FOUND!

AHA!!!!!!!!!!!! FOUND THEM!!!!!!! *Happy dance*

This is a follow up to the posting of yesterday and the mystery of the missing Bookmarks.

They were skulking in Notebook - which I never EVER use..? So goodness knows how they got there(?)

Had just re-googled the problem into the Search bar and one of the suggestions I happened across, was to click on Notebook. (Would never have thought of that by myself, in a thousand years. Didn't even know where it was).

Click, click click! Settings/Google Account Settings/Notebook - and lo and behold, there were all my missing URLs! (Come to Mamma!!!)

Still haven't found out where the Bookmark button is hiding itself (?) and it would be much handier to have it back on the Google Toolbar. But never mind, if it is still hidden away after a week, I will borrow my neighbour's (mannetje) 'man'.
This 'man' is another neighbour, whom the first neighbour knows (and I don't) and who being possessed of IT knowledge, will come over and tinker about with your computer and 'retrieve things', for a small honorarium. (I hope that means money!).

Bye for now. Have a nice computer day!

BOOM-DIDDY-BOOM!

Dutch New Year celebrations started officially yesterday morning, with the legal sale of fireworks in Holland. Legally, they must not be let off before 10 a.m. on the 31st Dec.; but unrealistically, billions of bangers, rockets and other heart jumping noisy explosives, are now in the hands of millions of over-excited Dutch youth.

So, since I am not allowed to leap out, screeching bloodcurdlingly (and brandishing my broomstick) onto the backs of our local youth - and physically remove their fireworks from them when they let them off right under my windows (!) - that just leaves the following:

Check list:
Wheelie bins under cover.
Letter box sealed shut.
Last minute shopping done.
All windows closed.
Monitor the dog's pulse and respiration.

A friend's German Shepherd mix is staying with me, while her 'mam' holidays in Dubai - and she is cowering on top of my feet. She has been there for almost the last 24 hours and my feet are numb. Toasty, but numb.

This poor dog is my greatest concern; what with all the smoke and noise coming from the street she is a nervous wreck, so I have created an elaborate, 'escape' route, out of my scullery door (mine is the only residence on the ground floor - a sort of granny flat) and into a small enclosed back passage. Then out through another door into the main hall, past the lift and out through the electronic back doors onto a large cul-de-sac of grass and trees - and from there it is just a couple of minutes mad dash across the grass, around a corner, across a road and into a large wooded park, where an 'off lead' area for our four footed friends, offers sanctuary. Phew!

After a bit of a run, I will put her back on the lead and since the local New Year's bonfire is being built further up in the park, we will then proceed the opposite way, past monuments and duck filled ponds, towards an area of high prickly bushes - to relax and sniff at rabbit holes. (The dog, not me (!) I gave up rabbit hole sniffing years ago...). It seems to soothe the dog's nerves and the local rabbits are apparently used to us now, since they don't bolt anymore.
I just hope that these cute, seemingly unafraid bunnies - and the local tame ducks - have the sense to bolt and hide from the growing swarms of kids armed with thousands of 'bombs': i.e, bangers that get louder and more dangerous every year... *shudder*..
Because some of them really are like small bombs. Obtained illegally from Belgium and smuggled into the Neths. I saw two of them blow a couple of impressive holes in the tarmac outside a party in Amsterdam, a couple of years ago.

Happy New Year everyone - and be safe! And that goes for your pets and the local wild life too.

Cheers!!!

TAKEN SHORT!

Feeding the ducks in the park yesterday, met a neighbour just back from his holidays. A friendly man and very proud of his idiomatic-type English, which he practices on me – strangely with an ‘American’ accent - whenever he can.

Me: 'Howdy neighbour!'

Him: (Walking stiffly)…'O.K.. Jes got me a new case of the "galloping whatsits…".'

Me: 'Oh dear. That doesn’t sound O.K.. Picked it up on holiday?'

Him: 'Yeah. Makes it difficult to walk properly. A bit sore between the…'

Me: (Interrupting hastily)… 'Oo-er, yes yes, well, perhaps you shouldn’t be out? I mean, I know there are a lot of bushes around here, but perhaps it would be better to stay home, close to the...er.. W.C. You know - bathroom.'

Him: (With a slightly puzzled air)… 'But why would I wanna do that? I allus walk the hound round this time…'

Me: (More puzzled) 'Well, those ‘galloping…er…whatsits’ can come on quite - suddenly.'

Him: 'Awl-a-sudden? Well nay, s'matter-a-fact, took quite a while to tug them critters on!'

Me: (Totally confused). 'Heh???'

Him: (Lifting his T-shirt and pulling at his jeans waistband) 'Looky here…'

Me: (In rising panic) 'What are you doing man.? Get home quick! I’ll finish walking your dog for you!'

Him: 'The label. Look at the label.'

Me: ' "Colt". You’ve bought yourself a new pair of Colt jeans?'

Him: 'Tight sons-a-b****ers.'

Me: (Whinnying). 'NAAAY…toch!' (spelled NEE - Dutch for NO…).

Him: 'Whad'ya think I meant?'

Me: (Quickly) 'Nothing. Have a nice day.'

Him: (Shuffling stiffly off, mumbling in Dutch..) Translation: 'Strange woman. Goin’ a bit ‘potty’...'

HORSE MANURE!

I am standing outside my front door chatting to a neighbour, when the clatter of horses’ hooves draws our attention to two magnificent police horses turning into our street. Whether by accident or design the horses are a matching sandy brown and their riders sit high and haughty in the saddles, resplendent in their blue police uniforms.

‘Now that’s a fine sight…’ I begin, but as they draw abreast of us the nearest horse is obviously agitated, tossing his head and rolling a baleful eye.
‘He’s gonna crap!’ Yells my neighbour’s young son, jumping up and down with glee - and sure enough as the horse strolls past, he lets fly with endless dollops of thick, smelly yellow manure.

My neighbour clicks her tongue in disgust and shooing her delighted progeny before her, picks her way through the piles of steaming poo to their house across the road, leaving me staring after the horses. In my mind I am five years old again and back in England at my grandparent’s house. The coal man’s horse has just passed by and the cry has gone out: Horse muck! Horse muck! And at every house in the immediate vicinity, kids are scrambling to grab buckets and spades and be the first to collect the inevitable booty left by this hard working animal.

‘Just what my roses need.’ Laughs granddad, egging my cousin and I on.
‘A penny each for a bucketful!’
As the youngest by two years, I would hold the bucket, while my cousin shovelled frantically. The kids who lived next door were about our ages and competition was fierce! Still, there always seemed enough to go round and my cousin and I would struggle back to granddad with our bucket of steaming bounty, to collect our reward. A penny in those days would fill the whole of a child’s palm and I would stare down at my huge, hard earned copper coin with satisfaction. A sherbet dab, pink sugar mouse, gobstopper, thin chocolate bar wrapped in tin foil… the mouth-watering treats this coin would buy were endless!

A passing car jerks me from my reverie. There are still no children anywhere to be seen and my neighbour across the road is calling me over for a cup of tea. As we sit in her back garden my eyes are drawn to a bag of fertilizer pellets standing next to her rose bushes. Clean, efficient, no pungent odour… and the only bucket and spade to be seen are the brightly coloured plastic ones in her child’s sandpit.

As I return home the horse manure is still there but almost completely flattened and crisscrossed with the tire treads of passing cars. But all is not wasted – a couple of magpies are pecking animatedly in the remains.
‘Ah well’, I mutter. ‘Peck away. After the street sweeper car has been tomorrow there will be no trace of it at all. That’s progress for you; a clean and sanitized world – but not half as much fun!’

UP THE GARDEN PATH

I know for a fact, having recently lived there, that many of the apartment blocks in Amsterdam hide glorious secret gardens!
Often assessable only through the ground floor apartments to which they belong the effect is of a tranquil and colourful oasis, hidden away from the dinginess and turmoil of city life.

Each rainy day in spring our modest lawns would be teeming with frogs – though lord knows where they came from, while bees, butterflies, snails and slugs went forth and multiplied. Blackbirds and blue tits abounded too, whilst the tallest trees were often filled with screeching families of wild green city parrots, who liked nothing better than to bombard us with twigs and poo (!)

So with all this natural beauty to keep us busy, it was with some surprise that one bright summer morning I discovered my seventy-six year old neighbour Mrs. V., halfway under a hortensia bush, feeding a dish of strawberry yogurt to her scrubbing brush….

Mrs. V: ‘Tch… It wont drink it…. do you think it’s ill?’

Me: ‘ Oh definitely.’

Mrs. V: ‘I don’t know. It’s unheard of to find one of these here. I mean how did it get here? Do you think it's dead?'

Me: ‘Indubitably.’

Mrs. V: Blinking and frowning. ‘You don’t seem bothered. I thought you liked hedgehogs?'

Me: ‘Well like you said - it’s dead… Oh Mrs. V., I am sorry but… you know that cataract operation you are due to have next week?'

Mrs. V: ‘Yes.’

Me: ‘And you know that scrubbing brush you lost last year and that is now half rotten and buried in the dirt under your hortensia bush?'

Mrs. V: Brightly. ‘Is it? Oh good, I wondered where… that… had… got … to… WEL NU BEN IK VAN DE POT GERUKT!’

Which means something like: ‘Well now I’ve gone completely off my rocker!’ The Dutch aren't known for spicy swear words.

P.S. We threw the scrubbing brush in the bin. A-men.

HOLES AND DINOSAURS

There is a gigantic hole at the end of my street and like starlings around a bacon rind we flock to view it. Its proportions are truly enormous and as we gawk admiringly, I detect communal pride and street solidarity in the contemplation of ‘our hole’. No one knows why it is there. Road works are a permanent fixture in our city. One day an intact road - next day a hole. No big deal.
Even so, this particular hole is truly magnificent (!) and we venture closer. Excited kids toss stones and we watch them bounce off the sides and plummet downwards. Shivering, I reflect that this must have been how the whole planet once was: A pitted globe of dank treacherous holes, in a ground torn apart by primeval earthquakes. A time when dinosaurs roamed the earth, perhaps on this very spot!
As I gaze with fascination into the newly dug aperture, I wonder what it is about holes that exert such magnetism on the human psyche? Take a hole in a garment for example. Goaded on by an almost instinctive, primeval urge, we are doomed to stick a finger in it! But what is a hole really? Nothing. It is simply not there - and yet it is - defined by its edges. It is a maddening concept.
Shrugging off my musings I hop back onto my bike and continue on round the corner to the shops – and stop dead! The whole main street is dug up, with a huge trench excavated along its entire length. The sand and soil from the trench is piled up high along its outer edge like a…dinosaur’s vertebrae (!) and the strip of road left over, is made even narrower by a row of parked cars along the pavement curb.
With a line of honking cars now piling up behind me, I peddle frantically. Well it isn’t my fault that there is no room for a car and a bicycle side by side…
Then suddenly and horribly – BAM! The door of a parked car swings open and I smash full tilt into it and fall to the ground. The car behind me screeches to a stop and I am vaguely aware of the driver extricating me from my damaged bike and yelling at the perpetrator.
'What the 'blazes' do you think you are doing?!'
A crowd is gathering, asking me if I am all right. I don’t know. My left hand is grazed and embedded with grit from the road and there is a large lump on the front of my right shin and something decidedly odd about my right hand. I hold it up and the ring finger swings drunkenly across the front of the little finger. It is obviously broken. The crowd sighs.
‘Insurance,’ I mumble and the perpetrator looks alarmed but under the baleful glare of the crowd, he writes his name, phone and car registration number on a piece of paper and gives it to me.
Then he tries to sneak off.
‘Hospital!’ I mutter, staring angrily at him.
The crowd hisses.
Chastened, he agrees and his female companion helps me into their car, while a helpful shopkeeper locks my damaged bike, props it up on a lamppost and drops the key into my coat pocket. I thank him through trembling lips.
What happens at the hospital is a bit of a blur. The perpetrator drops me at the entrance and screeches away without a word, which just stiffens my resolve to ‘get him’ later...grr..(insurance!).
They plaster the whole of my broken right hand and the left hand too is cleaned, ointmented and mummified in bandage. The lump on my shin is left to heal itself. Then an obliging nurse wraps my coat around me and sends me on my way with a medical report and instructions to report the incident to the police. Apparently knocking people off bikes with car doors is a crime! Ha!
Exhausted now, I take the tram home and don’t punch my card. How can I with two mummified hands? How will I manage when I get home - I am bursting for the loo!
Finally at my front door, I open my bag with my teeth and am staring helplessly down at the door key, when suddenly, like a guardian angel, my good neighbour Mrs. V., is swooping down upon me!
‘Potverdorie’! She clucks. Which I think is Dutch for 'damn the pots' but might mean 'good grief'!
‘Saw you from the window. Whatever’s happened? Here, let me help you off with your coat. Tut-tut!’
Surrendering to her kind ministrations, I am soon standing in my hallway being told by Mrs. V. that I am to come over directly and have a nice cup of tea and that she’ll leave her front door open a crack, so that I don’t have to ring the bell with my nose…. Dear Mrs. V..
Wearily I lean back against the wall of the hallway. My swaddled hands are throbbing badly and alone at last I fight down tears of self-pity. Then suddenly my eyes fly open! Mesmerized I stare ahead, as somewhere deep within my brain stem, echoes of a primeval Jurassic past are stirring. Earthquakes, chasms and HOLES… I must be feverish. Then unbidden and instinctively, I sense her! My ‘Terrible Lizard’ is waking and as her massive mouth roars out her mighty pain and frustration, I can hold back the tears no longer...(!)
There's a h-hole in my coat and I don't have a f-finger to poke it with...waahh!

CELL PHONE CACOPHONY

There is no doubt about it, celluloid phones, rank high on my list of most annoying and difficult to master technologies! The enthusiasm with which these phones were first greeted, baffled me completely. Everyone except me it seemed, was rushing out to buy one. Even my septuagenarian neighbour, a certain Mrs. V., astonished me one day during a trip to our local market, by suddenly pulling out a cell phone, flipping it dexterously open and bawling into it at the top of her voice! I didn’t even know she owned such a thing and almost jumped out of my skin at the unexpectedness of it all.
The most amazing thing to me was that Mrs. V was holding the phone below chin level and repeatedly shouting her granddaughter’s name at it.
‘Er.. Don’t you have to dial first?’ I ventured.
‘I am doing,’ answered the intrepid Mrs.V.. ‘I’m using name–recognition-dialing.’
‘Oh…of course,’ I murmured faintly, ‘name-recognition-dialing’.
I was always amazed at the richness and variation of the cell phone topics under discussion, although often dismayed too that nothing seemed sacred anymore. Like someone’s loud voice slagging off their neighbour/spouse/best friend/boss etc.. Bah!
'Learn to turn a 'deaf' ear', advised the serene Mrs. V..
But even she avoided the city center during tourist season.
Climbing into an over full tram one hot summers day, I was perplexed by the cacophony of sound - until I slowly realized that practically everyone was talking on a cell phone - and I couldn’t understand a word of it!
Throaty Arabic consonants assailed the air. Turkish words, all seemingly ending in ‘Z’ flew over my head. Melodious Caribbean bounced off the windows. Lilting Italian; rapid Spanish; Australian; American; German; Chinese and all manner of Baltic vocals, swirled frenziedly through the humid, claustrophobic interiour. Everyone seemed to be gesturing; either punching the air or drawing directions in it; or just rocking backwards and forwards with their gaze ‘turned inwards’ as they visualized the person on the other end of their phone.
I felt myself giggle and supressed it with a spluttering cough. Oh Lord, help me! Cough cough. That’s right. Swallow. Take a deep breath...
No offence intended to any of the languages mentioned here but when mixed up all together in a confined space, they're a blast!
And then suddenly there I was - screeching like a banshee. Oh flippin 'eck, hold your breath! Hunch forward! Think of something sad! Nothing was working and heads were turning, as people were distracted from their own noise by mine!
I could imagine that in all their different languages the sentiment would be the same:
‘Look at that silly old bat, laughing at nothing. Shouldn’t be allowed out in public alone. No telling what she’ll do next.’
Tears of mirth and humiliation trickled from my eyes - and as I fumbled desperately in my bag for a tissue, my fingers closed around salvation! Cool and shiny to the touch the flat, rectangular shape slid into my palm and with a last ditch flourish I pulled it from my bag and held it to my ear. I was just in time.
Baleful, suspicious eyes were raking my posture. Check it out: Laughing elderly woman, squashed near the door, gazing downwards, right arm bent, hand held to ear at familiar angle. Hmm… nothing unusual, no threat after all.
Relief flooded through me as their eyes ‘turned inwards’ once more, leaving me alone to chortle insanely - into my wallet!