Extract 1 - Bohemia

Astronomical Clock, Prague Please note, this illustration is not from the book.

There was a simplicity, almost an unreality, about the rounded contours of the landscape, pleasing to the eye, and heightened by a lack of the usual twentieth century impedimenta. The few houses in open country were square and uncomplicated, like a child's drawing, and occasionally a solitary church or round stone tower stood out on a hilltop. The effect was strangely mediaeval, as if it were a landscape glimpsed through the window of a Renaissance portrait, or a backcloth for Olivier's Henry V.

... but the delight of the afternoon was fading. It worried me that I couldn't seem to get my timing right. Day after day I was late to bed, getting up and starting late the next morning and so perpetuating the whole cycle, the constant need to catch up on myself.

...at least, I wasn't troubled by loneliness. When I had first proposed the trip, one of the commonest reactions among my friends was: "But surely you're not going alone?" It was hard to explain that it was better so; that the physical demands of being in company constituted a luxury well beyond my budget.

Imagine that you are slightly drunk, taking tea with your mother-in-law and the Bishop, and trying desperately to appear sober. The level of effort involved is about the same as that which the average ME person makes in company. None of us wishes to be constantly slow, unresponsive or plain dim. The animation you need to raise your game, even just a little, in front of others is supplied by nervous energy or adrenaline, which does a good temporary job but burns you out in no time.

...Loneliness is not a matter of geography...

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