Miroslav Skalický

„That house was ambushed by the police every weekend. They checked us down there at Ušák, that’s such a pub by the bus stop and then you walk a kilometer or two uphill. All the weekends, there were roadblocks. And when the Plastics were to perform there, even the people who lived in the house did not know anything beforehand. I had planned that this way with Magor [Ivan Jirous, his nickname Magor means Wacko or Crazy guy] in Prague. There could be three variants, for example. I knew that it would be in our place but we did not want it to leak so people were told to go elsewhere. First, they went to a place where they were told where to continue. And since the house was full during the weekends and the police were all around, such events as the concert of the Plastics were held on Tuesdays or Thursdays. People came but the cops did not have a clue. They came to guard when everything was over. It was conceived and organised in such a way that the cops never managed to interrupt any event even though they were all around the place.”

„I was two stories undergrond in the so-called hole. That was a tough one. It was in December, the heating was turned off. So, it was ice cold there. Water was soaking through the walls. Cold. We begged to be allowed to wash the dishes because those were washed in hot water. To eat, we got a quarter of bread [of a loaf of 1,2 kilos, i. e. 300 grams] and that sort of crude oil in the cup. A bit of soup or sauce with two dumplings, the normal portion was four. There was a toilet bowl in the corner, made of cast iron and without the siphon, it stank. A water tap above so that one couldn’t even sit on that crapper. That was the only source of water which was there. We got the blankets only for the night. A wooden plank bed without a mattress. And there were regular brown rats or Norwegian rats jumping out of the shitter and they wandered all over me during the night. I would always shake them off the blanket. Then a guy with whom I would do the dishes told me to leave them a bit of food next to the crapper. I left them a bit of bread in the cup, the rat ate and jumped back to the toilet and we could sleep in peace. “