining room into a second lounge, knocked walls about and a whole host of other things. Someone told me that, due to the slope of the land immediately behind the house, we’d need to remove the paving slabs that were causing the rainwater to run up against the wall, causing some rising damp. Someone else suggested digging up the compacted earth and infilling with stone chips. Who would do all of this? Moi, of course. That was tough work, digging three 16′ channels down to a depth of two feet, and shifting the compacted earth in builders’ bags and into the back of the trusty steed, Uncle Ravnikov*.

I digress. The upshoot is that we spent a huge amount of time and our own summer doing work on the house. It’s been worth it, but it has meant that other things haven’t happened. Such as the threatened CallCentreVoice .NET rewrite, my summer ‘lose the gut’ campaign and of course holidays.

So, my nearest & dearest suggested we ought to take off for a few days and as such we have chosen to fly to Prague and freeze. ‘Cause it’s winter. To paraphrase Billy Connolly, “We Scots are a strange bunch. We live in a cold place, and every now and then we migrate, saying ‘Come on, I know a colder place!’".

So, spare batteries and film are ordered for my little Contax G2 (I might talk about cameras one day soon), the animal-sitter (Gail) has agreed to help out, and we’re heading off in at the weekend. Splendid.

Neither of us have ever been to Prague before, so it’s the great unknown. Many people have, of course, beaten a track before us, and everyone is very positive about this beautiful city.

Oh, I’m open to suggestions as to where we might go - bearing in mind it’s close season. I’m hoping for the following:

• Great architecture so that I can take photos with the Contax;
• Decent food (especially for T.’s sake as she’s a veggie;
• Fairly quiet streets (photos again, y’see);
• Good beer; I’m a big fan of those cloudy Belgian beers, and hopefully there’ll be similar in Prague;
• Good duty free - can anyone say Eye Pod?

So, when I’m away, hopefully Dave & Darryl (our first blogging volunteers) will keep you all entertained and keep the momentum up. Nothing worse than a blogging vacuum, eh?

John

* You’re probably wondering why our car is called Uncle Ravnikov; maybe when I’m stuck for ideas one day in the future, I might explain…