15th November 1970

Branik

15/11/70

Dear Mum and Dad

Just a short note to let you know I arrived in Prague safely. I really enjoyed my stay with you in England. It was lovely to see everyone again. Since I have been back I have been very busy at home and at work. At home I had all the washing from before I left England. Tony did the ironing for me, I have been helping to organise the library for my Czech customer which entails several meetings and lots of paper work.

Tony has just been to see Ralph .L who says we can go home for Christmas. However there is a problem of where to go but we will see you at some time if not on Christmas day. What are your plans? Are Paula and the family coming to stay? Will there be room for a few from the F. family? I don’t expect you have room for Mr and Mrs F. too which would be one solution of our problem. Tony does not want to go home at all but I guess he will in the end. However they just don’t make any effort when we are there- it is quite depressing.

We are going to see Chris.D’s new baby tonight- it is a little girl two months old.

 We are going to a cocktail party on Thursday- what a thrill that will be.

I have had two car accidents in the last 3 days but both of them very minor. On Sunday I cleverly backed the VW into the Daf’s bumper and scratched its wing. Then today my Czech friend Jitka was driving me in her car and scraped alongside a tram.

The weekend was spent almost entirely cleaning the cars and patching up the little holes where stones have hit the paintwork.

On Saturday we went to see the film ‘Detective’ but it was dubbed in Czech and I think we missed some of the subtleties. The books I bought in UK are very good and I am enjoying lots of reading in bed.

I had better close now

Lots of love from both of us

The trams are involved in many accidents in Czechoslovakia. The trams tracks themselves were not always sunk into the road, sometimes they went above the road making an impassable barrier. Other time the tracks were sunken below the road which could cause you to swerve. The most common accident, and the one that happened to me and Jitka, was that when the trams went around a corner the back end would swing out and if you were following the tram too closely you would get hit. Needless to say in a tram versus car conflict the car always came off worse. Jitka was another person who made Gill’s stay in Prague a happy one. She worked at UAVT, the Ministry of Technology Computer Site, and spoke excellent English as she had lived in London for a couple of years. She showed Gill where to buy things and took her to interesting restaurants. One meal which she ordered for Gill started with a soup. ‘What sort of mushroom is this?’ Gill asked lifting out a pale spherical shape from my soup. ‘That’s not a mushroom, that’s brain’ Jitka replied. Gill decided to carry on eating the soup which she would never have ordered herself as it tasted scrumptious. Other dishes which Gill like included tripe soup which had a lot of paprika in it and was warming on a winter’s day; and plum dumplings which Vashek.L.’s mother made for Gill in Brno. There is a letter missing before this next letter- I only have the envelope.