Well, here
I am in Haarlem (cue song?). And listening to a lot of Dutch. The
first thing you notice about speakers of this fine language is that
most of them suffer from some sort of bronchial infection which
causes them to hawk – but not spit – every few seconds. Very sad
really. But they are nice people. By and large.
Talking of
spitting . . . When I was a kid, there used to be signs on the buses
instructing you not to do this. And I'm reminded now of an old
limerick on this subject:
There was
a young man from Darjeeling
Who went
on a bus trip to Ealing.
It said on
the door:
Don't spit
on the floor.
So, he lay
down and spat on the ceiling.
I guess
this would be seen as racist these days and I'd have to come up with
something to replace Darjeeling, so as not to imply that all Indians
are in the habit of expectorating at will. Life was much simpler back
then.
I'm taking a coffee in a new shop-cum-café-cum-library near the
railway station. Naturally, the young lady speaks excellent English
and was able to explain that I couldn't pay €2.50 in cash but would
have to use one of my cards. Then we ran into the problem that their
machine only accepts Dutch cards, which we solved by me giving her the
€2.25 I luckily had in cash. I'm sure they can find a use for it.
I flew here on a nice little airline called Transavia, which I
suspect is KLM's cheapie option. As my take-on bag somehow reached
9.7kilos, and I lacked a scarf with hidden compartments, I decided to
go with the mac-with-deep-pockets option for my camera and all the
chargers one needs these days. Plus the adaptor plug(s). But I
needn't have bothered; no one weighed the bag. What they did do at Security, though, was relieve me of my watch and everything that I
had in my pockets and then put them on different trays. I'd gone 400
metres towards the gate before my brain told me I didn't have my
phone, and one or two other things. Fortunately, though, I retrieved everything and made the
plane with a few minutes to spare. And was happy to see that, though
they didn't offer a gin & tonic, they could give me a vodka &
orange. Though the charming hostess did try to palm me off with a
water & orange. Clearly, I didn't hawk enough when saying 'vodka'. And she thought I'd said 'vater'
The other thing you notice when you land in Amsterdam is that it's
bloody cold. Only 2 degrees, in fact, compared with 15 in Pontevedra.
Fortunately, I'd remembered that the mac I've only worn about 10
times in 30 years also had a warm lining which I'd never once used.
This proved a wise recollection, especially as I knew where it was
hanging.
I'm off to do some sightseeing now, in advance of much-anticipated
Indonesian food tonight. And very probably at lunchtime as well. I miss it hugely.
I hope you all have as nice a day as I plan to have. No doubt some
readers will be delighted there's no political news in today's post.
Others, I hope, will be sorely disappointed. But I'll be boning up on
Dutch politics today, of course.
Postscript:
The drug smugglers arrested by the Galician police a couple of days
ago numbered 14 in all. Sadly, 7 of these were Brits. Even more
sadly, 5 of them were from Liverpool. I wasn't aware that
Scouse-Gallego commercial relations were so strong.
No comments:
Post a Comment