january 1985.

Not just the date, but the year is also a guess. After the success of the first parastos, and hearing that IV₄ were making their own a few times already, we decided to give it a try for IV_5pp. The location we picked was The Hole (see 19-I-1977.), which was still working, though not anymore as a disco, but rather as an ordinary restaurant, not as posh as their main dining hall, where the prices were lower and most of the people came there to just have a drink, not necessarily to eat.

I don't quite remember who was there - specially the girls, there were probably just a few. I know Staša was there, Mjedac, Baki, Čombe, Bajče, probably Bajlo and Mandža, maybe Sredljak. And that's it. Ah, yes, I sort of remember Jolpaz was sitting across from me.

I brought the 88 pages of notes, the various blurts and pearls collected in those four years, and the booklet went around the table, and every now and then someone would find something interesting to read aloud. This became a tradition that kept on until about 2003 or 2007, when Staša was in custody of it. He then scanned all the pages and then everybody had a copy and carrying the original made sense no more.

We didn't get too drunk, just enough. Baki and Čombe somehow talked one other... now whether it was Bajče or Jolpaz, fuck me if I remember, to take the train with them to their village; the guy's last bus was long gone, so why not. He thought he'd just sleep on a couch at one of them, but no, they went to the local tavern. At 1:30. „Why go in now, we can't possibly have time for one drink, it must be closing already“. „No no no, it's just beginning now...“ - and they stayed there until six. Baki said that's the normal hours in that place.

In the photo archive for this month I see we had quite a snow... which must have thawed by the evening, I remember it was dry. Or it's more likely that this was shot in february, third week of it is when the frost goes the lowest, when the thin walls in the bathroom condense not just humidity, they get a layer of ice, centimeter thick. The walls of the kitchen aren't thicker either, except toward the house, but that one is internal, and the kitchen is heated. To bathe, we'd run the 2x1500 watt area heater, plus the inbuilt one on the wall, at, guessing, 1800, and then we'd wash the quickest possible, and then scram into the kitchen, staying there any longer isn't healthy.

Mentions: 19-I-1977., Branislav Bačikin (Bajče), Branislav Rade (Baki), Gradivoj Sredljev (Sredljak), IV₄, IV_5pp, Joško Čobzanin (Čombe), maturski parastos (parastos), Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Pavle Džeferdarević (Jolpaz), Slavoljub Mandić (Mandža), Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), Živko Mjedenica (Mjedac), in serbian

17-IV-2024 - 2-XI-2025