Where's the light switch?

This may be my last day of blogging in the dark. It's getting a touch depressing in here. Also, I've discovered that those clever devils among you who access my blog via Bloglines can read the latest text with ease, on a white background. That's just not fair, guys, you have to actually CLICK on my blog and come over and have a look.

And discover that I really do have nothing much to say at present...

To those of you who are rummaging around here in the dark (what are you doing?), thank you and do come again.

Success! (Yawn)

I was offered another job today, within the international bakery here in the Lowlands. Being head-hunted does wonders for your ego. Just a pity that the post is in a speciality area that's about as dull as a piece of German schwarzbrot (black bread). Even the mention of the department's name puts me to sleep. Plus points are that it's a high profile team, hovering just below the Managing Board. It's new, has financial backing and offers prospects for becoming a bigger and better communications bod. Down side is that it would mean committing to being here for another year - and that also puts me to sleep.

z z z z z z z zzzzzz zzzzz z z z z z z.

Summer

It's summer here now - at least for yesterday, today and possibly tomorrow. Hit 25-30 degrees celsius in Holland. Incredible. Bud's on the balcony revising his German grammar (more on that later). I've been surfing the web for information but 11 in the morning isn't really the time to do it. Haven't decided where I'm gong with this blog - or how I'm going to carry it on and study but daresay I'll manage to do both. I think my blog is going to remain a hotch-potch - a place where I can post whatever I want, say what I think regardless of whether anyone's listening or not and, at times, behave badly and just get away with it....

Turquoise shatter

Turquoise shatter, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Exactly the same pic as the one below - only the colours are different.

Black rose

Black rose, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

This pic was originally a photo of my lovely yellow birthday rose. With the help of the photo editor program that comes with my camera, I've filled in the petals with black and, heh presto, a work of art!

eyesgreen

eyesgreen, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

eyes3

eyes3, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Eyes right!

eyes2, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

eyes

eyes, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Blank post

Bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla....

Bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla...

bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla ....

bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla...

BLAAAGH.......

blaaaaah......

BLA. And that's the reality. BLA!

moon2

moon2, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Moon

, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Blog mandala in the dark

Blog mandala in the dark, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Einstein

Einstein, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Willow tree

Willow tree, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Golden bike

Golden bike, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

A wall in Amsterdam

A wall in Amsterdam, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Passageway

Passageway, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

The guys in the park

The guys in the park, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Talking heads

Talking heads, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Reflection

Imgp0335, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Let's move on...

It's a beautiful, sunny day in Amsterdam; wonderful quiet morning time - just the light humming of the fridge, joined now by the louder zumming of the computer, and out there somewhere a blackbird sounding off now and again. I love these couple of hours on a Sunday before the day gets going for us.

I'm posting some photos above, fulfilling a need to create a space here that feels good to be in. A blog is a sort of extended living area and it's strange how the energy exchange you take part in there can affect you in your real life. I've found the recent comment sessions deeply disturbing and with the photos above, I'm attempting to sweep out the feeling of utter hopelessness they've left behind. A sort of late Spring clean...

Yes, I'm rethinking what I'm doing with this blog. What do I want to achieve with it? At this point, I'm not sure. I do know what I don't want - I don't want my little corner of blogosphere to be used (via the 'comments' function that I've switched off at least for today) as a vehicle for what I consider to be regurgitated propaganda. There's enough space elsewhere for that.

Time to turn off the comments?

The ability to comment on other people's blogs - and to receive comments on mine - is one of the fun things about blogging. I've often looked enviously at posts on other people's blogs that have attracted dozens of comments. And I've twice experienced that strange cut-off feeling when someone decides to turn off the comments function. In the past few days, I've begun to realise why they do it.

What I thought was an interesting opportunity for an exchange of views, a chance to find out how someone else views the world, has turned into an increasingly nasty experience, with every new page-length comment from Jack across-the-water. I've begun to dread turning on haloscan to find out what his latest rampage is this time. I feel bombarded - as though the guy's trying to ram his oh-so-well-informed-absolutely-American-and-indisputedly-right views down my throat. Why's he doing this? What does he hope to achieve? Convert me?

No, he wants to personally insult me - as indicated by his last comment which I've just deleted. Go home Jack - get off my patch and go and share your incredible insights with someone else. I'll manage without them, believe me.

Give us light!

Lantern Humboldt courtyard, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Book addiction strikes again...

I've got my first three books for the comms course that starts next month. It feels good - any excuse to be busy with books is good - like the start of an adventure. Two are new and one's from the university libary here. 'Understanding organisations' by Charles Handy looks promising. He was on the BBC not long ago and gives the impression of being a rare source of wisdom in a world that badly needs it.

Does music heal?

Our bedroom has been turned into a recording studio. Bud's found his voice back - his singing voice from his good ol' days as a musician - and he's trying to capture on tape the song he composed this afternoon. It sounds good and I'm with him all the way in believing it could be hit! It's sad and beautiful, grieving past losses and hinting of future joy. So much emotion packed into one little song, one liddle man (Bud's a head shorter than me). He's happy to have found his old Buddy back again. Listening to the song, I can even feel where his songwriter's block began.

Does music heal? I think it can. I've been leafing through the book 'The Mozart Effect', looking if there's anything in there that could help an elderly relative who's being driven desperate with pain. It recommends the harp for helping soothe back pain, and toning - the drawn-out sounding of different vowels - as a way through pain. I imagine my dear aunt sitting in her living room sounding out high-pitched 'eee's and dark 'ooooooo's and wonder whether she'd be more likely to try that than a little chanting of Sanskrit mantras - as recommended in the other book 'Healing Mantras'.

You can't interfere with karma, that book warns. But I could try a little toning myself just to see what happens. If you hear a few 'oooooo's and an 'aaaaaahhhhh', it's probably me.

View from Israel

Jack, who's been commenting here on my 'Free to say no to Bush?' post, has not only given my visitor stats a boost (heh, thanks!) in 'An Effective Response to Terror' , he's also posted a very interesting article about an Israeli who took his children to see Gaza before it's handed back. 'The Exodus from Gaza' makes fascinating reading, particularly for someone like me who's been there herself and heard almost exclusively the Palestinian side of the story. It's an eye-opener for me, and although I feel there's an element missing from his story, I do admire the guy for having the guts to take his children there to see the situation first-hand. And, I'm interested to know how an Israeli sees it.
I clicked through to the website of the writer: Daniel Gordis and read the article shown under 'Dispatches' - 'The Bird's Nest in Shul' . Published in March, before the Exodus one, it gives a glimpse inside Israel of today - I'd no idea what was going on - and is, overall, one of the most hopeful pieces about the Middle East that I've read in some time. I keep my fingers crossed for both sides in this awful conflict that there can be a way out and a better time ahead for all.

"I poured water on your teabag" or Storm in a Teacup

Bud and I are having a little running battle this evening over who is doing more around the house. Bud claims to have cooked the meal, done last night's washing up and supervised two rounds of clothes washing in our machine with a broken pump. He's now composing a masterpiece on the keyboard and has just taken a break to boil water for tea. "You'll have to make your own," he said, putting exactly the amount of water in the boiler for just one cup - his. "OK," I said, answering Jack's comment about the war on terror and the diverging approaches of Europe and the US...
Bud went back to the keyboard while the water boiled. When the switch clicked off, I got up to finish making his cup of tea for him. While it was brewing, I went through to the bedroom to interrupt his masterpiece and tell him:

"I want you to know that I've poured the water on your teabag."

He laughed, rocking at the keyboard.

And then, damn it, I even squeezed the teabag, put milk and saccharin in it and took it through to him. MAN, you're getting a first class service here. Be happy!

Long weekend

We're into the silly season in Holland - that time of year, starting around Easter, when there's one national holiday after another. We've just had one long weekend, celebrating Liberation Day, and now we've got another, celebrating Whitsun. I can't remember what Whitsun is any more. When I was little, I used to don my girl guide's uniform and parade with the rest of my company down the road to the church. Once, I had to carry the flag. A damned heavy thing it was. I can still remember the weight of the pole, balanced on my scrawny flat tum. Anyway, they scrapped Whitsun at some point and we didn't get to parade any more.

I won't be parading this Monday either, the second day of Whitsun, but - since I don't work on Friday - it does mean I have a four-day, totally unplanned break coming up. I should be ecstatic. Four whole days out of the office. And we could, theoretically, just hop in the car and zoom up the motorway in the direction of Hamburg or somewhere like that. But I'm still tired from the Berlin trip, still trying to shake off this cold. Colds seem to last forever these days, then lurk in the sinuses for a week or so and come back and hit you for Round Two just when you let your guard slip and allow three raindrops to fall on your head...

So, I have a long weekend and if I don't plan something fast and get up at six tomorrow, I'll be going nowhere.

I feel Spring cleaning coming on....

Go on, inspire me. Where would you go?

Sonny Boy

I've been reading a lot lately. Just finished a book called 'Sonny Boy' by Annejet van der Zijl. It's in Dutch but my guess is that it won't be long before it's translated into English. The book was both a disappointment and a revelation. A disappointment because it turned out to be more of a biography, a story based on historical facts, than the novel I'd thought it was (should have read the back cover more carefully). The author is a journalist originally and she doesn't 'dive in' to the characters. They remain people in a journalistic account, seen from the outside.

It was a revelation because it describes what happened to the Jews in Holland during World War II - the war that seems to be my theme at the moment - and, believe it or not, I've read very little about the holocaust, full stop. According to this book, 11,000 Jews were deported from The Hague and only 500 came back. How is that possible? How? What went on in the minds of the people who did this? And what would I have done if I'd been there? And shouldn't I be doing something more with my life now - since I'm lucky enough to have one?

The central characters of the book are a black Surinamese man and a white Dutch woman - married and many years his senior - who fall in love and have a son 'Sonny Boy'. The woman's first husband gains custody of her four children by him and restricts her to seeing them once a year for two hours. Despite all their trials and tribulations, the two main characters remain together, marry and, during the war give shelter to Jews hiding from the Nazi regime during the occupation of Holland. They're arrested and deported to concentration camps just over the border in northern Germany (not so far from the route we took to Berlin a couple of weekends ago). For the rest, you'll have to wait for the English translation! If you want to know more, there's an interview with Sonny Boy himself on the author's website.

For anyone who takes the trouble, this book could form the basis of a cracking good novel or even a film.

Berlin

Just discovered a blogger who's been to Berlin and taken some super photos. Have a look: Berlin.

Free to say 'no' to Bush?

Bush was here today. In the Netherlands, that is. He laid a wreath with the Dutch queen at a cemetery in the far south of the country where American soldiers, killed saving us from the Nazis, are buried. Then he left and went to Moscow to continue commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII.

He was in the Netherlands for 15 hours in total and for that he'd asked the Dutch government to close the stretch of motorway near the cemetery for two weeks - as a security measure. Amazingly, the government stood up to him. The fact that he even asked for it shows that he has zero comprehension of life in Europe. Close a motorway in southern Holland for one day and you can disrupt business traffic and cause chaos on roads in five countries.

Those Americans lost their lives fighting for a free Europe. It would be an insult to them to just bow down and let ourselves be run by the White House. Yet that - increasingly and on a number of different fronts - seems to be what our big buddy across the water is expecting European countries to do these days.

Achtung! Diz will change your leiff

The decision to learn German was a life-changer for me. If only because it was the first true decision I ever made myself.

I came home one day from school and announced that I was going to do German for O-level (the state exams we took in those days at aged 16 in Britain). My father, a veteran of the Second World War, was aghast. "Why?" I remember him saying, followed immediately by something like: "You can't. You don't know any German."

Undaunted - unusual for me in those days as a shy 14-year-old with a father you didn't contradict - I just said: "Yes, but I can do a crash course and learn it in two years." He gave in. I took the course, got the O-level, took an A-level and was already more fluent than the teacher by the the time I left school. (Thanks in part to Dad who'd sent me abroad to live with a German-speaking family for three weeks.)

No-one who knew me as a shy teenager would ever have guessed I'd later move abroad on my own and live for 20 years in Continental Europe - speaking German, then Dutch. I myself didn't have a clue what I was starting....!

Heartbreak at Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

This photo doesn't say it like the one below but I thought I'd better change something so you know I've delivered on the promise to tell you what happened in Berlin. Nothing big really and yet still the moment I'll always remember from our weekend trip to this imposing city.

As I said before, this was my first – our first, in fact – trip to Berlin. I’d always wanted to go there to see The Wall but never got round to it. When The Wall came down in ’89, I really regretted not having been there earlier. Same story for Bud. And so we went there knowing that we’d already missed a very significant part of the city’s history. Not having been there before, you can’t really appreciate how the city was divided into East and West. The residents – helped by several thousand tourists, no doubt – tore down the wall and threw away almost every last trace of it. There’s one stretch left that’s become a sort of historic monument and there’s part that’s been reconstructed for the tourists at Checkpoint Charlie (see photo below).

I’d read all that in the papers over the years, so I wasn’t particularly looking for a ‘wall experience’ on this trip to Berlin. The first thing that surprised me was how difficult it was for a first-time visitor to sense which part of the city had been West and which had been East. The Wall ran zig-zag through the centre and these days, even the locals aren’t quite sure any more where it was. Truth is that the western part of the city looks rather neglected because the real building work is going on in what used to be the eastern side.

Anyway, we were staying just a couple of streets away from Checkpoint Charlie and Bud was keen to have a look. I wasn’t too bothered, to be honest, since I knew The Wall was already long since gone…

We turned into the street, just a grey street like any other. As we got nearer to the House at Checkpoint Charlie (housing a museum about The Wall), we passed snack bars and a shoe repair shop named Charlie This or Charlie That. The number of little shops selling tourist nick-nacks increased. After the crossing shown on the photo above, there’s just a short stretch of street before the section of reconstructed wall shown in the photo below. The place is crammed with tourist shops selling everything from old Gestapo helmets to postcards declaring ‘You are leaving the American sector’. In the middle of the road – Friedrichstrasse, now running all the way through into the former east side – there’s a border post (a little hut) with sandbags in front and a young soldier, presumably an American, stood there in uniform and holding the US flag. Dozens of tourists are standing around, clicking away on their digitals and taking it in turns to go and stand with that good humoured guy and have their pictures taken for posterity.

Ticky-tacky, trashy, tourist trap, I thought, as we went past the sign warning that we were ‘leaving the American sector’ and crossed the road to inspect the fake, pristine clean white wall that now no longer cuts Friedrichstrasse in two. It’s a lot thinner and lower than I would have expected. There’s no barbed wire on the other side as there used to be. Just a small forest of black crosses, each labelled with the name of one of the 80 people who died trying to get out there. The mini ‘cemetery’ is on both sides of the road. There’s a maroon-coloured van and some cars parked on the other side, blocking the view. And two gigantic adverts on both sides of the street. And something in a glass box construction that seems to be advertising a concert. And what look to be Middle Eastern immigrants selling the worst tourist trash from a row of market stalls just beyond The Wall.

I don’t know whether it was seeing the crosses that did it. I don’t really think it was. It certainly wasn’t the atmosphere. And I couldn’t feel sentimental about a piece of so obviously reconstructed wall.

Fact is, the moment I crossed the line where The Wall once stood, emotion welled up in my throat. It was only three steps to those tacky market stalls but I was already in tears when I got there. Trickling down my cheeks. You don’t ‘do’ this as a Brit. There was dull thud feeling in the middle of my chest – like The Wall went straight through the heart. It felt so real that it would have hurt to touch the spot. It wasn’t just the crosses, the thought of those who got shot there, it felt more like the pain of all those lives torn in two – families divided, hopes shattered by that monstrous wall. That’s all I could think it was. Where else did this dull ache come from? Apart from those crosses, certainly not from anything I saw or heard around me. It was a sunny day, the trish-trash sellers were happy enough and the tourists were enjoying this swinging city – as I was too. Enjoying Berlin, with a dull ache in my heart.

Places have memories. Hearts broken leave their mark. My heart and yours, maybe they’re just nodes on one big network.

I never saw the Berlin Wall. I felt it.

Traume, originally uploaded by Picc-a-dilly.

Here it is. The Berlin Wall - the wall I never saw - reconstructed for the tourists at Checkpoint Charlie. And it's here that I had the strange little experience I'm going to tell you about ... tomorrow.

Are you a doughnut or a rabbit?

If you Ask Jeeves where the doughnut comes from, it seems at first glance that it could have been a Dutch export to the USA. Look down the links a little further and other theories emerge. Maybe the Indians first struck upon the idea of putting a hole through their fried cakes. The origins of the doughnut (or ‘donut’) seem to be shrouded in mystery. Except, that is, for my resident expert – Bud – who is quite sure that this particularly fattening delicacy first came from BERLIN.

And it was there, in a speech at the Berlin Wall on 26 June 1963 that John F. Kennedy showed his support for the city by declaring “Ich bin ein Berliner”, meaning to say “I’m a Berliner” (like “I’m a New Yorker” or “I’m a Londoner”). Unfortunately for him, by a little quirk of German grammar, you miss out the word “ein” when giving your origin or nationality. What he should have said was, “Ich bin Berliner”. What he actually said was “ I am a doughnut!” For ‘Berliner’ is also the name of the famous doughnut.

In a similar story, two centuries ago, it seems that Napolean’s brother Louis Bonaparte felt the need to utter a few words in Dutch when he became King of Holland in June 1806. Addressing the crowds, he tried to say “Ik ben uw koning” (“I am your king”) but mispronounced the word ‘koning’ and said ‘konijn’ instead, solemnly declaring to his new subjects: “I am your rabbit!”

Love stories like that, don’t you? So, we went to Berlin – seven to eight hours drive along the green, green E50 route that runs all the way from Amsterdam past Hanover to the old/new German capital.

I loved the place. And I experienced something very unexpected. But it’ll be tomorrow before I can tell you more…

Under pressure

Fifteen minutes of the day left and I’ve promised to tell you the story of Who said Yes to What and to give you the run-down on our trip to a city seven hours away from Amsterdam. And my cold is back – the one I had a few weeks ago – and I’m not in the writing mood again. So I’ll have to be quick:

Who?: the Employer
said ‘yes’ to
What?: financing my communications course in London and letting me attend half of it in working hours.

There are some strings attached but basically it’s a good deal – and sensational that they said ‘yes’ to it within five days. Totally amazing. For those who’ve forgotten, or not been around for a while, this ‘yes’ follows a big ‘no’ to my previous request for a transfer to London.

So, yes, it’s a little victory (thanks also to my boss who pressed the bigger boss for me) and makes me feel a whole lot better about life at the international bakery.

And the weekend, well, I’ll keep you in suspense a bit longer. See if you can guess:

Which city is seven to seven-and-a-half hours’ drive east of Amsterdam, is surrounded by forests, gave the world the donut and caused a former US President to make a famous statement that contained an amusing grammatical fault?

Tell you tomorrow!

Hello, oh wonderful Employer!

I say only nice things about you in the posts above and below and you are always anonymous in my blog. Your secrets are safe with me...

While surfing around the web, trying to find an online book token for a little relative whose birthday I'm about to miss for the second, third or fourth year running (you lousy aunt, you), I stumbled across this blog entry about a bookstore employee who was fired earlier this year for blogging, apparently, about his employer. It seems he didn't blog much about his employer but they took offence to it anyway.

He's still blogging. Take a look on The Woolamaloo Gazette.

YES!

THEY said YES!! If you don't know Who said yes to What, call back tomorrow. I'm too tired to post properly tonight. We've just got back from a weekend away in a buzzing European city just seven-and-a-half hours' drive from here. More on that tomorrow too.