4: Prague Diary

We left the subway to even brighter sunshine. It was gorgeous. I like Mr Sun. I enjoy the way he touches me and gropes me seductively when Russ isn't looking. The area looked a little better than the previous few drop offs and we were in high spirits. Already we’d met two other people going to the concert and that was miles away. There must be thousands of them around here. We decided to get a drink and something to eat before finding the stadium. We have a method for picking eateries, you just turn in a circle, pick the first bar you see—there are at least three in any turned circle— and off you go. This was our recipe which had already failed the night before but creatures of habit that we are, we were filled with good feelings and oodles of positivity that would have put the Spice Girls to shame.

We walked in and it was an exact repeat of the reception in the pub next to the hotel, everybody turned to stare at us and the bar was filled with the kind of men who looked as though they were very familiar with lifting a tankard. The man behind the bar must have fallen down in a heap the night before because he had a gravel rash that had taken most of the skin, and a goodly chunk of flesh, from his nose. He didn’t appear to be in a very good mood. There was nowhere to sit in the barroom and we weren’t sure if the restaurant beyond was open so we just took a place at the bar. My back was killing me. I needed to sit down. I suggested to Russ that we leave and find somewhere else, but it was too late, he was already ordering drinks.

I had a coffee, he had a beer. My coffee cost four times the price of his lager and mine was only about eighty pence. We tried to ask about food. Gesturing at the clock, he told us something about twenty five minutes, but we didn’t understand whether the restaurant would be opening then or if it would only be open until then so we left it, hastily supped up, paid and left, but not before mister Kiss The Pavement had thrown a hissy fit and chucked a bottle across the bar in temper, not at us though I don’t think. Well, if it was aimed at us, then he’d be about as good as me at darts. One thing that did amuse me was that one of these big, burly, hardened drinking men had a tiny white fluffy poodle under his arm.

It was in this bar that I had my first inkling that people in Prague weren’t used to seeing somebody like me. I don’t think I’d quite personalized it at this point and I just felt that we were being stared at and talked about.

We were still hungry so we tried the next place along.

It was much the same as the last, same smattering of drinkers, but this one also had people eating at some of the tables. This was more like it. We sat at a table and somebody soon came to attend to us. This lady didn’t throw her arms around us or smother us in affection but at least she wasn’t openly hostile. She tried her best to help us out with the Czech menu. This time I had a vodka and coke, Russ had a beer. He ordered Czech chili goulash with American fried potatoes. I had steak in a cream sauce with Czech dumplings.

There are three good things that I will never forget about Prague, the weather after a miserable British Winter, the scenery, and the food. In all the time we were there neither of us had a meal that we weren’t delighted with. The Czechs know their food, it’s not usually fancy and normally in these bars the portions aren’t huge and they are particularly frugal with the meat content… but it was gorgeous and more than enough for me and as Russ always had his own and at least half of mine as well, he had nothing to moan about either.

His goulash was a plate of meat and veg in a rich chilli sauce and it was very tasty. He went on about it for days. Mine was a small piece of fillet steak dressed with a plateful of spiced cream sauce. The dumplings were nothing like our stick to your ribs dumplings; it more resembled a small loaf of doughy bread. It was cooked in a loaf tin and sliced like bread. They were gorgeous but not what I was expecting. I got five generous slices that slopped up the excess sauce perfectly. I had one and gave the other four to Russ.

A vodka, a bottle of real Coca-cola, a tankard of beer and two beautiful meals came to less than a fiver.

By the time we left the bar it was about three o’clock and the sun passed its zenith. We decided to go to the arena and see if we could find somewhere to sunbathe for a while. We still hadn’t seen any other Waters’ fans. The Sazka was massive; at the far end of the arena was a large grass banking with three groups of people sitting around enjoying the sun while they waited to queue for the concert. About fifty, die hard, must get the front row at all costs, fans were already at the turnstiles but my back wouldn’t let me stand and queue for another four hours. We’d bought a litre of vodka and a bottle of coke for less than three quid and decided to go and join the people sitting on the grass.

We were fifteen people, all excited about the concert. I figured we’d sit there chewing the fat. It didn’t matter if these people were Czech or English we had a common denominator and I’ve never met unfriendly people in a concert, gig or festival environment yet. I wanted to share our vodka, thought they might have some fragrant tobacco to pass along and that after ten minutes we’d all be old friends.

Er… no. We went, we sat and within three minutes they’d all given us the evils, got up and stormed off, we had the entire banking to ourselves, and so it stayed for the rest of the afternoon. No problem, fuck `em, who needs company we had sunshine, we had vodka and we had each other. We took our tops off (though I did use my vest to cover my bare essentials when I lay on my back as we were right next to the police station and I didn’t know the Czech etiquette about topless sunbathing.) An hour later we had red bodies and mellow dispositions. I topped up on pain killers and all was good. I didn’t want to drink very much at all because I wanted to enjoy the concert sober. It broke my heart having to throw over half a bottle of vodka away when we went through the security checks and Russ had supped most of what we’d used. I make him sound like a big drinker, don’t I? Neither of us are, we were just in holiday mode.

After an hour in the sun we went in search of other Waters’ fans in several bars but didn’t find any at all. That was mad, usually when there’s a big concert the closest bars to the venues are chocker with fans. It was very surreal. We’ve both done a lot of gigs and neither of us had seen anything like it before.

We didn’t have to queue at all to get in, but the level of security was all alien to us as well. We had to go through two scanners one on each level of the arena. No drinks at all were allowed to be taken into the concert hall, not even in plastic glasses and my bag was checked.

The next hour was the worst of the day. We managed to get right at the front against the safety barriers and our places had to be closely guarded. I spent most of the hour sitting with my back to the railing to protect it. My back, that is, not the railing. I had four hours to stand when the concert began. I got to closely examine many pairs of shoes and felt claustrophobic down there among all the shoving feet. Because the crowd had pushed right up against the barrier and therefore against me, I had no room to move my legs at all and had to sit in a tight little cross legged ball. But it was all worth it once the concert began. I’d topped up on pain killers and although I was in pain it was manageable and didn’t spoil the gig for me at all.
Waters was amazing. I was totally transfixed and can’t wait to see him again on the seventh of May. Roger Waters is hyped as, the genius behind Pink Floyd. He wrote most of their songs and since the big falling out of the band has gone it alone and, if anything, is even better as a solo performer than he was as part of one of the best bands in the world. He’s well into his sixties now, but what a good looking charismatic man he is. He’s still very fanciable and many a middle aged woman would be creaming her knickers watching him.

I said that he’s a solo performer, but he isn’t, He just doesn’t go under the Pink Floyd banner any longer. He has a large backing band and three female vocalists including P.P.Arnold who could sail a rigger from Dover to Atlantis on her lung power alone. Years of literally screaming harmoniously from the top of her lungs every night has taken its toll on her vocal chords, but my God, what a voice.

They played the entire, Dark Side of the Moon album, plus extracts from, The Wall and lots of Waters' own solo stuff. My favourite song is called, Perfect Sense, but Russ laughs at me because I call it, Monkey. Monkey sits on a block of stone, contemplating the broken bone in his hand. Russ gets frustrated with me though, because I’m not quite as hard dying a fan as he is and I still can’t differentiate between Waters’ songs and Pink Floyd songs a lot of the time. I loved every second of it.

We came out to a very different Prague. No matter how hot Prague days are it seems that Prague nights are always freezing. I only had on a vest and shorts. God it was cold. We bought a couple of bootleg tour shirts outside the Arena for a fiver each. The same t-shirts inside were twenty pounds. I’m glad we hadn’t bothered buying any. We made our way back to the tube and had a shock when people milling round told us that the Metro system was about to shut down for the night, we had no idea how to get back to the hotel and knew that a taxi would cost the earth. We were miles from Prague city.

It was standing on the Metro station platform that I finally realized that I was the subject of very rude staring and ridicule. Most people were wrapped up against winter weather while I was in shorts and vest. At first, I thought it was that which fascinated them. I have tattoos and I wondered if Prague women don’t. I took the thought further. Maybe tattoos hadn’t come to the Czech Republic at all and they might never have seen one before out here in the sticks, surely not, what with the recent influx of British tourists. I didn’t realise then why everybody was staring at me. Despite the bodings of doom a train did come and we managed to get back to the city centre, but we couldn’t get any further by public transport that night. We’d hit the point of hunger again and all that we could find open was a MacDonald’s. I never eat in them in England so I didn’t want to eat there. Because it was so cold we’d both put our tour t-shirts on and looked like a pair of idiot twins in our his n her matching shirts. I felt a right prat but was too cold to care about it too much. We found a bar and the man told us that he was just closing but we could have one drink if we liked. He was far from warm or friendly but this man was the nicest person we’d met so far. We gratefully accepted his offer and ordered our drinks; again we were too late to get any food.

The bar was fantastic. It was built into the cellar of a huge building and was made up of a set of caves, large ones for the bar area and small ones for private alcoves. The walls and ceilings were stone and rounded. The place had a medieval cum Viking feel to it. I loved it and wanted to go back again for a meal before we left Prague, but we never got back. As we were led to our table we walked past one of the alcoves and a man was standing in front of a lady receiving oral sex in full view of anybody walking past. At least somebody was getting fed that night.

There were still a couple of large drinking parties in and they didn’t seem in any hurry to sup up and bugger off so the man kindly said that we could stay for another drink if we wanted to. This was one of the only kindnesses we were shown by the locals in all the time we spent in Prague.

After a couple of double voddies, and beers for Russ, we went out, found a taxi within a few yards and went back to the hotel at the not too unreasonable cost of ten pounds. Once in bed we munched on our supper buns and I can’t remember anything ever tasting so good.