Monday 26 November 2018

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. )

Wednesday 21 November 2018

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.

Friday 9 November 2018

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.