Postcard from Montenegro
Seeing that my country, the UK, has become one where a school teacher is forced to apologise for saying “Good afternoon, girls” to a class of girls, a boy accidentally scuffing a Koran necessitates the need for a press conference involving the police and local ‘faith leaders’, and citizens have their bank accounts closed if their views happen not to align with left-wing dogma, I figure it’s time to go abroad again, this time to Montenegro, one of the seven countries formerly known as Yugoslavia (six, if you don’t count Kosovo). In late July 2023, I go for one week, accompanied by a friend and David Szalay’s magnificent book All That Man Is . The weather is hot and sunny (in summer, in Southern Europe, who knew?) and we stay in the slice-of-heaven Old Town in a nice Airbnb. I fly with easyJet into Tivat airport from Gatwick, my friend from elsewhere. To speedily get the covid crap out of the way first: in terms of finger-wagging signage I see only the very occasional faded sticke