Cowboy
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up.
Not a cowgirl like Calamity Jane, a proper cowboy. This was not a fashion statement, although I did love my little faux leather waistcoat and my star-shaped sheriff’s badge. I also loved quick-draw shooting all of the neighbourhood cats and assorted other roaming creatures, which was always followed by blowing smoke away from the end of my pistol before replacing it smartly in its holster that hung jauntily at my hip. A quick getaway from the baddies was always possible on my trusty steed, the bright orange palomino space hopper that was such a brilliant all-terrain mode of transport.
And strangely enough, in my garden, just like in all of the cowboy films that I was actually allowed to watch, the sun was always shining.
Those were the days, and I know I’m not the first to drift off into a whimsical reverie of times past, remembering the long, hot endless summers of an English childhood. Why did they last so long, stretching far into the future with no end in sight?
I remember one summer we had a plague of ladybirds. They were everywhere. I collected as many as I could find and put them into a matchbox just to see how long it would take to fill it. Job done within half an hour. Some time later we had the greenfly invasion but these silent pests were a little creepy and covered everything in the garden. If I’m not mistaken, ladybirds are partial to greenfly dinners so perhaps I have remembered them in the wrong order. Maybe the ladybirds came after, not before, as a result of the bountiful food supply.
Since we’ve been Dutchside (12 years now) there have been at least two infestations of chunky, slightly chavvy-looking spiders that sit boldly in the middle of their huge webs, usually slung between two far-flung bushes, daring you to walk past them. These boys are definitely not the spindly, slightly drunken-auntie looking arachnids that wobble about on their ridiculously long hairy legs with knobbly knees. No, these are the mildly threatening type that are a little rough around the edges and wouldn’t think twice about sucking the living juices out of your children if they could just bundle them up in their sticky web threads quickly enough. I digress…
If being a cowboy was an unrealistic career aspiration, then a racing driver or a lorry driver would do – (interchangeable – didn’t mind which really) or a hairdresser or a check-out girl in our little local general shop. It stood next door to the flower shop on the one side, which was run by a certain Miss Chart, who had teeth to rival those of Esther Rantzen in the early years, and Harty’s on the other side, our local sweetie shop that had an impressive display of penny chews in small, empty Flora tubs beneath the open-fronted counter. They must have got through a lot of Flora in the Harty household. In the latter years, the ‘Floral’ display had to be protected behind glass, not, I hasten to add, because of over-zealous hygiene regulations (they didn’t exist then) but sadly, due to too many black jacks, fruit salads, space ships and cola bottles being spirited away without any exchange of money. A sad indictment of the times and progress, I suppose.
I do not understand what the particular attraction was for me in wanting to become a cashier – the cowboy, the racing driver or the lorry driver all have quite obvious appeal but this latter secret ambition does intrigue me. I used to raid the store cupboard at home and dump my booty unceremoniously onto the kitchen table where I would enter each item into the improvised cash desk i.e. the family calculator with EXTREMELY BIG BUTTONS. My greatest wish at this point was to acquire one of those calculators with a roll of paper so that I could print receipts. Alas, this was another ambition never to be realised.
One day I was sent to buy some sugar. The lady in front of me had a collection of items that totalled something like £1.10½.
‘Would you like the half?’ she enquired of the assistant.
When it came to my turn, and I was informed of the amount I had to pay, which was a full round number with no halves, I took out my giant purple suede granny purse that made a loud ‘snap’ noise as you clicked it open or shut, asked:
‘Would you like the half?’
in a misguided effort to be helpful, and tipped all the contents of the purse into the assistant’s outstretched palm. Out fell a folded pound note, followed by an enormous pair of false eyelashes. These latter actually seemed to bounce into her palm and sat there quivering as she and I both stared in surprise at them and I turned a deep shade of beetroot that surely must have been visible from outer space. I remember being mortified, partly because I was trying so hard to be grown-up and had been caught out, dammit, and partly because I was a real tomboy and hated all things girly viz make up etc. The falsies were a feature of the disguise kit I had received for my birthday that included a roll of what seemed to be plaited pubic hair, which could be unfurled, cut to the requisite length and then fluffed up to make a very stylish set of Frida Kahlo eyebrows or a Charles Bronsonesque moustache. So really, any Secret Agent like me should not have shown any surprise at all when the purse that doubled as a storage container yielded its unexpected bounty along with the cash.
Later career aspirations, following a useless (but lots of fun achieving it) degree in French literature, progressed to a physiotherapist or helicopter pilot. How is it then that I drifted, like so many women I know, into uninspiring administrative jobs? The one thing I have learnt from all of this is that I will encourage my children as much as I can to choose a vocation, or to find something tangible towards which they can aim. It’s just finding that enigmatic something which causes all the problems. I’m still waiting for that lightbulb moment where I wake up one day knowing what it is I want to be.
It’s never too late for that, is it?
Boys Night Out
Husband went to Amsterdam for a knees up with the boys last night. The plan was to go straight to Friend’s house directly from work in order to dump overnight bag etc and then to meet Others where they were kicking the whole shenanigans off with a brewery tour.
Cost of tour: €4.50 including 5 free drinks.
As you can imagine, I was slightly anxious that he might not make it back to wherever he was supposed to be sleeping in one piece. They were leaving work at 2:00 p.m. for a 4:00 p.m. kick-off. Husband scoffed when I expressed concern, until I reminded him that he doesn’t have an off button when it comes to drinking, plus, as a non-regular heavy drinker, he is easily out-paced by the serious types that would be among the crowd.
‘I was only ill last time because someone bought me a Depth Charge and then a Baileys after several pints of beer,’ was his response.
‘Not because someone bought them for you but because you drank them,’ was my counter-response.
At this juncture he acquiesced that I may have a point.
As it was, the evening seemingly was a good one, enjoyed by all apart from one, a victim of his own excess, who went home bleary-eyed and much the worse for wear at a comparatively early hour.
Husband recounted this morning how Mad Welshie, one of the group, had decided at one point when they were all on a bus that it would be fun to exit and re-enter the vehicle whilst it was still in motion. In three steps from floor to top of seat, he reached the open skylight in the roof of the bus, shot out head first by pulling himself through, crawled along the roof outside and re-entreed via the other sky light further along the bus. I wish I had been there to see that. Same Mad Welshie tried to gate crash a boat party as it passed under the bridge (but didn’t sprint to the bridge quite quickly enough to ‘drop in’ so literally missed the boat) and was also unsuccessful some time later in his attempt to steal a glass-topped tour boat that was moored outside a bar. He wanted his drinking buds to pay him €50 to park it on the other side of the canal. When he admitted that, not having the key to the ignition, there ‘might be some damage involved,’ the others demurred.
Next time I go out drinking I’m inviting Mad Welshie along….
Belgian Waffling…
I finally made it across the border to Antwerp on Saturday.
Friend had called out of the blue on Thursday and asked whether I fancied going with her on the train for a day trip. As I have wanted to see the city for quite some time – about 11 years actually – and as it is less than an hour and a half away, I had no reason to demur. I’m actually quite ashamed that it has taken me so long to get there.
Despite that fact that quite a number of friends have waxed lyrical about the virtues of the city, not least of all the shopping, I found I couldn’t work up any great enthusiasm about going although I did quite like the idea of it.
I’m in a funny forty-something phase of life at the moment, one where I don’t know whether to dress young ‘n funky or whether to wear lemon yellow twinsets and, as a result, I find that occupying this bleak wardrobe no-man’s -land has left me indifferent to shopping. The usual pattern I follow is enter shop, try to select a couple of items I sort of like, try on said garments that in truth I’m not really very keen on because they’re just the best of a bad bunch, gaze forlornly at giant in child’s clothes staring back at me from the mirror, leave shop feeling dissatisfied and slightly freakish. Nothing seems to fit me and nothing suits me.
So, the trip was planned for Saturday. We woud go on the train because a) it was ridiculously cheap at €27 return; b) parking would be tricky and probably expensive and c) there might be a certain level of alcohol intake at lunch time. Lunch would probably consist of Belgian beer, mussels, chips and a waffle. I was looking forward to the day out with Friend but, in all honesty, I didn’t really have any great expectations of Antwerp because, well… it’s in Belgium.
How wrong I was.
From the minute we stepped off the train into the beautiful and impressive Centraal Station, with its massive iron and glass dome and stone staircases, there was a lightness of atmosphere and a positive feeling in the air. Friend knew her way around the city and we headed straight off towards the shops. And what shops! Such a selection! I was again reminded of how small the selection of shops, or rather the variety is in The Netherlands. I remembered why I love going home to England or on trips to Paris or Lille for shopping because it is such a delight to be faced with such choice. I can’t put my finger on what it is with Holland – there are plenty of shops but somehow, no choice. That’s why, if I’m just wandering aimlessly in the hope of seeing a must-have item, I never find it and if I don’t have a definite idea of what I want, I still don’t find it because it’s not there. Drifting aimlessly in Dutch shopping centers looking for ‘tops for work’ or ‘just some t-shirts’ is indubitably pointless, just as looking for something too specific like ‘black trousers’ is a waste of time because, predictably, something won’t quite be right. They won’t have my size, or they’ll be too short or too low-cut in the waste or made of crimplene.
Antwerp, on the other hand, has streets and streets of shops. Even when it became busy in the afternoon, it wasn’t The Hague-busy because there are so many streets of shops that there was somehow room for everyone to fit. They had Belgian shops, Dutch shops, French shops, British shops…oh, the list is endless. I managed to buy two, yes TWO, pairs of shoes within 200 metres of Central Station. I never buy shoes in Holland because I can’t find any that I like. Forget finding ones that fit. They’re either mega-expensive or ridiculously cheap with nothing in between but that doesn’t matter because I don’t like any of them anyway and have to rely on trips home or holidays abroad to get them. Now I have discovered Antwerp though, we won’t have to get on a plane or drive for 5 hours to buy shoes!
Friend is an elegant, funny and sexy woman, a space cadet when not at work and a true professional in work. As a young, single, she has the time and disposable income to indulge her passion for fashion. As such, she frequents a certain type of boutique that I like to refer to as Elephant Shops. Having been on a few trips to Paris with Friend, I have been into quite of few of these trendy little designer boutiques, all minimalist décor and sparse racks of garments made of fabrics so fine that they crumple and turn to dust when I finger them with my clumsy digits. These are the shops that make me feel like Gulliver in the Land of the Lilliputians. I have to stoop so as not to bump my head on the ceiling; I can’t fit my big toe into the ridiculoulsy narrow tube of the leg of a pair of tiny jeans; sweaters of fine silks or linen make me look like an East German border guard in a cardigan stolen from a small child and the furniture all seems to have been bought from the nursery department of some hugely expensive furniture store. I don’t know why but I feel myself turning into a giant, clumsy, oafish elephant who has been squeezed into a miniature shop for doll-like people . Turning around without knocking over one of the stick thin leggy models working as assistants becomes an achievement in itself. If I catch sight of myself in one of the highly posished mirrors, my hair will invariably be flatter and thinner than usual and the clothes I’m wearing will be screaming ‘Cheap! Badly cut! Wash me!’ I feel inept to the point of wanting to apologise for having entered the shop . In short, I think I may have some kind of phobia. It’s as though I cease to function the minute I cross the threshold. Friend commented when I tried to explain this to her in Antwerp that she had noticed my odd behaviour in Paris the last time when we had gone into an Elephant shop in Le Marais district. Apparently I had followed her in, come to an abrupt halt in the middle of the shop and looked as though I had had a complete mental shut down before turning around and, knuckles trailing on the floor, walked out and waited for her in the street. For me, it’s a question of being way, way outside my comfort zone and absolutely losing all sense of worth and self-respect.
I feel like the one on the left:
Am I alone in this, or are there other people out there like me?
Back to Antwerp, however. For lunch we found a lovely bar in a lively little street of funky shops with window displays of 70’s furniture, goth fahsion and boots made out of bits of wood and old socks.
Knitted boots
The meal consisted of a few Mojitos, some calamari rings and oh, I can’t really remember what else…
The rest of the day passed in a bit of a blur. Suffice to say that I was also impressed by the friendliness of the Belgian people and the exemplary customer service we received in all of the shops and eating/drinking establishments we entered. This is something that is sadly lacking in Holland. There was plenty of beautiful architecture and a multitude of cultural possibilities that we could have enjoyed had we had more time to indulge ourselves. As it was, we had a really enjoyable day in Antwerp and I find that I’m keen to return. Thirteen, an avid shopper with a very sorted wardrobe, is keen to go with me next time.
On a final note, when I arrived home, I found that Husband had bought the Saturday Guardian, whose travel section featured an article on Mechelen, about 15 miles from Antwerp. It sounds lovely, so I think I want to go there next. My eyes have been opened to a small corner of Belgium and, having had a taster, I find I’m left wanting more.
Olives
This is where we will be going for our summer holidays: L’Oliveto.
Two glorious weeks of Italian sunshine, food and countryside.
I really enjoy the fact that the owner, Tamsin, writes a blog called ‘A Mass of Odds & Ends‘ and posts pictures – it really infuses one with a feeling for the place. I almost feel as though I have been there once before, a very long time ago or maybe in a dream….
The name of the property, as well as the website, means the Olive Farm, or Olive Grove (at least, I’m assuming it does) and I know from some of Tamsin’s previous posts that they do actually cultivate olives. This property is a family home as well as a family business and will double as our home for the two weeks that we will lodge there in the summer.
Recently, I have noticed that the header photo has been updated. Being generally ignorant about most horticultural activities, I would hazard a guess that the leaves in the photo are, in fact, those of an olive tree. Those leaves look olivey and there are a few clues dotted around the website and the blog so I think I have a pretty good chance of being right. I think that our olive blogger is updating the photo with the changing of the seasons, as you can see little clusters of something amongst the leaves now – be they blossom, buds or baby olives, I don’t know.
I like Tamsin’s blog. It is very visual. The words are concise but plentiful enough to divulge all of the necessary information to the reader.
But what I like most is the fact that she is providing me with the information and images I need to really relish the anticipation of the holiday without making me feel as though I am wishing my life away in my eagerness to get there.
And yet, having said that, roll on, August!
Almost Horizontal: Part II
In contrast to their road frustrations, an example of something to which the Dutch take a very laid back approach is, of course, sex.
I like that same-sex couples can marry or hold hands in the street if they want to without fear of reprisals and I like the way that prostitution is legal because that means that workers in the sex trade are entitled to the same benefits as anyone else at work, along with regular check ups and certificates declaring them infection-free. That must, surely be a good thing? After all, prostitution has always been with us and probably always will be, so why marginalise it by keeping it illegal. It doesn’t mean that I condone it but I think it’s far more pragmatic and sensible if we learn to live side by side with it. It also means that you can limit it to certain areas, thus sparing residents or town centres from having it forced down their throats, if you’ll excuse the rather overworked turn of phrase. Then again, perhaps I’m being idealistic and ignorant about the exploitation factor.
Funnily enough, we had a bit of a surprise when we changed our cable TV provider and got the Family Package, including the BBC (yay!) along with, amongst others, 6 hardcore porn channels. Fortunately you can password protect these ‘adult’ channels to avoid episodes like the rather amusing one that took place at my friend’s house when her daughter, then 5, happened by chance upon some hot lesbian action. When mum came into the room and hit the floor with her jaw on seeing what her little precious had been watching, she was met with:
‘Ah, look Mummy, isn’t that nice? Those sisters really love each other!’
At least she hadn’t chanced upon the nun with her aubergine that took me by surprise when I was looking for 30 Rock one night…..
Legal drugs are, of course, the other naughty for which the Dutch have made themselves infamous. Cannabis may be purchased legally, ready rolled into joints or in its ‘raw’ state, in certain licensed cafés known as coffee shops. Note that a coffee shop is not the place to go if it’s a cup of coffee you’re after. Making it legal seems to reduce the novelty factor – I never see people lolling about the place in a haze or looking as though they’re tripping somewhere particularly warm and fuzzy. The worst I’ve seen is adolescents having a sneaky toke at the back of the tram late on a Saturday night, thinking they are just the coolest thing ever but actually looking a bit pathetic.
Actually, that’s a bit of a lie, the worst I’ve seen is friends of my parents who came to stay and decided to buy a couple of ready-rolled joints ‘just to see what it’s like.’ Husband was sent in to purchase said item as they didn’t know what they should ask for. (Note to self: how did Husband know what to ask for?) They sat outside in our teeny weeny back garden, wrapped in their blankets against the cold like Darby & Joan puffing away under the stars, only to roll back in somewhat wide-eyed a little later. Whilst playing cards with them that same evening, I felt the urge for a pee and noticed at the same time that Darby had gone missing. Joan soon found him slumped on the loo, looking a little green around the gills. When she tried to encourage him to come out, telling him that I needed some time in the smallest room in the house, he called out:
‘It’s ok. There’s plenty of room. Tell her I’ll move over.’
Along with the mellow attitude towards certain ideas that we may find a tad too liberal, the Dutch have, most commendably, managed to resist climbing to the ridiculous levels of political correctness that we have achieved in the UK. I remember sitting on a terrace outside a city centre bar with some friends one night when a very drunk man came stumbling past. He suddenly stopped in his tracks, turned towards the crowded terrace and started hurling abuse and profanities at people. He was picking on individuals, obviously spoiling for a fight but no one took the bait. Instead, someone called the police, who arrived pretty quickly. They tried to reason with him but he argued with them as well, so in the end they arrested him. He was cuffed and the back door of the police car was opened for him to get in. One of the officers tried to get him to bend over in order to step into the car without hitting his head but this detainee was having none of it and resisted the bend so, cool as you like, the officer punched him in the stomach. That got him bent over pretty smartly and into the car with no further resistance and I don’t think a single onlooker raised any objections– rather they seemed to think he had it coming.
I think I even heard a wry chuckle from the table behind.
To Tweet or Not To Tweet?
In my inbox I am forever finding nudges, pokes,invitations and all manner of cyber reminders that I am not yet fully techied up and am therefore missing all of the goings on in the virtual world. The trouble is, viewing it from this side of ignorance, I can’t see what the attraction is. It just doesn’t turn me on.
When Husband finally allowed Thirteen to have a Facebook account (we’re both paranoid about predatory pervs peeking up her virtual skirt) it struck me that all she seems to do is spend more time wasting her precious youth looking at inane things and chatting to friends she sees every day at school than she used to. It’s like a progression from achieving a diploma at the College of MSN or Skype to enrolling for a degree at the University of FaceBook.
This might be totally inaccurate – I’m not actually allowed to look over her shoulder as she types, just as she is not allowed to look over mine so I suppose it’s no more than random speculation – but that’s how it seems from my side of 40. Husband had already acquired a Facebook account and since he has done so, all the techy nerds he avoided in former jobs have tracked him down and asked to be his friend. My goodness, it’s becoming more and more like real life! The other one, and by ‘one’ I think I mean ‘social networking site’, is of course Twitter. Now Twitter is completely different to Facebook, in that you can inform Everyone Out There of important events such as bowel movements, the temperature of your bath water and what you fed your cat for tea as they happen.
Snort…grunt….WHAT? Oh sorry, I just nodded off for a moment there. What was I saying.? Oh yes. Twitter. I first heard of Twitter when the story broke about the plane ditching in New York’s Hudson River earlier this year, and someone on the Staten Island Ferry managed to post a photo taken on his mobile phone before it made the national press. Now that’s impressive. I had also heard about it before that through Stephen Fry’s writings, some of which I had actually managed to read without realising I was on a social networking site! How on earth did I manage that? Must have been my mischievous evil twin (Melanie) who sometimes pops out to wreak havoc when I’m asleep or otherwise occupied. She’s the reason I don’t always remember things people tell me, because actually they’ve never told me – it was HER!
Anyway, I digress. Since starting this blog, I have received a number of gentle nudges Twitter-wards but have so far resisted, more out of fear of the unknown than anything else. Although I am assured that it is a very effective way of increasing one’s readership, I think I’d be one of those deserters who opens an account, posts a message (‘Going to trim my ear hairs now’) and then forgets to ever come back. Someone has even taken the time to compile a list of them (and applied the catchy moniker of Orphaned Tweets) and reported on the more amusing ones. They are even asking people to send the best ones in.
My personal fave is the following:
‘It hurts to breathe. Should I go to the hospital?’
Right, well, it’s been lovely chatting. Now here’s a practice tweet from me, ready for when I get my Twitter account. I don’t want to end up a one twit wonder:
Must empty filter from dishwasher. Hold tummy in. Finish cup of tea. Mmm that tasted nice. Rinsing cup prior to stacking in dishwasher. Going to pair up socks from laundry. Time to open the custard. Comb eyebrows first. Keep holding tummy in. Pull plug out of sink before washing hands.. Check no-one’s looking then scratch arse.
And she’s failed at the first hurdle. Husband smugly informs me that tweets cannot be longer than 140 characters.
Oh well, guess I’m more Twit than Tweet………
.
Shookshesh!
Living in a foreign country within our little ex-pat bubble can be very frustrating sometimes but, by the same token, it also has its funny moments. These can sometimes involve amusing episodes of mis-translations from the host country’s language which can quite inadvertently cause great hilarity. Dutch is a funny old language with lots of hawking and spitting and strange clearing-of-the-throat type action. If you are familiar with it, you’ll know this already but a first introduction to the language can be quite strange. I remember being surprised when I first came here that I was able to understand quite a lot of a review I started reading in a TV magazine. Husband looked at me in a startled hamster kind of way asking how on earth I knew what it said, wild imaginings of a secret past flitting through his mind no doubt but it all boiled down to the fact that I had studied German to A-Level and when written, there are lots of similarities between the two languages, not least of all the strange act of banishing the verb of a subordinate clause to the end of the sentence. Dutch does that too.
To the unaccustomed ear, however, the void between written and spoken Dutch is a veritable chasm. How could those jumbled letters possibly sound like that? And to guess at the pronunciation of words like graag gedaan (you’re welcome) or Kijkduin(beach resort) when you know that to pronounce the letter ‘g’ correctly you have to hawk a huge loogie and get tangled up with lots of phlegm can be daunting in the extreme. It puts a whole new spin on Flemish, which is actually the same language as Dutch, spoken less aggressively over the border by our Belgian neighbours.
Husband had come over to Holland a week before Thirteen (then Two) and me and we had followed once a place for us to live had been chosen. During my first week, he had taken us out for our first foray into ‘Royal The Hague’ as they like to call it here as (and there’s a big clue in the name) this is where the Royal Family is based. I remember being shocked to the core when I saw a sign in the window of a shop on this first outing that said ‘ U kunt hier pinnen en chippen.’ (You can pay by pin or chip here). Actually, the somewhat shocking nature of THAT word is a bit of a running theme in this post. U kunt means ‘ you can’ but, of course, it is only amusing when seen written down as it is pronounced ‘Oo koont.’ I suppose you could convince yourself it sounds a bit like a tipsy northerner arguing with his girlfriend. On the other hand, hysterically funny for its pronunciation rather than its spelling is the word for lace. A recently arrived Australian friend who was trying very hard to learn the lingo wanted to buy a cardigan with lace edging she had seen in a shop the previous week. She returned to same shop and asked in English for said article. ‘How do you say lace in Dutch?’ she innocently asked the assistant. ‘C*nt,’ came the reply. Stunned silence for a few seconds whilst friend computes that she has not in fact just been sworn at. The word is actually spelt ‘kant’ but pronounced the other way, unlike ‘kunt’ which phonetically is spelt the same but pronounced differently. Confused yet? Even funnier and heart-stoppingly shocking is the Dutch word for cot, which tops the word for lace. It’s written ‘ledikant’ but I was reeling on another occasion when same Ozzie friend took her newborn out of my arms and said it was time for her to go back in the lady c*nt.. Honestly, I kid you not, that is how it is pronounced. I had to ask her Dutch husband to say it for me just to make sure.
After we had been here around 6 months we moved to a house a short distance from our first flat. Almost the entire street was owned by the same landlord, Henk, who was an affable scoundrel with an extremely hard-working and reliable ‘handyman’ as they like to call them here (pronounced ‘hendymen’), called Sunny. I don’t know how he spelt his name, but that’s how it was pronounced. One day, I had left the house to go out on an errand. Two was strapped into her car seat in the back and I had just clicked my own seat belt in place when there was a tapping on my window. It was Sunny in an obvious state of agitation. I wound the window down and waited for him to speak. ‘Have you got any panties?’ was his startling question. ‘ Umm.. well, I’m not sure. I… um…what for?’ ‘Have you got any panties you could give me? I need them for in my van,’ came the unexpected reply. In a somewhat confused and bemused state, I said I was sorry I could not help and drove away. What on earth did he want a pair of my knickers for? And more to the point, what did he want with them in the back of his van? He had always seemed like such a decent bloke – how could he so brazenly ask me for my undies out on the street?. I wondered whether Henk was in on the action and what it was all about and then I got distracted and forgot about it until later, when I retold the story to Husband, tears of laughter pouring down my face as I was suddenly struck by the farcical situation. It transpired later, of course, that panties is the word used in Dutch for tights and poor Sunny wanted nothing more than to fix his van with an impromptu fan belt. Silly me. I should have known!
A characteristic of the Dutch accent when speaking English is their pronunciation of the letter ‘s’. You may have noticed (and Paul Whitehouse & Harry Enfield definitely have, as their accents in the Fast Show Amsterdam Police sketches demonstrate) they do go a bit slushy-shushy. The Dutch use the English word ‘Success’ to wish each other luck, only they pronounce it ‘Shookshesh’. A great example of this loose-dentured business with the letter S was with one of my former yoga teachers, the lovely Pieter, who was forever hitching up his dinky little shorts in order to give a physical demonstration (and a quick flash of toned buttock) whilst instructing us to ‘Shit on your shitting bonesh and do it nishely.’
Hmm…. come to mention it, I’m not too sure I’d really want to do that, even if I did know how!
Almost Horizontal: Part I
One of the things I like about the Netherlands is their laid back attitude towards certain things that we Britons and, indeed, many other European nations tend to be a little uptight about. It’s strange really, because the Dutch do get extremely on edge about some things, like driving for example, but they have a very different way of letting their anger rise to the surface and bubble over. It’s not unknown for a driver to follow you after you have annoyed him, only to get out of the car at a red traffic light in order to admonish you for your inability to drive properly. He won’t stab you or ram your car like the Brit version of road rage, it’s slightly more civilised than that and it happened to me once when I had to pull out of a side street onto a busy shopping road.
Unfortunately a lorry needing to unload had parked half on the pavement and half on the road, thus blocking my view of any traffic that may be approaching from the right. I had checked to my left before starting to edge out slowly in case anything should be coming from my blind side. Unfortunately though, a car that subsequently came from my left thought that I was wrong to pull out so slowly and, in true Nederlander style had, instead of slowing and giving way to me (poor hapless person that I was in a rather awkward plight) put his foot down and then screeched to a theatrical halt once he was dangerously close, stopping his De Lorean (yes, really) a picometre from my own vehicle. This kind of behaviour usually has the opposite of the desired effect upon me, which is to say that I continued edging out but went even slower than before in order to annoy said road lout as much as possible. This showed a profound lack of judgement on my part as it actually succeeded in having the desired effect on him in that he blew steam out of his ears accompanied by a loud ferry horn blast from his nose and followed me to the next set of lights which, most conveniently for him, turned red just as I got there.
I watched in my mirror as one of the doors of his Wankmobile opened up into the sky above him and a rather lanky, skinny version of Martin Clunes stepped out. I quickly pressed the ‘all doors’ central locking button and slid my electric window almost closed to half a centimetre. (He might even try to squirt me with battery acid – you never know.)
When he reached my door, he said something Dutchie along the lines of ‘Didn’t you see me racing towards you at breakneck speed, you idiot woman?’ I replied as calmly and superciliously as I could ‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak Dutch,’ which caused more steam to come at high pressure from his aural orifices, and then drove smartly off as the lights changed whilst he was left trying to formulate same insult in English at the side of the road. At this point, the line of cars behind him all started honking loudly for him to get back in his Time Machine that was sitting abandoned like a bird with a broken wing and to stop blocking the traffic. I had passed the next set of traffic lights before any of them had moved which lead me to believe that by the time he had jumped back in and managed to put the wing back in place the lights had gone back to red.
Ha ha, Smug-but actually-crapping-her-pants-a-bit English Woman: 1; Furious Dutchman: 0.
Whipping Up A Storm
Wow! Last night brought the most dramatic and sudden storm I have seen in years. From a beautifully hot and sunny day with clear blue skies and the occasional light breeze (which turbo dried my gently flapping washing), the skies suddenly turned into a dark and swirling soup, menacing enough for any witch’s cauldron . The clouds descended until they were almost touching the rooftops, turned nearly black and looked as though they were simmering in preparation for something really dramatic.
We were not disappointed. Almost instantaneously, the wind whipped itself into a frenzy, knocking pot plants over on the balcony and kicking an empty bucket around the garden like a football. At the same time, the heavens opened and rather than just falling out of the sky, the rain drops seemed to hurl themselves towards the ground as though determined to hammer their way through the roofs and paving stones. A few seconds later, the skies started their display of lights with non-stop sheet lightening interspersed with the occasional fork zig-zagging its way to earth with a loud crack behind the row of houses out the back and all this was accompanied by deafening roars, rumbles and bangs of thunder. Mother Nature really did put on a most spectacular and sudden display for us, gratifying sight, sound and smell senses simultaneously.
Ah, the wonder and the power of it all. And yet both of my children, who cannot fall asleep at this time of year if there is too much light seeping through a chink in the curtains, slept as soundly as babes through the whole thing. Go figure.
Cola Cubes
Yesterday Nine had his Tenth birthday. So I have achieved the status of mother to two double-figured children. Does that mean I am a real grown up now? Although I also have a washing machine, a mortgage, middle-aged spread and a teenage daughter, I’m not so sure. This morning when I was supposed to be doing my Italian homework I found myself perusing a site called aquarterof.com, a fantastic retro sweetie shop that has, amongst others, cola cubes (that leave your mouth as ragged as a shaggy mop), traffic light lollies, lemon bon bons, Refreshers and even Golden Nuggets bubblegum in a real sack!! This latter is now, somewhat un-authentically, packaged in a sealed pouch within the hessian bag thanks to modern hygiene regulations but still, as soon as the photo of these little gems popped up on screen, a whole Niagara of childhood memories came flooding right in. I was directed to this site by the wonderful Motherhood: The Final Frontier, which has been my main inspiration to begin my own blog and to whom I feel somewhat indebted for kick-starting me on my way. Following the link to the sweeties available by the quarter – and note that this is quarter of a kilo, significantly more than the traditional quarter of a pound – I then somehow found myself watching YouTube videos of The Bananna Splits and The Double Deckers. How did that happen? In the old days, when I watched them the first time round, I would quite likely have been sitting on the Saturday morning sofa, sucking noisily on said sweet treats, my Dandy beside me waiting to be read and all purchased with the 10p pocket money handed over by my parents every weekend.
But back to reality… Wow, a whole morning wasted dawdling in the past when I should have been doing my already-one-week-overdue homework and getting the shopping in ready for preparation of tonight’s dinner, which has to be left for the hungry family to eat whilst I go out to yoga. Ho hum. What it is to have the freedom to waste or make the most of one’s time when one has the choice. But it was a completely delicious morning. Endless cups of coffee accompanied me on each of my, albeit sedentary, activities. Tomorrow I will have no such luxury of choice on how best to despatch of my time being tied, as I shall like many others across the globe, to my desk at work. In fact tomorrow is a whole day of meetings, so there you have it. The choice is already made. Will I be spending my time in worthwhile activity, being productive and achieving great things and thus dutifully earning the salary which is paid to me? No. I will be sitting twiddling a pencil, shuffling papers around and thinking how incredibly focused some people are on completely worthless activities. When I say worthless, what I really mean is ‘boring to me.’ My colleagues are, for the most part, a delightful group of people who are funny, clever, motivated and really deserving of their generous salaries. I, on the other hand, am less so. Whilst seated around the meeting table emanating a carefully crafted countenance of concentration, behind the facade I will be wondering whether I can get home in time to take newly achieved Ten to the beach to fly the kite he received for said birthday. An activity for which neither of us will be paid but one which is far more inspirational and rewarding, wouldn’t you say?
Are You Receiving Me? 
