My brain needed a rinse, and as everybody else has been away this summer (for work in my other half’s case, but he did get his dose of culture shock) I thought I’d treat myself to a bargain day-ticket for the train. It was about a quarter of the normal price, with some restrictions— only valid on the national network and not on the local networks, which thwarted me on one stretch, and not valid until 9:00, which I didn’t mind much because otherwise I’d have taken the 8:45 at the earliest.

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So I’m a single parent without any children— other half is in India, Prima and Tertia at camp, and Secunda cat-sitting for friends who don’t want their ancient cats to be alone at night so she only comes to dinner. I expected that I’d be able to do a lot of work that’s otherwise swamped by distraction and domesticity (like migrate the server), but nothing seems to come out of my hands. Apparently I need the distraction!

I’d promised Secunda that we’d visit her godmother, my cousin the nun, who lives in The Hague, and today seemed the day for it so I bought a special-offer day-ticket for two and we hopped on a train. On the train I realised that I hadn’t informed the godmother of our intentions, but my phone battery was flat and Secunda didn’t have her phone with her (“we’re that kind of people”, she said). But being a nun, the probability that she’d be at home was very high so we didn’t worry.

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After the success of 2008 Fieldwork Day I wanted to do it again. And again, it was a success.

Tertia was on one of my teams though I’d asked for all-boys teams or, failing that, teams without any of my daughters. “Is that so?” Geography Teacher said when I alerted him, “let’s try to swap.” But the only reasonable swap would have given me the same locations as last year— and Secunda. So we left it the way it was.

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(No pictures, because I lent the camera to Tertia. Two other people in her study group also had cameras. Next time it will be in my pocket.)

The second year had fieldwork day— divide into study groups of four to six people with ideally an adult supervisor, go to a designated place along the little stream that runs along the north side of town, take samples of water and soil, catch the fauna, observe the flora, draw the landscape, interview people about Nature Development, etcetera; all of this for double geography and biology credit.

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The bottle of natural rose water that we bought in Haarlem years ago was finally empty, and our quest to get it locally was unsuccessful (though now that I know the brand, I know where to try: the pharmacy section of the organic-food store). Also, we were out of Darjeeling and almost out of Oolong. And I wanted to go to the convent in The Hague and show the sisters the Life and Travels of Father Adrian web page to see if they agreed that it was ready to put online.

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Brain duly rinsed. Not even at the station yet and I saw the first strange thing.

There was no puff of smoke, and anyway the shoes weren’t pointed, but still. They were about size 38, too small for me or any of my daughters, or I might have taken them.

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(A blog-as-I-go spree)

Wednesday night: There’s a snow front coming. The Dutch Railways decide to preventively cancel some trains, especially in the West. We snigger at them being fazed by a little normal winter weather.

Thursday morning: Foggy. Temperature around zero Celsius. I go to work. Trains completely normal, but they still say they’re going to cancel some after 9:00. We’re still laughing at the so-called weather alarm.

9:45 The radio says that there’s heavy snow in the south already. I look up a news site and find that it’s worse in Belgium. Professor comes in and says he’s leaving early because otherwise he may not get home (he lives in Belgium). We advise him to leave right away and I hurriedly finish a letter he wants to sign before he does. My colleague (who has to cross a steepish bridge in a car) and I decide to leave as soon as there’s substantial snow. Other people, who live in town, stay.

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Another trip into the West, not for research this time but, on the pretext of buying tea in Haarlem, to solve my POV and plot problems on the train. A trip Away From it All to get some uninterrupted writing and thinking time, not really alone but at least without people who want something of me.

The POV problem proved easy —a matter of moving one paragraph from the second scene to the first and tweaking a word or two—, the plot problem is still intractable, but the space opera romp I started a few days ago when stalled, because that was something I could do, acquired 71 words, all moving the story forward. One darling I’ll never kill, from an earlier scene: “engineer-scaring gorgeous”.

ETA, in the Skating Cafe: my plot problem has just solved itself. All it needed was for me to delete six words and move a speech tag to the middle of an utterance.

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The story was stalled, requiring research— it ends with a fight in a church, and I even know which church: the church of the Beheading of St.John the Baptist in the Zuidbuurt in Zoeterwoude. It burnt down in 1964, perfect for the story: I can cause that.

Anyway, I wanted a day off before starting the new job on Tuesday.

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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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