Amsterdam - Philosophy, Art, War, Sex and Aching Feet

I'm going to have to write about our trip in instalments - there's a lot to write. But first - having read my heading - let's get the bit that everyone who knows us wants to know: yes we did investigate the red light district and no, the sex and the aching feet are not the result of some adventurous new position discovered as the result of our investigations.

Amsterdam is a fabulous city: easy to get around and easy to just be in; everyone speaks English - willingly; and the public transport system would make John Prescott blush (remember his cunning plan for a ten year integrated transport system? - the one he hastily dumped on Stephen Byers when he realised it couldn't be done). Famous for its liberal culture the city has a generally relaxed feel; Amsterdam's citizens are neither gushily friendly nor stand offish, more that they are simply happy to share their space with you no matter who or how you are.

I know you probably won't believe this, but our sojourn into the red light district was actually to visit a church. De Oude Kerk is Amsterdam's oldest and grandest church with burial records dating back to 1300 but, as if that wasn't enough, it also has a magnificent organ (that is not an invitation to skip ahead to the smut, by the way) and, at the moment, contains the World Press Photo of the Year exhibition. This is an international annual contest to do exactly what it says on the tin: find the best press photo of the year. The winning pictures in a variety of categories then go on a world tour.

It was stunning; I'd already seen the wining picture in The Independent, but the large scale photos really take your breath away. The subject matter is often grim and I take my hat off to the art of photographers who have the gift of composition and can use it under circumstances that would leave me diving for cover. If you get five minutes click on the link to see an on-line gallery of the winners; but, even better, if you get chance to go to the exhibition, do.

The irony of the juxtaposition of stark media images, a beautiful place of worship and window brothels not 15 metres from the rear wall of the the church, was not lost on me as we stepped out onto the Voorburgwal, the canal that bisects the dark alleys of the Red Light district. We had chosen our moment carefully, not wanting to get our pockets picked in the crowds of lascivious lads later in the day, mid afternoon was sufficiently daring for our sex tour. Even then though ladies in windows plied their trade to passing men - it's always men - who bargain shamelessly for a better deal on their desired method of having their snake milked. I'm sorry if that is a little blunt, but my overriding opinion is that that is all it amounts to; even our Rough Guide warns unwary young men not to expect the romantic encounter they hope for: it is an extremely practical service.

In the interests of journalism I assiduously studied the lady window occupants, though was made to suffer for my art with a hasty clip round the ear off Mrs C. She needn't have worried; the whole thing was unappealing and seedy. The alleyways are liberally peppered with live sex shows and DVD bars with private cabins: I had to explain why someone, who might not be able to afford the fifty Euro fee for a window visit, might opt for a cheaper private DVD cabin.

All that said, once we'd agreed on our joint moral stance, there was great fun to be had giggling and snorting at some of the more extreme sex aids offered for sale:

"Good Lord, you'd put your back out with that thing!"

Our moral stance? The other notable inclusion in this legalised leisure centre for the lonely, was a large number of sex health centres and other centres offering support for people involved in the sex industry. The Dutch view seems to be more pragmatic than liberal: deal with the world as it is rather than sweep the unseemly bits beneath the carpet and hope they will go away. I admire the Dutch approach.

Into the Hands of God and Physics I Place Myself

Did I mention that I'm not a good flier? "Amsterdam here we come" I gleefully cheer on the one hand; whilst on the other I'm a bit of a sweaty palmed wreck.
"Who's afraid of flying?..." sang the insightful Loudon Wainright III, "I'm just afraid of crashing..." he reassuringly continued.

So, give us a thought at around 8.15 tomorrow morning as we embark on our KLM white knuckle ride!

See you all soon.

There's Culture Up North Tha' Knows...Our Perfect Weekend

Grand opera and grand gardens – it could have been any of Europe’s cultural capitals; but it wasn’t, this was Yorkshire, England. Celebrating a significant birthday for Mrs C, we gambled on the English summer weather with tickets for an outdoor performance of La Boheme. After dropping bags at our B and B, Watergate Lodge, Knaresborough, we set out into a perfect summer afternoon and enjoyed the town’s riverside tranquillity before dressing to impress, picking up our picnic and heading to the hauntingly beautiful Cistercian ruins of Fountains Abbey.

Opera Brava are a small company who specialise in pared down performances; accompanied simply by a pianist they manage to distil the essence of grand opera into exquisite miniatures. Their performance was punctuated by Tawny Owl calls lending a fittingly sad note to Puccini’s tragic tale of love and loss in Bohemian Paris. Cynics say that plots like La Boheme have about as much depth as Coronation Street, their distant detergent relative; but as poor Mimi coughed her last tuberculous breath into the hankie held in her tiny frozen hand, assembled picnickers took an extra sip of Chardonnay to disperse the lumps appearing mysteriously in their throats.

The following morning, replete with culture and Peter Guest’s excellent Watergate Lodge breakfast, we headed to the RHS Gardens at Harlow Carr. These are gardener’s gardens where people won’t glance askance at you for talking about mulch or compost. There is a gorgeous floral array, a stunning kitchen garden, woodland walks and the national rhubarb collection - fabulous. We also benefit from the knowledge that the growing conditions are not dissimilar to our home patch: ‘if it grows at Harlow Carr, it will grow at home’, our motto.
Opera and gardening: not to everyone’s taste – but this was our weekend and we loved it.

The Great Airmiles (bit of a) Con

OK, I'm over my introspective period now, you'll be glad to hear. In fact Mrs C and I have a bit of a spring in our step at the moment: we are going away - properly away, abroad, alone: sans sons - for the first time in nearly nineteen years. We have planned a trip to coincide with a special birthday for Val and because our sons were eighteen in the same period - expensive - we have saved Airmiles thanks to the true rulers of our fine land: Tesco.

The trip we planned was four nights in Rome, direct flights from Manchester in a hotel recommended to us by the well travelled Reverend Richard. The reality is that we are going to the equally interesting - I'm sure - Amsterdam. Here's why: despite the hype, you are very limited to where and how you can travel with your hard earned Airmiles, unless you live in London. Yes, I know that lots of airlines fly direct to Rome from Manchester but with your Airmiles you can only fly via Gatwick because Airmiles only deal with a limited number of companies. So, Amsterdam it is, leaving on Monday on a jet plane; and despite our initial disappointment we are very excited and currently spending evenings poring over our Rough Guide to Amsterdam.So don't plan your world trip based on Airmiles before checking where you can go first.

While we are on the subject of travel I'm quite excited about the new Fuel My Blog competition which involves a blog post about my best weekend. The prize is a trip to Austria which might just compensate for the lack of a trip to Rome so watch out for my next post.

My body: a map of experience

It occurred to me, whilst musing over my body's failings and foibles, that, while it might not be the perfect specimen of masculine form, my body does form an interesting aide to reminiscence. So, join me on a trip over my body's lumps bumps and imperfections and experience a selection of the events that caused them.

Let's start at my feet: large, hobbit like, flat as pancakes and recently scarred with 26 stitches at the hands of the excellent Mr Sundar, Orthopaedic surgeon. The surgery the result of my insistence on running for many years on feet that clearly weren't designed for it.

Moving over my hairy shins we arrive at a moon shaped scar just below my right knee, another experience at the hands of an orthopaedic surgeon when I was fourteen years old. This memory is not pleasant, not because of the surgery but because of the memories of repeated visits to the doctor, trying to convince him that there was something wrong: I knew there was - it bloody well hurt - but the experts of the time did not believe me. My memories of repeatedly hitting the sore spot to give the doctors cause to listen, would clothe and feed a psychotherapist's family for months.

Skirting my hairy thighs we pause at mid-point to view two scars. One the result of childhood exertion: showing off trying to lift a climbing frame, aged seven, a piece of my bowel popped through the inguinal canal causing a hernia. The resulting four inch scar to pop it back would cause today's surgeons to chuckle as they removed most of someone's innards through a hole the size of a five pence piece (think dime for the US). The other scar is rather more personal; it is tiny and hidden in the corrugations of my man-parts. Its minuscule size is inversely proportional to the size of the family-limiting decision it represents; and though off less importance, the experience itself is worth a passing reference: "Fame, I wanna live forever, I wanna learn how to fly (fly)...." trying to make small talk with a man wielding a scalpel at your testicles is not for the faint of heart.

Moving hastily on, we bypass the largely unscathed abdomen and pause a moment at an interestingly moon shaped scar just below the middle joint of my right index finger. This represents some of my irritating character traits: impatience and enthusiasm for invention without the necessary clear thinking pragmatism. Picture New Year's Eve 1978; I am sixteen years old and am to spend the night alone in the house - my parents have sportingly supplied me with a four pack of bottled Guinness. The Old Grey Whistle Test - the older equivalent of Jools Holland's excellent Hootenanny - is about to start and I reckon I've just got time to open a bottle in the kitchen. The familiar theme starts; I can't find the bottle opener, so in panic reach for the next best tool: a Party Seven can piercer - a Party Seven was a seven pint can of beer for which you needed a piercer to open - I had not worked out that the piercer's width was greater than the bottle neck width, so was surprised when the neck of the bottle snapped gashing my youthful finger. It bled until January 2nd.

Scooting over my face with its slightly bulbous, broken-looking nose (another story) we'll finish with what is my favourite scar. Atop my balding head, running transversely is a perfectly straight three inch scar. A sign of youthful exuberance and sheer stupidity that, I am proud to say, has never left me. Do you remember the Fame TV series? Leg warmers, dance and music - the seed of every youthful ambition to be in the entertainment industry. As the theme music played through the credits dancers leap into the air as they sing:

"Fame, I wanna live forever, I wanna learn how to fly (fly)..."

I was getting ready to go out for a drink, freshly bathed and wrapped in a towel I watched Fame in my bedroom. As the theme music came on cast aside the towel, ran naked along the landing of my parents' house and leapt into the air at the appropriate moment, failing to notice that I was positioned directly beneath the bathroom door frame: four stitches no local anaesthetic...the doctor lied.

Hope you have enjoyed this journey across my body; hope you kept your dinner down.

I'm making the big time

I've just spotted my face in the 'Today's Top Bloggers' section at Fuel My Blog. Thanks to everyone who voted for me today. If you don't know what I'm talking about have a look for the Fuel My Blog widget on the right hand side of my page; it looks like this:

When you've found it click on it, just to see what happens...you can also click on it if you like my blog and want to vote for it, or 'fuel' it as we say in the trade. If you are a regular visitor give it a click each time you are here, if for no other reason than to give me the lovely warm feeling I had when I saw that I was popular today.

More of 'Am I normal?'

I'm not normally so introspective, but whilst on the verge of creating a post about my body - I'll not tell you too much about it, don't want to spoil a future plot - I shared a thought, a perfectly innocent thought, with my colleagues. Their reaction was both instructive and fascinating.

I have some weight to lose, roughly a stone, I feel fat and my clothes are uncomfortable.
"Well buy new clothes" I hear some of you shout; but I am made of sterner stuff than that. In order to judge my progressive weight loss I have a method of viewing myself with an objective eye. Rather than rely on the Avery bathroom scales, I consider my appearance by standing naked in front of a mirror, tensing whatever muscles can be tensed and well, jiggling up and down. It is quite obvious - barring obvious exceptions - which are the wobbly bits to lose.

This is the thought I shared with my colleagues and I am ashamed to say that, after listening, one or two of those with a better visual imagination were looking a bit queasy. You can see why I am rather reticent to make future posts about my body. I put it down to Val's and my shared background in nursing, we have shared many a romantic dinner where the dinner table talk has centred on topics that any decent horror movie critic would describe as gore: it is our normal. It is also the shared normal that our two sons have grown up with. When they were younger some of their friends found our normal dinner table chat rather rich for their tastes; we had to learn to be more sensitive to the needs of their more sensitive friends or risk rejections to our tea time invitations.

So we are back round to this idea of normality again. I think I will do the post about my body, then, in the great democracy that is the blogosphere, people can choose the normal they prefer.