Found Objects

The grammar-school kid had to study for a Latin test (they have a test week every six weeks) and asked me to help. We went briefly through the gender rules, I explained what ‘congruence’ meant, and then we tackled the nearest text to see if it had any interesting grammatical features. “Why do I have to translate this again? We did it in class!” she protested with proper adolescent fury. I said, “Because I’m the boss right now, and that you’ve translated it already is a good and useful thing because then we can concentrate on the grammar instead of the meaning.”

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A fencing meet practically next door —12 minutes by train— so we could leave late and had most of the morning for housework and last-minute weekend shopping. At the entrance to the sports hall, one of the judges greeted us and asked “did it go all right by public transport?” I’m used to people at fencing meets thinking that getting there by public transport is by definition difficult and unpleasant and we’re heroic for suffering it, so I said, “why, yes, of course” without telling him about the roundabout bus route that the public-transport planner had made us take: bus 2 that goes all through the newish housing estate, when we could have taken bus 4 that goes straight, and a driver who told us that the stop I thought was our stop wasn’t, and later asked why we hadn’t got off there. (In fact going places by public transport is usually pleasant, though time-consuming, and easy once you’ve got the hang of it. I suppose it’s mostly a matter of competence, though; I can imagine people not used to it getting completely confused.) It wasn’t until later that I realised that he thought we came from Gouda, because that was the place where he’d first met us, and Gouda is on the other side of the country and happened to be completely isolated because of railway works and an accident.

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Her sisters will probably follow in time, but are now mightily annoyed with their teachers (the selfsame two teachers that the grammar-school kid had some trouble with last year) whom they will have to put up with (up with whom they will have to put, to satisfy the prescriptivists) for two years because it’s a combination 7/8 and they’re in 7. Now if that meant that they’d be able to do 7 and 8 in one year it would actually be worth it, but (a) these teachers wouldn’t cooperate even if we tried, and (b) they really are only ten years old, and they’d be starting high school at just or not quite eleven. Not that it seems to matter much at that school (I’m not responsible for their web design, God forbid): of the thirty-one kids in Naomi’s class almost half are less than twelve, and two of those are still ten. She herself is eleven and a half and one of the tallest in the class.

The first day started at 12:30 and was taken up with typical start-of-school things, like getting her locker key and a puzzle tour through the school which caused her to lose herself, and her group to lose each other, in the admittedly confusing corridors. And there was the amazing event of a whole class of very young adolescents groaning in dismay as one (wo)man because there won’t be any Latin this week: the Latin teacher is away to Rome with the third-years. This is what they came to grammar school for. It may be one of the few things that are better about the new school system (well, new since I was in grammar school): it causes the classical-studies stream to be populated by only those people who are actually interested. Nice people, too, the kind that we think of as ‘our sort of people’, who compliment her on her unusual blouse instead of making fun of it.

She came home knackered, of course, despite the lack of Latin, not the least from carrying six kilos of books on her back (though some of those were in her locker for part of the day, I hope). And then homework. A bit miffed about having parents look over her shoulder, but she’ll have to get used to that, because we intend to keep looking over her shoulder until she gets the hang of planning.

But she has more coherent geography than I did, and more interesting maths, and music lessons that actually teach something about music. The maths book came with a CD-Rom which was only-for-Windows, unnecessarily because all the example and practice programs were simple Java things, and Boudewijn managed to get it working under Linux quite easily. We’ll fight the ICT teacher (or at least the people who thought up the course, which is basically Windows-for-dummies) after Christmas when she gets ICT. Something will have to give way for that; her schedule is full. The only relevant thing I can find in the school guide is that both music and art are on the curriculum for one hour a week, and that she has two hours of music and no art now, so probably she’ll get two hours of art after Christmas. Perhaps it’s ‘study skills’ that’s only for the first semester.

She’s enjoying it immensely. Let’s hope it persists.

This is the home of either a small solitary bee or wasp, or a largish trap spider, though the latter is unlikely because I didn’t see any spinning-work or a trap door. It’s in the little alley that runs to the street between our house and the house next door. I saw something black and pea-sized disappear in it when I took my bicycle to the street to go and take the picture of the bug poster.

Nothing tastes as good as home-made strawberry jam. Well, no jam does, at least.

We bought a kilo of ripe strawberries and a kilo of geleisuiker (with added pectin and citric acid) and followed the instructions. It’s phenomenally easy. Cleaning the strawberries is most of the work.

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KPN is offering wireless internet with an advertisement that features something alarmingly like a bug.

The text reads: This summer in the garden: Direct ADSL from KPN, safe wireless internet. The orange circle offers the first month free and a free wireless modem.

The ‘bug’ is in fact a very flat laptop, not a wireless card as I thought when I first passed it.

The kids are away at camp, the house is full of hackers hacking away (Boudewijn is hosting the Krita Hackathon) so it ought to be easy to make some writing progress.

Erm, no. It flows like treacle; very sticky.

Probably because this is one of those awkward scenes that don’t write themselves and can’t be glossed over to fix in the second draft. It’s a court case, and I simply don’t know enough to let that write itself, I have to pay attention to every detail. I’m tempted, and about to give in to the temptation, to have the accused (the about-to-be king and his consort) simply split and leave everything dangling. They’re that kind of people.

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I’ve been wearing glasses for two and a half weeks now, and I must say that I like it. Not only the pure vision effect —I do really see a lot better, though the 3-D has lost its ‘wow’ factor— but it suits me to be a bespectacled person.

I think I’ve had everything now: rain, sleet, grease, condensation from opening the oven (I hadn’t expected that) or from drinking something hot (I hadn’t expected that either, and it made an old hand at glasses-wearing laugh at me at coffee after church), bumping into things because parts of my face are an inch or so further forward than I expect, kisses going ‘clank’ instead of ‘smack’. Oh, and all the little flies that used to fly into my eyes while I was cycling and don’t any more.

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All of this cost me the net sum of 59 cents.

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Trouw brought it as breaking news: Children perform best without TV, but with computer. (disclaimer: this may be free for subscribers of the paper newspaper only, but everything is in the articles it refers to). The girls were thrilled: they’d always known that it’s watching too much TV that makes the rest of the class stupid. Hours later, I found the same item on the news site nu.nl.

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I’ve always had very good eyesight. Last time my eyes were checked, about ten years ago, the left was 125% and the right 180% of normal. But they’ve always been very different: so different, in fact, that I’ve never had proper depth vision. And as it seems silly to have glasses to correct only that (cylinder and no correction; I don’t know if it’s even possible) I’ve never had glasses while my eyes were good enough.

But now I’m fortymumble, and my left eye had been falling short of expectations for some time, though not annoyingly enough to do something about it. Until this morning in the middle of the liturgy of the parish feast, when the slight squint that (I realise now) had become second nature suddenly sprouted a headache.

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Theatergroep Splinter came to the girls’ school and produced a Wizard of Oz… well, not really a musical, though there was a lot of music, and not really a play; let’s say a chunk of theatre. (Their web site, by the way, doesn’t mention this one; it must be new)

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It’s Release 3.4.0 Level “b”. And I’m not satisfied.

I keep an empty desktop: if it’s not covered by windows (as usual) the only things on it, apart from the panel, are two folders “inbox” and “objects” that contain files I’m working on. They live in the upper right corner of the desktop. At least, they’re supposed to live in the upper right corner of the desktop. My new KDE puts them in the upper left corner, along with the trash can (more about the trash can later). I put them back where I wanted them and unchecked “Automatically line up icons” in the Configure Desktop dialog, but it mysteriously checked itself again, and the folders went back to the left. Also (seems like another symptom of KDE forgetting what I want), I selected a different background for the splash screen on startup and though Control Panel duly shows it I still get the default blue-bend thing on startup, but I can live with that.

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There must have been a major cat chess event going on tonight. In the few streets, three minutes by bike, from folk dancing to home I saw at least four groups of cats observing each other. Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera with me (one never has in such circumstances) so here’s one we made earlier a picture I took of an earlier bout when I came home from taking folk-dancing pictures:

From our upstairs window I could see the tabby cat across the road behind its upstairs window, looking wistfully at the local section. The tabby isn’t allowed out, probably not yet as they only moved in yesterday. I had to retreat —one of the tabby’s people had business in the room and I wasn’t exactly decent as I was on my way to the bath— but later I saw the tail-end of what the cat had been watching: the long-haired ginger disappearing under some bushes and the large black retreating into his own back yard.

This time we knew where to go in Wageningen and didn’t have to stand on the crossing with four signs pointing in different directions, each one to another sports centre. And we found out, completely by accident, that the bus the public transport planner recommended from Ede-Wageningen station isn’t the most convenient one; the most convenient one is the one we took from Arnhem which goes all the way from one railway station to another, stopping three minutes’ walk from the sports hall.

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My fingers are bright red. I’ve been doing the Easter eggs.

I still need to painstakingly paint X <cross> B on each of the 150 eggs in gold, for Christos Voskrese, “Christ is risen”. There’s a woman in the parish who keeps offering to help, but this is my job and I’ll do it until I can’t any more.

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I’m not doing this nearly often enough. One of the tree itself, much recovered from its surgery after the storm:

And one of the tree and its surroundings. It’s almost too idyllic-looking a place to be right in front of the station, with the photograph taken from a particularly ugly new bridge.

“I think there’s a wasp in my room,” Menna said as she came down, still in her pyjamas. Well, this is better than two years ago at the same time of year, when the three girls were still sharing the room and there was a wasp on Rebecca’s chest with only a sheet between her and it. Or last year for that matter, when the wasp caused shrieks rather than calm observation.

This wasp was on the floor in front of the chest of drawers, making it impossible for Menna to get at her clothes safely. I think it was the same queen wasp that I put out of the window last year and the year before, but I’m not sure how long they live and whether they can communicate a perfect location to hibernate to their daughters.

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The kid’s been fencing in Almere twice before, but I’d never noticed the extremely weird art on the walkways that connect the sports cafe to the bleachers.

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Finally done a real round of marketing-type stuff. It doesn’t make me not want to be a writer —any job has its no-fun parts— but it’s the least fun part of the job, until now.

Three serious email queries, one of which got rejected in 20 hours (!): probably boilerplate, but friendly and encouraging boilerplate along the lines of “this is not the kind of thing I’m handling right now, it’s no reflection on the quality of your work, you should definitely seek other representation”. Pity, because this was the agent I liked best from his web site; when I have something else that’s finished enough, I’ll see if it’s the kind of thing he’s handling then.

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I survived the four and a half hours. The choirmistress counted prostrations and came out at 271, of which I could manage perhaps a hundred until my knees said “don’t do that to us!”

Next year I’ll follow the example of the choirmistress’ son, who came in at 9:15, just after the reading of the life of St. Mary and in good time to catch most of Matins. He doesn’t like the life of St. Mary any more than I do, and I recall a conversation with him last year in which he said “it makes me want to go out and sin!”

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Of all the services in the Church year, Matins with the life of St. Mary of Egypt, in the fifth week of Great Lent, is the one I like least. Not only the one hundred and fifty prostrations —I know my knees will protest after thirty if not sooner, and give up entirely after seventy or so— or the endless self-deprecation in the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, but especially the life of St. Mary itself. All it does to me is to make me feel guilty that I like life, including its carnal aspects.

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Foundations for Christian Education by John L. Boojamra. A friendly priest gave it to me years ago, I dimly remember skimming it at the time, I’m now reading it for Lent.

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I habitually use two supermarkets: the fairly expensive but quality (but see below) one that I’ll call ‘A’ because its name starts with A, and the cheap and barely adequate one that I’ll call ‘B’ because there’s a B in its name. And I buy flour from the organic shop, but not all the time because it’s expensive and the stuff they’ve got is not always what I want. Also, I used to go to the windmill in Twello a lot until they changed grain providers and the quality fell like a stone, but I might try them again if I ever have time on a Saturday; they’re only open on Saturdays, and it takes an hour to go there and back, more if the weather’s bad enough to go by bus because I tend to miss the bus back and they only go once an hour.

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Or, how this

turned into this.

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While cleaning the kitchen cupboard I found something I’d had for ages: a package of dried sourdough. I used to have a perfect sourdough culture, imported from Denmark where the mother of a friend gave it to me, but one summer I went away and didn’t bake and it died. I’ve tried to start another one a few times, but it never took properly. Now it’s Lent I want more interesting bread, because we don’t have as many interesting things to put on the bread, so I thought I’d try the stuff.

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If —I’ll be optimistic: when— an editor buys my book and gives me an advance, I’m going to buy a new bicycle. A new new bicycle, not just another second-hand rattletrap only slightly newer than my current rattletrap. This one. Or this one. Unfortunately they don’t have them in green. But I’ll settle for red or purple or grey as long as it’s the right shape for my proportions and the lights work when I want them to work. Well, I did get the light of the old grey mare bike fixed, and the chain oiled and tightened, but it’s still a rattletrap.

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And Whit Monday, of course, and Boxing Day.

Well, maybe not. They’re traditional, after all, and some people do want an extra day off to do furniture fun-shopping, and I especially don’t want to get mixed up in the debate about all Dutch national holidays being Christian holidays, “and can’t we accommodate other faiths, or abolish all feast days because nobody believes any more anyway?”

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Spring means getting out the summer coats. I happen to have an in-betweenish one, reversible so I can use it in the rain as well. The real summer jacket needs a new lining, but is otherwise okay — I think I’ll take it to the Turkish tailor next month and see what they can do and whether I can afford it. Boudewijn’s is threadbare but serviceable. Now for the kids:

State of Rebecca’s summer coat: all right, it was too large last year, this year it fits, if she keeps growing at this rate she’ll need a new one next year but we’ll worry about that next year.

State of Naomi’s summer coat: pinches in the shoulders, frayed sleeves, zipper is dead, Jim.

State of Menna’s summer coat: at least two sizes too small (sleeves come to the elbows), falling apart.

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Writing the post about circumcision made me think about issues of privacy. An attitude (almost wrote ‘meme’ but that means something else in the blog world these days, I think) that’s becoming more and more prevalent in modern society, at least modern Dutch society, is that you don’t need privacy if you have nothing to hide. And, conversely, that if you want privacy it’s a sure sign that you have something to hide.

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Vespers and Liturgy of the Annunciation. Warning: it’s silly.

In the altar:

• 1 Dutchman with a beard (but he’s the priest and it goes with the job)
• 2 Dutchmen without beards; the younger one also without the little moustache that he has at times
• 2 prepubescent boys, 1 White Russian and 1 Dutch, obviously without beards

In the choir:

• 2 Dutchwomen with headscarves
• 2 Dutchwomen without headscarves
• 1 Russian woman with a headscarf
• 2 Dutchmen without beards
• 1 Dutchman with a beard
• 1 Englishman without a beard

In the congregation:

• 2 Dutchmen with beards
• 1 Dutchman without a beard
• 2 Russian men without beards
• 1 man from one of the Central Asian former Soviet republics, I never know which one, without a beard
• 1 White Russian woman with a headscarf
• 1 Frenchwoman without a headscarf
• 1 Uzbek woman without a headscarf
• 1 teenaged girl, 2 prepubescent girls and 1 female toddler, all Dutch, all without headscarves
• 1 male toddler

There were lots of other interesting things to be observed, like the fact that the female toddler was the Dutch altar boy’s sister and the male toddler the White Russian altar boy’s brother, and that the whole alto section was wearing headscarves (as well as one-third of the soprano section). And the tenor section was unbearded, but there was only one of him. All the (hyphenated-)Russian women wore headscarves, or two-thirds if we count the Uzbek woman (who is married to one of the Russian men, after all).

Totals: 4 men with beards, all Dutch; 9 men without beards, more than half Dutch and the rest various nationalities; 4 women with headscarves, 2 Dutch, 1 Russian and 1 White Russian; 4 women without headscarves, various nationalities; 7 children of both sexes without beards or headscarves

This may serve to refute the claim that all Orthodox women wear headscarves (or, alternately, that only Russian women wear headscarves), and that all Orthodox men have beards. It’s probably true that among Orthodox men, not only the clergy, beards are more common than among non-Orthodox men, but I had no control sample of non-Orthodox men handy.

This is only in the ‘Church’ category because all the other posts about headscarves were, and because I don’t have a ‘Fashion’ category.

Slightly over a year ago, I posted that I didn’t have enough headscarves. In fact, only these (after I’d given the garish one away and retired the dark blue one with holes to the spare winter clothes bag):

Left to right: the old synthetic too-small Russian, the black one, the overly large one with leaves, the sheer and pretty georgette.

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Hence the new green clothes. I’m not completely satisfied, but I’ve done enough fiddling for now.

I went to Haarlem, because we’d run out of tea, without even taking my coat, just a heavy cotton top over a T-shirt. 19 degrees and sunny. Lots of lambs; the cutest were the black ones with a white stripe down their face. I can’t tell summer birds from winter birds, but I saw a blackbird almost weighed down by the bunch of twigs she was carrying, so it must be nesting time.

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I cleaned the messy half of the kitchen: bread bin, coffee machine, gunky bottles of oil and vinegar and soy sauce, shelves always full of miscellaneous junk. Among the miscellaneous junk there were many stamps cut out from supermarket-brand coffee bags: when you have twenty-five and stick them on a special leaflet (it’s a sheet folded in three, hardly a ‘book’) you can redeem that for a free bag of coffee of your choice. I filled three leaflets and bundled stamps for three more in twenty-fives with elastic bands.

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Translating and commenting on parts of an article in yesterday’s Trouw:

The Commission Against Female Genital Mutilation has presented Minister Hoogervorst of Public Health with a package of measures to ‘eradicate’ circumcision of girls.

Well, that sounds reasonable enough. It goes on to say that it happens about fifty times a year to girls living in the Netherlands, mostly in their home countries (in the Sahara area).

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The first time we had a fencing meet in Ermelo it was in a very new, very large sports hall in a new (and, by the look of it, rich) neighbourhood. This time it was in the old sports hall on the industrial estate. Easy walking distance from the station and easy to find, and nostalgic for me because I used to go to the swimming pool in the same building when I was living in the next village over as a teenager. But it’s small. There were about the average number of people, but they only just fit in.

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I felt that I ought to read more Real Literature, but I balk at Dostojevskij, so I went in search of Jane Austen (who seems to be the author whose fiction I am). That’s on the English Literature shelf, and what I found there instead was The Prisoner of Zenda. I faintly remembered reading that years and years ago, or at least starting to read it or wanting to read it, so I took it out (most of the Eng.Lit. is over the living-room door) and couldn’t put it back until I’d finished it.

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That must be ‘stimulate’. I don’t know what makes it ugly (‘ugly’ itself is a good candidate too, falling short by a hair’s breadth because it’s kind of cute in a frog-shaped way) but I’ve never liked it. I don’t like it in Dutch either, ‘stimuleren’. In the erotic sense it sounds downright filthy to me in both languages.

It can’t be the meaning: I like ‘parsimony’ much better than ‘peace’, and ‘love’ and ‘motherhood’ almost make it to the ugly-words list.

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Last week the story of King Vegelin (well, currently Prince Valain) sprouted wings and a propeller and soared away. I was averaging easily 800 words a day. Then the family flu came and took me by the scruff of the neck.

Two days of nothing, one day with exactly one sentence, one day when I was proud of 151 words, and today seems to be reasonable (though I still have an annoying cough and random fits of sneezing): 370 words until now and I’ll see what comes of it. But I know where the story is going now. I’ve killed a good guy and a bad guy, and slightly redeemed a bad girl, and set up the prince as a Really Good Guy. At least that’s something.

Eric Jarvis wrote in rec.arts.sf.composition on January 24:

(aargh! I hate Google Groups, and I especially hate the new beta interface)

If anyone is up for a challenging exercise I’ve got an idea. Short shorts, 500 words or so. ALL the events portrayed must take place within five minutes.

So this is what I did. It’s exactly 500 words and I wrote it on my birthday. Yes, Dorothy, I know that posting it in the public domain means that I can never submit it anywhere; but it’s my birthday present and it’s not for submitting.

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Yesterday I finished transferring the blue-fluorescent-marker edit to electrons. Terms of Service is now officially finished. For the second time: this is the revised version, still innocent of slush piles.

Now for the synopsis. That word has an epithet when I think it that I won’t write in public, because that’s one skill I don’t have (didn’t have it in high school either). Boudewijn wrote the synopsis for the previous version, and what I’m trying to do now is to make it match the new one without showing the stitches. It’s slightly easier than it sounds, because most changes are cosmetic (though I did fix a continuity error or two, zapped a complete subplot and played down a little subplot that had never really come to fruition), but it’s still, well, The Very Hot Place.

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The Guardian, which I know from my time in England as a respectable paper though that may have changed, reported on February 8 that making pancakes can be bad for your health. The warning came from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which actually exists. I had to look at the date to be sure it wasn’t the first of April; when I translated it for the kids they couldn’t stop giggling.

This didn’t keep me from making pancakes today. With bacon in honour of the week of the Publican and the Pharisee, pointedly not fasting because we’re not Pharisees who boast of fasting twice a week. Interesting tidbit: the Pharisees fasted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Of course, they didn’t have the Crucifixion to commemorate and fast for on Wednesdays and Fridays. The pancakes weren’t as good as usual, probably because I had only two eggs and used a bottle of beer in the batter which makes it less suitable for bacon pancakes, but a good time was had by all anyway.

“I can throw this in the paper recycling, right?” a kid asked when I was kneading bread dough, and when I saw what “this” was I almost said yes, but then I started thinking. Baking bread always does that to me. “No!” I said, “I’ll probably want to write about it.”

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This one was on Sunday, when we usually can’t make it, but it was in De Scheg (I’ll spare you the “click here” front page, but the little map marked PANOVIEW on the index page leads to a nice geek toy) so we rushed over after church, twenty minutes by bike. It was strange to use the sports hall where I sit every Saturday morning reading, or abusing manuscript with fluorescent markers, while the twins swim. Well, I don’t actually sit in the sports hall itself, but in the entrance hall where smoke wafts in every time the door opens because they forgot to have a designated smoking area far from the sliding doors.

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My aunt died last week. That didn’t make me very sad —she’d been incapacitated for fourteen months after a stroke already— but I did want to go the funeral. The problem is that I’ve grown apart from my family a lot: I didn’t go to the previous family funeral partly because I thought I’d make a mortal fool of myself. This time I thought “well, if it’s horrible, I can always use it as writing material!”

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Two thousand words into the thing about Vegelin the Great and I already have a conspiracy. Of the good guys, no less. They’ve just made a bad mistake, but then they don’t know what I know: that the prince they suspect of —well— not being entirely fit to rule is already, at fifteen, planning to kill his mother, Queen Mialle, and rule before his time.

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Revising what is now tentatively called A Voice from the North, the Frozen North thing, it suddenly came to me how to cut thirty thousand words out of Terms of Service and make it better.

I didn’t quite manage thirty thousand (in fact just under ten thousand), because even when I wrote the then-final draft of Terms of Service my style was almost as spare as I want it to be. I like writing lean; the moment it becomes florid under my hands I know I’m doing something wrong.

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That was my first thought when I got the paper out of the letterbox this morning. The next thought was that it should have been “Eek! The paper is wrong!”

Trouw has gone tabloid. And however many quality papers in the world have gone tabloid before, tabloid format still means “a rag” to me, not a real newspaper.

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A free concert of Ambon Country Rock, ballads, krontjong and other Indonesian music, in the local shopping mall on a Wednesday afternoon: that sounded delectable. It was Nightbreakers from Zoetermeer giving the concert, something I’d never heard of, but then I’m not well-versed in the genre.

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I don’t remember what exactly caused this error message, but it’s one of the silliest I’ve ever seen:

From the tiny knife and fork icon, it’s probably from a restaurant site, and from the Dutch-language “close” button I infer it was a Dutch restaurant site because all of my KDE is in English. Probably when I was looking for the Greek restaurant in Haarlem I wrote about a while ago.

The first meet of the Points Tournament in 2005 was in ‘t Harde, a little town that used to be one of the big garrison towns of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces when we still had conscription. We have a professional army now (it’s a normal job that people actually choose to do, you’re not thrown into it if you happen to be male, healthy and in your late teens) and that means there’s much less of it.

Even a flourishing army brings its own particular brand of desolation, and this was already evident on the station.

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This morning, taking the kids to school (well, they can go to school by themselves, I just go along for company), I found myself singing the troparion of Theophany.

At Your baptism in the Jordan, O Lord, worship of the Trinity was revealed, for the Father’s voice bore witness to You, calling You His “beloved Son”, and the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of these words. O Christ God, Who appeared and enlightened the world, glory be to You!

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After the Theophany, the Christmas tree has to go. We planted one in the garden a few years ago; it came to the then eight-year-old’s shoulder, and it’s now inches taller than the same kid at almost eleven. We don’t have a garden large enough to cope with two, let alone a whole stand of, former Christmas trees.

The municipal garbage-collecting people collect them every year, so that’s no problem, but I spotted discarded trees in the town centre before the Theophany and that worried me a bit. So I looked up the official city website; nothing about Christmas-tree collection. What’s the garbage-collecting outfit called again? Circulus. It figures, it rings a whole peal of bells of recycling, but it’s yet another of those fashionable names for institutions that don’t tell you what it is. “Thuiszorg” (“home care”) is now Carinova — and I had to look that up because it’s not something you remember.

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We were in Haarlem, having seen the Pieter Claesz exhibit