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 . )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Catching Up ...

I know , we faded from view ...  My laptop felt peaky , WiFi vanished and I rediscovered Outside .
Since when , a lot has been done and thoroughly enjoyed ....

 There's been very old buildings ... with  stairs  , spiral and endless ... and not such old ones . Surprises . I discovered that , on hot days ,  Selfridges staff enjoy a roof terrace with bean bags , deck chairs and Astroturf

 

and that our local mayor has a hard hat and clogs handy by the fireplace in his office .

There were museums and a talk on interior architecture in Leeuwarden during the Golden Age . Ancient wallpaper

 

 and not such ancient three-piece suites .

 

 And unexpected details .

Animals , herb gardens and city farms .

 

 And, best of all ,  grandchildren . Air guitar and chocolate buttons . Fearless holding of falcons , and having to hunt for a suddenly lost front tooth till we agreed that it must have been swallowed ...  and the ensuing discussions about the Tooth Fairy's job description as laid down in her work contract . Books and songs , swings and all manner of furry elephants  . And loving presents of squashed bananas and beaming smiles ...
 Trains , buses ( you have no idea just how long ten hours can be till you go from Amsterdam to London on a Eurolines bus ) and boats . Sunsets and stained glass

 

And food , lots and lots of delicious food ... which , sensibly,  I just ate without taking a single photo .

Back To Earth With A Bump

Sonata :
 After a busy week of , sometimes almost hedonistic , delights ranging from cafe-crawling and tapas in Amsterdam to celebrate YD's birthday and a delectably fishy dinner in Leeuwarden to celebrate friend's ditto ,  to a plateless Book Fair all-in Special in Deventer

 ( though this , to be honest , did belong more to the Food As Fuel school of mass catering ... but was served with speed and a smile ) , I was beginning to see myself in a whole new light . No , I'm not a medium-sized , white-haired , nosy older woman in sensible shoes at all . That's just a disguise . Really , I look like this :

 Or at least I did , until I picked up my new glasses yesterday . I'm obviously now being re-cast as an elderly gent .

So , I'm back on the sofa with the most sensible of my Book Fair finds , Daughter of Persia by Sattereh Farman Farmaian and Donna Munker ... plus a couple of elderly Italian cooker magazines .
Oh yes , and there's Always the Swiss Gospel Choir's concert on Friday in a nearby village ....

Retail Therapy ... Of A Modest Nature

Sonata:
 By this weekend I'd recovered sufficiently to have a Nice Day Out .... Smitonius' idea .... and , as always , she was quite right .
I always enjoy a trip to Groningen and yesterday , with the sun blazing , it was particularly lively . The cafè on the corner of the market square , where you'd only sit if you had all the time in the world and no desire to eat anything till tomorrow , had a terrace full of comatose clients and no visible staff but did have a very nice black upright piano outside , which a young man was playing Thirties show tunes on . Very tempting , but I decided to save time and  chose a cafè a bit further along , which served coffee so strong it gave me palpitations . Perfect ! I had a lot to do .
So off to  Cook&Co for a handy gadget to add to YD's ever-growing collection of toys for her kitchen and yet another cookery book ... they might console her for being even more ancient than she was last week . The Italian deli for Lomo Adobado and vinegar . A browse through the C.D.s in a little shop that specialises in harder to find recordings .
 Then on to little places with lovely soaps , French stationery , pretty scarves or vintage china  . Past a tiny place where you can order a bespoke table or bookshelves , whose owner sat playing the clarinet . Cyclists wove in and out , a child bounced past on a Skippy Ball ( they must be in again . That's the second I''ve seen this week ) . People strolled along with ice creams or bags of cherries from the market .
Then suddenly the sky went black , it poured weirdly warm rain and I discovered I'd brought the umbrella that only opens half way up so nipped into the second-hand bookshop that stocks English paperbacks for a Euro and found six , including Armistead Maupin's Babycakes .
And finally the North African shop for the best dried apricots ever and lots of herby olives . All in all , great fun and not at all an extravagant day out .
 No , the real , rather disastrous,  loss of control was a few days earlier ... My unbending resolve to disembarrass myself of clutter and Not Buy Any More collapsed in the face of a snail . Meet Stanley ...

He did  only cost a Euro ....