Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Events

  • The Lace Anniversary

    Last Sunday, the 12th June, we celebrated our 13th (Lace) Wedding Anniversary. Our combined ages are now 120 years, we’ve been together for (almost) 30 years, and this is our fifth year of living in our farmhouse, De Witte Wand.

    All the above seemed like a good excuse for a party, so on Sunday over thirty friends (old and new) joined us for lunch in the garden.

    Our new friends are from the neighbourhood, and they followed the local tradition of placing two fir trees decorated with paper roses outside the front door.

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    As it was Martin’s birthday very recently, they also brought along an Abraham to mark the occasion.

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    And since we had put up a tent for the party in the garden, they planted a Meiboom (Maypole) next to it. Whenever a new building is erected in this part of the Netherlands, a Meiboom is placed next to it to mark the occasion.

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    It’s also traditional to make speeches at these events. Fortunately, these were light-hearted, accompanied by joke presents (e.g. we were presented with walking sticks, a box to soak our false teeth overnight in, and two pairs of long-johns), so everyone was thoroughly entertained.

    The weather was kind, and I think a good time was had by all. Martin and I certainly enjoyed it. Our thanks to everyone who helped make it special, and particularly to our new friends from the neighbourhood who have welcomed us so warmly, and who went to great trouble to make this a special day for us.

  • The Wedding Party–A Mystery Solved

    I’ve got a pile of postcards and old photos that I inherited from my father. Many of the postcards he collected from places that he visited around the world, when he was a merchant seaman in the 1920s and 1930s. There are also lots of postcards of places in the Isle of Man, where he and I were born. As well as reproductions of 18th century engravings, there are photos; the earliest of which date from 1860. Here’s an example of one of these, showing Douglas Bay:

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    But there is one photo that has always intrigued me. It shows a wedding party, in the grounds of what could be a rather grand house. Other than the fact that it certainly couldn’t be any of our family, I had no idea who these people were, or where the photo was taken. Until, that is, a couple of days ago…

    Here’s the photo:

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    My brother has finally solved the mystery – he came across the same photo in a book. It is the wedding of Louisa Jane Dumbell and Alfred Charles Elliot on the 23rd June 1866. Louisa was the daughter of a prominent Manx figure of the time, George William Dumbell. He founded his own bank in 1853, and it had a fairly chequered history until its collapse in 1900. However, in 1866, George was riding high, and he made sure his daughter’s wedding was a lavish affair:

    In 1866, on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter, Louisa,to Mr Elliott, of the Indian Civil Service, the most lavish expenditure was indulged in. The SUN columns described the bride’s dress as being of “white satin, trimmed with three rolls of satinround the skirt, bodice trimmed with Bruxelles point lace, with crystal buttons, Bruxelles lace veil, wreath of orange and myrtle,pearl ornaments, etc. She was attended by eight bridesmaids, and the wedding party completely filled the church at Braddan. A troop of workmen had been for weeks employed in erecting a. monster marquee in the grounds at Belmont, which were illuminated and decorated with fairy-like grandeur.” The wedding festivities terminated on the fourth day with a great ball in the Castle Mona Hotel.

    The photo shows the wedding party in the six-acre grounds of “Belmont”, the house that George Dumbell had built in 1835. And now, with the benefit of knowledge, I realise that I should have recognised the house in the photograph, because I played in the house and grounds as a child. One of my schoolboy friends was Michael Crowe, and his family lived in Belmont (which by this time had been split into two semi-detached , but still very grand, houses). We spent many happy hours playing in the very Rhododendron bush that you can see on the left of the photo. By the 1950s, it had grown to gigantic size, and it was our jungle and climbing frame all rolled into one.

  • Carbideschieten 2010

    I don’t know where the year has gone, but here we are at the last day of 2010. And in the Dutch countryside, the last day of the year is celebrated by Carbideschieten. So once again, we enjoyed the hospitality of our neighbours; drank mulled wine, and ate oliebollen and snert. It was the very definition of gezelligheid – a practically untranslatable Dutch word.

  • A Catholic Appeal

    Johann Hari addresses an appeal to British Catholics in the run up to the Pope’s visit. I suspect that most will be blinded by hero worship and not see the feet of clay in the red Prada shoes.

  • Seasons Greetings

    Xmas 2009 card

  • Varsseveld’s Carnival

    The nearest small town to us, Varsseveld, is currently holding its annual four-day carnival. I went along to see the carnival parade last night. Nice atmosphere, with some good floats on show. A tradition in The Netherlands is to decorate the floats with thousands of flowers. There were some good examples last night. The most bizarre, however, was a float that represented a huge dung beetle, rolling an even larger ball of dung – the entire thing being covered in flowers and waste. Only in The Netherlands…

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    More photos of the parade here.

  • Families In Straitjackets

    There’s a bit of a stir going on in Amsterdam and the Hague at the moment. The reason is that the fifth World Family Congress has just opened at the RAI in Amsterdam for its three-day conference. The Dutch Minister for Youth and the Family, André Rouvoet, gave the opening address at the conference. And that was the reason for the stir: many, including fellow politicians in the Parliament in The Hague, felt that he was giving a stamp of approval to a conference that appears to have a very narrow view of what a family is.

    Last night’s television news journal had an item on the conference, which included a snippet from Rouvoet’s video address. In part he said:

    I’m aware of the outspoken views on the family that many of your organisations have. That’s why I want to challenge you to build bridges.

    This was immediately followed by a spokesman from one of the participating organisations (Tradition, Family and Property – the name says it all, really) saying:

    I don’t want to build a bridge to nowhere, I’m willing to cross bridges that go somewhere.

    In response to a question from the interviewer, he then helpfully clarified that a bridge to gay parenting and gay marriage was a bridge to nowhere. What a surprise. And what really pisses me off is the Orwellian newspeak of it all. For example, the  Howard Center is the think-tank behind the World Congress of Families, and which believes that the “natural human family is founded by the Creator, and is essential for a good society”. The director of the Howard Center, Larry Jacobs, is quoted as saying:

    "It is clear that the left is shocked by the family congress because it brings a pro-family message to a city which they claim as their own territory."

    There it is: pro-family – a positive-sounding term that actually means a rigid definition of what a family is and that is against any other meaning. It’s a great pity that Mr. Jacobs and others like the spokesman quoted above will never understand that families come in all shapes and sizes. Meanwhile he and his ilk will continue to spout their self-righteous bigotry. I also think it hypocritical. If you read the definition of the family given on the World Congress of Families V own web site, it goes to some pains to widen the narrow definition (man, woman and children) to include “alternatives”, which, it concedes:

    If these alternatives have the same quality of love, upbringing and intergenerational transfer as the natural family, then they also belong to the category which we call ‘the family’.

    However, the difference between these words and the deeds of the majority of the participants at this congress seem wide indeed, judging by the attitudes that I have seen and read.

    But perhaps it’s hardly surprising really, because if you refer back to the Howard Center’s web site, you’ll find a much more hardline approach as to what the family is. Nary a whisper there of “alternatives”; indeed, I see that I’m headed for damnation:

    Marriage between a man and a woman forms the sole moral context for natural sexual union. Whether through pornography, promiscuity, incest or homosexuality, deviations from these created sexual norms cannot truly satisfy the human spirit. They lead to obsession, remorse, alienation, and disease.

    Here I think we see the true guiding spirit behind this conference: anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-secular. Now that sounds like a bridge to nowhere to me.

  • The Gay Games: 1998

    The first week in August 1998 saw the holding of the fifth Gay Games. And, for the first time, the Gay Games was held outside of North America. This time, Amsterdam was its home for one remarkable week, even by the standards of this city.

    The first Gay Games was an initiative taken by the late Dr.Tom Waddell, participant in the Olympic Games in Mexico. From the first Games, which attracted 1,300 participants, the scale and popularity has steadily grown. Amsterdam had 14,299 participants and 250,000 spectators – one of the largest sporting and cultural events in the world.

    Amsterdam Canal Parade

    The day of the official opening of the Games coincided with Amsterdam’s third annual Gay Canal Parade, where carnival floats literally do just that.

    Canal Parade - Games Boat

    This was the official boat for the Gay Games. The two rainbow towers went up and down, and raised and lowered the yellow flag of the Games. In the background you can see the Amsterdam Opera House – the Stopera. This, and the area around it, became Friendship Village for the week of the Games.

    Canal Parade - GayLM Boat

    Royal Dutch Airlines – KLM – was a major sponsor of the Gay Games, so what more justification was required for GayLM – the “Legs in the Air Line”. And, of course, there were passing royal visitors…

    Canal Parade - Royalty

    Ancient and Modern…

    Canal Parade - Ancient and Modern

    And just to prove that we shouldn’t take anything for granted in August, it rained for part of the time…

    Canal Parade - August Weather

    Opening Ceremony

    The opening ceremony of the Games was held at the Amsterdam ArenA. The entry of the participants (all 14,299 of them!) was both joyful and stirring, every last one of them being cheered and clapped by some 30,000 spectators. What was also striking was the number of countries represented by the participants – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Sobering to realise also that in many of these countries, gays and lesbians are persecuted – up to and including capital punishment.

    Opening Ceremony

    There’s been quite a lot of discussion over why we should have a “Gay Games” – some have said that it is separatism, when we are simultaneously seeking integration with society at large. While I can see some small justification for this view, to my mind it is swept away by the fact that we should celebrate our diversity, particularly in the light of the continuing existence of prejudice and persecution. The positive feelings that the opening ceremony ignited in the hearts and souls of those of us present are sparks that I’m sure we will carry back to our respective communities. As Harvey Fierstein said, to ringing cheers, “We are not different, we are extraordinary!” His speech that night was truly magnificent – reminding us that the journeys that we made by train, boat and plane to get to Amsterdam were short in comparison with the journeys in our souls to reach this place. “We were carried here on the backs of the millions of gays and lesbians that went before us… some of whom paid for the struggle against prejudice with their very lifeblood.”

    I was impressed too by the speeches (at both the opening and closing ceremonies) made by Schelto Patijn, the Mayor of Amsterdam at the time. He epitomised the strong support given by the wider community of Amsterdam for this event. He rightly deserved the applause he received on both occasions.

    And then there was the music and dancing… The 200 sailors stripping to the Weather Girls “It’s Raining Men”; Dana International, Mathilde Santing (now apparently christened as “the Dutch Diva”).

    The Competitions

    A friend of ours, Jim Atkinson, was taking part in the weightlifting competition at the Gay Games. On Sunday, 2nd August, I went along to watch some of the competition, and give moral support…

    Weightlifting medals

    Jim with Chris Morgan on the right. The end result – Silver and Bronze medals! Well done, Jim! You can see the results for all the sports at the Gay Games web site here.

    Closing

    The participants once again marched into the ArenA, this time with their medals and memories…

    Closing Ceremony

    The Scottish contingent proving that traditionally, nothing is worn beneath a kilt (it is all in perfect working order)…

    Scottish Contingent

    Closing Thanks

    You can visit the official Gay Games Federation web site by clicking here.