'Til Boredom Do Us Part

One of the surprising things about the Dutch civil wedding ceremony is it's choice of words for the vows. Where I'm from, and where Cath's from, the marriage vows last "'til death do us part." The only way out is in a box.

The Dutch vows apply "for as long as you love and respect each other in this relationship." It took us aback when we heard it. However, it is a bit more realistic. And has the added benefit of not putting the fear of God in you.

The problem is, now I worry that the marriage will end without us wanting it to? Does it automatically dissolve if we stop loving and/or respecting each other? What happens on those days when you wake up annoyed after a poor nights sleep or during an argument? What happens when you do not, for a moment, feel that love or feel that respect? Is it over? In many ways this is even more of a worry than "'til death do us part." Because with "'til death do us part" it's only a problem when the marriage is not going well, but "for as long as you love and respect each other in this relationship" means as long as you want the relationship to continue, you have to be on your toes. You can't let that love slip or that respect slide. That may well be the effect they were after.

Going, Going, Gone to the Chapel

So I tied the knot. Got hitched. Clasped on the old ball and chain. Said goodbye to the single life. Threw away the little, black book. In short, I got married.

Many friends who have known me a long time have mentioned things I may have said some time in the past to the effect that in no way would I ever tie the knot, get hitched, etc. Well, I probably said something similar about Motown and muesli. It's fair to say some of my views have mellowed.

Our original plan was to tie the knot in a simple, cheap ceremony with only a couple of witnesses and a member of the local council trained in performing the relevant ceremony. But the best-laid plans o' well-laid mice often go quite agley. But ours went agley in the best possible way.

Firstly, you should know the Dutch allow keen but poor people to get hitched free of charge. Albeit on a Wednesday morning at 9 am and in the offices of the local council. You don't quite have to take a number and queue, but it isn't, on the surface, much more romantic.

Secondly, my parent's decided they would like to be there to finally absolve their responsibility for me. This meant the whole organisation needed stepping up a bit. Catherine spent a long time finding a dress that was suitable yet multipurpose and in her size; and I had to iron a shirt.

So, we had a small, efficient ceremony, attended by 4 witnesses, my parents and our official filmmaker. The registrar (or woman from the council) kindly did the whole thing in English so my parent's could follow and we could say, "I do." The Dutch equivalent is "Ja," which has the disadvantage of being such an everyday expression that it's hard to say with any true meaning. I have heard a "Ja" delivered with crippling sarcasm, but not during a wedding ceremony.

After the ceremony, we reconvened at our flat to celebrate with the cats and then threw the house open to a select few of our friends. Selected until we knew the house would be full, rather than to include everyone we would have liked, which would have filled most of the flats in the building.

We stopped inviting people not because we ran out of people we liked sufficiently, but because we realised we had reached the limits of our flat. But those we could invite and who could make it filled our place and made the whole day something much more special than we had ever planned. Seriously, you want to find out how awesome your friends are, get married.

Our flat thronged with friends, neighbours and their kids. In fact I'm sure the flat has never had so many children in it. I counted 7. They outnumbered the cats, and so it was apt that on the day when I did the thing I said I never would do, the things I said I'd never own and the things I said I'd never produce would square up and fight for territory. The cats, of course, won, because the cat's owners didn't have to leave.

After a few hours of fun, conversation, good company, bubbly alcohol and a splendid cake, the bride and groom were alone (apart from the cats) and performed their first act as a married couple. They went to Blokker to buy household wares. Who says I'm a changed man?

The Cataclasm

Last night, we suddenly awoke to a tremendous uproar happening downstairs. It sounded like plastic thunder. As if someone was throwing every single non-heavy item in the house to the floor. This fearful clattering happened in bursts of up a minute or more and moved around at great speed before stopping eerily for several moments.

I went down to investigate, fully clothed in the suit of armour God gave me on by birthday. But for some reason, the plastic nature of it lead me not to suspect young hoodlums. I threw the light on and the only visible signs of life downstairs were two terrified cats. One immediately started running and the thunder began again, setting off the other cat.

Flashback: recently the local council had started to collect plastic packaging for recycling. And being good little creatures of this Earth, we had enthusiastically taken to throwing old cartons and bottles into a bag in the kitchen. Both cats were strangely intrigued by the new bag and frequently stuck their heads in for a good old sniff. Borneo, who loves hiding in plastic bags anyway, was naturally the more curious.

So the scene that greeted us when we came down last night was that of a cat whose body was wedged in the handle of a plastic bag completely filled with empty plastic bottles. When he moved, it followed and made a tremendous racket, which scared him out of his little cat wits. This made him run faster which made more noise. Meanwhile his sister also tried to run away from the loud monster chasing her brother, but found it very almost impossible because Borneo was running just about everywhere he could to find safety.

If they weren't so terrified, and if we didn’t love them as if they were our own fat, lazy, spoiled children, we would probably have found it hilarious.

Netherlands: City Part Tin Can Tower

The Netherlands is a country that is continuously in danger of being engulfed in a sea of red tape. They erect great dykes to keep this sea back called Stadsdeelkantoren. This means "Local Council Offices" or, literally, "City Part Tin Can Tower" or "Town Slice Side Ears." It depends how you divide it. There is a story that the "kantoor" part of the name is a contraction of "kan niet, hoor" (Trans: "NOT possible").

These are places where forms are filled in to get permission to fill in further forms; Where a receipt for a document is longer than the original document; Where anything outside of predefined norms is not possible or at the very least, the responsibility of some other vague department that you may never get in contact with.

This departmentalising (or, more accurately, compartmentalising) can be quite extreme. My mission to the local Statsdeelkantoor today was show them my birth certificate. This was to show them that I am not merely alive (that has been proven already) but that I was born and, I guess, not created in a factory or laboratory. (Although if I had the correct paperwork for that, it would be fine.)

Unrelated elephant

This is not a normal procedure, it would seem. This is evident by a few facts. Firstly, although I had a letter confirming the appointment, it wasn't in the receptionist's system. In most organisations this would mean a screw up with the system. But the receptionist, after a few moments of perplexed searching, realised that it meant it fell outside of the norm. She took me to the next level of people. The ones who deal with most of the people who come through their doors clutching pieces of paper. It was in their system, but they had no idea what to do about it. A couple of them discussed if for a few moments. In the end, they had to take me to a third level. Now, for me, none of this was a big issue. It meant I had to wait a few minutes for someone with the authority to work around the system to become free, but they do seem to have created extra work for themselves. Plus, given 3 members of their staff some moments of confusion. But, then again, these anomalies might be what keeps them going.

In think it's all part of bigger job creation scheme. The longer it takes to process anyone, the more people are needed. Proof of this scheme is shown by the entrance and exit doors. They are automatic. Great. Except that a security guard sat behind a computer has to press a button to approve it each time before they open. So they are not, in effect, automatic at all.

Travel: 17/6/11 Texas: Sugar and Flags

So the local Walmart has a flag aisle. Mostly because it's near the 4th of July, my girlfriend's sister tells me. But partly because this is Texas. I resisted asking in my most middle-eastern accent, "Zis. Iz zis flamable?"

People think that America is a country run on oil, but quite frankly it's sugar that the country doesn't seem to be able to do without. It’s in everything from bread to milk to carrots. Meanwhile scientists are baffled by an epidemic of obesity. I blame the Communists.

Despite this epidemic, one of the malls near my girlfriend's parents seems to have more sports stores than anything else. It's bizarre, because in general people don't seem so sporty round here. However, the ones who are, are pretty hardcore. We saw several people running in the midday heat of this heatwave. Apparently because it makes them work harder.

Well if you can't beat them, join them, as the old adage says. And as I can't beat that adage, I have to concede to its wisdom. I bought some running shoes. Some of you might know this already, but I have recently started running. I'll write more on this soon as I'm quite the running bore these days. In fact, Running Boar is my new Native American name given to me by the North Pumadikas tribe.

As well as shoes I bought some special running socks with the letters "L" and "R," one on each. Now I really feel like an athlete.

Lunch was at Chick-fil-A who claim to have invented the concept of putting chicken inside buns. Maybe they did. Although it really just seems like a specific application of the Earl of Sandwich's original patent ("A process of serving a variety of foodstuffs by placing the same between two slices of bread").

Dinner was at the Meddlesome Moth, a restaurant that was like a gastro pub in a warehouse. The food was great, but in those gastro pub sampler sizes. It also had a great selection of beers. We Europeans rightly denigrate Americans for their general awfulness in the beer department, whilst forgetting that it's also a country with a large enough population that anything is possible. It also has a strong German heritage. Because of this, it does have some great breweries. They're often small, local and they don't export. So we tend to think the only choices are "Buttwiper" and "Flavor Lite." And in this we are wrong. That's not to say that vast swathes of the community don't drink these poor options, mostly because every 5 minutes the TV tells them to.

Anyhoo, to end on a positive beer note, I had a thoroughly tasty, local brew called "512 Pecan Porter" which was like a nutty stout and worth tracking down.

Travel: 16/6/11 Atlanta to Dallas

Would you leave two overweight, grumpy siblings who hate each other locked in the same flat for a week? We just did that with our cats. If they were people it would be cruelty OR a new reality show. ("Fat Family Feud" it's called and I hope the exclusive world rights.) But enough about cats, we're on holiday.

Atlanta is a spikey outcrop of skyscrapers in a thick medieval forest. Like something out of a Swords and Sorcery movie. It feels like we should be fighting our way to it in order to steal the sacred chalice of Cocacola from the wicked King Thrasher. But instead we just flew in, were shepherded through various checkpoints and then thrown on another aircraft heading towards the fabled city of money, Dollars-For-t'Worth (or, as it's now known through colloquial corruption, Dallas-Fort Worth).

When we get to our final destination, we find that Texas is undergoing a sort of heat wave. The kind that TV stations scream about and make doomful predictions about; meanwhile the locals shrug at and point out that it's not actually broken any records yet. My girlfriend asks what's the equivalent of this Texan heat in Europe. "Gas Mark 4," I respond.

16/6/11 Travel: Amsterdam to Atlanta

The large, loud guy with a Southern drawl waiting to get on the plane to Atlanta only needs to be chewing tobacco to complete the stereotype. Oh, and maybe a Stetson instead of a baseball cap.

A Jewish man in historical garb rocks back and forth nervously muttering to himself in the corner. Okay, he's not nervous so much as praying. But it's the sort of praying that would be the onset of craziness in an atheist.

Flying is like being strapped into a hospital waiting room for several hours while the Earth spins away below you. The seats even come with their own dog-eared magazines which tell you how wonderful it is to be in various places around the world to take your mind off how awful it is to actually get there.

Planes these days often come with tiny little screens behind the head of the person in front of you. These ones are so tiny and low resolution I thought I was looking at an ad for "Miss Dim" for a minute before I realised it was for "Miss Dior." I'm not sure how wrong I was, to be honest.

I've seen about 20 movies in my life silently, over people's shoulders in planes. Not movies I want to see; but I'm attracted to moving pictures. I believe it's called Scapulavision.

On my tiny little screen, I saw a movie and a half to help pass the time because I sleep quite badly in uncomfortable chairs suspended over two miles of nothingness. I saw the King's Speech, in which an Australian teaches Colin Firth to speak so he can replace another Australian as king. I believe the working title was, George, King of the Desserts.

I also watched the first half of Robot (original title: Endhiran). If you wanted to know what Terminator would be like if it was mashed with The Matrix, made in Bollywood and starred Elvis, this is it. Sublime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNXHveyzUvY

The Beans of Wrath

People of the Netherlands a cancer is encroaching your country. I have enjoyed my ten years here without it, but the proverbial triffids are at our door. They are in our train stations; they are in our high streets; and they are bent on stealing your culture.

I'm a huge fan of coffee. My fandom resembles that of a fresh crack addict. I love my drug of choice and what it does for me. I am convinced I can kick it whenever I choose. As an addict, I do like the coffee Starbuck's sells. And I enjoy the look of their cakes, although they do inject them with more sugar than a healthy man should consider eating. And their décor within them is not unpleasant.

Artists' rendition of your future.

However, their business model is parasitic. The aim is not to compete with other establishments in a healthy competitive manner, but to strangle them by flooding as many Starbucks as they can into a particular area so that if you go into a random coffee house, the chances are it's a Starbucks. Then, once the competition has all died out, they close most of their stores and enjoy being the people's only option.[1][2]

It's a savage use of money to deny people free choice. It's Soviet-style coffee communism aggressively brought about by abuse of people liberal attitudes to the free-market.

Now, I can understand it not mattering in a country like the US (or even the UK) that doesn't have a café culture, but this country does. Most bars and cafes actually have good coffee. They have atmosphere. And they are usually run by individuals with character and often a connection to or compassion for the community they serve.

If you go to a Starbucks, you are contributing to the eradication of the café culture of the Netherlands. You are saying, "I don't want 'gezellig' places with charm and character. I don't want a choice of places to go and drink coffee." You are, in short, supporting the Stalinesque purge of your nation's cafés.

Anyway, rant over, enjoy your coffee.

---

[1] No Logo, Naomi Klein, 2000;
[2] The Simpsons episode 3G04: Simpson Tide, 1998.

Whinging about Pommes

Firstly, I'm going to have to preface this with a whole explanation to avoid the crisp-chip / chip-fry confusion. Basically it can be explained thus: What the Americans call "Chips," the British call "Crisps;" and what the British call "Chips," the Americans call "Fries." (For more scientific information, see my own research at More's Uncyclopaedia, the world's (mis)leading database of facts, figures, lists, and general trivia.)

Being British, I am inclined to use the words God gave us and not the more common, colonial / international corruptions. I assume this stance will not offend anyone.

But I am not here to talk about the ongoing Anglo-American Lingo Wars, I'm here to talk about the Dutch. The Dutch like their chips (fries) so much they have more than one word for them. They called them "Frites" or "Patats" and the only difference in usage I can see is that frites tend to come in paper cones and patats in polystyrene cartons. The highest form of frites you can get here are Vlaamse Frites, or Belgian Fries. It's odd here, because the Dutch love to look down on the Belgians. Pointing out their country is really just the quickest way to France; and that it's a place where signposts can change language half way through because the left half is in a French-speaking part and the right in a Flemish-speaking part. Yet, two things the Dutch are very, very fond of are frites and beer, and the highest form of both of these, as far as the Dutch are concerned, are the Belgian varieties.

What aren't so popular here are crisps (or the American potato chips). Or at least they weren't. When I arrived some 9 years ago there were 3 flavours of crisp in the stores. Three. "Natural," "Salt and Pepper" and (for the people with exotic tastes) "Paprika" (sweet pepper). That was it. I'd just come from the UK, where crisps were considered a good substitute for pretty much any meal of the day. In the UK, and even more so in the US, the array of crisp flavours (as well as crisp brands and styles) is staggering. But in the last few years, there are more and more crisp flavours and types appearing in the Netherlands. So much so that Lay's, the multinational crisp conglomerate, had a competition locally to vote for new flavours. So what do you think the winning flavour was? Huh? The winner was "Papatje Joppie" – chip-flavour crisps (or fry-flavoured chips). I'm not joking.

Now, clearly they are not purely chip-flavoured – they are the flavour of chips dipped in a mustardy sauce, but still. Really, are you so obsessed as a nation that when offered the chance to have ANY flavour in the world, you chose that your potato-based snack should taste like a different potato-based snack? I sometimes wonder if the ultimate Dutch snack would be a crisp that tastes like a chip dipped in mashed potato and sprinkled with flaked potato skins. Mmm, starchy.

Mars Needs Women

I'd like to thank Invader Stu for drawing attention to this song... Bruno Mars – Granade:

The fact that a bearded blogger has to draw my attention to a best-selling, Grammy-winning artist shows how out of touch I am musically. I just don't like to look at music news in case Ike and Tina have split up.

The song is basically an insanely intense young man dragging a piano through the streets of LA and listing all of the ways ye would kill himself to prove his love. He'd catch a grenade, put his hand on a blade, jump in front of a train, take a bullet through the brain, drink strychnane, and many more vaguely rhyming deaths and mutilations. He makes the mistake of many insanely intense young men and takes his death wish as proof of the depth of his feelings. His girlfriend, quite rightly, is not so keen to have her innards blown out or receive an extreme manicure just to show she has feelings. In fact, in the video, she has rightly moved on to someone who rather than wanting to get his guts spread along a railway track wants to make sweet love to her. I would argue that three weeks in four girls would much rather make sweet love than become a widow. The other week, it's not so clear.

There is a film title that comes to mind as being apt... Mars Needs Women. (Note: the title is apt; not so much the plot.) Maybe Mars just needs to get out there and experience a lot more women (as many of his lyrical contemporaries are advocating) to temper the intensity of his yearnings. Otherwise I have a terrible picture of young Bruno Mars rushing ecstatically up to his girlfriend's side and saying, "Hey, baby, look what I caught for you!" Turns out she would die for him, or, rather, because of him.

At the end of the video, it implies he does actually step in front of a train (alone, which means that somewhere on the streets of LA is a random, abandoned piano). It reminded me of James Blunt videos. They usually end with him jumping into a ravine or some other act that could be taken as ending it all. With James Blunt I'm always left with the feeling, "three minutes too late, buddy." With Bruno Mars, I can't help wondering if this intense reflection and constant referencing to bullets in craniums couldn't be turned outwards somehow and used to create something altogether more worthy.






Random Link: Rage Against the Machine - Bullet in the Head

New vignette at The Character Project

image via kalibneil.tripod.com

New short character vignette at The Character Project: The Year at Cannes.

5 Bill Murray Holidays

1. Groundhog Day (US)
2. Losten Translayshen (India)
3. Gho Sbu Sters (Korea)
4. Skrøøjd (Denmark)
5. Groundhog Day (US)

Magic Bean With Miffy

Seen at a local garden centre. I love it because the name doesn't in any way say kids growing educational toy to me. It's exactly the title of a free-wheeling, 1960s drug-culture comedy. Probably featuring a cameo of up-and-coming star Jack Nicholson

The Huffy Fluffy Morning Club

The common wisdom is that pets calm you down. People are always throwing pat phrases at me to that effect. Or they throw the scientific equivalent of pat phrases at me, statistics. I don't deny that the majority of people who have pets are calmed by their presence, charmed by their actions and generally enraptured by the fact that this little furry bundle loves them like they were its own little mummikins.

However, statistics is a two way street. As readers of British tabloids know (although the papers themselves do not seem to) for every study showing X is bad for you it is only a matter of time before a study appears showing that X is good for you. (It's called Dacre's Mirror in newspaper circles, I believe.) Thus I am sure I can dig up statistics demonstrating the following:

People in a state somewhat akin to sleep, when greeted every morning by constant, bad-tempered whines and attempts to block their every step by something fat demanding to be made even fatter, find their levels of calm are shown to drop sharply.

I'm not saying that I never find the cats charming, or even on occasion (when it's their wish to be stroked) calming. (Although it is patently clear their love is at best that which you might have for an occasionally conscientious servant.) But for me the key moment of every day is when I awake. The hopes of the whole day are forming in my clouded mind. The whole mood and outlook of the next segment of daylight is created by the first few events between emerging from the sanctity of bed to that first taste of the brew of life. Were I to be wafted from my bedroom, held aloft by a set of adoring felines and carried to my study and a waiting mug of steaming coffee, then the cats could be said to have a truly calming effect.

But instead I get a chorus of ill-tempered mews berating me for spending all those hours sleeping when I should have been shovelling chicken-flavoured globules in their beaks. I get petulant demands to head down and replenish their bowls with poultry-based kibbles whilst at the same time, the same cats stand directly in front of my feet making any serious attempt to head anywhere almost impossible. It makes me wonder if they are simply without concept of cause and effect or whether they are deliberately out to annoy me.

Somehow they don't seem to mind that their breakfast is thrown in their bowls in the most begrudging fashion. And I shouldn't be so begrudging, really. Because that moment after the food is down and the coffee machine is preparing to do it's Jesus trick of turning water and a bag into coffee – when the only sounds are a few late morning birds asking around where the worms are, the gentle rumble of the Jesus machine warming up and the restful "nom nom" of God's creatures stuffing their furry faces – that moment is the calmest point of the day. Thank you for making me appreciate it, cats. Thank you. Who loves their daddikins?

I hope 2011 is so prosperous for you, signs like this will be commonplace.

Happy 2011!!!
Peter

'Tis the Season to be Golly

Fluffy tufts of snow linger in the air deciding where they will look the best. Many decide the most advantageous place is the edge of my gloves where they transform from being crystalline cotton to cold dampness. But I don’t care; I'm cycling through a postcard. The old houses and timelessness of any body of water makes the postcard resemble a reproduction of an Avercamp or Koekkoek. (If only my bike wasn't so modern and stylish.) There's no denying it's winter. Christmas is around the corner and tomorrow is Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas is the grandfather of Christmas; the Dutch day of present-giving which was transformed into the one we what we know in the UK (and US). The transformation occurred by turning a shoe into a stocking, a bearded, red-wearing bishop into a bearded, red-wearing kindly old man and an army of "Moors" into elves and reindeer.

The "Moors" are the hardest thing to get used to. Everything else is cute and understandable, but I escaped 1970s Britain to avoid ever having to see a white guy blacked up and the sight of "golly wogs" in shop stores, only to find all of that turns up once a year in a supposedly liberal country.

I'm at the point where I'm no longer disturbed by the representations of Zwarte Piet (either in doll form or in the form of a guy with boot polish on his face), but still fail to comprehend it. According to Wikipedia (the Wikileaks of semi-truth), the Zwarte Piet character was originally the Devil (enslaved by Saint Nicholas to help him deliver presents), but evolved to become a black slave, which is no less disturbing.

More recently the slavery elements of the tradition have been attemptedly excised. It is hoped that it is less controversial if the Zwarte Piets are merely "travelling companions" of Sinterklaas. However, is it really less controversial for a bishop to spend most of his life holidaying in Spain accompanied by dozens of much younger, dark-skinned men? Especially a bishop who once a year sails up to the Netherlands with his young holiday chums, showers the good local children with sweets and gifts and kidnaps the bad ones and takes them back to Spain.

It's no wonder a few details got changed in the evolution to Santa and Christmas. Although it's not clear where the tradition that Santa is an alcoholic came from. But I assume that must be what replaced the holidaying in Spain with young, black men.

Kadootje

So I was in a rehearsal room the other day and I saw a little box. "A present?" I thought. I went over and looked at it. It was already opened at one end. On it was some Dutch. The first word was "giftig." You can't get a more present-like word. The second word was "lokaas" which must be related to lokaal, which means room or place. So this little box was a "gifty room." Before I opened up the box and handled (and possibly even devoured) my present, I bothered to read the English that was also on the box. It said, "poisoned bait." It wasn't a nice gift for me, it was a deadly surprise for mice. It's like Dutch is out there just to trap and poison foreigners.

Amsterdam: Ant Misbehaving

Something I like about the newer Amsterdam trams is they have sand in them. They have little windows here and there (usually near the joints, i.e. the bendy bits) where you can look through and see sand. I haven't seen any signs yet, but my theory is that they are ant farms. You know, the thin layer of sand between two sheets of glass that as a kid you introduced ants to so you could see their tunnelling? It was a huge crazy in 1957.

1950s ant farmer

So in my theory, eventually we'll start seeing ant trails in these little slots and occasional glimpses of ants. And this is a billion times more fascinating than the terrible adverts and annoying twirling news items they have on the TV screens. Eventually, I hope they fill the TV screens with sand and introduce the ants into there as well.

A terminal case of the termites

I have an extension to my theory in that these new trams are run on some form of ant power. This is all well and good, and ecological, if somewhat exploitative, but it raises one huge issue. What happens when an ant-power tram collides with one of the future nuclear-powered superbusses? Huh? Has nobody seen Them!? The movie where giant ants terrorise the middle of nowhere and bog down the US army in a protracted desert conflict. Do you really want to see huge, radioactive ants attacking government buildings and eating tourists? Actually, that would be pretty cool. I'm off to design an atomic superbus and engineer an accident. See you in 30 years.

Filmography:
Them! (1954): IMDB

Did Somebody Order A Plumber?

I'm always impressed when I use my Dutch and get what I wanted. Today I ordered a plumber (loodgieter, or "lead pourer") and within an hour one was at my door. Plumbers normally only arrive this fast in porn films. In fact there they usually turn up uninvited (but definitely welcome).

Ours was too gumpy to be in a porn movie, but he came bearing gadgets. Modern plumbing has changed a lot since the Victorian days when plumbers would send small foetuses down the pipes to clean them. Nowadays, the chief tool of the trade is an ultra-powerful vacuum cleaner that will suck pretty much anything out of the drain. I expected to hear the squeak of sewer rats and the clatter of downstairs' washing up. But instead we got the occasional wet thump of hair, rice, pasta, various unclogging agents, uncategorizable grey slime and some more hair. I blame my girlfriend and our cats for this hair, despite the fact I'm the hairiest thing in the house.

The grumpy chap grew less grumpy the more he got to use his vacuum cleaner and the less clogged our pipes became. Until he was quite chirpy as he dragged his stuff back down the stairs.

We had a great old conversation circled solely on our drains, and our previous efforts and his current efforts to clear them. His strong accent and use of the vernacular meant I didn't always understand him and my inability to find the words I needed meant I spoke without committing too much content. Sometimes I had a blank expression that said, "I didn't understand that," and sometimes he had a blank expression that said, "That made no sense." But in my mind we were two Oscar Wilde characters exchanging witticisms. But actually our dialogue was much more stilted and banal. A lot more like the dialogue in a porn film. But without the undercurrent of sex and the over-suggestiveness. At least I hope so. I never intended there to be any of that, of course, but with my control over the Dutch language, who knows how it came out. It would explain why he got so chirpy. Oh, God! Now, I can't be sure I didn't say something like "That's quite a powerful suction device you've got there; I can't wait for you to wrap it round my piping and start clearing it out." Oh, God!!! And I thought it had gone so well.

Travel: France Aug 2010: Festival International d'animaux

At this state of my life, things have transpired to give me two French holidays a year. One in the millionaires' playground of St. Tropez, the other in the French region of Nullepart Centre (i.e. the middle of nowhere). My parents, some years back, just before it became trendy and a several years before it became passé, bought a set of tumbledown French farm buildings with a view to making them habitable enough for an occasional summer residence.

Over the years, much time and effort has gone into making these buildings habitable, and now, many years later, a couple of them are. Although most of the structures retain their tumbledown charm.

Scary Spider (c) 2010 Peter More

Living there, you must first get over any qualms you have of cohabiting with nature. You must embrace "l'existence rural" (which I just made up). Not only does the surrounding countryside teem with wildlife, but so does the house. The house is occupied by flies, wasps and moths; a hundred varieties of spider (from large to superlarge, which live off the above); and several sizes of alien centipede things (which apparently eat the spiders). Not to mention edible dormice which will you will hear more of soon.

Spider-eating centipede (c) 2010 Peter More

And I haven't even begun to mention the wildlife outside, including ants, grasshoppers, crickets, bees, hornets, butterflies, frogs, slugs, bats, beetles, lizards, snakes, deer, glow worms, owls, pigeons, pheasants, and all manner of other wild things.

Cool Chickens (c) 2010 Peter More

As well as this wildlife, there is some tamelife. My parents have a couple of chickens which spend their time scratching around the ground and once a day yodeling to announce the arrival of a new egg. Forget your dogs, cats and newborn babies, chickens make the best pets. They have personality, curiosity and form a close companionship which breaks down the moment food appears.

Sheep (c) 2010 Peter More

There are also sheep in one of their fields (courtesy of a local farmer). Sheep are awesome. Forget your prejudices, sheep all look very distinct from each other and have very different personalities.

And, of course, there was my parents' faithful, aging dog, Marley.

Marley (c) 2010 Peter More

And to add to all of this, we brought our own cats, just in case there weren't enough creatures lying around. The cat's story, I'll tell soon. In fact, pretty much every one of the creatures listed above will get its own story. Oh, and there will even be monkeys.

Monkey (c) 2010 Peter More

Five stages of being drink on the internet

from uncyclopedia.wikia.com

1. Twipsy
2. Google-Eyed
3. Best Friends Reunited
4. Off Your Facebook
5. Vomeo

Light Entertainment; or the Haynes Guide to French

French is one of those languages where if you know a little, it's not enough. A little bit of French will usually be enough to lead you in totally the wrong direction. A good example is something that appeared on a recent garage invoice:

"allumeur d'allumage"

Now a little bit of French will tell you this must have something to do with the lights.

• Maybe the light that indicates that the lights are lit? FAUX!
• Is it something that turns the lights on? FAUX!
• Is it the ring in the cigarette lighter? FAUX!

Answer: It's the distributor.

Because we went through this process, I will now not forget this for a long, long time. Probably not until just before I next need it.

Paradis Du Porc

France is something of a Pork Paradise. I know that sounds like the worst 1970s porn movie ever, but it is a very good way to describe the things on a French lunch table. Especially if I have set said table. Most forms of Saucissons contain at least 3 types of pork, as do pâtés of any flavour, including no doubt the "surprise végétalien." And then there's Rillettes du Mans, which is basically spreadable pork in a pot. The ingredients list of Rillettes du Mans claims that in every 100g of the product, there is 108g of porc. Yes, the product is 108% Pork, which is actually one of the best porn movies of the 1970s.

9 More Pork-related porn movies
1. The Pâté Hearst Story
2. Pig Male-ion
3. The Porkman Always Ribs Twice
4. Babyback Mountain
5. Silver Streaky
6. The Fabulous Bacon Boys
7. The Shoulder-Shank Connection
8. I Am Ham
9. The Loin King

If anything demonstrates the porkular paradise that is much of France, it is this illustration from a packet of pork chops. It shows a pig all excited with a knife and fork in his trotters. Unfortunately, I think he didn't quite understand what was said.

Sleep Deprivation

It's 3 am. Having been soundly asleep a short while before, I answered the screams of distress of a loved one. Armed with only my trusty sandal, I crushed her assailant and a couple of innocent bystanders. I say assailant, but really I mean centipede that happened to be hanging about nearby when she put her light on.

To go from deep sleep to savage killer in a few seconds leaves a man wired. So as my loved one thanked me and quickly dropped back into that same solid sleep I had recently enjoyed, I sat up, buzzing, unable to retain that state for a good while.

As ever, no rest for the heroic.

My Old Dutch

One of the problems with my Dutch is that it sounds better than it is.  I have a good accent, however I don't have the vocabulary to back it up. Consequently people speed on a dime a dozen assuming I'm fluent and leave me trailing behind trying to work out what a watjenoemhet is and whether not knowing it is important to everything else being said. I'm a long way from fluent. I do understand quite a bit, but people frequently throw words in that I can't fathom. Words like "doorgronden."

Example of mass Dutch communication (c) 2009 Peter More

What happens even more is that I'm speaking and I can't remember, or simply never knew, the Dutch word for something. I have, however, developed some tools to deal with this.

1. Say the English word but pronounce it in a Dutch way.

The rule of thumb with Dutch is that if a word looks the same as the English word, then it is pronounced completely differently. But knowing a few simple pronunciation guidelines will allow you to remanglify the word into Dutch.
(There is a corollary rule that states that if an English word and Dutch word sound the same, then, when written, they bare almost no resemblance to each other, for example: "fluent" and "vloeiend.")

2. Say the English word in an English way.

Most Dutch people speak English at a level I will never attain in Dutch. Plus when Dutch borrows words from English, it pronounces them almost the same for a few years before it remanglifies them. So the second method is to simply say the word the English way, and I usually revert to my native accent. It's remarkable how well this also works.

3. Wordfabricationism

The preferred method the Dutch use for getting a new word into their language is to make one up out of existing words. Thus ziekenhouse is hospital (literally, sick house), and wapenstilstandsonderhandelingen (supposedly the longest word in the standard dictionary) is cease-fire negotiations (literally, weapon standstill under-handling). So the third, and most fun, method to guess the Dutch word is to consolidate shorter words that describe the thing in the hope that it is correct or conveys enough of the meaning to work as a substitue word. Thus if you don't know the word for envy, you could try translating "stuff-want-ness" or "ox-covet-ism." You'll probably be wrong, but you'll amuse the listener and, if you're lucky, they might even think you're Belgian.

Oh, Voiture (French Driving)

I have discussed before the French attitude to driving. The French drive like tomorrow is for wimps and today is the last day of the rest of their lives. As the very French Philosopher Descartes put it, "I think, therefore I am; I drive, therefore I probably won't be much longer."

Scene From French Road (c) 2010 Peter More

In driving down the small roads of rural France, one meets two classes of "other road users." Those who drive three times slower than you and those drive three times faster than you. The former is usually a nonchalant, sun-weathered rustic driving some enormous piece of farm equipment; or it's a little, old couple on holiday from somewhere outside of France. Little, old, French couples are so surprised they are still living, they speed along the narrow, country backstreets like aging bats out of Old Peoples' Hell.

So while us tourists grip the simulated leather of our vehicles as we scoot along, not wanting driving on a French road be the last thing we ever do, the French are content in the knowledge that, at some point, driving on a French road will be the last thing they ever do. So once again the French win on philosophy, even if that philosophy is "Drive fast; die young."

Finally found a French book at my level.

Travel 6/8/2009, Czech Republic: Pre-Czech Flight

Sky Europe is an Eastern European budget airline which somehow makes it sound like it should be dodgier and less safe than Ryanair, but it isn't.

It's the way the world's going. In the old days, if you had a plumbing job, you'd get in the very friendly Mr O'Leary, the Irish plumber to do it. But after a while you got sick of the cut corners, mysterious surcharges and endless delays; and nowadays everyone has an Eastern European plumber. Budget airlines are going the same way.

Being a budget airline, Sky Europe flights leave from the distant, isolated cheap zone at Schiphol rather than the main terminal. Here there is one duty-free shop and one "grab-and-fly" (snack kiosk), that's it. And of course, the flight was delayed for some reason. I'm not sure if we ever really found out why, but it must have been drastic as the plane we eventually got wasn't even a Sky Europe plane.

The flight to Prague was quick and painless. We landed late at the airport, but had counted on this: We had one night booked at a hotel 2 minutes walk from the main terminal. We only had to dodge one police armoured car to get there. It's possibly just there to give tourists a taste of the iron-curtain days.

But anyway, we strode past the mobile monument to state oppression and checked in to our modern slab of business luxury. The hotel was anything but iron curtain being a brand, spanking new Marriott.

Travel: 7/5/10: Stanstead 4:25pm

I'm sitting eating a "Moor-ish" (their name) sandwich in an airport departure lounge whilst my three travelling companions easyjet their way back to the Netherlands. It's been a little while since I've been stuck at an airport for a so long on my own. I wish I had my laptop, but of course I have nature's laptop – a pen and paper.

I was supposed to be on the same flight as the others but I missed it by a gnat's cock. In fact, I sat and watched the plane sit at the gate for five minutes, door open, but not being allowed to board. There was ample time to squeeze me onto that flight, but international regulations dictate that easyjet need their £43 ticket change fee.

The friendly staff at the gate explained that my friends had tried to help, but planes aren't buses, no matter how much the cheap ones feel like it. You can't run after them attracting the attention of the driver or hang off the back.

One way that easyjet is trying to make itself more like a bus service is by not allocating seats. This means you adopt the same tactics you do on busses to keep the seat next to you – you lay stuff there, you puff yourself up so that you spill over the arm rests and you try to look like the sort of person who doesn't bathe very often. Another great trick is to look really, really keen for the next person to sit there, smiling and nodding at anyone who so much as glances in your direction. However, this can backfire terribly as it does attract the sort of people for whom this is normal behaviour.

How I came to miss my flight was a simple tale of a lost phone, a rental car, a kindly guy called Phil and his two helpful companions who brought the phone back from the rental car lot, a pimply twat who was too limp in the life department to help me get through security quicker, and whoever it was who came up with the concept that airports should be so sprawling that they need metro systems to connect the parts.

It was a disappointing turn in a day that had seen us wake up in a top hotel, feast for breakfast, wander the hallowed streets of Cambridge and go punting. It was a great chance to see how the other half is educated. (The other half being the smarter and/or better off portion of society.) It had all gone very well until the "phone left in the rental car" incident. It meant I had to travel alone and miss a show I was supposed to be in. In fact I only got to the venue just as I was supposed to go on stage and co-host my student class' show. Real last minute stuff.

As I said, I had to wait at the gate until my plane had pushed off. It was an inordinately long time to sit and stare at a vehicle you were supposed to be on. Once it had gone, the girl at the gate was able to take me back to the check-in desks. Getting back there for staff isn't quite the ordeal it is for passengers because they know secret back routes only available to those with passes and a magic code. The corridors are narrow and even less glamorous than the rest of the airport, but they feel like intrigue. You feel like you've been taken into a kind of drab yet secret world.

The girl at the easyjet abnormal events desk was affable, pretty yet somehow ruthless. In fact she had no ruths whatsoever. She came right out and demanded her £43 to get on the next flight. And she had no trouble repeating it when I happened to change the subject. "The subject," incidentally, is probably what she calls her boyfriend.

Despite being sat at a check-in desk, all this girl could do was change my ticket, demand money, demand money again and print receipts. I had to go a few desks down, to an inordinately chirpy girl, to get issued with a boarding pass.

It's rare that you get the chance to go through the same security control area twice in one day, so it was interesting to have confirmed what was always reasonably obvious: Implementation of the security rules and calibration of security equipment are very inconsistent.

First time I went through I did not have to remove my shoes; however the second time, the Spaniard who puts things in trays told everyone to remove their shoes. With my shoes on, I hadn't set the scanner off. With them, however, it did go off. It could, perhaps be sensitive to smell as I'd done a lot of rushing since the last time I'd been through security.

The security guy patted me down exactly the way he was supposed to, but something told me I was not the first person the machine had erroneously fingered. This guy probably had to pat down nearly everyone who went through, whereas, the guy at the scanner three doors down, where I'd gone through earlier, merely waved everyone past except the odd terrorist who'd left his keys in his pocket.

Even easyjet ground crew lament the way the company does certain things, especially the speedy boarding con (my words, not theirs) and the fact the company is becoming more and more like Aer Fungus (Ryan Air) in terms of shovelling customers into a bucket of a plane and charging for any form of abnormality.


I'm also amused that easyjet offer "memorabilia" in their in flight catalogue, and even go as far as announcing it during the flight. How many people want a souvenir of an easyjet flight? Something to help you forget it, yes. But a reminder?

"What's this plane on your mantelpiece?"
"Oh, that was the time we flew from London to Birmingham for £25. Such happy times; just the four of us... and two hundred others, squashed into tiny seats; and such beautiful delays."
"Why doesn't it have any wings?"
"Ah, wings cost extra."

Travel: France 11-15/7/09: To See You... Nice

Having lived the French rural life for a good week or so, it was now time to sample the French millionaire lifestyle. This was several days of swimming in the pool, playing jou de boule, and being driven around in sports cars by rarely less than two women.

At night we played Werewolf as a pleaser of both children and adults. For those who don’t know Werewolf, it's a game where one or two people (unknown to the others) are werewolves and slowly pick off villagers one by one whilst villagers desperately burn each other at the stake trying to flush out the werewolves. It's a metaphor for politics, I believe. After this, I slept in a room that Sophie Marceau once lay naked in. Apparently.

We ate at restaurants right on the Mediterranean seafront. I mean literally right on the Mediterranean seafront. We jumped into the sea straight from the deck our table was on. It's a part of the world all girls wear bikinis and things like being in a wheelchair or merely shopping doesn't exempt you in any way.

The fourth day was Bastille Day; when the French celebrate the storming of the Bastille, an event which was a vital element in getting the French Revolution going. The Bastille, a notorious prison in Paris, very much represented state tyranny and so its storming has come to encapsulate and symbolise the liberation of the French people from oppression. Unfortunately the liberatees who represent the French people, in this case, were four forgers, two lunatics and an aristocratic pervert. The French are perfectly happy that these people are used to represent them; and not having seen any statistics, I couldn't say if this is or is not representational of French Society.

To celebrate this historic event, we went to the beach at Cannes. We went early to get a spot and swim. It was supercrazybusy. The whole of the south of France drove into Cannes that afternoon and were all picking out spots on the beach. Cannes is quite a long beach but soon you were lucky if you saw a patch of sand. There were thousands and thousands of people there. Possibly hundreds of thousands. And I was the whitest person there. I kid you not. I trudged up and down that beach trying to find people as or more ashen than I, but to no avail. This was a place for tanned bodies. There may well be pale people such as myself in Cannes, but they probably live in the sewer.

Bastille Day is traditionally celebrated with fireworks. Very much like the American 4th of July, a date that celebrates a similar event: when American citizens stormed Boston and rescued four barrels of Darjeeling, two of Oolong and a vat of Earl Grey. It seems freedom from oppression is frequently celebrated by a show of shock and awe.

At Cannes, where they have a few bob (i.e. they're rich), the magnificent firework display is accompanied by a lot of music broadcast from off shore. There were some real moments of awe with huge, well-choreographed explosions of gunpowder and glitter over the sea. The shock came mostly from fireworks that individuals and small groups were letting off on the beach. The French let off fireworks the way they drive. Like they want to die and take as many of les bâtards with them as possible.

Leaving Cannes was even slower than getting in because half of France was leaving it at exactly the same time. It took an hour and a half instead of about 20 minutes.

There are those who say U2 are a force for good. (Members of the band mainly.) But if proof was needed to the contrary, which is isn't, when it came time to leave, Bonio, The Side, Larry and Moe caused nothing but havoc. Two people missed flights thanks to their concert antics. I was dropped off super early to avoid the traffic from people leaving the scene of the crime. I believe this was actually called the Carbon Footprint Tour by the press. It certainly caused unnecessary trips and noise pollution. Many called it an egological disaster.

Again my flight was full of kids, but this time it affected me much less. Am I becoming immune? Maybe more tolerant? Or maybe a long holiday had relaxed me so much that even the combined horror of children and U2, could do nothing to destroy it. Peace out!

Travel: France 10/7/09: Nice To See You

"Revenge is sweet, chocolaty and frequently unnoticed by the recipient."

The morning of the last day of this leg of the trip was bright and early. After an encounter with the space centipede and 2 strong coffees, it was time to drive to Bordeaux again. This time to drop the car off with the rental company and for me to catch a flight to the next stage of the adventure.

The French don't seam to deal with money the same way the rest of Europe does. Apart from everyone still thinking in Francs and converting to Euros, it seems, they handle bank and credit cards very differently to how I'm used to. Several times I tried to pay with my credit card only to find I not only needed to sign, but also enter my PIN number. In fact sometimes I didn't even have to sign, but I always had to PIN. I do have a PIN number for my credit card, but I never use it and so don't remember it. So I had to see whether they would allow me to use my debit card, which I do know the PIN for because I absolutely need to use the PIN for it to work. Firstly I was surprised that I could use my debit card, because only a few years ago, only credit cards seemed to work outside of where you lived, and supraflabbergasted that I had to (a) sign the chit and (b) not use my PIN number. Several time this happened, and I was sure when I came home my bank was going to call me up and demand why I signed for the card I need to PIN for and PINned for the card I need to sign for, but no. The bank accepted it.

Because the French roads, particularly those around cities, are unpredictable trafficly, I had allowed plenty of time. I had two hours to kill before my plane left, which I did, in part, with the sandwiches my mum had made and a coffee some unknown barista made me. I had the coffee at the more reasonable looking of the coffee places at the smallish airport. The guy seemed so amenable despite being surrounded by screaming kids, I ended up being relatively generous with the tip.

Because I was there early and had time to relax and observe airport life. It was Jack Dee, I think who speculated that parents only take their kids to supermarkets so that they could spank them. I've noticed that parents bring their kids to airports so that they can shout at them over the longest possible distance.

The airport was lousy with Brits who were all heading back to the UK. I, however, was on my way to Nice, adventure playground of the rich.

Once it became time for my plane to start doing things, with no indication of such on the board, I became concerned. If it didn't start doing things soon, it would be late. Then, after a time, the signs changed to say that the flight was "Terminé" which the board translated as "Finished." I had a few score minutes to wonder what that really meant, before they found the actual word they meant: "Retardé." Indeed. (It means delayed.)

To stop rioting, they gave out free drink coupons. So, as I waited for l'avion retardé, I went back to the coffee place and gave the waiter my coupon. He took it and plonked a paper cup of coffee down gruffly in front of me. I felt dreadful that I'd over tipped him the earlier time. And to get my own back I decided to buy a pain-au-chocolate from elsewhere. (Revenge is sweet, chocolaty and frequently unnoticed by the recipient.)

It was during this drink I realised that my passport was missing. I panicked about all the places I could have left it, all the people who could have taken it, and what they were now doing with my identity. I was probably executing exiled Palestinians as we spoke. Then realised I must have left it when I got the voucher from the pretty, grumpy lady at the far end of the terminal. I was correct.

I got my pain-au-chocolate from Paul Pain-Au-Chocolate who make all the regular French pâtisserie things but with whole wheat flour so they can charge you 50% more. (This is on top of the 75% more for merely being situated at an airport.) I'm not sure why leaving the wheat "whole" costs more than removing part of it, but apparently it does.

Eventually, the boards started saying positive things. In fact, they said in the far left column...

NICE
BREST

...which cheered me up. Breasts are to men what shoes are to many women: Any mention of them, reference to them, or humorous suggestion as to their importance in life is very cheering indeed.

Apparently the delay was due to part or all of the plane being missing. The plane we got to replace it was a tatty, old thing with an engine that made a clunky sound as we boarded. What's more, it was full of kids. (The plane that is, not the engine.) Although, that wasn't a fault of the plane itself. To keep me from crying and shouting, I was given an International Herald Tribute. Nothing was given to the kid behind me who was not only a screamer but a kicker.

The good thing about the new plane was that it was bigger than the one we were originally supposed to have. It had six seats across instead of four. It meant lots of room (sideways, at least). In fact on my row, there was me by one window and on the other side by the other window was a lone child. Lone children are the best children on planes because they are always quiet and well behaved. Something about the presence of parents makes children jump up and down and scream the whole flight. Or it could be that children travelling alone are terrified into silence, in which case perhaps the solution is to send kids on different flights to their parents. Maybe a separate glider is towed behind the real plane with the kids on board like those baby boxes that get towed behind bikes.

As with the whole trip so far, I was photographing like I was a paparazzo and nature some knickerless starlet. Once in the air, I told myself to stop drooling and put the camera away. Just as I did a great set of mountains came thrusting over the horizon. Oh, yeah, nature, give me tectonic movement.

Nice airport is, like many airports in affluent seaside areas, created on reclaimed land so that it doesn't take up valuable real estate but can still be close to the town. As I believe is the norm in Nice, I was picked up and driven to where I was staying by two girls in a sports car. As they say, "Qui est le père?"