The swimming pool has a new access system. This means that everybody needed a new pass. First we got a very wordy letter explaining that all sports accommodations are in a new conglomerate now, and the various antiquated computer systems are being updated, yadda yadda, ending with one small paragraph saying that our passes would stop working and we should go and get a new one at the other pool on the other side of town. Then we got another letter to apologise for the unclearness of first letter, saying that we could use our old pass until January 4, and would get a new pass after January 11, right at our usual pool, and in the week between we would be let in on showing our old pass.

January 4 came and went and the old pass still worked. So did January 11. On the 14th, a new beepy machine had suddenly appeared on the gate, but the gate was open so I walked right through. This wasn’t the idea: I had to come back and have my pass changed. Ten minutes of waiting, a new photo even worse than the one I had, and then the beepy machine told me that my pass was valid until 1-13-2010. WTF? Even in the US date format it would be 1-14-2010. The woman behind the counter said “impossible that it says that, we don’t have a 13th month” so firmly that I thought I’d seen it wrong, but when I came out she asked me to beep the pass again and yes, 1-13-2010. I had to do it twice more for two different men both called Jan to see it too.

Tech support was called. Tech support didn’t believe it either, but they said they’d look into it.

The next day —Friday the 15th— the beepy machine told me that my pass was valid until 1-14-2010. Had tech support, er, fixed it, or was it something strange and US date format after all? Today —Monday the 18th— my curiosity was satisfied: 1-17-2010.

Apparently my pass is always valid until yesterday. So why does it let me in?

I wish I could rememer poetry in dreams, because what you gave me this time was amazing. A king (presumably played by me, but rather unimaginatively called George) who was given a wooden box with three cakes and a prophecy, making him travel the world to find three people to share the cakes with, one with the innocence of a child, one with the vigor of a grown man (I think) and one with the wisdom of an old man. In the end it turned out, of course, that these people were all himself at various stages of life. But the entourage! If I could write it up as a story it might even be publishable.

(But would three cakes stay fresh that long? Ah well, must have been a magical box.)

There was much more, ordering chocolate sprinkles that when they arrived were more like Spätzle and carrying lots of groceries into a house I’ve never seen, but presumably mine, helped by random passers-by, but it pales beside the box with the cakes.

This little Christmas-tree angel is older than I am. I think my parents got it the first Christmas after they were married, in 1954.

There’s also a glass house that’s still from my parents’ decorations, but I forgot to take a picture of that. Next year…

Well done in view of current affairs, that floating mosque. You might have weighted it better, though, because every new person inside made it list and lurch like a row-boat. We (I don’t remember who else apart from me, but a good handful of people) didn’t want to enter at first, but the imam (or whoever, with a long robe and a longish beard) did a very good job convincing us that we were welcome. Strangely, we had to stand with our backs to the action; I thought at the time that it was because we weren’t Muslims, but perhaps it was just that the action was at the back of the room. There was singing, which we had a textbook for: doggerel in short lines, which I don’t remember as being particularly religious, without any mention of God or Allah. All the same it was so Protestant in flavour that I half expected a Gospel reading to follow, but we got a tour of the building vessel instead (making it lurch again), a talk with the imam, and another song on the quay, with longer lines this time but just as much doggerel.

(I realise now that the details were probably so fuzzy, and presumably completely wrong, because I’ve never been in an actual mosque let alone to the service.)

The bike ride after that would have been uneventful if it hadn’t been for the steep and winding roads and the darts and cannonballs flying at us at every turn; probably from playing too much Bloons Tower Defense 3 last night.

Na, nu wissen se — nu is zu Ende. (Kurt Tucholsky)

I’m an orphan. It’s a strange feeling.

A friend of Prima’s who had helped hang up lamps and assemble Ikea furniture in my father’s new flat in May said on the bus home “you’ve got a way cool grandfather!” I can only agree.

He taught me to swim, to ride a bike, to use tools, to catch a ball (no mean feat, because I was as astigmatic as a child as I am now and didn’t see in 3D until I got glasses in my forties), to bake sponge cake, to appreciate German wine and indeed wine in general, and to think in a particular way that seems crooked but is actually straighter than the default. When I was eight or so he took me outside on a clear moonless night and said “now try to imagine what’s behind the stars!”

His presents were above all practical in a subversive way: timber and carpentry tools for my seventh birthday, a net to catch sticklebacks and a tank to keep them in at eight, my first pocket-knife at nine (which led me to think that that’s the statutory age to have a pocket-knife, and to treat my daughters the same). When I left home he gave me a hundred guilders to buy kitchen things. I still have some of that set, after more than thirty years.

His last word was, characteristically, “No.” It was the answer to the nurse’s question “wouldn’t you rather get back into bed?” Alive until his death —no embarrassing half-life in sedation for him— and stubborn to the end.

This morning I cycled to the swimming pool through “best of November” weather, wind and rain and general nastiness, thinking I’d collect my reward by swimming in it. But no! There was a sign on the gate that you pass with your pass, stuck so that nobody could miss it: “Outdoor pool closed. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

As soon as I entered the indoor pool area (where the changing cubicles are) the chlorine fumes got to me, worse than usual, probably because there were more people in the water. I said to the woman who was sitting there supervising “that’s not an inconvenience, it’s a disaster!” It turned out that the coordinator had made a mistake in scheduling shifts, so that there was only this one woman supervising today, and apparently a surfeit of people tomorrow. Another regular outdoor swimmer said “the people who use the outdoor pool don’t need supervision!” — but if anything does happen, this woman will be liable, and it was perfectly reasonable not to take any risks.

I pondered swimming indoors, but I couldn’t face three-quarters of an hour in that stink and went home, not without misgivings. Missing one day won’t be disastrous for my fitness, but now I can’t say any more that I haven’t missed a single day, I’ll have to qualify it. I tell myself now that I should at least have tried and that the chlorine fumes can’t have been that bad. But the smell did make me queasy from just standing there; indeed worse than on a normal day and with no prospect of being out the other door in a moment.

The rain stopped the moment I was on the bike again (i.e. when I’d normally have been swimming) and didn’t start again until I left the supermarket with a bag of groceries too full to close. Go figure.

You greatly pleased me when you made one of the nicest people I know a professor —of physics, I suppose, that’s her thing— and me her secretary. The only sour note was that her other secretary was the woman who was the proximate cause of my burnout when I worked with her in waking life, but as this time she worked mornings and I afternoons we only met coming and going and didn’t have to interact much. It also meant that opening and registering the mail fell to her, and composing letters and sending packages to me. And helping the professor dress for a function, which revealed that she not only had the perfect middle-aged figure that I aspire to (but may never attain) by swimming, but also lingerie to die for. I want my next bra to be dove-grey lace, too, with matching panties.

I didn’t get to see any actual evidence of physics, unless it was the decorated circle five inches across, kept in a flat tin like a film canister, that looked like solid gold and felt heavy enough for that as well. The other women who came in from time to time to talk to the professor —one of whom said of a man both of them apparently knew, “He keeps throwing lovers at me”— looked very much like middle-aged academics too, but vague as to branch of academia. The room was a dead giveaway, though: the long and extremely narrow room I worked in when I was the secretary of a professor of physics in waking life in the summer of 1980 or 1981.

Later we were at the function, which suddenly turned out to be a parish meal. Because I was the only person standing when everybody else was already seated, someone asked me to fill a water jug. I spent a lot of time filling all the water jugs; I especially liked the four-foot-high one in the shape of a trumpet flower that had a wheel at the bottom of the stem because it was too heavy to carry when full. Eventually I sat down and said “I haven’t had anything to eat yet,” but all that was left was a platter with two pieces of bread. Deeply symbolic, I suppose, but I wouldn’t know of what.

Those were splendid military planes and airships, especially the huge one that came very low in the centre (possibly of Roermond, I sort of recognised the city hall) to disgorge small red one-person aircraft. They were coming from several directions so you had me worried for a while until I realised that they were all just flying in patterns, not trying to fight each other or even get in each other’s way. My cousin the nun was right, though, when she said “it’s a pity those beautiful things are designed for killing people”.

Also, I’ll have you know that this is a Linzer torte, not this; that’s a slice of cheesecake. The coffee shop in the covered mall where my cousin and I fled the rain and the noise didn’t know either. My cousin did like it, fortunately, and I loved the sugared puff-pastry things I had— must make that!

Now I’m at it I must commend your offering of the night before, when you put a bit of lawn edged with flowers in the church so people who aren’t in the choir in waking life —mostly because they don’t sing, and even if they did sing they’d be unlikely to be in the choir: one is an acolyte and two others live too far away to come to choir practice— could start the Liturgy an hour before the normal time, because they were in church an hour early on account of forgetting the end of summer time. Fr T was so angry that he locked the connecting doors, conveniently situated about three meters closer to the altar than they normally are. I was left on the choir platform alone and confused, but somehow found myself outside a moment later. Naturally, I didn’t want to get in past the rogue choir, and I couldn’t get into my own house because I had church keys but no house keys, so I had to wait until Secunda and Tertia came out of the house, dressed to the nines (Secunda in a short green dress and thigh-high boots) and, more importantly, with keys.

The Chamber of Commerce held a meeting for local entrepreneurs —not quite the right word, because it was for people who have a business and work in it, not just put up the money— with “how fit is your business” as its theme. My first thing of that kind. It was in the VIP lounge of the football stadium, that I wouldn’t ever have set foot in otherwise (and will never set foot in again if I can help it; the combination of dry air and bad acoustics gave me a two-day sore throat from talking, and the dim lighting and low ceiling made it a very uncomfortable place).

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Rain at last, though it didn’t start raining properly until I was back on the bike. I almost turned back for more swimming, but the prospect of having to put on a wet swimsuit and use wet towels kept me from it.

But it was enjoyable anyway. Especially the large heavy raindrops bouncing back up from bubbles were pretty in the lamplight (I was very early so it was still dark).

One woman came out with her towel, started hanging it on the back of the seat as she does every day, only then realised it was raining and ran back inside to lay it on the bench there.

It’s actually less annoying to cycle in the rain after swimming in the rain. And my new(ish) jacket turns out to be waterproof, or at least water-resistant enough to keep my upper half dry until I got home.