Doing Good , One Way Or Another

Knitted kittens apart , the big aim in town this month is to raise lots of money for 3FM - Serious Request 's drive to provide clean water and sanitation in Third World countries . And I love the Nature Museum's fundraiser this weekend ... two whole days of poop and pee , specially aimed at children , if you see what I mean . Lots of delightfully Ee-uugh!  exhibits , films of wiggly bacteria and shedding tapeworms , sewers and smells and farts galore . A guaranteed success  . I expect it's been full of giggly little boys revelling in the rudeness of it all !
 If shit's not your thing and you missed the Auction and the Popmarathon , there's always the Christmas Market next weekend . Later  there's a three day rowing marathon following the Elfstedentocht route ...for once ,  we'll have to hope that there isn't a freeze . And for those who love wearing tickly fake beards , red dressing gowns and black wellie boots , there's a Santa run on the 21st .
 Meanwhile I should really clear out the kichen drawers ... there's a schoolgirl who's collecting up everone's old ballpoint pens . 

Sucking Eggs

One each side , Mum and daughter hoisted Gran up into the train and helped her down the carriage , her feet hardly touching the ground . They parked her next to me , after checking for draughts and possible noisy ,  neighbouring children .  Then grandaughter retreated behind her 'phone and Mum heaved a sigh of relief . Everyone in the carriage who'd ever had anything to do with the day-to-day care of an elderly relative looked on in sympathy .
Gran opened her enormous handbag ... one of those that open with a clasp at the top ... and started rummaging . I , who tend to do the same , watched fascinated . What was she looking for ... reading glasses ? hanky ? or a packet of Wilhelmina Extra Strong Peppermints ?
No . With a smart click of her wrist , she pulled a tablet out of the depths , opened it and announced to her daughter ,
"I'm going to read the paper. " . And did ... the online version .
I wish she'd give me a few tips ... my laptop and I need to be re-trained . Hence the infrequent posts  lately .

Ch...mas Shopping

It's nearly time to start Christmas shopping . I like to think about it for a while , ponder all the possibilities , ask everyone what they'd like , make lists , narrow it down . Usually by the time I've done all this , it's suddenly nine days before Christmas  , I still haven't bought anything and the shops look as though looters have swept through . So , instead , yesterday I set the alarm and went down to Amsterdam on the first train .
 And now I'm back ... with a pop-up book about  a goose for Small Grandson ....No , not just any old pop-up book . It's in English and from Waterstone's in Kalverstraat  ( only because I temporarily mislaid the American Bookshop round the corner ) . You might think that the language it's written in is of minor importance , given that he's still not quite two , but his big brother felt that it was , so I complied . Of course , I know that he'd really have preferred his own baby elephant and a banana plantation but his parents haven't really got room for a howdah and the neighbours might complain ..
Still , I'd made a start and  after a break for lunch , a bowl of sweet potato and coconut soup ( delicious ! ) and a chunk of homemade bread  in this corner of a tiny side-street cafè  , I

went window-shopping and managed to find a few stocking fillers .

But the real breakthrough present-wise came when I got back to Leeuwarden in the evening . Stowed next to mine in the bike racks was this !

Look! The perfect Christmas present for everyone ... crocheted mud guards . It's enough to tempt me to conquer my inability to crochet

Kittensssss .... or how to avoid doing something else

Displacement activity can take many forms ,. Ideally it involves doing something non-essential that still leaves you feeling that you've been mildly virtuous ;  throwing out old bus tickets is good . Making somethig small , knitted and for charity is better . May I present the perfect example ?

 

At the moment the Dutch Animal Protection website has the pattern for a kitten :   "Knitten een kitten". The plan is to collect as many as possible to raise cash to get all the litters of  kittens  that are abandoned each year at their door ,   socialised and vaccinated ready for adoption .

So here's Hoskins  (   spending extra time to think of a  name wastes even more time. A definite plus-point )   . Heather followed and now I seem inadvertently to have cast on the as yet unamed third ...

I'm now at risk of being locked up with a couple of other volunteers .

 

One Minute We Had A Bus Stop , The Next ...

Having decided not to cycle to the hospital this morning , given the Red Alert , we were to take the 12 o'clock bus . But , as I stood on the balcony watching the storm just after eleven , a big tree dropped across the road and landed right  on top of the bus stop . When I phoned to cancel  , the receptionist didn't sound too surprised .
Meanwhile at the other end of the road , a smaller tree keeled over on the river bank and the lovely weeping willow lashed back and forth , branches ripping off and dropped into the water .Amazingly,  a few students were still riding their bikes up to the college and back . I wouldn't have dared .

 

I hope the storm treated you ... and your trees ... kindly .

Wooly Hats In The Rijksmuseum

Now that it's been re-opened , beautifully refurbished and reorganised , I decided to go down to Amsterdam and  have a day in the Rijks Museum .
And loved it all , of course . No , not the queues or the crowds ... it's apparently best to go early on Monday mornings , difficult unless you live round the corner ... but the excellence and variety of the collections is stunning .
And therein lies the problem . Even after a pause for lunch , by Floor 2 and the Seventeenth century  I was slightly overwhelmed . Bewigged gentlemen , tapestries and silver , Renaissance angels and Greek gods , pomegranates , hunting scenes and men-of-war had become  indistinguishable ....
Then I turned a corner and , under a large painting of  another stormtossed boat  , I found a small cabinet of wooly hats .

In 1980 , while excavating the graves of 185 Dutch whalers who had died while working in Spitsbergen in the seventeenth century , archaologists found that the bodies were still wearing their woolen caps . In the bitter cold of an Artic winter , the caps , all different ,  had been the only way to distinguish one sailor from another , muffled up as they all were to the eyes .
And , for me , nothing made the past more real than this little group of wooly hats , stocking-stitch stll clear and colours fresh . You could picture them all : lanky Piet with his stripey stovepipe , pompous Hendrijk in his brimmed hat and little Jan in his beige bunnet . And the wives and mothers who'd knitted each cap and waited for the boat's return .

What Have We Here ?

 

At the moment , I seem to have lost control of this blog . The inclusion of photos is purely random and exclusively Blogger's , though the photos themselves are mine . So all I can do , it seems is throw a selection in the air and add a few words to whatever appears . 

Anyway , first you have the ingredients of my new love , the Do-It-Yourself Muesli from Mimi Spencer's Fast Diet recipe book . It could be more accurately named The Most Expensive Muesli In The World , I must add ... but it's delicious  , and , since you just add what you actually like , needn't contain anything unappetising . I've added chia seeds because I had them and left out pumpkin seeds because I didn't ... and am delighted with the result . I'm not too convinced , though , of its place in a diet book . Far too decadent ! As are her chicken meatballs or Romano peppers ...

 

And next , we seem to have a collage of two photos , one taken in Amsterdam's Jordaan district and the other in London's Westfield Center .  So readers ... which shoes are you likely to totter out of the shop wearing and which would you be eating ? 

 

( And now , with a devil-may-care flourish , I'm going to press Publish and see if any photos actually appear at all . If , in fact , you're now looking at photos of tomatoes and of Harry Selfridge reconstucted in Jelly Beans , I apologise . )