Day 211: I Receive A Rude Awakening

After drinking too much strong beer last night, I fall into my pit virtually fully clothed (except that I am naked). Virtually seconds later, I am woken by a sharp ringing on the door, followed by a banging. I fall out of bed onto my laminate floorboards and scuffle about in the dust looking for my "floooffy" white robe, bought for me some three months ago by a French Canadian pathologist.

I open the door, and there is an enormous man in a cap holding a gigantic spanner! "What do you want?", I squeak. "Come to fix the intercommunication device!", he shouts back. "Please! No shouting! It is early!", I mumble into my floooffy shoulder. "Sorry to awaken you! But the electrician is here NOW", he bellows. From behind him appears a tiny electrician, who looks not unlike a Super Mario Brother. He too is holding a spanner!

My brain is full of thoughts of dark beer and Canada. I wordlessly open the door wider and let them in. They do some things with spanners and talk a lot in loud voices. I catch the word "spanner" and "bangen", and sit wide-eyed in front of the BBC News for some ten minutes. The front door slams. They run up and down the stairs shouting in Dutch and also (unaccountably) some Italian, ringing on bells and shouting into intercoms. They make me feel very tired.

Then I wash and dress and get in the lift (as I am weak in the legs and head and unable to walk down two flights of spiral Dutch stairs) where I find the Super Mario Brother who is, by now, holding a gigantic screwdriver. I leave him in the lift going up and down and up and down with his screwdriver, and go to work.

Then I remember this and look it up. It is entirely my favourite thing.

Day 210: I Hate It When This Happens

You know. Liking the people you work with. Got me into terrible trouble last time. Started out working for three weeks and left fifteen months later.

These are dangerous times, my friends.

Day 209: I Am Sufficiently Recovered To Remember Wild Aquatic Chickens

Regular readers will be aware of the work of Saturday, which consisted of an accidental 50km journey on a bicycle originally created in 1904 to undertake journeys of no more than 200 feet. Suffice to say my companion and I were exhausted upon our return, and could barely speak for up to and including ten minutes.

Excitingly, however, later that day my companion - a cretin, if I am to be frank, with an enormously large head - re-did his original calculations and announced that our journey had in fact been closer to 55km. This is enormously impressive, whatever way you look at it. If you are still not impressed, try this! 55km is the equivalent of:

34.17 miles
29.67 nautical miles
55,000,000 millimetres
60,148.73 yards.

If you remain unmoved even by those astonishing facts, consider (if you will) that it was undertaken by me (porky, but not unattractive) and my companion, whose huge head sometimes makes it hard for him to balance properly.

But enough of this chat of enormous athleticism! We saw sights on our travels and it is those that I want to tell you about! For example, before I had even left the canal upon which I live in my foreign 'apartment', the local Monkey-Fashioner revealed two further artistic works, Porno Dog and Gaping Fish:













































































A glimpse to the left revealed further delights: this lady looks with some delight upon Floating Spacehopper - but where are her arms? Were they taken off so she would not bounce away from the barge, leaving her owner bereft?



















A short bicycle ride later, and we had embarked upon what can only be described as an Epic Journey: from behind the railway station to Amsterdam North, using a ferry as our transport. As the ferry pulled away from the shore I turned to find the most delightful of Dutchmen. "Let me take your photograph!", he cried into the wind, observing me pointing at my companion's head and laughing. "OK", I said, "If it will make you happy! But only if I can take YOUR photograph in return." "We are not TOGETHER", he said, indicating his companion; "but we ARE going to the North to play tennis!". "No, WE are not together either", I muttered, looking pityingly at my companion, "and neither are we going to play tennis".

I stop briefly and look out across the water, thinking wistfully of Canada. (If the self-haircutting pathologist had been there, I would have pointed at him and said, "Yes! WE are together, and WE are going to play Scrabble!") But I snap out of my delicious reverie, look at the Dutchman's hat and say: "but don't let that stop you; you take our photograph, and we will take yours!"

I took his photograph. He said I could do it on the condition that his picture would not appear on the internet because he was "famous in a way". Hey ho. Sorry about that. Lovely chap: still no idea who he is!




















From the ferry through the Dutch equivalent of Hemel Hempstead; from there through flat fields with heron and big hairy pigs. And then, finally, a "coffee break", where my companion eats a densely-packed confection in the shape of the ancient Greek Hippodrome and I nibble delicately upon a counterfeit Lincoln Biscuit (counterfeit as although it LOOKS just like a Lincoln biscuit, it is utterly delicious and made mainly of butter and almonds, unlike the rubbish real Lincoln biscuit).






















Fuelled by our splendid biscuits and really quite ghastly coffee, we bicycle onwards. We see tiny houses made of wood. I fail to brake and end up mounting a staircase. We see ducks and two swan. My companion (who, as I may already have mentioned, is a cretin), claims that there is a thing called a "wild aquatic chicken"*, and that we have seen many of them.

I ignore him and pedal onwards. Eventually we arrive in a strange place filled mainly with Delftware clogs and chips. We are stopped suddenly in our tracks by the promise of some authentic Dutch photography. "Step inside!", beckons the sign. "We will Costume You, and Take Your Photographe!". I resist, despite the obvious temptation:



































Following a quite astonishingy unpleasant luncheon made of dogfish and four week old mayonnaise, we begin our long bicycle back to Amsterdam, which is smoking on the distant horizon. For some reason I still cannot fathom, my companion insists on bicycling behind me, singing "fat-bottomed girls make the rockin' world go round."

I once again fail to brake and end up in a hedge, having swerved to avoid an oncoming Nissan. My enormous-headed companion finds this funny until he sees that I am crying with real water from my eyes. "I NEARLY DIED", I sob, "and you ... DON'T CARE." "Never mind!" he squeaks (his voice is high like a girl's, despite his enormous head), "have a cup of tea and biscuit!" I recover immediately.

Twenty five kilometres later, we reach the ferry back to Amsterdam, whereupon we laugh until we are home.












I spend the following afternoon on the sofa eating very old Gouda and reading The Cow Who Fell In The Canal. A horse called Pieter is telling a cow called Hendrika that in Amsterdam, "...the streets are made of cobblestones and the houses have staircases on their roofs. People ride bicycles." I get off the sofa and look out of the front door. He appears to be right!


* Has anyone else heard of wild aquatic chickens? Apparently there are many in Norfolk. I find the whole idea frankly preposterous.

Day 207: I Am Now Absolutely Sure That I Am In Holland

Much to relate, including how in God's name I found myself doing a bicycle ride (on a bike that is too big for me, has one gear, stops when you pedal backwards and goes by the name of Glorie) of UP TO AND INCLUDING 50km today. (That's just over 31 miles! My word.) I am Utterly Exhausted!

On a more positive note, I have been concerned of late that I may not actually be in the Netherlands, despite evidence to the contrary (tulips, shops selling cheese, canals, bicycles, people speaking Dutch - that sort of thing). Happily, on the way to Edam by bicycle today, my fears were allayed.























Well I did say I was tired, didn't I? You just wait until tomorrow. Then you'll be sorry you ever read this post and thought, "Christ alive, that's rubbish, even for Non-workingmonkey!". I've got ALL SORTS, including biscuits, a dog, a gaping fish, a baby in an enormous hat and a man with an accordion. Can you wait? I know I can't!

Day 205: I Watch Television And Wish I Could Find Monkey Song

On the television in the Netherlands has been playing, for the last four minutes, a film of people bicycling through a puddle in Amsterdam to the tune of You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real). It depicts the many different ways in which one can raise one's legs clear of murky water when moving at speed, and has included a woman who - the coward - dismounted from her bicycle to push it around the puddle.

I want it to rain so I can bicycle through puddles to the tune of Monkey Song by Herman Düne. It is excellent, and contains the splendid words "If some of my friends could be monkeys/They would have four hands and understand me" and "Monkeys are cool and sweet/And make a good pet name for someone you love". But sadly I cannot work out how to post it, so you will have to imagine it.

Instead, you may like this. It is called "I Wish That I Could See You Soon" and is also by Herman Düne.