Gatehouse of Fleet gets New Year's Day radio name-check - in the Czech Republic

10.01.2022 - 12:11 / dailyrecord.co.uk

Gatehouse of Fleet got a name-check or the radio on New Year’s Day – in the Czech Republic.

Radio Prague broadcast an interview with town provost Helen Keating about her new book, Andyel and his Magic Daddy.

A Czech resident living locally, Helen thinks, alerted the radio station after reading an article on her book in the Galloway News.

Under the title “Children’s book inspired by Czech fairy-tale character of Water Goblin released in Scotland” the three-minute piece was broadcast in English across the world.

Helen came across the Water Goblin – Vodnik in Czech – when she visited Czechoslovakia in 1989, shortly before the Velvet Revolution.

“I was involved in a school exchange, when we took a choir over to Prague,” she told Radio Prague.

“I met a family of one of the teachers involved in the exchange and we have been friends ever since.

“I am familiar with the Waterman and I have always been interested in the story, so I devised the idea of writing stories not directly about him, but about his descendants.

“There are seven little stories and in each one Andyel takes a problem to his father Grimble, who goes to his workshop and solves it with his magical powers.”

The book has another Czech connection – it features illustrations by 13-year-old Sidonie Procházková, the granddaughter of the Czech friends Helen got to know during her first visit to Prague.

“She is in a school in Prague, which has a special art department,” Helen told listeners. “I just casually asked her if she would like to do some drawings. She has done a whole selection of them and they are just amazing.

“And I found a very good publisher who has used them really well.”