Are We All Sitting Comfortably ? .....

Has everyone written and posted all the Christmas cards, ordered the turkey, unearthed the decorations, disentangled the tinsel and bought and wrapped all the presents?
 
Well , good for you. Think of me as you sit purring, sipping a coffee and eating a mince pie or two.  I'm the person you see out of the corner of your eye at the cash desk, muttering to herself and clutching two tins of biscuits and a fancy shower cap.

 I knew December was coming. It always does after November. There's no excuse………….

P.S. With thanks to Younger Grandson's archives. He would like me to point out that he's grown since….

Take Off

An article in this weekend's paper explained why the train from Leeuwarden to Groningen suddenly slows down to a crawl and can dawdle along for five or ten minutes before speeding up again … The train to Utrecht sometimes does the same . Come to that Dutch trains as a whole are prone to it and it's simply because we're all in a queue. Apparently more than eight thousand animals were reported on the tracks from January to September this year alone. More than two thousand deer and an astonishing  one and a half thousand swans plus hares, cows and the odd lama.

Well, I can vouch for the swans since the driver sometimes tells us passengers what's happening, though when it's a sheep it's not usually considered exciting enough to interrupt the conversation. Swans tend to see the track as their own airport runway and like to take off from it. What sheep, deer , cattle and an alarming number of dogs and cats are doing is unclear or, come to that,  the red panda seen in Rotterdam racing along the line. Best of all was the kangaroo seen just south of here a few months ago. Too fast to catch, he was finally beaten by the clients of the Spoorzicht ( Railway view) Cafe … they lassoo-ed it.
 ( with thanks to Saturday's De Volkskrant. )

Free-Space

Thanks to Free-Space*, I've got two tea-bag size bruises, one on each knee.

Like everywhere else our town is evolving. The old library , together with the equally old bank building behind it, is becoming an off shoot of Groningen University, something to do with commerce or tourism , I think, and once the builders have gone will have students running up and down the steps all day. So recently the streets and spaces around have been reorganised. Buses, cars and delivery vans still use them … and so do people both on and off bikes. But FREELY!  No more white lines or traffic lights, no boring traffic signs .

The traffic, apart from buses, can drive in the general direction of  its destination as long as it looks where it's going. And that's where I and a young girl went wrong. Both trying to go along the top of the bridge in a hurry but in different directions , we collided. Mind you, she wasn't to know that I'd just come back from England where everybody'd been driving on the other side of the road or that I'm not really fit to be let out alone on wheels at the best of times. Anyway, a nice young man picked us both up and we both hobbled off. And  I'm going back to cycling through the red light district again; it's much easier to navigate during the day.
* Officially called Shared Space, apparently.


Since it's suddenly winter and nearly freezing, I'm back to cooking industrial quantities of baked apples and the flat smells of cinnamon, I've hauled out the Annual Scarf … well, the Triennial scarf actually since it's been on the needles for ever … and Masterchef and Strictly Come Dancing are on television again. I can't watch one more young chef forget how to make Beef Wellington when watched by Marcus Waring … I can do that myself.  And it's easier to cherish the belief that I can tango when not actually watching people doing it.

Thank heaven for Netflix.

Remembering ....

When I was little, the occasional riotous behaviour of my father and uncles and their friends seemed rather fun and I used to feel sorry when Granny  and the aunts would look disapproving. It's only years later that I realise just how much all these young men spent their twenties putting themselves back together again after the war.

I've recently read my eldest uncle's diary, in which he describes how he found himself catapulted into the war and how, at first, being at war just meant scrubbing a decidedly scruffy boat from one end to the other endlessly. His main worry was how his mother would cope without his wages, which helped her feed and clothe his younger brothers and sisters. That it would be years till he found himself at home again never occured to him or that he'd be at sea, in one way or another, till his sixties.

 Much as I loved him, Matthew was no literary giant and the diary wasn't an easy read but a lot was fascinating. If nothing else it explained his lifelong reluctance to bow to authority.

He mentions their attempt at tailing the Graaf Spee and how it was perhaps as well that they never got too close given that their 6 inch guns had been installed in 1901 and definitely not up to the fire power and range of any modern ship. Perhaps it was just as well that my grandmother didn't know anything about what exactly her eldest son was up to just then. Never one for quietly accepting her fate, or anyone else's, she'd have been banging on the Admiralty doors, demanding better arms for them all at the very least.

Frogs And Suchlike

The 'fridge echoes. I've hunted the cupboard shelves. Quinoa (Heavens, how old is it?), a half full, plastic container with a hand-printed label saying "VERY  wholemeal flour" which I remember made some depressingly healthy buns and some elderly raisins. A tin of sardines in water, but I'm not quite  that hungry. Oh, I have found a small tin of sweet corn … is that nice on toast?

Perhaps not. And a pot of Marmite dated January 2003, does everybody British have one of these ? Trouble is, I don't like tinned food so I rarely buy it except for tomatoes which I then keep for an emergency, but I've even eaten those. And all the pasta .  Since I have now dared to get back on the bike again, I'd better find a couple of shoes that match and go to the shops.

  All I really want is some grapefruit juice now I can't, of course, but a bag of mandarins do. Three pots of cottage cheese and a pork chop. Peanut butter, some smoked mackerel and sweet peppers. Meuslibollen ( yes, they really do have meusli in them and they're lovely with cheese in ). And some more tinned tomatoes for the next emergency.

The reason for the food shortage is Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour. Thoroughly enthralling and the reason why I've been glued to my sofa. But I have been doing a jigsaw, too. A recycling shop challenge which might or might not be complete, though since it only cost 25 cents it probably isn't. The edge pieces are all there anyway and hundreds of frogs.

(Sorry, I've resorted to the manufacturers online catalogue photo  since posting my own photos has become very hit and miss.) And I'd like to post this before 2019.
P.S. I've finally finished the puzzle and it was complete !

Well, That Made A Change.

You know those surprise weekend breaks that people have been rushing off for for the last couple of years? To Munchen or Bratislava ? Well, I had a variation this week ....  

Food-wise it couldn't be recommended, eight cheese rolls being rather too much of a good thing and I don't know about you, but I prefer to take my toothbrush and a nightie away with me , but everyone was terribly friendly and the coffee was very good. It was a couple of rather busy days, not recommended if you wanted a rest, but it did make a change.

Last Saturday I felt a little peculiar and I still felt strange on Sunday, so when Youngest Daughter phoned on Sunday evening I couldn't really talk to her. Then Friend 'phoned and I didn't do much better but had luckily already decided to talk to the doctor on Monday or Tuesday. It's all right. Next time I'll just call an ambulance straightaway  and put everyone's mind at rest. I'd had a TIA.
I now sound fine, have had every test known to man and seem to be condemned to taking another form of Statins but I've been told that I might not react so badly to these, they're milder.

Since it seemed that I wasn't going to get home till I did, I'm swallowing them and keeping my fingers crossed. These are quite gentle which might be easier for both me and my great-greatgrandmother to put up with … apparently even vaguely Keralan people can only tolerate them so well.

I definitely don't want to be difficult. (The young specialist looked about twenty but I feel she and her gang looked as though they'd be bossy and I was determined to get out before series 3 of The Good Place was going to begin.) Besides, I'd read all the magazines and I'd eaten two lots of salmon and broccolli… I felt I'd wrung the whole experience dry.

I Had No Idea ...

Until last weekend I had no idea that my life was missing something so fundamental. Other people had cats or canaries, Guinea pigs or ant farms. A mouse in the skirting board. Dandelions on the lawn or mushrooms in the cellar… But Gloria and I soldiered on without any of these things.

 And then I went down to Amsterdam on Saturday to have lunch and a wander round with YD. We went to Hortus, the Botanic Gardens, and mooned over endless beautiful ferns and palm trees of all shapes and sizes. We're not gardeners; between us we have five plants, one of which is the balding, albino Basil in my kitchen. But we loitered by the purple Velvet plants and the little signs inviting us to stroke them, and we crushed mint and verbena leaves. We stabbed ourselves with an armoury of needle sharp cactii and admired our reflections in lily pad filled ponds. We were enchanted by the Butterfly house and peered through the windows of the Caterpillar House ( No Entry, presumably in case one inadvertently treads on a few). And just as we were beginning to feel hungry and reckoned we'd seen our moneysworth of greenery, I saw what  my balcony's been missing , an Elephant's Foot Palm, otherwise known as a Ponytail Palm.

 I know that Gloria would love one as would the pansy that grew after I'd planted some paprika seeds and the pink daisy-things that seem to be growing  horizontally next door …

I think I'm getting the hang of gardening …….

Academia

A small girl came to Keep Fit yesterday with her grandmother and was telling me all about school.

She said  she's going to go into class Four she thinks but it might be class Ten but she's not going to learn to read because her brother already can so it would be a waste of time for her to learn too but she can skip with a rope already and there's a spider in her kitchen and did I want a go on the trampoline but I might break my leg because I'm a granny and ……

 I do hope she enjoys Year One.

The Best Option

Husband had Alzheimer's for years before it was diagnosed, years before slight irrascibility became occasional rage, before getting lost became the norm.

When the small day care farm couldn't keep him safe anymore and there was no alternative to a fulltime care home, we found somewhere nearby, beautifully run by a team of charming nurses, where it didn't matter that he slept all day and wandered about all night, got hungry at four in the morning and liked playing the keyboard during breakfast.

They gave him plant pots which he overwatered,  let him make toast at midnight, wear his pyjamas all day,  push another old chap's wheelchair up and down the corridor for hours much to their joint delight.  I'd bring him the paper every day and chocolate biscuits, an old friend brought wine, he'd be sent magazines and sweets, his sister 'phoned … and he mostly tolerated it.

But two years later he could no longer taste anything, television frightened him, music irritated him, the sun was too bright and he didn't recognise the moon. He'd ask if he'd ever had a job or gone to school, ask what a fork was, who I was. Then he didn't talk anymore. Stopped eating and drinking, stopped breathing, stopped living.

And now for the first time in years, he's free. As one of the daughters said, he's found a nineteenth century wilderness where he can live off the land, surrounded by trees and birds. And sad though it is, we're happy for him.

Temptation

Max Liebermann's wonderful Parrot Man is only still in Den Haag's Gemeente Museum because I couldn't quite work out how to get it out of the exhibition without someone objecting. And they were selling an excellent poster of it in the shop downstairs which did look rather easier to bring home on the train. I would have lugged them all home given a chance … certainly the Anton Mauve one of the rather exasperated farmer's wife looking at the lamb … you can see her thinking, "There's not enough wool on that for a pair of socks and it's eating for three."

Having sat so long sitting staring at the paintings in the  https://www.gemeentemuseum.nl Summer Impressionist  exhibition that a passing attendant asked me if I was alright, I went down and ate an enormous Brie sandwich with sweet peanuts in it ( I don't know why they'd been added, they really weren't a good idea so I fished them out… but the coffee was good ). 

Then I went back upstairs to the Art Nouveau exhibition on the other side of the landing. And found more rooms full of things, every one of which I needed, really needed. 

I mean, if I needed one I could probably knit myself a tea cosy. I've certainly got enough odd bits of wool to knit ten tea cosies … but none would be quite as pretty as Berthe Bake's .

I took masses of photos which I seem to be working out how to load but it's still all a bit hit and miss so do look at the museum's website. There's masses of pretty things and quite a few that you wouldn't give house room to. It's rather like windowshopping.

 Meanwhile, there's an Escher exhibition to see, here. 

Next week.

Summer Exhibition

Alas...

***
The Geranium, hereafter known as Gloria, went out onto the balcony and made it her own. She took over a little table, grew dozens of leaves and buds, and even attracted a compliment. ( Here geraniums are seen as old ladies plants and not really considered favourably so the compliment was rather along the lines of, "Gosh, she's a big one, isn't she!"  Still.)

She loved our early hot summer spell and flourished.
But on Thursday morning, while I was in the kitchen trying to  set a world record for eating a bowl of porridge at the same time as tying my shoelaces  I opened the curtains and …. I saw half of Gloria blowing next door. Fierce wind rushing down to the river had snapped a big chunk off!

All my fault, I know. I've so enjoyed seeing her run riot that I've been overwatering her. Oh well, I'll have to replant the broken bit and hope that she settles down again. You never know, I might end up with two Glorias.

***And if I can ever work out how to load photos onto this laptop, I might even show them to you.

And We Were All Useless ....

Just as I was wondering whether to go off to the library or not, two police cars and an ambulance shot round the corner, sirens blaring , closely followed by two more police cars and a police motor bike.  They all tore into the next street and stopped by the old ladies home's back door. Another ambulance and police car rushed round from the main road and  two police started wrapping red and white tape round everything, including our car park … a sixth police car and third ambulance followed and a yellow helicopter hovered at the end of the road . The noise and chaos started taking shape....

Everybody was out on their balconies, wondering what was going on. Some of the police crowded round the home's door, holding tarpaulins as a shield as paramedics ran around with stretchers and the helicopter finally managed to land . By this stage there were so many people milling about I assumed that it was a training exercise and felt rather sorry for them all on such a hot day. The staff from the home set up a table with coffee and cold drinks and the tarpaulin holders changed around, glad of a rest. A man with a blanket round his shoulders was helped into a car and a lorry was driven away. Everybody, about 30 assorted paramedics, police and a fire crew, all milled about, desperate to help ...

Oxygen tanks lined up. Medics ran in and out of the tarpaulined area. Urgent instructions. A saline drip and a trolley disappeared into the ever growing tarpaulined space. The six police cars and three ambulances sat , doors open .... We all waited.  Radios crackled and one after the other,  the spare ambulances left...

A priest arrived.

The helicopter crew picked up  their stretcher and huge red rucksacks and left and two motorbike police started to untangle the traffic by the park at the top and the river at the bottom. Boats sailed past. Students were being allowed to cycle up the river path again in a tidy, organised queue, supervised by another motor bike policeman . The tarpaulin holders all swopped round again. And a hearse arrived.

She'd just gone out to walk down to the river with her walking frame because it was such a nice morning and she hadn't heard the peep-peep-peep of a backing lorry. The driver hadn't seen her, tiny and dressed in grey, in his blind spot  She was 92.
An hour later, it was as though nothing had happened at all.

And Then It All Went Splat

Or Crack! or Krak!! or Kapotski!!!
My laptop's screen decided to retire last Friday, getting darker and darker till I could only make anything out if the room was pitch dark. And 150 Euros to repair it, bearing in mind the fact that I bought it in 2013, made replacing it seem almost a bargain. Almost.

The Dutch pension system kindly keeps a small part of each monthly pension payment to one side for us and pays this out every May as Holiday Money. Everyone's used to this Big Brother arrangement, since employers have always done it as well and they add a bit extra so, depending on your salary, it can be quite a respectable amount. Involuntary, but painless saving.

So, you say, everyone in Holland goes on lovely, extravagant holidays to the Azores or Mexico? … well no. Everyone in Holland dusts off the family tent, climbs into the family car if they have one or a bus if they don't and drives to a French campsite, preferably one near the border. Or they stay at home.

Why doesn't everyone splurge? Simple. The holiday money is always paid out in May. Everything, including my old laptop, knows this and waits till May to expire. On the rare occasions that one's white goods can totter on another year then the sofa springs will all go boing! and poke out through the upholstery, someone will spill chocolate milk over the carpet and the curtain rod will detach itself from the wall.

There is junk mail thundering through every letter box in the land, offering bargains galore in everything from fridges to trampolines. I think the yearly Holiday Money could be renamed the Personal Kapotski Fund. Or, in my case this year, the New Laptop Payment and a dash to England to see daughters and grandsons on the leftovers.      

Lately

Today the sun shone and people were smiling and taking photos of pink trees. 

Apparently, in a rather colder Leicester, Smaller Grandson spent yesterday afternoon trying to teleport himself round the house. According to his mother, he's been putting a lot of effort into it. I really hope he manages it . Then he could pop over for lunch.
                                                                      
                                                                      ****
I used my new skin cleanser this morning and was surprised to find  it's green (no,  not my face. The lotion )  and that it smells aggresively of cucumber.  And suddenly I was six again.
High tea with various elderly great aunts all eyeing bowls of salad, searching for sneaky slices of cucumber.
The minute one was found Auntie Bel would beat herself on the chest, closely followed by her sister Claire and they'd both say, " It really doesn't agree with me."
I could never work out what Grandpa's sisters and the cucumber could find to fight about, till a cousin explained with sound effects. I was very impressed ... do children still have burping competitions? My mother discouraged these . They gave you indigestion, she said. (This was obviously an everpresent family danger ! )

Oh, I found a giant lizard lurking amid the blossom photos .........

And Just Like That ........

Ta-Dah !! It's hot and sunny and we're sitting on a cafe terrace in teeshirts! It won't last, of course, it's much too early but everybody looks livelier . Perhaps they're just astonished?

But now, I'm almost tempted to go out onto the balcony and dust down a chair. Or go past the garden center and buy a plant or two ... something sturdy, though.

No tomatoes yet. Perhaps my new waif and stray, which I found last November blowing about the car park; two leaves on a tatty bit of stem that I brought home and stuck in a jam jar of water to see what would happen. It gamely grew roots, got stuck in a flower pot and here she is

A geranium, one of those dangly ones ( I only have a sketchy knowledge of the true gardener's vocabulary, I'm afraid ), she looks remarkably like a large , rather bullying, deep pink one that lived in a tub round the corner till it disappeared in November. Said tub is now filled with genteel mauve things, instead. Perhaps I could take a couple of leaves from my new plant over one night and re-introduce it discreetly? No, maybe not; I'm not really cut out to be an urban guerrilla. I'll just re-pot her and stick her on the balcony and let her achieve world domination on her own, leaf by leaf.

I don't think she'd be too happy with this photo. Once I've re-potted her, I'll have to show her in her feisty glory ... probably just before she grows next door.

"What You Need Is ...... "

The worst conversation opener of all has to be,"What you need is ......" and you know that whatever follows, whether it's a bowl of Jerusalem artichoke soup or a bus tour to a liquorice factory, it's not going to be the answer.

Amazon has me in its sights again. Usually they leave me alone , but I bought something from them at Christmas that had to be returned, and they're determined to tempt me into spending the resulting credit note. So this week they're suggesting that my life will be complete with a book of Spanish recipes, a book on David Bowie and one on building birds of prey from Lego.

Well.... so far this week I seem to have lived on baked potatoes, read a book about running a karaoke club (don't, neither the book or the club can be recommended) and vaguely contemplated finishing a miniature quilt promised to MD eight months ago. So I'm obviously not who they think I am.

Tomorrow , perhaps I'll just go and sit in the Language Factory , have a coffee and listen to the background soundtrack that gives a quiet non-stop, shifting stream of  conversation in every language under the sun. Someone recommended it as being very Zen. Might inspire me to get up and do something or could just drive me crackers.

The Goat On The Golden Egg...

Yesterday I spent the afternoon in a little country town about an hour from here called Ommen. I wandered around the market

chatted with a few people ( everyone talks to you in Ommen ), had a coffee and sandwich ( hearty eaters in Ommen ) and  admired the murals in little side streets but didn't see a single tin soldier.

Having seen the poster for a new exhibition at the Nationaal Tinnen Figuren Museum,

 

I'd missed the bit on their website that said it was only open at weekends in March ; the museum opened full-time in April.
So I'll have to go back to admire the howdah ... and I will. Besides I must find out why there's a very long horse near the goat on a golden egg near the museum that wasn't open yesterday  .......

And a post-script ....

         Just in case you're looking for a companion ....our local paper has a weekly column highlighting one of the animals in the nearby refuge that needs rehousing. This week it's Ethan, a very little cockerel with an extremely loud voice.

"Not recommended if you've got neighbours, but he's friendly and would love to come and live with you if you've got some space and a couple of hens."  Wonder if anyone's adopted him yet ........ ?

All I Want Is A Strawberry

And I don't really even like strawberries . I mean, I eat them but vastly prefer raspberries or green apples, water melon or gooseberries; but at the moment I'd kill for anything that wasn't a brussel sprout ... even a purple one.

It's incipient scurvy, perhaps.

This whole winter thing has outstayed its welcome.
 It was C-10 the other day and, in fact, has only just crept above freezing, having decided that raining was more fun.
The only bright spot was the arrival of blood oranges in the market this week.  I know we're not supposed to eat things that come from far away, but they remind me of my granny who loved them too, and I know how short the season is...

This new promotion in the supermarket made me think of her, too

She definitely wouldn't have understood the Five A Day concept which these cards are promoting and would have found it very limiting. Her soups already contained carrots, leeks, parsley, onions, celery, and turnips before the lentils or barley were added.
But now it's been upgraded to Ten A Day, she would have been more impressed. And, the only person I've ever known to enjoy eating pomegranates, she would have wanted an extra Five for fruit. No child ever got away from her without a banana or apple in his hand. So anything that encouraged children to try new food, to make eating fun, would have appealed.  Meanwhile I'll collect them for Smaller Grandson who enjoys cooking and drawing in equal measure.

Sugar Shoulders

It's all Friend's fault ... as I perched precariously on a high stool with a microphone almost poked up my left nostril, she said  "Go, Beyonce !"  ... and off we went.

It's now Culture Capital 2018 for Leeuwarden and, as the poster of us all carrying the Frisian lily pad in the station reminds us, we're all supposed to do our bit. 

Well , Friend had translated the Historisch Center's guided tour app's voiceover script into flawless English and now I was going to be the 'voice'. Three students from the Friesland College's Sound Design faculty were to do the recording as part of their coursework. 

There were two scripts, one for children and another for adults ; a total of 29 pages.  Three hours had been allowed to record both the English and German voiceovers.

We started off in great style ... the children's one read easily, being zippier , with shorter sentences. It was helped by the fact that I've been reading to various children all my life, starting with an endless, increasing multitude of smaller cousins.

After that we had a break , while someone else recorded the German children's section . Then it was my turn again... the adult's bit.  By this time I'd read the script far too many times and I successfully mangled whole chunks of it but the students were endlessly patient and we kept on going. Until the penultimate paragraph describing what you can see in the Grocer's Shop and its displays ."Old fashioned sweets , like Syrup Soldiers and ullevelen ..."

And that's where it all went wrong....  At least ten attempts were made  and  every time I said Sugar Shoulders . On take eleven I finally managed syrup shoulders ... and after recording the last paragraph , we gave up. I hope the German lady zipped faultlessly through her final section and the apps will be downloadable before it's someone else's turn to be Culture Capital of Europe ... it's Coventry, I think, in 2019.  

I'd Better Buy A Yoga Mat ...

I was given a Netflix voucher by YD who thought it would be fun ... and unfortunately it is. The first weekend I watched all 30 episodes of Fargo and started to talk with a Montana accent.
Then it was Grimm , Ainsley Harriot eating street food and The Good Place.

 I'm becoming housebound. If it weren't for the fact that you have to place a minimum order of 50 Euros to get the supermarket to deliver your order , I might have stopped leaving the flat at all.

 I'm still going to Keep Fit but now the physiotherapist and I are exchanging recommendations ( we share an enjoyment of modern American detective fiction) and I fear it's only a matter of time for her , too.

To be on the safe side, I'd better buy a Yoga mat so that I can at least pretend to keep active at the same time.

This position might be good ... called Anantasana ( the Sanskrit for sofa holding , according to my Dutch handy handbook ) it looks achievable and not incompatable with bingeing through a few more series.

All suggestions wecome.

"Have you plugged it in ?"

Female solidarity ... I'm not sure the young woman on the cable company help desk is familiar with the concept. When I told her that my television kept on telling me that it had no signal she asked me if I had plugged the router in. Just how old does she think I am? I should have asked her why the television would tell me that it had no no signal but did still have pretty coloured lights, but I might not have understood the the answer . Anyway I'm obviously elderly and gaga . The young man on the help desk was much more flattering but I remember teaching him to count , which he's probably found useful . But of course it could be her ageism ... or my incompetence ...