Dutch 101:
Tootsines Goodbye
Tootslater Seeya later
Tootsguy Seeya tomorrow
Tootsie Bye
Flying into Amsterdam. All canals and flatness. The field explodes into blackbirds.Van Gogh’s last, haunting painting flashes into view in my head. Urinals in the airport terminal have little ‘fly’ targets in them. The second time I’ve seen this this month. Can’t remember where the first was, though. Oh my – it seems rational adults can be trusted to use normal, screw-thread water taps, instead of the stupid, tweedle-dum tweedle-dee push-button ones! My eyesight’s shot past 20ft. I hope it’s fatigue. Staying up ’til 3 getting Paris tip-offs from Tony Bourdain. Read the graffiti trackside on the way to Arnhem; HITS, RHYME, BRUSH, DUPLO.
Great Indonesian lunch. Later, discovered that my Opa’s (grandad’s) promise of a party with unlimited food and drink translated into bingo and an enormous, almond cookie. Seems there’s a lot of politics in octagenarian bingo; “Because you don’t live here, if you win you’ll get dark glances – they’re a jealous bunch”. Good wine, pickled herring, smoked eel and smoked salmon. Opa extoles the virtue of TV show ‘Casualty’; he likes it because of all the ingenious ways the writers come up with to injure people, it seems. At coffee, an old boy enters and shouts out a harmonious “OH YEAAA”. Opa tells me the guy’s not mad … just looks it. My grandad lives with other ex-servicemen in a Dutch military museum. Living exhibits.
Saturday was a really weird day. There’s a guy here who I swear loses teeth between smiles. There’s also a guy here with a green parrot on his shoulder. I think it’s great that an ex-Navy man has a parrot on his shoulder. He quizzed me on why, when he printed photos from his computer, only the last in the set would come out in colour? It was surreal, what with the parrot eye-balling me and Opa acting as translator (made less helpful by the fact that he kept referring to the coloured ink as ‘paint’, and earlier that day he’d asked me what a website was, so I wasn’t confident that all of my advice was coming through unscathed in his translations – which would explain the guy’s puzzled expression. And the parrot’s.). The guy perked up, however, when the smoked eels were brought in. Now I’ve seen eels, and I’ve eaten smoked eel. But I’ve never seen eels, smoked. These, apparently, were ‘medium’ – meaning about 15″ long. Just as I was coming to terms with the fact that yes, eels have skin and heads, the octagenarian opposite me pulled off a head and sucked it. Eeel brains taste like eel, only more bitter and … gritty. Eating a whole smoked eel (actually, two), is an amazing sensory experience. The skin is slimy and smooth, but for wrinkling around the head. It’s tone ranges between tissue-white and a murky green/brown – translucent, revealing a raised, ridged pattern, similar to that found on Greek temple facades (think multiple, simplified swastikas, interlinked). With practice, you can peel it off in one go. The flesh is tender and mild, thinning towards the tail and replaced by an auburn jelly. You eat it straight off the spine. All this requires a large napkin. It’s messy work.
When I visited Opa 5 years ago, there was a guy waiting in the breakfast line in a wheelchair, with a mangled fore-arm. Seems the shrapnel had torn it apart, and he was one of the first people ever to have skin graft reconstructive surgery. The British Queen Mother had visited him in hospital shortly after the operation. They’d got to talking, and he’d told her that once they’d camped by a school that had red rose gardens, and it was the most beautiful thing he’d seen during his time in combat. The next day he woke up, his room full-to-bursting with red roses. The QM had ordered them in for him overnight. He was crying by the time he got to telling me that bit. I think he died a short time ago.
This is beautiful. It’s taken from her latest album, on the leaf label [www.posteverything.com], which has been kicking out great tunes for years: http://lekplats.com/av/colleen-ill_read_you_a_story.mpg
