I sleep, finally, after many months. My noisy upstairs neighbour, De Twat, has quietened down after Saturday night's extravaganza of noise. I wash. I breakfast upon dense sourdough 8-seed bread, peanut butter made from unbleached hemp sacks and two tiny organic pears the size of gerbils. I dress. I leave my flat; I walk out of the front door; I unlock Glorie the bicycle, put my bag in Basil, her basket, and cycle off. For about three minutes I whizz up and down canals and over tiny bridges; cars stop; pedestrians know not to get in the way. Having left home at 8.37, I am locking Glorie up at 8.41.
It is strange and marvellous and absolutely the way things should be. In London, I would waste anything between an hour and a half and two hours a day either in my car, or sitting balefully on an underground tube train. Here, no more than ten minutes a day will be spent travelling to and from work. That means I have at least an extra one hour and twenty minutes a day to be literally rather then simply metaphorically "Non-working". It is Quite the Thing!
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3 comments:
It's the canals that do it. If London had canals it would be the same.
It also makes Amsterdam strangley quiet. Apart from all the drunken parties on boats of course.
Yes. Yes. Hmm. Yes.
I've got a useful Dutch phrase for you:
Lekker ding! (spelling probably wrong)
It means - Nice thing! - and is a bit like a wolfwhistle, if you know what I mean.
Hope this comes in handy...
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