Tag: Intercontinental Church Society

A visit to the UK

Phillip & Charlotte at Matt’s birthday sports afternoon © Ricky Yates

On Friday 16th July, I set out to make my first return visit to the UK since moving to Prague nearly two years ago. The five day trip was part holiday – spending sometime with my son Phillip in Derby; and part work – fulfilling a promise made earlier in the year to undertake a deputation visit for the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) who prayerfully and financially support the work of the Prague Chaplaincy.

As usual, the wonderful Prague public transport system got me from the bus stop, five minutes walk from the Chaplaincy flat, to the front entrance of Terminal 1 at Prague Airport, in little more than thirty minutes. Much more surprisingly, my Easyjet flight was taxiing down the runway at 10.45, exactly the time it was meant to be departing from Prague. Less than two hours later, we landed in the UK though, because of the one hour time difference, it was only 11.40 BST.

I flew into the rather incongruously named ‘Robin Hood Airport’ which serves Doncaster and Sheffield in South Yorkshire. At the end of 2009, Easyjet ceased to operate out of East Midlands Airport, the airport that serves Derby, and passed the Prague – East Midlands route to bmibaby.com. In their wisdom, bmibaby.com have suspended their Prague – East Midlands flights during July and August, presumably because it is more profitable to use their planes to fly British tourists to the Costas in Spain or the Greek islands during this time.

At UK passport control, I had great difficulty stopping myself from saying “Dobrý den” to the immigration officer, instead of saying “Good morning”. This was a problem I continued to have during the following few days, adjusting to the fact that I could actually speak in English and be completely understood. That I needed to say “Thank you” and “Goodbye”, not “Dekuji” and “Na shledanou”.

It was equally strange once I met up with Phillip in the airport car park. I got into the front passenger seat of his right-hand drive (RHD) car, in that respect no different from being in my RHD car in Prague. But he then proceeded to drive on the left-hand side of the road! After nearly two years of travelling or driving on the right-hand side of the road, that took some getting used to once again.

A forty minute drive down the M18 and the M1 got us to Derby. After Phillip had purchased a few things from Morrisons supermarket, I tried to get some Sterling currency out of the nearby ATM, using my Barclays Bank debit card. I had deliberately transferred funds from my Czech bank account to my UK Barclays account to be able to do exactly this. My attempt to withdraw cash was declined – a security measure because I hadn’t used the debit card in the UK for nearly two years!  So, before proceeding to Phillip’s home for a late lunch, we drove to a branch of Barclays Bank plc where I duly produced my passport and debit card with the request that I be allowed to withdraw my own money! I was extremely glad that I had arrived in the UK on a weekday rather than a weekend.

During my visit to the UK, I was asked several times whether there was anything I missed about the UK now I lived in the Czech Republic. My answer was always negative – as things currently stand, I don’t see myself living in the UK again in the foreseeable future. But on that Friday evening, I did do two thoroughly enjoyable things which it would not be possible to do in Prague.

Firstly, en-route to the city centre, Phillip and I purchased our evening meal from a Fish & Chips shop. We then walked slightly further on to the County Ground where we ate our fish and chips, (in Phillip’s case, pie and chips), whilst watching a day/night Twenty20 cricket match between Derbyshire CC and Northamptonshire CC. However, one less enjoyable, (though expected), thing was paying £3.00 a pint (0.568 litre) for a beer whilst watching the cricket when a 0.5 litre beer in most Prague bars would cost no more than £1.00.

The following day, Saturday 17th July, Phillip and his girlfriend Charlotte, had been invited to the birthday celebrations of Matt, a university friend of Phillip who, like Phillip, has stayed on in Derby after graduating. Matt kindly assured Phillip that his Dad was more than welcome to come along with him.

Matt lives with his heavily pregnant wife, in the village of Hilton, just to the west of Derby. For his birthday, he had invited various friends, his brother and sister, together with their respective boyfriends/girlfriends, to a picnic lunch and a sports afternoon on the nearby village playing field. So, after sandwiches, crisps and other goodies, accompanied by a variety of liquid refreshment, we spent the afternoon playing rounders and kwik cricket.

Afterwards, I returned with Phillip and Charlotte to their home. We quickly ate a stir-fry and got washed and changed before we rejoined the others in the centre of Derby where the birthday celebrations were resumed and the following two pictures were taken.

Father and Son © Ricky Yates
Phillip & Charlotte © Ricky Yates

More about my UK trip in my next post.

On holiday – but in Prague!

The yellow spire of St. Clement's Church seen from Letna Park © Ricky Yates

Once again, I have to start by apologising for not having posted anything here on my blog for over a month. The main reason for this has been a real sense of uncertainty about my situation because of the financial difficulties the Prague Anglican Chaplaincy has been facing. However, things are now looking a good deal more secure, not least due to some generous additional funding being immediately provided by the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) and the likelihood of further help from one or two other sources.

However, as Sybille’s and my contribution towards keeping costs down, we chose not to attend the ICS Chaplains & families conference which took place in Sussex, UK last week, as the Chaplaincy would have had to meet both the cost of the conference and our travel costs to get there. This decision also meant that our original plan, of spending two weeks of my annual leave in the UK immediately following the conference, also had to change. So instead, after celebrating the Eucharist on Sunday 4th July at St. Clements, I’ve been on a stay-at-home-holiday (vacation to my US readers) here in Prague.

One of the real difficulties of being a clergyman living on-the-job is that it is very difficult to be ‘on holiday at home’ without work inevitably intruding. However, other than answering a variety of emails and fielding a couple of phone calls, I’ve managed pretty well so far. And next week, I am going to the UK, but just for a long weekend – more about this in due course.

These past five days, I’ve set about trying to completely clean our flat, room by room. I don’t just mean running the vacuum cleaner across the floors and giving the furniture a quick wipe with the duster. I mean giving every room a really thorough clean! Therefore I’ve had my stepladder up from the cellar to enable me to reach and dismantle all the light fittings to remove a variety of dead insects and dust. It has also enabled me to clean the tops of wardrobes and the ledges above doorways.

For the first time since they were made and hung in January 2006, I’ve taken down the curtains a room at a time, in order to wash, dry, iron and re-hang them. They now seem several shades lighter, hopefully due to losing dirt rather than colour from the fabric! As I feared, the curtains have also shrunk a little. Fortunately, it is nothing too dramatic and no doubt they’ll drop a little in the next few weeks now they’ve been re-hung.

One very good reason for carrying out this cleaning exercise now is that finally, we are no longer living next to a building site. Our flat was built as part of the first stage of what the developers describe as Residence Podbaba. Ever since we moved here nearly two years ago, the fourth and final stage of the development has been under construction in front and at the side of our apartment block. Cleaning anything, especially the outside of windows or our balconies, was virtually a waste of time as within twenty-four hours, everything would once more be covered in dust from the building site.

About a month ago, the building work finished, paths were laid and the grounds landscaped. Therefore, whilst the curtains have been down, Sybille has been busy cleaning the windows and I’ve washed down all three of our external balconies.

As part of this cleaning exercise, we have also tried to look once more at our possessions, especially things that have gathered dust through lack of use. Have we used this item in the nearly two years we have been here? Are we likely to use it in the coming months? Jesus’ words recorded in Luke 12 v15 have been resonating once again. “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed: life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

Two rooms remain to be tackled as part of this major cleaning exercise – the kitchen and our joint office. The latter is the most cluttered and therefore the most difficult to both clean and sort out. I promise to provide a further progress report in the next few days…….