LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE IN THE EMBRACE OF A HONEY TRAP

THERE are times in an old codger’s life when it really would be nice to draw a veil over some of the things one got up to in one’s youth. Such as 55 years ago. But this Elysian state is not always to be. Thus last Friday I found myself invited as a puzzled guest to a seminar in a Cambridge college.

Now the erudite, the intellectual and the academic worlds and this writer occasionally pass each other going in opposite directions. A friendly nod usually suffices. Other than the usual courtesies we have nothing in common. So the hallowed walls of Corpus Christi are not at all my stamping ground. Still, an invitation to dine with the multi-degree-ed is rare enough to bring me cross-country to the city on the Cam. But why?

It seems that an academic researcher, Czech-born and specialising in her native land, had been back and persuaded the authorities to open for the first time the sealed archives of the STB, once Communist Czechoslovakia’s secret police. That made sense. I was there in 1964 and like all foreign correspondents (in my case Reuters) followed, watched, eaves-dropped and every move and conversation recorded.

It appeared that in the depths of the STB records was a fat file with my name on. OK, so what I said to the hotel staff was all there. So what? It was all harmless.

Then right at the back a name sprang out. Jana. I remembered her all right. Absolutely gorgeous. A never-to-forget night of love-making. Unfortunately my “conquest” was a honey-trap, working for the secret police. As the academics rocked with laughter her report to her bosses was read out.

It seems she met a Swiss three years later, married him and emigrated to Switzerland, where she still lives at the ripe age of 76.

I think we should leave that sleeping dog firmly in the land of Nod.

Just an occasional slow grin in the darkness of the night.