The accumulated reading on our wonderful holiday to the Netherlands and Belgium. We arrived back a few days ago and I'm in the post-holiday blues period, so while the memories are still fresh I should get them all down! It seems like we were away for ages, maybe that's because we stayed in two places, so already the first week at Duinrell seems distant, and the trip to get there, stopping at some little french village for breakfast from the patisserie and lunch in Middelburg underneath a deafening clock seems even longer ago. Fred navigated, and he's much better at it than me or Helen. We've come to rely on him for so much, he's very practical which we need in our family. He's also just learnt to solve a rubik's cube, and is patiently trying to explain it to us, but it is not going in to our old heads. Duinrell cost an absolute fortune, but it was perfect. we had a lovely 'duingalow' with 4 big bedrooms and with the theme park and water park onsite the kids were able to spend the days on rides and would happily never have left the site. We did make it out once or twice and dragged them on a cycle ride to Leiden, Fred and I went out to explore a bit and i managed to get some long runs and cycles in by myself. The second week in Belgium was at a Center Parcs in the Ardennes, and being in the forested hills was fantastic, again I managed a few runs and a cycle to the 'three frontiers' of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, but it was so hilly that long distance cycles weren't on the agenda. Fred and I also headed out to the Col de Stockau nearby which had a tribute to Eddy Merckx at the top. We had to walk up, it was an absolute killer. I also cut my head open exiting a very spooky cave after finding a geocache. Luckily Fred was with me to make sure I was ok. The kids actually got on quite well together, although there was a little bickering occasionally. The holiday seems to have tired out William completely, and he missed his first football training on Saturday. He showed up for the friendly match on sunday, but wasn't himself and after a few minutes on the pitch asked to be subbed off, bless him. Hopefully he'll be feeling better soon. Yesterday was Mum's 75th so we went over to Harmondsworth to see her. Jo and Vicki were there too, so we had a lovely afternoon. We got the spirit level out and Libby isn't quite as tall as Helen yet despite a recent growth spurt. It'll be soon though.
'The Future of Geography' wasn't a book I'd normally read, but I've enjoyed previous books by Tim Marshall so thought I'd give it a whirl. It was about the geopolitics of space, which I cannot get my head round. I can't see how the material benefits of mineral extractoin or whatever from space can possibly justify the expense of retrieving it, but maybe I don't have the necessary vision to see what humanity is capable of. It is quite disorienting to consider that Elon Musk, who otherwise appears to be an egocentric spoilt trolling buffoon may actually be a genuinely visionary pioneer when it comes to space. Let's see. Willem Elsschot's 'Cheese' was the result of wanting to read something of Dutch literature, and it was very funny indeed, a scathing satire of the world of work and the boredom, pettiness and pointlessness of office life. I'd love to read more, but it seems this is the only book of his that has been translated into english. 'The Mind's Eye' was another 'Dutch' read, even if set in the deliberately vague northern european Maardam of Inspector Van Veeteren. An enjoyable procedural, I'll try and read some more and get back into the habit. I seem to enjoy fiction much more than non-fiction at the moment, there's no books in my non-fiction pile that I'm excited about reading at the moment, but that's bound to change. 'Butcher's Crossing' was superb, a revisionist western that I preferred to the later works of Cormac McCarthy which cover similar, but more visceral and hallucinatory territory. I've never bothered with John Williams as I assumed 'Stoner' was about some slacker bumming around, but that's not the case at all, and I'll read it asap. Nora Ephron's collection of witty articles was a really nice read between courses - I'm hardly the target audience and I'll give it to Helen to read as I'm sure she'll love it. It was light, funny and self-deprecating, I'll look out for more. 'Summer Before The Dark' could have been written for me, a fictionalised account of Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth expatting in Ostend, exiled from their homeland and lamenting a lost world while the storm clouds gather over europe. Finally, Antony Beevor's new book on the Russian Revolution and Civil War which went into great depth. whenever I read about the Revolution, I wonder where my sympathies would have been, as on both sides there was such inhumanity, terror and atrocity. Maybe I once thought that the bolsheviks had the advantage of doing it in the interests of the workers and peasants, but Lenin and Trotsky didn't give a fig for them. I wonder when I would have figured it out and what I would have done. I'd like to think I'd have fought back (although not with the Whites), but I think the reality is I would have been meekly arrested for counter-revolutionary democratic tendencies without putting up a fight.
I've just had a quick look through the photos of our holiday to try and note down any other memories. on the way down to Belgium we stopped off at a town called Lier, which looked awful when we pulled into the underground car park, but which turned out (like so many towns we saw)to have a fantastic medieval square, wonderful clock tower and a special treat for Libby, a cat cafe. After that we broke the journey again at the Netherlands' highest point, which is also where Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands meet. For a few seconds the kids were all in different countries, but they still managed to wind each other up. I laughed when I saw 'ski resort' marked on the map, but it turns out the Ardennes were actually a very hilly (if not quite mountainous) area. We also explored some huge cave (this time with a proper guide so I didn't bash my head) at Han, which also had a land-train ride round a wildlife park which played a very jaunty dutch pop tune which the kids (and Helen) loved.
No comments:
Post a Comment