Happy with the Railroads

 

It had been a big step for the family: moving from the certainty of living with most of our relatives in the same city in the North to go to the South. But my father knew it was the only way for him to get a proper job.

He certainly managed to do this on the railroads. He started as a platform cleaner and a porter, getting goods on and off the train. Soon he got a job shunting trains and after some studies climbed up to be a train manager. As a person who loved talking to and meeting new people he had a job he used to dream about.

With a population that grew rapidly the Dutch railroads needed to expand, a lot more trains were needed and a lot more staff. So a campaign was started to get more workers. The campaign was mainly in the newspapers. My father was asked if he was interested to show his happiness in his work and he agreed to take part. After this my mother was also convinced this was a good thing to do. They both would appear in the national advertisement campaign. Maybe nowadays people would expect a nice payment from this, but my parents were made happy with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of cognac.

They were soon to regret what they had done. Under the supervision of my grandmother another campaign was started. This one was in my extended family. Grandma convinced the whole family that my parents had whored themselves for a TV. In the advertisement were two pictures: one of my father showing a big smile while giving the signal his train could leave the station and the other of mother, busy at the dining table. The photographer had been clever enough to get the new TV in his picture; to make it clear that you could get a nice salary that even allowed you to buy a TV set. 

A few weeks followed of angry letters being sent and received and even some angry phone calls that had to take place at the neighbour's place, since we didn't had a phone. Soon it became clear to the rest of the family that Grandma had been on a warpath because of our family's move and that she made things up. She had been quite bitter that we moved from the house next door to a village that took a journey of almost three hours to reach by train for her and my grandfather and would cost them a lot.

My oldest sister and I soon agreed not to do our yearly planned visit to our grandparents. We solemnly had promised them to do such, but we felt it would almost be like betraying our parents to do this.

Later it became clear that that possible visit would have been a last possibility to see our grandfather. He passed away that Summer. 

A year later my grandmother visited us in our new house in the south; after one week of hearing the adults arguing, I could hear her on the phone at the neighbour's house: "Please come and take me away from these horrible people. It's like hell over here." A day later an uncle came over by car to pick her up, much to our relief.

My father worked the rest of his working life on the railroads on all kinds of jobs. His last job was to manage stations with one worker: himself. He would sell tickets, give information and kept an eye on the platforms. Often my mother would keep him company, watering flowers and making coffee for him.

Sometimes she would say: "We do have the railroads to thank for this good life. Do you want another coffee?"

He was offered an early retirement, took it and enjoyed more than 30 years being a pensioner and living in a house rented from the Dutch Railroad Pension Fund. 

                                                                                                                                                            

An Indian in a Dutch town

 

The Dutch have, not surprisingly, a long tradition with chinese and indonesian food. Chinese restaurants you can find everywhere in the world; Indonesia was for centuries a Dutch colony, nowadays something they would like to forget. The food, not surprisingly, in a local Dutch variation is still being loved.

It took some time before the Dutch were ready to experiment with more outlandish food.  In the seventies pizzerias, mexican restaurants, balkan restaurants and bistros in French style started to pop up. Indian food took a bit longer to reach the Dutch, maybe because it was expected that people would confuse it with Indonesian, I am not certain about that. Fact is that it was not until the eighties before Indian restaurants became a normal sight in Dutch towns.

We discovered one in my hometown; it was a bit hidden, not on one of the main squares. The high rent in these areas probably was the reason for that. The restaurant got the name Ali Baba. First I thought it was a shop with a great variety of goods on offer, but peeping through the window taught me differently. Of course we had to check the place, we loved eating outdoors and had quite an amount of possibilities in town. Ali Baba was the newest attraction and we were curious.

The reception by the propietor who also functioned as waiter was very warm. He made a sort of reverence in reaction to almost everything we said. We got the menu, had the choice between three kinds of soups and my partner and I decided both to have a different one. We picked some other things for the main dish, ordered a beer and realised that we now would have to wait a bit. We were a bit afraid that the proprietor also had to function as cook, but that was not the case. He passed our order on through a door at the back and returned to take care of our beer.

"Look at that!", my partner whispered, "He is not having draught beer. The pumps are fake." I had a good look and saw him fiddling behind the counter with two bottles of beer, probably not realising I could see it all in the mirror behind him. After having filled two proper glasses of beer he brought them over, bowed and withdrew behind his counter. After a few minutes he went through the door and came back with two plates with bowls on top of them. The soup!

We both tried both bowls and they contained exactly the same soup. But it was nice and we did enjoy it. The proprietor came over to make this a certainty: "It's great, isn't? Of course it is! I would think so!" After the soup we had to wait for more than an hour; being bored we had more beer and had a bit of a laugh. The man in control came over and explained that the meal took some time because it was made with great care and within a clay oven. I expressed my interest and asked if we could have a look at the thing, we had never seen anything like that. He shook his head and said he was sorry; it was not possible.

Finally the food arrived and it was quite lovely. The man came over a few times to tell us that it was great food, we would certainly agree with him. It will not surprise you that we had more visits to Ali Baba. Everytime the soup would be exactly the same, the beer would come out of bottles and the wait for the main course would be very long. We never cared, always tried not to be in a hurry.              There came the time that we had visitors. The four of us decided to have a meal outdoors before they had to go home again. We considered the possibilities, our guests decided that we would do Indian food. It was their first time to have this. 

When we entered Ali Baba I explained to the proprietor that we had limited time this evening. Our guests had to catch a train at a certain hour. He bowed three times and said that it would be no problem. Even being the only guests, I had my doubts and I was right.

We had all three types of soup and there was still the same lentil soup in every bowl. We had a bit of a laugh about the man fiddling with the bottles of beer again. This time he noticed and told us that he would soon have a contract with Heineken. "Good for him", I thought. After the soup the waiting game began and I told the man that our time was beginning to run out. Again he assured me that the meal would be in time. And it was: we had 10 minutes left for our meal. The four of us gorged some down in record time and I asked for the bill. The proprietor was flabbergasted, we were forgetting our dessert! Again I had to tell him about time. He shook his head in disbelief when we walked out of the door.

After this we never ate in Ali Baba again. Some weeks later I saw the man in front of his window, maybe looking out for possible guests. Behind him there was nobody, no seat was taken.

A week after this I walked into town and passed the building; the window was wallpapered with newspapers and some worker was busy to scrape the name of the window.

Sometimes we have a nice dinner and we make certain that it is good. "It's great, isn't it? I certainly would say so!"

===============================================

Love

Her face showed that she had been crying a lot lately. She looked a bit cold, the coat she was wearing seemed a bit too summery for this day. "Is it okay if I get in?", she asked, even with that sad face it sounded more like an order than a request.

"Of course", I said and stepped aside to let her go in and closed the door behind her. "Do you want to hang your coat? Maybe you would like coffee or tea?"

"First question yes, the others NO THANK YOU", she tried to be relaxed and joky. I just nodded and accepted her coat and hung it on one of the hooks of the coat rack. She was already walking into the living room, not waiting for further invitations. She stopped abruptly when she saw the people sitting around the dining table, looked at them and walked on to the back of the room where the wood burner was. She sat down on one of the recliners and rubbed her hands. "It's nicer over here, than outside."

I took the other recliner and looked at her. She took a handkerchief out of the sleeve of her top and blew her nose. "Who are these people?" She nodded towards them, one of them was searching through my record collection. "Oh, these are squatters from the Regent Street, they have been knocked out of the house and everything was smashed by goons of the new owner of the place. They stay over here until they find a new place."

She pulled a face, obviously it would not have been her idea to invite people like that into her house. Every time I saw her it amazed me that we ever had something going on between us. My parents still asked about her, probably because she was decent, she was a teacher.

"So how are you doing?", I asked, trying to keep the conversation going. The question was not really needed, she was obviously not doing well. Her eyes filled with tears and she blew her nose quite loud. The squatter who was searching through the records showed one to his mates and they all laughed. It didn't bother me; I already was being told enough that I was bourgeois, not a revolutionary. I didn't mind, the world order would not be changed by me or by this lot. They still had their dreams.

She was ready to answer: "I'm so fed up with it all. He is using all our money to gamble. I can't even ask him to do some shopping, he takes the money and immediately runs to a betting agency. The bastard!"

I had heard it before, had asked the question before: "So why don't you kick him out?" She started crying openly now, the hanky could not stop the tears. "Because I love that bastard", she sniffed. I raised my hands in surrender: "That forces you to accept everything he chooses to do. It's still your own choice, I can't help you with this. I will not have another talk with him."

The squatters put a record on the player, I recognised it immediately: Rose Royce's "Love don't live here anymore".

She got up and almost ran out of the living room, I followed without really catching up with her. The squatters were observing the scene. When I reached the front door she was already closing it from the outside, through the glass in the door I could see her putting on her coat. I could hear the squatters laughing.

==================================================

Garth

Everybody differs from others, but colleague Garth was really different. He had an excellent knowledge of a lot of things, but in particular about his work field in the office. On top of that he was always available to give you very good, very thorough advice if you had questions about foreign taxes or social insurances. The thoroughness was great, but also a disability. He seemed to be never able to make decisions on the cases he handled. There were always new questions to be asked, other aspects to be looked upon. He would talk about this in a very loud way which was not exactly everybody's cup of tea, so it had been hard to find someone who wanted to share a room with him.

He had a habit that required a lot of his working hours. Garth always wanted to check packages on which was mentioned ca. or approx.. After counting the amount of things, like bolts; nuts; tissues; rubber bands; raisins and so on, he would exclaim: "There are never more than they say there should be! This tells you 50 paperclips, but there are only 46. That's thievery! If it's 49 I can understand, but 46 is ridiculous.

One day Garth told everybody he had thought of something ingenious. He had designed a spreadsheet that would warn him when he should buy a new box of sugar cubes for the coffee. He refused to use the sachets the office provided with our coffee. According to him in that sugar there were chemicals added; rather he wanted to be safe than sorry. So whenever he took a cube it would be registered on his spreadsheet.

His roommate was not his friend. Garth was always ready to point out that he didn't have friends, he seemed to be proud of that. If anyone said Thank you my friend, he would react with You're not my friend. I don't have friends. I had a nickname for his roommate, never told others about it. For me he was You have to be crazy wanting to work over here and got along very well with This is not MY work. They would get extra coffee from the machine for their endless coffee sessions together with various other colleagues. Normal talk would be to complain about the work stress and the awful management.

The two of them came up with something and they had to tell everybody in the hallway. In every room were two workers and the two friends went from room to room, bursting with laughter.
They had added one sugar cube to the box Garth was saving in his desk. "Let's see what happens."
They warned me: "You are not going to ruin the fun." I told them I don't want anything to do with it.
After a few days Garth himself went from room to room: "I don't get this. The spreadsheet is not correct. I have one cube extra. This can't be right."

The coffee sessions of the friends and their mates were filled with laughter for days on end. After a week colleague You have to be crazy to work over here got some remorse and told Garth what they had done. That solved the problem for Garth but also ruined the work relation between him and the pranksters. You have to crazy to work over here had to switch desks with a female colleague who had been ill for months and could not object sharing an office room with a person with no friends.
After she finally returned to the office she turned out to be able to get along with Garth very well.
=================================================

Paul McCartney

The old man knew exactly what he should give his beloved wife for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. She had told him over and over again how beautiful this rose named after a former Beatle was. Together they had watched a program on television about English gardens and they showed this rose as one of a few new species of plants. It took him only a few phonecalls to learn that he would have to drive to Truro to get one for the garden.

Together with their neighbours he found an excuse for not taking her along on a ride with the car. The two men were supposed to buy a new drill for the neighbour. Both women were not interested in this at all and so he could get what he wanted and keep it as a surprise. After the purchase he came home and put the little rosebush in the garage on a spot where she certainly would not look. The two men told her that the price for the drill had been too high and that the neighbour had decided not to buy it.

The next morning while she was having a shower, he sneaked out to the garage and put the rosebush in the kitchen. She had been a bit silent, probably thinking that he had forgotten that this was their wedding anniversary. She had been in good spirits, even a bit over the top and he had to chuckle how she could not really hide her disappointment from him. When she came out of the bathroom in her bathrobe, he asked her to follow him to the kitchen. And there it was: the Paul McCartney rose.

"Happy Anniversary, Darling", he said with a big smile.
"Oh Fred, what a lovely gift! I thought you forgot all about it."
He laughed: "I forget a lot nowadays, but not that I'm married to you, my Love."
After breakfast they went to the front garden to search for a nice spot where it could be planted, because she decided that she wanted everybody to see the lovely rose. She showed him what the best spot was and he planted it for her.

The rosebush grew steadily thanks to the good care from the old lady, but the bigger it got the health of the old man deteriorated. After a few years he died and she was on her own.
She would still make the joke to people they had made together. Whenever people asked where they lived, she would answer: "It's the house with Paul McCartney in front of the house."
People would look at her questioningly and she would explain. Sometimes she would add that it was the greatest gift he had ever given to her except for her wedding ring.

The years were getting harder and harder to get through for her on her own and she died only a few years later while Paul McCartney was in full bloom.
She had always loved gardening and that was quite obvious when you looked at it.
The daughter and her family came over for the funeral and to take care of the house and the garden, having to decide what should happen to it. It would feel like sacrilege to let the garden be ruined and so they did what they could to maintain it with a bit of help from the neighbours.

Most of the garden did okay, but the Paul McCartney rosebush suffered. You could almost see it getting worse in front of your eyes. Like it had no wish to go on anymore.
After a few days it died. The family let it be for a few days. After the estate agent advised to get the garden in topshape to give the house more kerb appeal for selling it, they knew they had to get it out of the ground and get rid of it.
Later one of the neighbours asked about the rosebush and got the answer that Paul McCartney had been disposed of in the bin. The house was sold only a few weeks later.
=======================================

KitKat Junky

After my last roommate in the office had been transferred to an office in the North of the country I had been on my own. I was quite happy with that, could do whatever I wanted with the room. So I had filled the empty spaces on the wall with prints of painting by Kandinsky and Joan Miro and could listen to an Amsterdam radio station that played Indian music all day. These were great days.

I knew these days had ended when my manager entered the room with "Let me introduce you to your new roommate. June, can you come in?"
There she was, June. I remembered her quite well from the first years of my life at the tax office. She was still as big and ugly as ever.
I gave a big smile and got up: "Well hello June! That's a long time ago I've seen you. How are things?"
The manager nodded approvingly: "It's obvious that you two know each other. Maybe you can help June getting started? There will be some files delivered within an hour, but she will need pen, pencils and so on. I understood:  "No problem. Do you want me to introduce her to everybody?"
The manager shook his head: "No need, you were the last one she needed to meet, being in the outskirts of the office."

Soon I saw that she had not changed at all. My art had to go, was replaced by a picture of her two sons and a picture of the office in which we both had started our career. The radio had to be on a channel with popsongs from the eighties and nineties. I went along with it all, love my peace, too lazy for quarrels.
Her workdays were filled a bit differently to mine. She liked to talk and she liked even more to talk a lot. I was not perfect in doing this, so she would phone her sister and some former colleagues to update the gossip.

A lot was about her wondering why everyone was always losing weight like anything and she was doing this crash diet and she was not even losing an ounce. This would be also discussed with me, at least she tried to. Then there were the health issues; she sometimes phoned that she was ill and would describe what kind of fluids were leaving her body; enough to lose your appetite for some hours. Once she asked me if I took showers with my daughters. She did this with her boys, who were of the same age as my children, ten and twelve. She described how she would clean their willies. I told her that my daughters probably would kill me if I would suggest something like that.

It was amazing how she managed the refurbishment of the family's house. The husband did the work, but for everything he needed her approval of his ideas. So he would make drawings of this and faxed to them to our office. June had a good look and would phone him to tell him what she thought of it. This went on for a few weeks.
Later there was the matter of a nice house in the neighbourhood of the village she lived in of which the owner had died. She phoned her sister who was a colleague in another tax office which was in charge of handling cases in her village and asked her to have a look into the files of the family who were inheriting the house.
Soon she was rubbing her hands: "So they are heavily in debt, you say. I think I will go to the estate agent. I feel I could get this place for a very nice price. Thanks, Sis!"

All in all there was not a lot of time for the work she was supposed to do and I was happy that she was working part-time, which  made it possible for myself to get enough work done in a week. The weeks went on and there came the time when the management had to give an evaluation of the work. Of course they were not happy with her productivity. We were supposed to handle from five to seven cases per day and June did an average of three in a week. A talk was held in front of me.
She defended herself fiercely: "But that's in three days, not in five!"
The manager shook his head: "I would expect fifteen to twenty-one cases being done."
"But I lack knowledge. They never really prepared me properly for this job. I would like a brushing course."
The manager laughed aloud: "I happen to know that you hardly worked the last three years. You have done every course there was on offer. So there's no way I'm going to let you do another one!"

After this talk she became ill for a longer period. I was quite happy on my own again. Being alone never has bothered me.
Once in a while other colleagues would come over to my room and we would discuss cases while drinking coffees. So it was not suprising when colleague Garth entered my room with two coffees in his hands and a file under his arm.

I thanked him for the coffee and he asked about June. I offered to phone her and ask about her illness.
"Oh no, don't! You don't want me to vomit over your desk!"
I had to laugh and took a sip of the coffee.
Garth was sitting behind her desk and played with the grips of the drawers.
"Hey, it's not locked! But look at that! You won't believe this!"
He opened the drawer completely and I walked over to have a look.
It was completely filled with KitKat Chunkies and wrappers of KitKat Chunkies.
I laughed along with Garth: "I think I start to understand why June can't lose weight."
==================================================

Partytime with the Picos

                                                          The Picos

My mother's family was quite gifted in making music; in the old days it was not for everybody to have a record player or even a radio. I think that is why people tried to make their own music, playing traditional songs or even creating things themselves. In my family the most popular instrument was the accordion and there were some great uncles who could play very well. They were always the first people to get invited for weddings, parties and such. Payment mostly consisted of free drinks.

                                                The Three Jacksons

In a lot of families this was the case and some of these accordion players became quite famous locally and sometimes even nationally, like the Jacksons, Las Estrellas, Schriebl & Hupperts and many more. In our family the band The Picos was the most important one. Every birthday would start with mother playing the 7 inch record "Partytime With The Picos", it was them playing the Dutch equivalent of Happy Birthday, called "We Wish You a Long Life". Becoming older we would feel a bit embarrassed when that music would sound really loudly through the house and imagined that the whole neighbourhood would witness this.

My parents never knew that the title of the record in the 60's would become a code for the children to warn each other when there were quarrells between my parents or with one or more of the children. If there were harsh words because my eldest sister would want to go out in her miniskirt or I refused to get a haircut or would play my beat music a bit too loudly, the warning would go out to me or my sisters coming home.
"Don't go in! It's Partytime With The Picos!"
We would stay outdoors until things would become quiet again.

The Birthday ritual remained for decades until the record got a scratch. How this happened, or who was the culprit for causing it was never discovered. In the meantime more and more of the children left the parental house and some moved to other countries.
It was my mother who took the initiative to give new musical congratulations. Both my parents could play the harmonica - nicknamed the poor people's accordion - very well.
So now we children would get a very early phonecall with my parents playing on their harmonicas the tune "We Wish You a Long Life".

                                           Hohner

They both had a Hohner,  the Rolls Royce of  harmonicas. My mother would play lead and Father would play the harmonies. It sounded quite good, certainly when you consider their age.
The first one who could not play anymore was Father, he didn't have the breath anymore, but Mother played on and on.
Father died and it was only her who would phone and give the little concert; she continued doing this almost to her last day when she was already in her nineties.

Yet sometimes in dreams I can still hear The Picos playing "We Wish You a Long Life".
===============================================

Mother

The journey had been quite smooth, it was not even 10 AM when I walked around my Mother's house to the backdoor. It was the natural way to do it, like I had been entering the house since 1961. Through the window in the back of the house I could see her sitting on her chair. She immediately noticed me, looked at me with wide open mouth. Near the backdoor everything still was like it always was. The metal bins in a row, a piece of a broom and a rag on a nail in the wall. The backdoor still made that strange sound, like it would break; nothing had changed in all these years.

In the kitchen I noticed little notes on the window ("Close before you leave!"), refrigerator ("Be certain the door is properly closed"), cupboards ("Leave everything like it is!").
Even the oven had a note attached to it: "Be certain it is turned off before you go!"
I recognised the writing of my youngest sister who obviously had some problems with people handling things in the kitchen.

I hung my coat on the coat rack, dropped my backpack under it and walked in the living room where she already had opened her arms for me. She was wearing a Christmas jumper, a bit surprising when Easter is near. I embraced her and kissed her on both cheeks: "Hello Ma. Are you surprised to see me? I did tell you."
She laughed: "So lovely to see you, my boy. I always have to see things first before I believe them. How was your crossing? Was the sea a bit friendlier this time?"
"It was very nice. I had a nice evening on the ferry and had a great sleep. I could catch the early train this time. It was all quite perfect."

Mother pointed at the chair of my Father: "Please sit down, don't keep standing there."
I sat down, but could not prevent myself saying: "It almost feels like sacrilege sitting in this chair."
She shook her head: "Don't be silly, my boy. He wouldn't mind you sitting there. Of course not."
I asked her how she had been and she assured me that everything was fine and had been fine. I knew this didn't mean anything. I had witnessed her being in a lot of pain and still saying that she was fine. She didn't like to moan, according to her it didn't bring you anywhere.

She yawned, so I asked if she was tired.
"I'm always tired, I never sleep. What I really would like is to sleep forever, being with your Dad."
I understood very well that she was a bit lonely in the house on her own, but knew too that she had some regular visitors.
I pointed at all the stuff around her: "They do keep you busy."
Mother nodded: "Medicine to swallow, it's almost a pharmacy over here; then there is the water to drink, two liters per day; I have my fruit, today it's apple and grapes. Also I have milk and had a coffee. Oh yes, I still have to finish breakfast, but I don't really fancy that last bit of the sandwich anymore."

I picked up a puzzlebook: "Do you still manage to do these?"
"Yes, I prove to myself by doing them that I didn't lose my sanity."
I picked up the coffee mug: "How about if I make us some new coffee? I certainly could use one."
She was about to answer, but there was some loud banging upstairs, almost like somebody lifting a bed and letting it drop from their hands. "What's that?", I asked a bit alarmed.
"Don't worry. That is Lisa, the new cleaner. You haven't seen her yet. She must be making the bed."

I knew about Lisa. My sisters were quite annoyed by her bullying character, she was very bossy towards our mother and didn't take any notice of what was required of her. Instead of cleaning she would reorganise the kitchen, so my sisters had to search for everything that was needed.
She had taken over from a Bosnian woman whom my mother had liked very much, but who was hired by a care company that was undercut by the company Lisa worked for.

Before I could get up from the chair, she sort of galloped down the stairs and came into the living room.
"I already thought I could hear voices...", she came to me with her hands in rubber gloves, took one off and offered me the ungloved hand. "My name is Lisa."
Mother answered for me: "This is my boy from England. He has an English wife."
Lisa nodded: "So I heard. But look at you! You're not presentable like this, certainly not with your son around."
I wondered what was wrong: maybe the jumper. But no, it was the hair!

I didn't notice it before, but it was a bit longer than normal and this morning it was a bit wild. Lisa grumbled about the nurses who only did half their job.
I defended them by saying that the schedule of these nurses was incredible. They only have a few minutes per client or patient and then have to race to the next one. Lisa was adament: they should have done my mother's hair properly.
"I'll get the brush!"

"Oh no!", my mother moaned softly. I kept silent, I was flabbergasted.
Lisa ran upstairs, came downstairs again, opened every drawer she could find. Sometimes my mother would say: "The brush certainly is not in there." It didn't stop the cleaning lady, who even opened the drawer next to my mother. I knew she kept some cash money in there and so Lisa now knew about this too, but maybe she had done this routine before and this was not new to her.
Lisa sighed, grumbled, even cursed and after every drawer in the living room had revealed it's secrets she ran upstairs again.

Triumphantly she came down again, hairbrush in her hands: "It was in the bathroom after all!"
I thought she was going to brush my mother's hair, but instead she first went to the kitchen and came back with a dripping brush and started to work at my mother's hair. When I was young we were never allowed to come near her hair, could not comb or brush it, we always said that she probably had hairpain. Lisa did it quite roughly; I was surprised Mother did not complain at all.
In the end the hair was sort of glued to her head, it looked a bit ridiculous.
Lisa stood behind her, very proud about her handywork: "See! It's much nicer like this!"
Mother rolled her eyes and pulled a face.
I wrestled not to burst out in laughter, managed to say: "I'll make that coffee now" and almost ran to the kitchen.
=============================================

Polystyrene

As lovers of a good glass of wine we gave ourselves the luxury to order wine from Spain. While some goods you order from nearby towns in the UK sometimes might take weeks to be delivered; the boxes with wine arrived within a week. Packaged in a very safe way, so there is no breakage, they used polystyrene in the shape of a crate for  safety. Well done!

Getting rid of garbage nowadays is a very serious matter: we sometimes have hours of discussion to come to an agreement about in which bin certain articles must be put, to do it in the right way. We try to do our share in recycling where we can, but the guidelines on the leaflet ot the garbage collecting company or the site of the council are not always very clear. To do the right thing I asked one of the garbage men how to do dispose of it in the proper way. I was a bit surprised, but NO it could not be recycled.

The next week I was fully prepared: I had put the polystyrene in plastic bin bags and put them together with the black bin that is destined for household waste. To make it easier I put the bags next to the bin. Because of a strong wind I had to replace them a few times, but I was pleased to do that for a good cause. I kept my eyes on the road: after the garbage collectors are gone, it's best to take the wheelie bins from the street as soon as possible to prevent the wind having little games with them.

When they came I was surprised to see one of the men fiddling with the bags instead of taking them along. I ran out of the house to see what was going on. I saw him placing red stickers on the bags. As a former citizen of the Netherlands I realised that this meant danger! Over there you first get yellow stickers and after that red stickers when you do something wrong. The first ones are a warning, the second ones mean that you are banished from the garbage collection society for some time.

I told the man I had asked his colleague what I should do to offer up my polystyrene and that I thought I was meant to do it in this way. He shook his head:
"No, the polystyrene should be in the bin." I started putting the bags in the bin.
The man shook his head again:"No you can't do that, the bags are stickered."
I pulled the stickers off the bags, which was not easy; he looked at me in amazement.
I put the now heavily damaged bags in the bin.

He thought a few seconds and took all of the bags including the polystyrene bags out of the bin and put everything under his arms. His mates didn't have the time to wait for his discussions with me, so they were already driving out of the street. My new friend ran after them with my bags under his arms. Two of the bags now were really ripped open and a bit of polystyrene was flying around in the street. He managed to catch it and ran out of the street, out of my sight.

My wife asked me what happened and I told her about my experience; she was not very positive about the system. I disagreed, told her I was glad I was in the UK. In the Netherlands the man would eventually have refused to take the bags along, he would have told me that even when the stickers were removed that still didn't take away the fact that they had been stickered and that the warning I had received was very valid. I reminded her of the neighbour in the Netherlands who had put food waste in biological dissolving bags. She had got a warning for putting her food waste in plastic bags. Even in appeal this stood.

Rules are rules!
======================================

The Car Booklet

At first he thought it was a stupid present. A small notebook and then they added a pencil and an eraser. His uncle and aunt probably had no idea what to give a 9-year-old boy on his birthday. At first he just left it in the living room until his mother said something about it. Then he put it in the bottom of his closet.

He never played much. He saw only girls outside school: his sisters and a few neighboring girls. They lived on a quiet road that ran through a forest. There were only four houses on the road. It was half an hour's walk to school, so boys in his class never wanted to come with him. He thought that was fine, he liked to read. Therefore, he was also very happy that his parents decided to take the reading portfolio. Actually there was only one magazine for him: the Donald Duck. But he also read the rest, except Woman's Own, because it was always about knitting, cooking and such.

He read a piece about plane spotters in the magazine Playmate. At first he thought they were people who were saying ugly things about airplanes. That would have been crazy. But it was not like that at all. These people would look at airplanes at airports and then write down what they saw.
It gave him an idea: he could do something like that with cars. After all, he had that notebook and then he could write down license plates, make and type of the car and the country it came from.

And so he wanted to go out with Father's fishing stool, but Father did not allow that and he had to put it back. He knew another solution: a little further in a bend in the road was a fence and you could sit on it. A great plan.
He had checked the clock before he left. He put the time at the top of the page and then all he had to do was to wait for the cars.

Not much came by, but because of that bend in the road they did not drive quickly and he could see everything quite well.
His eldest sister came over, being curious, she wanted to know what he was doing. And she thought it was stupid: it was of no use to anybody, she said.
But he quickly responded: if crooks or spies drove past, he would have written them down nicely! And that could be useful for the police.
His sister snorted contemptuously, but left him alone after that.

Sometimes it was quite difficult, like the time a military column passed. He could only have noted the first - with the red flag - and the last - with the green flag. Once a car came from the country CH. He had looked in the atlas, but he couldn't find the land. Even father didn't know where that country was, but he would check it out.
A day later he received the answer, father had it written down. It was Communautee Helvetia, Switzerland. Father couldn't tell why they used that crazy name.

He was lying on his bed on a warm summer evening. He couldn't sleep and through the open window he could hear the birds chirping and his parents talking to the neighbors. A car stopped in front of the house. He got out of bed and looked out the window. Police!
Right, here things were really happening. They knew about his book and they came to have a look.
He heard his parents say "come in".

His parents and the police were in the living room, he could hear them talking and one of the officers said "checked". After a while they left. The living room was quiet for a moment. He could hear his oldest sister coming out of her room and walking down the stairs. He decided to follow her example and took his car booklet along. There was a good chance that he would have to come to the police station with his booklet tomorrow.
In the room he saw that Mother was crying, Father looked very sad and said that the police had come to tell that Grandpa had died.

His sister climbed onto Mother's lap and started crying.
He himself just felt weird. He only felt disappointment with his booklet; felt guilty, he also wished he was in grief. Of course crying was not necessary, men and big boys did not do that. Father would probably say something about it if he did.
So he just stood next to Father, who took his hand and squeezed it a little. He squeezed back, he didn't know what else to do.

He had put his booklet on the table and looked at it.
His sister was right: it was of no use to anybody.
=====================================

Pedro

Our family living in the seventies with six children and father having a just adequate salary at the railroads, things were not very luxurious. Things became even more problematic when the oldest three, including me, became teenagers. To give us pocket money was almost impossible, so my oldest sister and I decided to make our own money by hiring ourselves out as babysitters. This was also very convenient, because we would have a bit of space and quiet to do our homework for school.

We were allowed to keep the money ourselves, so my sister spent hers on the skirts and dresses she was normally not allowed to have. My father was absolutely disgusted with her short mini skirts, declaring that it was asking to get bladder infections and he would not have any pity for her. He didn't like my spending of money either, hated every note of music on the albums of popmusic I bought.

Sometimes my sister took friends back to our home; my father was always interested but kept making his comments about the ridiculous short skirts. One day she came home with a girl with an ultra short outfit and a big white cat. Both were very friendly. The girl was called Brenda and had to go home pretty soon, but the cat didn't have one. Father was out working and my mother's mind was not strong enough to resist our pleas to let the cat stay. "But only if your father agrees."

The cat got the name Pedro and an old banana box to sleep in. The sisters arranged a nice bed for him with old doll clothes, which my mother regarded as a waste of nice things. But it looked nice and the cat even liked it, understanding what we wanted for him. The box was placed in the kitchen and all we had to do was to get some cat food and wait for father's judgement. He would be home quite late, so we would have to wait till the next morning to hear this.

Father came home in the night and obviously had taken the box and the cat outdoors, because the next morning we could see the box under the little school desk in the back garden. It was a Saturday, so we were able to have some negotiations with father. It was decided that the cat should stay outdoors, but did not have to go. All the children were a bit disappointed with this, but my sister put a finger to her lips and grinned. I think we all understood: just pretend he has his way and we'll have Pedro indoors whenever we can.

Pedro became very soon Patey and was spoiled every day. He understood the house and the surroundings became his territory and he decided to mark it to warn other cats off. The tom cat spray is very smelly, quite a horrible odour and of course my father was very unhappy about this. My oldest sister knew the solution: have the cat neutered. My father didn't have to think about that: "I'm not going to pay for that! He'll have to go." My sister and I reacted in one voice: "We'll pay for that."
Father grumbled a bit, but it happened like we wanted.

All was great with Patey and us children and I noticed that mother secretly gave him nice bites of food. There were some incidents: Patey proved to be an excellent hunter, killing nests of mice, little birds and even ducklings. My youngest sisters would be in tears and I expected father to banish Patey, but to my surprise he just explained to the little girls that this was what nature was about. He grew fatter because of our good food and the hunting stopped. 

One day I came home and Patey was lying on the doormat in the kitchen. He didn't lift his head, he was obviously very ill. My parents were in the living room and they were aware he was not well at all.
"You can't just leave him there to die!", I exclaimed. They just shrugged, father added that he was not going to pay a hefty bill from a vet.

My oldest sister and I wanted to pay the bill for the vet again, but had a problem. We had no money at all. She had spent everything on a new outfit to impress her new boyfriend and I had bought an expensive camera which had been used to make very arty black and white pictures of the cat, canals and railroad tracks. We both felt very bad about having no money for our beloved cat. That night my father agreed that Patey could sleep in his box in the kitchen. I wouldn't call it sleep; he was in a coma.

The next day the situation was the same and we were desperate for a solution. My sister came home that afternoon with one. Brenda told her about the veterinary academy that was part of the university in the near big city. They treated all animals, from gerbils to horses and mostly without a fee. She already had made enquiries: cats were treated for free too.

The next day was a Saturday again and Patey was put in an overnight bag with his trusted doll clothes and we went by train to the university city. (We could travel for free having a father that worked for the railroads.) It was a short trip by bus to the university after that. Once in a while we stroked Patey who a few times moaned in a high pitched voice, but for the rest hardly moved at all.

It was not a long wait in the clinic. A young guy wearing a rubber apron over his clothes came to get our cat. He talked to us and the cat in a very calming way, said that the cat was in good hands. He asked us if we trusted him and we nodded. Of course, there was no alternative. We waited with the empty bag between us and neither of us said a word. Finally the guy came back, there was some blood on the apron and he had no cat with him.

He shook his head and told us that Patey had been a very old cat and had died of old age. He would have been between 13 and 18 years old. My sister blurted out:
"But we had him neutered not even two years ago." The guy had to laugh:
"That must have been a bit sad for the old chap." He offered to get the dead cat for us so we could bury him, but we declined his kind offer. We both didn't like the thought of bringing a dead Patey back to our little sisters.

So he shook our hands and said goodbye. All the way back we didn't speak at all. I think my sister had the same vision in her mind: the guy with the blood on his apron. Probably Patey's blood. He had looked like a butcher and we had brought the poor cat over there to be slaughtered. Maybe a real vet had given a different result, but we would never know. I never should have bought the camera.
=====================================================

Sou-nen

It was Adrie's turn to choose where we would spend the break. As always, most colleagues lingered in the canteen, where you could buy cheese and ham balls with a cup of watery soup. The cheese always reminded me of insoles and I always kept away from the ham, which many covered with a layer of mustard to give it some flavor.

Adrie and I were always happy to get away from the office with a musty smell everywhere. "The air of mature files" as we called it. Even in the canteen you could smell it, it seemed to hang in the clothes of the employees. Like my only friend in the company, I was also not keen to bring a packed lunch from home, which is why we were in our free time in cafes and the like, where we ordered an omelet or a Russian egg with a coffee or, if it was warm, a beer.

This time, he chose to go to a Chinese restaurant a few blocks from the office. On the way we met a street musician who mistreated "Mister Tambourine Man". "You should be ashamed of yourself," said Adrie, "you should pay us to hear this!" He pretended to dive into the cigar box containing a few coins. The song was interrupted with a curse and some kind of threat with the guitar. We walked on laughing as the musician handled another song.

The Chinese restaurant had a takeaway section, which we walked through to get to the tables. My friend walked through it as if he were a regular, who even had a favorite table. As we sat and went through the menu, I asked about it. I was right, he came here more often. I noticed that he looked around restlessly. An elderly Chinese lady was standing behind the take-away counter, which also served as a bar. She called back something unintelligible and a moment later a young super slim Chinese girl appeared at our table.

Suddenly Adrie had a bright red blush on the cheeks. I took a good look: the Chinese was or seemed quite young and had a lovely face. "Can I already take the order or would you first like to look further in the menu?" she asked in almost flawless Dutch. We both ordered a spring roll special and a beer. As she walked away I couldn't resist saying something, "Now I understand why we went here! Be careful not to drool." Adrie got redder in his face and I decided not to make it harder for him.

He was struggling enough: every time she came to our table (with the spring rolls, the beer and the bill) he struggled to get his words out. When she walked away he watched her with a sigh.

On the way back to the office, he confessed that he thought he was in love. He only gave himself little chance with such a nice girl with his thin, receding hair and floppy ears. I tried to give him some courage; "You can always try. Just ask her out." He sighed gloomily.

The following breaks went to the Chinese restaurant again and again. Adrie sometimes ordered a tomato soup in addition to the now traditional spring roll, where he stirred large amounts of sambal. After a week I caught the name of the girl, who apparently worked every day. Sou Nen was called by her mother, or grandmother, or aunt, when we came in again. From now on I had to hear her name every now and then. My friend said it as if he tasted something very tasty.

After a few weeks it sounded next to me on the way to the office: "I'm going to ask Friday. I'm going to do it." I just nodded; I wondered if he could find the courage.

That Friday he was very quiet on his way to restaurant "De Lange Muur", the sweat was on his forehead and he looked straight ahead. Even the pitiful street musician was safe this time.

We sat down at our usual table again, while Adrie seemed white this time. He sighed and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the napkin. The older lady, as always, called back. When I looked that way, I saw an elderly Chinese shuffle our way. She looked exactly like the lady behind the take-away counter. Maybe her sister? Adrie saw it now and murmured something under his breath. As always, the spring roll was ordered again, with a beer. The tip that my friend usually gave was almost omitted this time.

The Chinese restaurant was visited a few more times, until Adrie suggested playing billiards for an hour instead of eating that eternal spring roll. We never saw Sou Nen again.

================================================== 

The Band

In the 50s and 60s common people didn't have the money to afford a holiday and certainly not one abroad. My parents and their brothers and sisters found a way to let their children have a change of scenery anyway. My cousins, my sisters and I would be brought over to the aunts and uncles so the children would spend some time together and their parents would have some peace and quiet for weeks.

We would mostly travel by train, my sisters and I would go to the north of the country or to Amsterdam or Rotterdam. And the cousins who lived over there would come and stay with us in exchange. The fact that our house was quite full – there were eight of us living there - was not a problem: my father would set up a tent on the lawn in the back garden in which two children could sleep.

When we were a bit older we were sent off by ourselves. My father worked for the railroads and we were quite used to travelling, having a pass that was valid in the whole country. Sometimes I would get on the wrong train on purpose, to see something else than the normal route.

One year my eldest sister and I were staying in the north again and we got the pleasant surprise of a cousin who started his own band. We were all in our early teens and there was a feeling everywhere of young people that if you could play an instrument you could start up a band. My cousin was a very serious young man, we always thought he was forced into a sort of father role after loosing his father at a young age. His brother who was only one year younger, was quite rebellious in comparison. I could understand that he didn't see his brother as his senior.

So seeing the serious one of the two starting a band was a double surprise for us. As always his preparations were very thorough. He studied the music made by the Yardbirds and especially their guitar player, Jeff Beck. Their music was quite a revelation to me: I was very much into the Kinks, the Swinging Blue Jeans and the Dave Clark Five much to the regret of my parents who considered all this new music utter rubbish.

The eldest cousin played lead guitar in the band, there was a drummer – who forbade everybody to touch his kit – and a bass player. He was more friendly, let me fool around on his bass guitar and even taught me the chord progression of some blues tunes. Not very hard, I have to admit. The last person in the band was the singer. He was a very skinny boy, even skinnier than me, with a face that reminded me a bit of a rat. My aunt – who was the friendliest person I ever met – was friendly towards him, but she told us: “I don't really like that boy. Somehow I don't trust him.”

So we took great care not to let him near the bit of money we had taken along and kept a close eye. It was very surprising when he one day showed up to tell my cousin: “My mother doesn't allow me any more to come over to your place.” He was asked why, but did not make this clear. My sister and I thought that the reason could be that my aunt's family never went to church or that she was considered to be a bit posh. Her Dutch was perfect and very unlike the local dialect. That was spoken too by the younger cousin, much to the regret of his mother. But I don't think my aunt ever fitted in the very closed community in which they lived but were not part of.

My cousin now had a problem: he was planning to start doing gigs, but without a singer that was impossible. He asked his brother, who only had a good laugh. He asked me, but as a boy I was deadly shy, so no way this was possible for me. My sister tried to sing some of the songs, but didn't sound very bluesy. Normally she would belt out songs while doing the dishes at home, but that would be songs of Francoise Hardy, Dusty Springfield, France Gall and Sylvie Vartan. So the style of the band didn't fit her and my cousin was realistic enough to know that the distance to our home would be a problem. When we went home to our parents again, there still was no new singer.

Eventually a singer was found and according to the family in the north the Band was the best band of the North. I never heard them play and it never came to the making of a record.

This was caused by the collapse of the band: my cousin met a nice girl and joined forces with her to play in concerts for Youth for Christ. The electric guitar was exchanged for an acoustic one. A very unexpected development to us.

The next time the brothers came to stay with us he joined me to sleep in the tent on the lawn. We had one night a deep conversation about the end of the universe while looking at the starry sky and he assured me that he would convert me to Christianity. I in turn assured him this would never happen. And indeed I never joined that band either.

The band was never mentioned afterwards and their former leader became a teacher, later even became the headmaster of the school.

==============================================

Funeral cake

In the Netherlands there is a cake everybody is familiar with. It has a yellow colour and it seems that everybody who is a bit of a cook, can bake it.

So you get it in quite a lot of variations. See it a lot in offices when somebody is celebrating a birthday. When you are a bit tight with money you don't order something nice from a baker, instead you or your wife bakes a cake or you buy a cheap cake from a supermarket.

The best of these cakes was made by my father. He would add a bit of lemon sauce to the dough which made it quite nice and moist. Very unlike what you get from the shops, it's often called “hotel cake” and tastes a bit like cardboard if you are lucky and is very dry. Next to office birthday celebrations it also pops up regularly at funerals, reason why we nicknamed it “funeral cake”. You attend the regular funeral and afterwards you are invited to come back to the funeral parlour for a bit of togetherness with relatives and close friends. You will get coffee and that cake and it's hard to say “No” to an invitation.

I left the Netherlands years ago, funerals in the UK often end in the pub where you will have snacks and something to drink. The drink is something you most of the time will pay for yourself, so it can be something else than weak brown drab fluid.

The last funeral I attended in the Netherlands was of a former colleague. I hadn't seen him for years, but we got along quite well while he still worked, which was some years before.

After the actual burial a couple of other former colleagues and me were contemplating about the guy in the parlour. We all had our memories about the man, who really had been a very nice guy. Coffee in one hand, piece of cake in the other. I told a funny thing. Suddenly tears sprang in my eyes and I waved at the others, I could not continue. I must have looked quite alarming and sad, tears in my eyes and all.

“Oh my! I never knew you were so close to him!”, one colleague exclaimed.

I took a gulp of coffee and swallowed hard: “Sorry, I have some problems with the cake. Almost suffocating...” I had problems even saying this. One of the others slammed on my back and I felt the cake slowly sinking.

===========================================

Hank

"Who is that?", his mother asked, pointing at the window. They were having desserts and in front of the house was a boy, obviously waiting for somebody, having a glance in the house again and again.
"That's my friend, Hank", he answered, while the rest of the family all turned around and were having a good look. The boy probably noticed and walked out of sight, but returned after what could not have been more than a minute. He spooned his pudding in an amazing speed, felt a bit uncomfortable with the situation. Why could stupid Hank not wait at the corner of the street, like he was asked to do?

"Can I go now?" He looked at his sisters' plates; as usual they were eating in slow-motion. He feared he would have to wait till everybody was finished, what always happened when his parents were not completely happy with life and their children. To his relief he heard: "Oh, go on then! But be home before it gets dark!" He did not want to look to eager, but had problems not to run off.
Hank had moved to the corner of the street when he got out of the house and they ran together to the fields that surrounded the village.

The next morning, at the breakfast table, he was questioned like he feared he would be. Who was this boy? Where did he live? What did his father do for a job? Did he have any brothers or sisters? How old were the parents?
Reluctantly he gave answers where he could, but ran off after he finished to stack away the last sandwich in his mouth. Again he could go, without waiting for the others to finish.
The weather was a lot worse, so they decided to play in Hank's house with his trainset. Having such a thing was a luxury he could only dream off.

The next day at the breakfast table his father said: "Mrs.Dimble said that you were a polite and very nice boy. We were very pleased to hear this." He didn't react on this, had a feeling of being betrayed, just made a sort of mumbling sound that seemed to escape him.
"What's that?", his father asked.
"Nothing", he reacted, as honest as could be.
Hank wanted to play at his place again, but he refused and they went into the fields again. Things felt different and Hank teamed up in a meadow between some cows with a farmer's boy and had a peeing competition he himself didn't want to enter.

After that day he saw Hank a lot less, didn't go to his place anymore. It was Hank who kept their friendship up a bit.
One evening the telephone rang, of course his father answered, the telephone was not something he or his sisters would touch and mother never seemed to answer either.
Father sounded very friendly: "No problem at all Mrs.Dimble! It really was our pleasure to give these stamps. I hope she'll make a quick recovery."

The word "stamps" gave him a bad gut feeling. What stamps were they talking about?
When father was seated again he dared to ask: "What did Mrs.Dimble thank you for?"
Father looked at him like he should have known, like the question was stupid: "We gave your stamps to her for her little niece, who is in hospital. She is quite ill and you don't do anything with your stamps anyway."
He had a feeling of an impossible anger, had no way to let it out. Maybe he could have said "I could not do anything because you want me out of the house all the time", or "these stamps were mine; you can't give away other people's things". Instead he said nothing, only mumbled: "I go to bed now."
In bed he punched the pillow very hard, but it did not give any relief.

Weeks later his mother asked: "We never see your friend Hank anymore..."
His answer was very clear, he thought: "We are no friends anymore."
"Why?"
"Just because!"
That evening his parents went over to the Dimble's house again, to play cards. His older sister would be in charge again.
=======================================

Wallpaper

It was a great thought: no more primary school, people would be taking him more seriously. First the summer and after that he would go to school by bicycle in the city instead of going to the small building in the village. There would be new things to study, it all would be fabulous! He really looked forward to have a lot of schoolbooks.

Father took him apart, told him that there was a job in the house that needed to be taken care of. He expected to hear that he had forgotten about polishing the shoes of the whole family or that the grass needed another cut. But no, Father had something special: the walls of the living room were covered in wallpaper that had seen better days. Years of smoking by him and guests had changed the wallpaper's basic white colour into yellow. So he had bought new and it was a man's job to put it on the walls. Father made it sound like a big honour that he had been chosen to help. What made it extra special was that it all was going to happen in the night. No women (he meant Mother and the sisters) would be around.

That night the whole family, except for Father and the boy, went to bed quite early. They dragged all the furniture out of the room and put them outside in the garden at the back of the house. Father got a special table he had kept in the shed, it needed to be folded out and was quite long. Together they put it together and after that he got loads of little rolls of wallpaper. He had it all cut on the right length days before. The boy had never noticed.

He also had a big bucket full of glue, he must have prepared that in the afternoon. The son never noticed he had done this either. There were also two big brushes, not something suitable for a painting. The boy got involved in the next step: he had a pair of scissors tied to a rope. the son had to stand on a chair with the rope while the man draw a line with a huge pencil over the rope. "So we know where to start."
The boy nodded, the man seemed to know what he was doing. He himself had thought you could start in a corner or next to a door, told this to Father. He had to laugh, it probably was a silly thought.

He took a roll, asked his son to hold the end and he straightened it, put an ashtray on his end. After that he put the glue on with one of the brushes, while the boy was just holding the paper till he had wetted it with glue. He folded the wet paper once and got on the chair, putting the paper exactly on the line he had drawn. He pressed it partly and then the younger one was asked to unfold it. He wanted to press the lower bit with the other brush to push some air bubbles out, but had to step aside. Father did that himself. He also cut a bit off, because it was a bit too long. The boy watched and felt useless.

The next roll was hung the same way; while he was cutting the lower end, I asked if I should start putting glue on the next roll. The answer was clear, definitely not. This went on all night, when the day had really started he did the parts of the wall where the sockets were. That needed extra care: he pinched holes in the paper and cut around it, so the electric wires were visible. He had taken the electricity off, of course. He remembered when they had done the wallpaper in the old house, he had been 6 or 7 years old and very curious. The nice red, blue and green wires could give you quite a shock, he had experienced. He never told his parents about this and would not do so that day either.

The work was finished when Mother came downstairs. She was very pleased with both of them: it looked great, the boy thought so too. She was going to make breakfast after they had put the furniture back. Father put two deckchairs on the empty spots in the garden. He sat down in one and gestured the son to sit next to him. Mother brought sandwiches and a glass of buttermilk. She told Father that the coffee was in the make. He gave her the thumbs up. The man and the boy ate in silence and he drank his buttermilk. After that Father stretched out on the chair and fell asleep. Mother came with his coffee, saw him asleep and put her finger on her lips. "Shh."

The boy got up very carefully, not to wake Father and went to his bedroom. While he heard his sisters going downstairs, he got into bed. The windows were open, it was going to be a glorious day. He tried to sleep, envied Father: the man could sleep everwhere at any time. He could hear children playing in the street and kept turning around in bed until he had enough of it. He got up and went downstairs. Father and Mother were drinking coffee together. He told them he could not sleep and was going to play a bit of football if his mates were around.

Father stopped him: "Thanks for helping out. We did a great job together. Some day we'll do it again."
The boy nodded: "Sure", but a little voice in his head told him it would never happen again.
"Bye now!" He ran off to the street.
===============================================

Old People

In my younger years I have been flying a lot, but nowadays there is a lot I don't like about it. I very much dislike the uncomfortable chairs in planes and the unfriendly security on airports. They treat you like you probably will let the plane explode: so they let you sweat shoeless in spaces without airconditioning, try to have your trousers sinking to your knees by forcing you to take your belt off, make a mess of your luggage if they can and dispossess any liquids you want to take along on a flight.

In reality nowadays the danger is lurking from within the plane, technical failures and manic depressive pilots threaten your life. To add to the danger there are misinformed military who will shoot rockets to try to bring you down. All in all enough reason for me to travel by cruise ship. Maybe I'm an old moaner, but it's a lot more pleasant. Of course there still are security checks, but they are done discreetly and with much patience and friendliness.

On the ships is good food and quite good entertainment. We love the classical music they provide and always attend the recitals. The music is very relaxing and that shows in the position of the audience: often you see the majority of the people asleep on their chairs or almost nodding off. You can't really blame them: you really have to have a thorough search before you can find passengers younger than 65. The listeners probably are used to having a little kip in the afternoon.

After a piano recital we decided to stay in the room, which was transformed to a venue for Afternoon Tea. Next to us an elderly couple took seats and while we were enjoying the little sandwiches, the small cakes and scones, we had a conversation with them. Like always, soon there were the exchanges of experiences and the comparing of cruises of different companies.

I asked them: "What do you think of SAGA?"
Answer: "Not something for us! These ships are always full with old people."
I almost choked in my coffee, but managed to keep a straight face.
We waited until the couple was gone before we had a big laugh and looked around us. I don't think there was anybody younger than 70 in the room. We cheered: "Wow, we really are young people!"
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Overners

The rain was supposed to continue the rest of the day, but suddenly stopped and the sun brightened everything. We decided to escape from the house and have a walk after all. It's a short drive to St.Helen's, to the Duver and because we like it, we went over there for some fresh air.

Everything was wet and soaked, it caused the seaweed on the beach to be less smelly. Normally there is an odour of rotting when the tide is ebbing, but even with an amazing low tide the air now was as clean as it looked fresh. In the blue sky the full moon was visible, always a strange sight during daytime.

From our island we could see the mainland on the other side of the Solent, the winter sun shone on Portsmouth and made reflections of the Spinnaker Tower, so it looked like it was a source of light.
In the distance four "parked" freight ships were on the water, together with the ferry that moved quickly along, on it's way to Brittany. Far away to the right the Condor came in sight, this ferry coming from the Channel Islands.

Seagulls were bobbing on the water, a group of geese flew over, some crows were searching for food next to a bin, sanderlings ran over the beach, frequently pecking in the sand. A few people were walking their dogs on the beach. All in all, there is always a lot to see on and near the Solent. We were standing still, just admiring the sight.

"What a lovely sight, isn't it?" An elderly lady was standing on the edge of the car park, looking at the same things as us. We discussed living on the island. We had been living there longer, but I stated that - of course - this didn't make us Islanders. We all agreed, we were Overners in the eyes of the Islanders. It's hard to become an Islander, it's impossible. You have to be born on the island to be one. It's also hard to become really acquainted to Islanders, it sometimes even looks like that you only get more words from them when there is a profit to be made, the old lady joked.

So we agreed again that it was really lovely to live on the island and that it was important for Overners to be friendly and communicate with each other. We told her we should resume our walk and after exchanging names said goodbye to the friendly lady. She was going to search for her husband and their three rescue dogs.
"See you next time!"
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