Europe faces “civilisational erasure” within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration, arguing in a policy document that the US must “cultivate resistance” within the continent to “Europe’s current trajectory”.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the current US Administration would espouse the Great Replacement Theory along with its other dubious morals.
As I blogged previously, Watson started to lose strength in his back legs in April. By mid-May he was finding it difficult to stay upright.
His quality of life reduced to the point where we decided that he had reached his final destination and called the vet. She came and with gentle care put him to sleep. He was almost 15, which for a Labrador is a good age.
We said that we wouldn’t think about getting another dog for at least 6 months. However, it turns out that both Martin and I were scanning the web secretly, and Martin came across Ollie, an 8-year-old rescue dog. We decided to adopt him, and he has been settling into his new home for the past two months. Here he is…
Just under a month ago, I blogged that The End Is Nigh – and today it arrived.
It has been very clear over the last week that Watson was on the downward slope – he was finding it difficult to stay upright, and preferred to spend the day resting and sleeping. He would no longer come into our bedroom every morning to wake Martin and steal a sock from the clothes basket, or ask to be chased around the dining table every evening.
On his daily walks, he could only manage a little way outside the house before he would collapse and need to rest and recover his strength. I needed to help him get back upright on all fours before he was able to carry on.
Today we decided that he had reached his final destination and called the vet.
She came, with a vet in training, and with gentle care put him to sleep.
Our dog Watson is well into old age – he’s more than 14 years old, which is old for a Labrador. A few weeks ago his back legs suddenly gave way and he collapsed in a heap on the floor. He looked very confused at this, but picked himself up and carried on. It occurred again a week later and now it’s become really noticeable that he’s losing control of his back legs. Last weekend out on his walk I had to stop a few times after he collapsed to let him gather himself together and struggle on.
I took him to the vets’ yesterday and had a good discussion with the vet. We agreed that Watson still has a good quality of life considering his age, but that we’re definitely on the downward slope now. She thinks that it’s a matter of months before we reach a point where we need to think seriously about having him put to sleep, but she did warn that things could change quickly, so to be prepared.
At the moment, the fact that he still wants to play, and getting exercise by wandering about the garden and our field doing his own thing several times a day is demonstrating that he’s coping with his arthritis (for which he’s already getting painkillers and food supplements). So he may just reach his 15th birthday at the end of July – which for a Lab is exceptional – but it’s highly unlikely that he will see Christmas. We will just make the best of the time that we have left.
Watson has his 14th birthday today – a good age for a Labrador.
He spends most of the day gently snoozing (and dreaming of chasing rabbits I think), but he does go out daily on short walks or pottering around our (large) garden. And he’s still up for the game of being chased around the table in the living room every evening – I am the one who usually calls a halt to the proceedings before him.
We can’t quite believe it, but a couple of days ago (the 12th June) marked 25 years since we were married – our Silver Wedding Anniversary. Time is passing far too fast these days.
We celebrated the fact last weekend by inviting friends to join us for dinner at the Hotel Heerlyckheid in Bredevoort. We had packed our dog, Watson, off to the local kennels for an overnight stay so that we could do the same at the hotel.
The evening was a great success, and thanks go to the staff and the chef at the hotel for making it so.
Somehow, given both our ages, I doubt that we will make it to the Golden Wedding, but we can look back on this with pride and satisfaction that a significant milestone was reached.
The annual members’ meeting of our local village community council, Heelwegs Belang, was held on the 7th March. I had been a board member for a total of nine years (three terms of three years) and the statutes rule that this is the maximum that I could serve, so I stepped down. The post of secretary has passed to another board member. Although no longer on the board, I remain as their webmaster and the IT department, administering the Microsoft 365 Business system for Heelwegs Belang.
When a board member steps down, it is usual for them to be formally thanked in the members’ meeting and presented with a bunch of flowers and a small gift. So I was expecting this as part of the proceedings of the members’ meeting. What I did not expect was that the Mayor (Burgemeester) of our Local Authority also showed up and thanked me for my work, not only for Heelwegs Belang, but also for my work in bringing the fibre-optic network to the area. He presented me with the obligatory bunch of flowers, but also a wünderkamer – a “cabinet of curiosities” artwork made by a local artist.
Photo: Roel Kleinpenning
I was also pleased that the board did not forget that another member of our community, Jan Geert, had worked with me on the network project, and he was formally thanked by the board that evening for his efforts.
The board presented me with a certificate proclaiming that I was now an Honorary Member of Heelwegs Belang.
Martin had apparently been plotting this together with the other board members for over a year beforehand. I was totally unaware of all this, so it all came as a total and pleasant surprise on the night.
We received a letter from the Dutch Post Office (PostNL) last week. It told us that they had received a packet addressed to us from abroad and that they were legally obliged to make a Customs Declaration on it. The letter further stated that there were no details on the contents of the package and that we needed to give these details online.
I went to the website (post.nl/track-en-trace) and filled in the reference code given in the letter. I found myself faced with a series of questions:
Was this a purchase or a gift?
What was the nature of the contents?
How many items were in the package?
What was the value of the items?
Since we hadn’t purchased anything from outside of the EU recently, it had to be a gift, but since it was a gift, how the devil would we know what the package contained, how many items there would be, and what the value would be?
I said as much in my reply, and gambled that if it was a gift, the value would be no more than €20.
That seems to have satisfied PostNL, because the package landed in the letterbox today. It turns out to be chocolates sent as a Christmas present by my niece in Scotland. She posted it two months ago, and as evidence of the utter cluelessness of PostNL, she had a signed and dated Customs Declaration label on it stating that the contents were chocolates, and of a value that did not attract import duty. Furthermore, she had her return address on the package – why couldn’t PostNL tell us this, so we could have put two and two together?
By way of contrast, there was a second package in the letterbox for me today. This was a second-hand book that I ordered just last week. It also came from abroad, but since it came from Ireland (in the EU), it just tootled across to the Netherlands without generating paperwork and delays.
Today is Watson’s 13th birthday. He’s still pretty active for his age, and still likes playing games, but we don’t go on long walks anymore – a 15 minute walk is quite enough, he thinks.
Time flies, it seems that only yesterday he was a puppy…
I was in the UK last week visiting family and seeing old friends. Martin stayed at home to look after Watson and the garden.
Long-distance travel was entirely by train. First travelling from home to Amsterdam to connect with the Eurostar direct to London. Then after an overnight stay in London and lunch with an old friend and his partner in Stratford (my god, how Stratford has changed…), back to Euston to catch the Avanti West Coast express to Lockerbie, where my brother collected me and drove me to his home.
I spent a few days in the area seeing family and taking short walks, for example down St. Mary’s Isle (actually an isthmus), where wild raspberries grew in abundance in the woods.
wild raspberries
At the end of the isthmus, southwards is the Irish Sea:
On the ground…In the air…In the air – looking back towards Kirkcudbright
When I graduated from Liverpool University in July 1970, I worked for a couple of months in a Summer job at the Liverpool Museum. I had been a member of the Astronomical Society at the university, so I was lucky enough to be selected to operate the newly-opened planetarium in the museum as one of my tasks. That planetarium was fitted with a Zeiss projector; at its heart was a light source that shone through tiny holes in copper foil and then focused through an array of lenses to display the night sky on the inner surface of the planetarium’s domed roof. It was, I suppose, the “analogue” version of a planetarium – at the Dark Space Planetarium the system was fully digital. A series of projectors mounted around the rim of the dome were controlled by a computer. That meant that trips through time and space could be simulated. Very sophisticated in comparison with what we had back in 1970. I mentioned that I had operated a Zeiss projector to the young man giving the show in Kirkcudbright, and his response was: “what’s a Zeiss projector?”… Time marches on and I felt old.
At the end of the week I travelled back to London for the weekend. I was staying at The Standard hotel on Euston Road. Once again I was made to feel old – the marketing of the hotel seems to be aimed exclusively at hip young people. However, it was comfortable and the staff were pleasant. The building was originally the annex to Camden Town Hall, and once housed Camden’s public library. A remnant of the library has been preserved in the hotel’s lounge area and I felt right at home there…
Saturday evening was spent in the company of John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London at a Prom concert in the Royal Albert Hall. The programme was English music: Vaughan Williams, Bax, Walton and Elgar, with a new piece by Huw Watkins.
The Elgar was the old warhorse of the Enigma Variations, but John Wilson found things in it that I had not heard before – he is an excellent conductor and the Sinfonia of London (with members hand-picked by Wilson) is a very good orchestra. The audience cheered and stamped its appreciation at the end.
Prom Concert
Sunday morning was spent at the Wellcome Collection. I only had time to see three of the exhibitions and one installation there:
Medicine Man
Being Human
In The Air
The Archive of an Unseen (installation)
The Medicine Man gallery houses (a very small part of) the collection of Sir Henry Wellcome – a real cabinet of curiosities. The most bizarre (for me) was the tobacco resuscitation kit. In the eighteenth century the Royal Humane Society of London placed these kits along the river Thames for use in drowning incidents. It was believed that blowing tobacco smoke up the arse of a drowned person would revive them. I loved the deadpan caption that read “[this practice] might seem strange to us…” – no, it is bloody insane…
Tobacco resuscitation kit
And then it was off to the British Museum to (re)visit some of the galleries before meeting three old friends for High Tea in the Great Court Restaurant. I hadn’t seen them for years (in one case I think it has been 30 years since we last clapped eyes on each other). Thankfully, we were all still recognisable to each other – green carnations were not required – and a hugely enjoyable time was had by all.
Monday saw me catch the early morning Eurostar to Amsterdam, and then back home to the Achterhoek and the reunion with Martin and Watson. It was a very pleasant break, and now back to our usual routine – with extra watering of the garden needed in the current heatwave…
I had read about a new series on Netflix called Heartstopper, the coming-of-age story of a gay teenage boy. It’s based on a webcomic by Alice Oseman.
Martin and I sat down to watch the first episode, and were delighted by it. It’s warm and funny, and shows the joy and angst of teenagers beginning to navigate their way through relationships.
Two things struck me. The first being how “normal” it seemed; Charlie, a 15-year old boy, is out at school, and being gay is not “a statement”, but just part of him, like his hair colour. He’s got a small group of supportive friends, and he’s able to ask an openly-gay teacher for advice.
The other thing was that the very normality was so very different from what I experienced growing up gay, and it made me somewhat sad to think back on how much I had missed out of life as a teenager.
Heartstopper is a little marvel – I hope that it shows some LGBTQ teenagers that they do not need to hate themselves, and that things will get better.
Addendum 27 May 2022: I just found out today that Joe Locke – who plays Charlie in Heartstopper – is another gay Manx lad! More power to your elbow Mr. Locke. You’ve made this old gay Manxman very proud of what you and your fellow actors and crew have achieved with Heartstopper.
I’m sorry to say that we had to have our dog Lexie put to sleep yesterday.
Just over two weeks ago, she had a day when she refused to eat, and wouldn’t stir from her cushion. The following day, she was back to her normal self, but then a week later, the same thing happened. Last week I took her to the vet, where she had blood and urine samples taken. A couple of days later she had an echo scan, and the diagnosis was that she had an inoperable tumour and severe anaemia.
The vet’s advice was to have her put to sleep. We agreed that Lexie would spend her last weekend with us, and the vet would come here to put her to sleep on the Monday (yesterday). Over the weekend it was clear that she was failing fast, and so Monday was a mercy.
Lexie had only been with us for a short time in her life – just over three and a half years. We found her in an animal shelter in Enschede and adopted her. She settled in well, and she and Watson got on well together. Our original intention was that Lexie was to be Martin’s dog (Watson is my dog), but in the event, Lexie had other ideas, and chose me as her owner, much to Martin’s chagrin. She would follow me everywhere. We will both miss her. She was much more phlegmatic than Watson and was a calming influence in our household.
We went away at Easter. The impetus for the weekend away was the fact that a good friend of ours was celebrating his 80th birthday in Brighton, and we thought, why not celebrate with him?
We put the dogs into the tender care of our local kennels, and travelled to London by train. That meant travelling two hours from home to Amsterdam, boarding the Thalys to Brussels, and then changing to the Eurostar to London St. Pancras. All told, the outward journey took eight hours. Coming back, we could travel direct from London to Amsterdam on the Eurostar, which made the inbound journey a mere six hours. Whilst flying would have been quicker and cheaper, it wouldn’t be that much shorter, and I feel that we’ve done our bit to counter climate change. So pardon my smugness. I like travelling by train as well.
So, Friday night in London, travel to Brighton on the Saturday for the party (by train, of course), back to London on the Sunday (ditto), and then back to the Netherlands on Monday.
Everything went according to plan. We ticked off a trip on the London Eye from the bucket list, met friends for a pub lunch, had a great time in Brighton, visited the British Museum on Sunday (where I bought yet another book), had a very good meal at Indian Accent (recommended by a Foodie friend), slept at the St. Pancras Hotel on Sunday night, and tumbled out of bed onto the train to Amsterdam on Monday morning. We collected the dogs on Tuesday, who seemed pleased to see us, and now it’s back to work in the garden.
Someone asked me last night how long I had been living here in the Netherlands, and I replied: “35 years”.
“So, for half your life?” he asked. And up until that moment I had not thought about it, but he’s right: for the first 35 years of my life, I lived in the UK (even though, technically speaking, the country of my birth, the Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency and not part of the UK) and now I’ve been living for 35 years in the Netherlands.
It’s been almost a year since we had to have our Labrador, Kai, put to sleep. We miss him a lot, although our other Labrador, Watson, seems much more sanguine about it. In the beginning we didn’t actively think about getting another dog, but in the last few months we have begun to entertain the possibility.
We decided against getting another puppy – Watson was enough of a handful to think about avoiding going through all that again – so we kept an eye on the central website of the Dutch Animal Shelters, thinking that we might be able to adopt a dog.
As a result, in the last six weeks we’ve visited four animal shelters, the length and breadth of the Netherlands, looking at possible candidates. The first one was far too hyperactive for us; Watson is as mad as a box of frogs as it is, the thought of yet another did not appeal. Then Watson did not get on with the second or the third candidate, but the fourth seemed just right.
We went last Saturday with Watson to the animal shelter in Enschede to see Lexie, a 6½ year old female Labrador cross. We were all, Watson included, taken with her. Initially we thought that we’d have to make several visits to the shelter before the process of adoption could be completed, so we were surprised when the staff said that we could adopt her that very day.
So, since last Saturday, we are now the proud owners of Lexie.
It will take a while for her to settle in, at the moment she is very dependent on us, and does not like to let us out of her sight, or to be left alone. However, she is now becoming confident of her territory in our large garden, and today began exploring beyond its borders, so we’re going to have to keep an eye on that. She and Watson are getting on well, and play together.
And today we had a surprise from our neighbours. It’s the tradition around here to welcome new arrivals into the neighbourhood. Usually that’s for babies (mostly human – but last Sunday our neighbours celebrated the arrival of a foal at the farm next door). I looked out of the window after dinner, and saw balloons tied to the entrance to the garden, which certainly were not there a couple of hours earlier. Walking out to the front revealed the following sight:
It says: “Welcome to the neighbourhood, Lexie”.
It’s a delightful surprise. Thank you, neighbours! Hartstikke bedankt, buren!
We had the older of our two Labradors put to sleep this morning. He was 14 years and two months old, which for a Labrador, is a long life. I think we can say that he had a good life as well.
Kai came into our lives shortly after we moved to the farmhouse, 11 years ago. He was then three years old. His first owners had moved from a house into a flat, and it was clear to them that Kai was not happy with the downsizing, so with heavy hearts they asked the breeder to try and find new owners for him. We were the lucky ones.
After Kai had settled in here, he had a visit from his previous owners. We were all curious to see how he would react. When they left, he followed them down to the entrance of the driveway, and then lay down, as if to say: “you can go, I’m OK here…”.
He had plenty of room to roam around in, both in the garden, and in our field at the back of the property.
Like all Labradors, he loved water. Fortunately, he learned not to go into our two ornamental ponds, but loved swimming in the nearby river.
He could look very regal, or let his hair down…
Watson arrived in September 2009, and Kai learned to tolerate a boisterous newcomer.
They actually got on well together.
In March 2016, Kai turned 13. He was getting very slow and spent most of his time snoozing gently. Often he seemed to be dreaming of running, because he’d run in his sleep. Chasing dream rabbits, probably. He’d pad around the garden to inspect his estate a couple of times during the day, but I could no longer take him out with Watson, because he couldn’t walk as far or as fast as us. Martin would take him out for a short walk whilst Watson and I headed off to the woods. At the time, the vet said that Kai’s heart and lungs were still functioning well, and his quality of life was good, but she was clearly signalling that the home stretch was in sight.
A week ago, he spent most of the day resting on his cushion, and had difficulty walking. The following days, he was up and about again, but this morning he had extreme difficulty staying on his feet. We called the vet, and her diagnosis was that he had reached his final destination.
This crossed-paw pose was very characteristic of Kai, he did it a lot. We’ll miss it, and him…
At the moment, we’re seeing Keats’s poem “To Autumn” come to life all around us. We’re harvesting our fruit trees and shrubs. This year we have a bumper crop of plums, pears, elderberries and blackberries, backed up by a reasonable result from our walnut, hazelnut, and sweet chestnut trees.
We have also discovered that we have Cornelian Cherry shrubs laden with berries, and so we’ll be making a new jam variety this year, to go alongside the pear jam (with hints of lemon and cinnamon), the blackberry and elderberry jams, and the plum jam and chutney. Trouble is, we’re rapidly running out of jam jars…
I travelled to Scotland last week for a funeral. It was not an unexpected trip, but one that came too soon, nonetheless.
David, my niece’s husband, was diagnosed with a brain tumour a year ago, and he died peacefully, with Fiona by his side, on August 1st. He was just 50 years old.
David was neither rich nor powerful, in the usual measures of these terms. He was a gardener and a family man. Yet he was loved and respected by many. His funeral was attended by over a hundred people paying their respects.
The funeral service was held at the graveside in Kirkcudbright cemetery. It was a Humanist burial, led by a Humanist Celebrant. She delivered a moving summary of David’s life, and I, like many others present I’m sure, smiled through my tears.
David and Fiona had chosen a Tom Leonard poem “Remembrance Day” to be read out. It was the perfect choice. It begins:
While still shaking my head over the idiocy of David Jones, who claims that two same-sex partners cannot provide a warm and safe environment for their children, I came across a new book written by Andrew Solomon: Far From the Tree: A Dozen Kinds of Love. In it he:
tells the stories of parents who learn to deal with their exceptional children and find profound meaning in doing so.
He introduces us to families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, Solomon documents repeated triumphs of human love and compassion to show that the shared experience of difference is what unites us.
Solomon is himself the gay child of straight parents, and is now, in turn, a parent himself. Here he talks movingly and lucidly about the nature of vertical identities (those that we inherit from our parents) and horizontal identities (those that we do not share with our parents, and which we develop through our peer groups). This short video is worth watching.
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