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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