Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2006

  • The Line of Beauty

    Tomorrow night, the BBC screens the first episode of a three-part adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, the Booker Prize-winning novel that evokes the spirit of fast living in London in the years of Thatcher.
     
    It promises to be riveting television. There’s even a leader in The Guardian today praising the adaptation (but, he said pedantically, haven’t they got the hyphen in the wrong place in the phrase "Booker Prize-winning"?).

  • From Frying Pan To Fire?

    A row has broken out around the Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is accused of being economical with the truth when she arrived in The Netherlands seeking asylum in 1992.
     
    The result has been that she has decided not just to step down from the Dutch parliament, but also to move to the US where she will take up a position in the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative thinktank based in Washington.
     
    I confess to having mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I can see why the conservative elements in US politics would want to embrace Hirsi Ali as someone who stands against "islamic facism", and I can see why she might want to leave all the shit she’s been getting in the Netherlands behind. But I can’t help feeling that, if she really is true to her views on women’s and homosexuals’ rights that these will ultimately jar with her new paymasters, and I predict a divorce in the not too distant future.
     
    It’s either that, or she’s just another typical politician, willing to change her views for her own survival. Time will tell.
     
    Update: reactions from various people in Dutch politics. Wiegel’s reaction is a typical smug Dutch pronouncement. I find that sort of attitude irritating beyond belief. He is clearly in the "I’m alright Jack" mode of thinking whilst rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Peter van Ham, however, points in the same direction as my feelings – Hirsi Ali will find strange bedfellows in the AEI.
     
    Update 2: the story is now emerging in the UK press, e.g. The Guardian and The Telegraph. The latter does point out that apparently the fact that Hirsi Ali lied about her background in order to get asylum status "has been common knowledge since September 2002". Still, that’s not going to sav her. Today, the Dutch papers are reporting that the lovely Rita Verdonk, the hard-line Dutch Immigration Minister, is now saying that Hirsi Ali should never have been granted Dutch citizenship in 1997, and therefore it is possible that she will be stripped of her citizenship.

  • Recycling Is Good Business

    As a result of the house move and buying some new stuff, we’d accumulated a lot of rubbish that needed to be got rid of. It was time to look at the recycling options. When we were in Gouda, we’d just load the car up with the junk and take it down to the Cyclus plant and offload it for free. Here in the Achterhoek, I discovered that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
     
    There is a recycling location, Ter Horst in Varsseveld, but as a privatised concern (no longer under the control of the council), you have to pay to get rid of your rubbish. This has had two effects. One, the good burgers of Varsseveld and the surrounding environs tend to just dump their rubbish anywhere rather than actually taking it to Ter Horst and paying someone to get rid of it. The Dutch have a reputation second only to the Scots for being careful with their money. And two, I noticed that a privatised recycling business which not only charges its customers, but which also makes money through recycling the stuff they bring in is clearly doing well. I note this from the fact that the line of cars owned by the employees and the owner of the concern were, without exception, rather expensive BMWs.
     
    Ah well, such is life, I thought as I offloaded the junk and received a chit that I had to take to the cash desk. And it was there that I had the experience for which it was all worthwhile. The cash desk was in the kitchen of the business owner’s house, and it was presided over by Gypsy Rose Lee. She was every inch the part, and guarded by two fearsome dogs of some kind of (very large) bulldog breed. The house was doing its best to masquerade as a gypsy caravan, complete with chandeliers, oil stoves, knicknacks and tapestries. Glorious to see that sub-cultures are alive and well in the Netherlands… 

  • Look Out, Eurovision’s Coming…

    This weekend sees this year’s extravaganza of kitsch, otherwise known as Eurovision. We’ll be glued to the TV, watching the BBC simply because of Terry Wogan’s post-ironic commentary. Eurovision really is the biggest pile of tosh, and for that reason is irresistible. Some of the performers and their entourage are probably a few sandwiches short of a full lunch as well. For example, in the report of the press conference from the 12th May, we read:
    Before Silvia arrived to meet the press, her boyfriend instructed the journalists not to look the Icelandic star Silvia Night in the eye or else they would be removed. “I welcome you all to enjoy my stay in Athens,” said Silvia when she did arrive. “I am an international superstar and you are all my children.”
    Yes, dear, just keep taking the tablets.
     

  • Harold and Maude

    Rupert Christiansen in The Telegraph reviews Harold and Maude, and brings back a whole raft of memories to me. Thanks to Yuki for saying to me all those years ago that I simply had to see this film. She was right. I see that Christiansen ranks it alongside If…, which was another film that made a profound impression on me.

  • Mourning Sickness

    An interesting, and sobering, story in The Guardian today. It’s about the reaction to the death of an American teenager – Anna Svidersky – that has become an Internet phenomenon. Real life and online life appear to be becoming one and the same for some people. Indeed, as the article points out: for some, their online life seems to be more important.

  • WTF?

    Distressing evidence emerges today that journalists on The Observer are becoming lazy irresponsible hacks who can’t be bothered to check the credentials of anyone purporting to be an expert. 
     
    The evidence: quoting Christopher Malyszewicz as an "MRSA Expert" after Dr. Ben Goldacre, on the Observer’s sister paper, The Guardian, has convincingly shown Malyszewicz to be a quack of the first water. 
     
    Still, the ever-hungry maw of journalism has to grab and masticate whatever it can. Witness the BBC’s faux pas over Guy Kewney. He’s an IT pundit who was recently invited to comment on the Apple versus Apple Corps legal wrangling. Imagine his surprise when waiting in BBC reception to see his taxi-driver (who is black and French-Gabonese) being introduced as Guy Kewney (who is white and English) and being interviewed on TV.
     

  • Not What I was Looking for…

    So there I was, looking for a solution for long term storage of our extra bedding (sheets, pillowcases, and so forth). I’d seen a solution that was like a strong plastic bag, into which you stuff the textiles and then suck out the air, leaving a smaller, well protected package impervious to moths and damp. But where to buy such a thing? Then I thought of Wehkamp – the Dutch equivalent to the Sears (US) and Littlewoods (UK) home shopping catalogues.
     
    So off to their web site I went. After some fruitless browsing, trying to track the thing down, I thought I’d use their search engine. So I entered the term "vacuum" – and was rewarded with this. Not quite what I had in mind. 

  • And The Big Gay Read Winner Is…

    … Armistead Maupin for Tales of the City. While it’s understandable that Maupin has won – the books are good and deservedly popular – part of me thinks that, for a competition seeking to find the favourite books of British gays and lesbians, it’s a pity that a British author didn’t make it into first place. Sarah Waters and Jeanette Winterson figure prominently, of course, and I see Alan Hollinghurst and Patrick Gale are also in the top ten, so British voices weren’t entirely drowned out by our transatlantic cousins. Personally, I would have liked to have seen the work of the late Tom Wakefield also in the list.

  • Black Lake: The Ballet

    Here’s a piece of trivia for you: Sir Sean Connery is reputed to have devised a ballet in the mid-1960s. Perhaps fortunately for posterity, it was never performed. However, Tim Dowling, in today’s Guardian, does a wonderful job of imagining what it might have been like.

  • Prejudice in the EU

    A sobering article in the Guardian today that contrasts the situation of gays and lesbians living in different parts of the EU. The prejudice and homophobia that exists in some countries such as Poland must make life pretty miserable for gay people. Another reason to be thankful that I live where I do.

  • The Piper and the Penguin

    Idle Words has an entry on Tierra del Fuego with an arresting image of a piper and a penguin. The words are interesting too. Although, I don’t share his enthusiasm for Bruce Chatwin, who always struck me as a monstrous carbuncle, feeding off his friends and family. Read Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of Chatwin to understand why I feel this way.

  • Shuffling the Rats

    Simon Hoggart nails it as usual. But the biggest rat of all didn’t get shuffled- he was the one doing the shuffling. There ain’t no justice in the world.

  • Cracks in the Pavement

    When I was very small, I used to be scared to step on the cracks in the pavement. I also was quite convinced that there were dragons in the attic that would come after me when I left the bedroom to go downstairs each day. So there were rules that I followed (religiously) about not stepping on the cracks and running downstairs so that the dragons wouldn’t catch me.
     
    Some people have similar rules, that frankly, in retrospect, strike me and Ophelia as just as bizarre and nonsensical. But then, we perhaps claim to be a trifle more rational than some.
     
    Oh, and I grew up. One day, the dragons disappeared from the attic after I dared them to catch me. And the cracks were just cracks.

  • Never A Truer Word…

    "B&Q is not an evolutionary part of the process. A B&Q shed planted on the edge of the greenbelt is not evolution, that’s just mismanaged".
    – Bill Bryson on the current state of the British Countryside; an interview in today’s Observer.
     
    What he says goes for here in the Netherlands as well – perhaps even more so. Since moving to what passes for the country in a densely-populated country such as The Netherlands I’ve become aware of how little of "Nature in the raw" there is, and how much of an agrarian machine exists here. It’s like Disneyland – a simulacrum of reality (or Hyper-Reality, as Umberto Eco puts it so well); in this case, a simulacrum of Nature. That’s not to say that I don’t take pleasure in it, I certainly do; but unmanaged wilderness it ain’t.
     
    Bryson talks about the loss of hedgerows. They are almost unknown here. I am struck by the amount of electrified fences I see as I walk or cycle around the region. Hedgerows – a vital part of preserving wildlife and bio-diversity – seem to be an extinct species here in The Netherlands so far as I can see.

  • Damn It, Janet

    Another event in London that I missed. I saw the original production at the Royal Court (was it really 33 years ago? Ohmigod!), have seen the film countless times and have even gone to parties dressed as Frank-N-Furter. It’s in my blood, I tell you…

  • Choose One from the Following

    Gary McKinnon is either:
     
    a) barking
     
    b) a sad case
     
    c) trying to justify himself
     
    d) taking us for a ride
     
    My money hovers between (b) and (d), but (a) would not surprise me.

  • The Sultan’s Elephant

    Now that’s something I would like to have seen…
     

  • I Am Not A Number…

  • Doctor Who’s Viral Marketing

    The BBC has been setting up tie-in websites as viral marketing for Doctor Who. I haven’t had time to explore them yet, but will try to do so sometime soon.
     
    And may I just say that the reinvented Doctor Who series has been simply wonderful. Christopher Eccleston was excellent, and David Tennant is already shaping up to match him in the eponymous role. It’s not simply that the production values of the new series are an order of magnitude better than the cardboard sets and characters of the original (fun, in a cheesy sort of way, though they were). It’s that the quality of the writing, and the strength of the acting of all the lead characters, knocks the series into a different class altogether. For example the scene in the swimming pool between David Tennant and Anthony Head in last week’s School Reunion was electrifying, and the dissection of the doctor’s character by his present and past assistants (Billie Piper and Elisabeth Sladen) was brilliant. In fact, the tying together of past and present in School Reunion made that episode for me one of the most satisfying I have ever seen, while The Doctor Dances remains as my number one favourite, with Boom Town as a close second, because of the scenes between Annette Badland and Christopher Eccleston.. 
     
    My only regret is that Martin does not share my enthusiasm for Doctor Who in any shape or form, so I’ve got no-one to discuss it face to face with. Perhaps I’ll just talk to the dog about it. At least he won’t get bored and go off to do something else.
     
    (hat-tip to Diamond Geezer of the tie-in websites link)