Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Travel

Pop Goes the Weasel…

A little local matter that’s vexing our village…

Our village Heelweg is split into two halves – East Heelweg and West Heelweg – separated by 1.5 kilometers.

There are two connecting routes: the Molenweg, which loops between the two centres and is 2.2 kilometers in length and the Bosboombroekerweg, which is the most direct route being 1.6 kilometers in length. The problem being that the Bosboombroekerweg is a track for parts of the route, and unsuitable for vehicular traffic other than farm machinery for large parts of the year. This also goes for cyclists who must then use the Molenweg. The issue there is that the road is narrow, and can be dangerous for cyclists as a result.

The village School is in West Heelweg, so schoolchildren living in East Heelweg are subjected to dangerous situations on schooldays.

In 2017, our village community council (Heelwegs Belang) wrote to our local authority (Oude IJsselstreek) proposing that a cycle path be laid along the Bosboombroekerweg tracks so that schoolchildren – and other cyclists – could travel safely and more directly between the two parts of the village.

The local authority did initiate a project to make a plan for the construction of a cycle path. However, it took several years and discussions with landowners before a final design was ready:

As part of the work, an ecological study was carried out, and a camera placed along the proposed route captured a photo of a weasel going about its business.

Stock image of a weasel; CC0 public domain license

Unfortunately, the weasel has thrown a spanner into the works.

As a result of the proof of the presence of a weasel, the local authority was obliged to seek a permit from the provincial authority for the work to be carried out. We were told that a decision on the granting of the permit would take a maximum of 26 weeks.

We’ve been waiting to hear the result of the decision for almost a year now.

The upshot is that work on the last section of the cycle path has been halted by the local authority until the provincial authority pulls its finger out and deigns to give them a decision on the permit.

It is five years and counting since we first proposed the cycle path… We’re still waiting…

As the old English Nursery Rhyme has it:

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! Goes the weasel

Addendum 21 February 2024: the provincial authority has finally announced its decision and allowed the construction of the last section of the cycle path to begin. That won’t be until mid 2024 now, but at least the final hurdle has been overcome.

Addendum 2 September 2024: well, it wasn’t “mid 2024”, but work will finally begin on the 9th of September. The end is finally in sight…

October 12, 2023
There And Back Again – Again
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

I paid a visit to the Dark Space Planetarium in Kirkcudbright – highly recommended.

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…

On Saturday I met an old friend for lunch in Brasserie Zedel and then we viewed the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy.

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…
July 19, 2022
Up, Up and Away

Our neighbours took a balloon trip the other evening. The balloon was launched from their field, next to ours, and they took some photos of our house and garden…

May 14, 2022
NS Newspeak

The NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen) is the Dutch national passenger rail company. I have an annual subscription that entitles me to 40% discount on train fares, and up to six days free travel (keuzedagen) on the entire Dutch rail network. These keuzedagen are available to people who are 60 and above.

Yesterday, I received an email from the NS. It started promisingly enough (in translation):

We want to make our subscription offerings less complicated and more flexible for all travellers.

Well, excellent, I’m all for that. But then it goes on:

Due to the growing number of travellers, the afternoon rush hour is getting busier and the need to ensure a better spread of our travellers throughout the day. Unfortunately, we cannot maintain giving a 40% discount during the afternoon rush hour.

Eh? What was that about “less complicated and more flexible”? Introducing a period when the 40% discount doesn’t apply makes things more complicated and less flexible, surely?

Not only that, but the keuzedag free travel will magically become invalid during the afternoon rush hour. What if I am in the middle of my journey when the clock strikes four? Does the ticket inspector swoop down on me and issue a fine?

The final flourish in the email is the announcement that keuzedagen will no longer be available to people who turn 60 after 2021. I can continue to receive them as part of my annual subscription, but I’ll be part of a dwindling group as we all die off – much to the relief of the NS, I expect.

I can only reflect on the effrontery of the NS (and Tjalling Smit, director of commerce and development, who has sent out this email) and consider it a fine example of Newspeak.

November 6, 2019
There and Back Again

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.

April 25, 2019
MH17 & Dutch Pragmatism

It’s shocking news about the loss of flight MH17. All the more so because 298 civilians appear to have been killed in a conflict that has nothing whatsoever to do with them. And all because some trigger-happy Ukrainian rebels, armed by the Russians with surface-to-air missiles, appear to have mistaken a passenger airliner, flying above 32,000 feet on an established route over Ukrainian air-space, for a Ukrainian military transport plane.

It’s a route and flight that was well-known to me during my last years working for Shell. We were setting up a data centre in Kuala Lumpur, and many of my colleagues, of many nationalities, would be travelling back and forth between Shell’s head office in The Hague and KL. I myself flew that route on a couple of occasions. It would not surprise me in the least to learn that at least one Shell employee, working in IT, was on that flight.

This article in today’s Guardian points up the phenomenon of Dutch pragmatism. Dutch passengers checking in at Schiphol today seem to be of the opinion that the downing of flight MH17 was an isolated incident, and unlikely to happen ever again. They are right, but that’s probably of little comfort to those who have lost family, friends or colleagues in this tragic event.

July 18, 2014
Postcards From Spain

We’re just back from a week in sunny Sitges. We were first there 25 years ago, and stayed in the amazing Hotel Romantica. This time, we hired an apartment from SitgesHolidayAccommodation (thanks, Brian and Ryan!), and were equally at home.

Sitges is a seaside town, outside of Barcelona. It has charm, and it is a holiday destination for both Spanish families, and a high proportion of gay men from all over Europe.

Sitges 2013

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Twenty-five years ago, and we would have been out on the gay beaches and in the gay bars each and every day and night. This time, we were content to stroll around, enjoying the sights and eating out in the many restaurants. We particularly enjoyed the restaurant by the pool in the gardens of the hotel Xalet, which has been stunningly restored.

I took a day out to travel to the monastery on the Montserrat mountain (Martin lazed on the beach). I went to see the panoramic views from the mountain and its geology, not to bend the knee at the Black Virgin, I hasten to add.

Montserrat 2013

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Once I’d arrived, via the cable car, I took the funicular further up the mountain. I walked around for a couple of hours, and then walked back down to the monastery. Almost invariably, the people I passed on the way down, were Polish Catholics making a pilgrimage on foot to the peaks.

When leaving the mountain, I had a l’esprit de l’escalier moment. I had arrived at the cable car station ahead of time, to ensure a place. In fact, I was the third in the queue. I was joined shortly by a Polish family, a mother and a young boy, accompanied by another woman with children. The mother did not have tickets for the return journey, so she went to the ticket office, which was shut for lunch and waited for it to open.

Meanwhile, other passengers trickled in and formed a queue to wait for the cable car. The ticket office finally opened just before the departure of the cable car, and the mother purchased her tickets. She then attempted to move to the head of the queue to rejoin her child. She got halfway before she was forcibly stopped by another Polish woman who refused to let her move forward. It was clear that this woman did not approve of what she viewed as queue-jumping. In vain, the mother, and others, attempted to explain that she had been there earlier, but was forced to wait for the ticket office to open.

In the end she managed to give a ticket to her small child and told him to wait for her to travel on the next cable car.

I was sorry that I could not point out in Polish to the angry woman that her behaviour toward to the mother was neither Catholic nor Christian. My l’esprit de l’escalier moment came later whilst descending on the cable car. I realised that I should have given up my place in the queue to the mother and caught a later cable car and train. This godless atheist would then have demonstrated to the angry Catholic woman what Christianity should be…

I returned to Sitges ruminating on how easily we hit out at others, and how easily we fail to offer support to them.

June 29, 2013
Through The Looking Glass

Sometimes I feel like Alice – I’m in a looking-glass world where black is portrayed as white, good is bad, or up is down. It’s at times like these when I’m likely to throw a Victor Meldrew fit at the apparent stupidity, cupidity or just plain bare-faced effrontery of those in charge, who have the power to dictate what we will experience in our daily lives.

What’s brought on this latest attack is the publication in yesterday’s Volkskrant newspaper of a two page spread covering the likely future of rail transport in the Netherlands.

The kernel of the report was the finding that breaking up the national rail network into separate chunks and putting services out to tender will reduce delays, according to research by network operator ProRail.

Let’s just savour that, shall we? And why would that proposition be true, in any meaning in the real world? Ah, we read, it’s because services will not be so interdependent, reducing the domino effect of delays, ProRail is quoting as saying.

Dear god in heaven, do these people not have two braincells to rub together?

Let’s just take a practical example. I want to travel from Amsterdam to my home – nearest station Varsseveld. That means that I’m using the Dutch National Railways (the NS) from Amsterdam until Arnhem, and then changing over to Syntus for the last hour from Arnhem to Varsseveld.

So excuse me, but surely for me, these services are interdependent – I want to step out at Arnhem and step onto a train bound for Varsseveld with the minimum of delay.

As a matter of fact, at the moment, Syntus (one of the independent rail operators that the Dutch Government is so in love with) offer what can only be described as a truly shitty service. I’ve lost count of the number of times that services have been delayed or cancelled, while the hapless train drivers run around like headless chickens, glued to their mobile phones receiving zero practical information.

On more than one occasion, I, together with my fellow travellers in the outer regions of Hell, have been herded from one platform to another in Zevenaar at the behest of the Syntus staff for what seemed like hours at a time. “The next train for Winterswijk will leave from platform 3”, “no, platform 4”, “no, that’s going back to Arnhem”, “Platform 1”, “no, we’re putting buses on” – so three train’s worth of passengers have to fight for seats on a single bus.

So, ProRail, don’t tell me that delays are not interdependent. Wherever they happen, they will have a domino effect on the individual traveller, if that traveller is where the delays are.

I note, with a roll of my eyes, that the ProRail research report was carried out at the request of the private rail operators. I can’t say I’m totally surprised at the findings then, although it only serves to underline the fact that we are indeed in looking-glass land.

And, oh joy, because of the love affair the Dutch Government have with the idea that more independent operators make for more efficiency, we have the situation to look forward to that if we want to travel from Amsterdam to Varsseveld, we will have not two, but three train operators to deal with: the NS, Breng and Syntus.

It’s at times like this when I earnestly wish to be face to face with the authors of these research reports and the faceless bureaucrats who decide our transport fate and slap them hard around the face with a wet fish.

September 2, 2011
Hoist By Their Own Petard

A rather ironic little story in the Dutch news today… TomTom, the Dutch SatNav company collects information from its devices installed in cars. This information gives an insight into the driving habits of the motorists using the TomTom devices.

TomTom sells this information on to other companies. One such company has taken a very enterprising approach and sells the data to the Dutch Police, who use it to determine where best to set their speed traps. Quite right, too.

April 27, 2011
Managing Expectations

Another thought-provoking post from Jan Chipchase – this time from Cairo. It’s about managing expectations in foreign situations, and being aware.

Reminds me of the time I went on a business trip for Shell to Cartegena in Columbia and being met by the Computing Manager at the small airport. His driver had a slight bulge under his left armpit, and I thought, hmm.

The Hilton hotel had been bombed a month before and two days after my arrival, the airport runway was blown up by guerillas. The pilot of the Shell plane announced that there was 1500 feet of usable runway left, and he could take off with 1350 feet. I remember thinking that 150 feet didn’t sound like an enormous margin for error. Still, as you can surmise, I lived to tell the tale.

April 13, 2011
Service Interruption

Just a heads-up to note that I may well be out of circulation from the blogosphere for a few days.

I’m heading to Blighty to visit an old friend. My connection to the Intertubes is likely to be interrupted. So, apologies if your comment remains in the moderation queue for longer than either of us would wish.

January 6, 2011
A Day Out

Yesterday I left Martin in charge of the dogs while I travelled to Rotterdam for a day out with a couple of old colleagues. I arrived at midday, and the original plan was to stroll from Central Station down to the Veerhaven, catch a water taxi there and cross the Maas river to the Hotel New York for lunch.

Alas, we had hardly started walking when the heavens opened, and what can only be described as a tropical downpour commenced. As a result, we abandoned that plan, and took shelter in the museum Boijmans van Beuningen instead. We had intended visiting it after lunch anyway, so we thought that we would switch to having lunch in the museum. It has a roomy restaurant overlooking a park, thus plan B was looking good.

We should have been alerted to the fact that yesterday was Friday the thirteenth by the downpour…

We bought our museum tickets, and announced to the cashier that we would go straight to the restaurant first for lunch before strolling around the exhibits. “Ah”, she said, “sorry, but the restaurant is closed for renovation; only the coffee bar is open”. She pointed to the coffee bar next to the museum entrance and our hearts sank. The coffee bar was small, crowded, and with very little in the way of choice of food. Still, we decided to have coffee while we ruminated on the date.

We enjoyed the Notion Motion installation by Olafur Eliasson. A very effective visual experience using very simple means. I was personally less impressed by the work of Thomas Demand, although I can appreciate the work that went into constructing it.

One thing that we all wanted to see was the exhibition of the work of Han van Meegeren, who became (in)famous in the 1940s as the man who faked Vermeers. It’s definitely an exhibition worth seeing. It captures the scandal that rocked the art world very well. The museum itself was at the centre of the storm, since, in 1937, the ambitious director of the museum, Dirk Hannema, wanted to purchase The Supper at Emmaus by Vermeer which had just been discovered. Of course, this was actually a forgery by van Meegeren. Hannema managed to raise 520,000 guilders – a huge amount for the time – and purchased the painting. Ironically, one of the first things that the museum did was to have the painting restored. Ironic, since it wasn’t a 17th Century painting, but something that had been painted the year before on a 17th Century canvas.

The thing that struck me, looking at these paintings, was how bad they are. I know I’m no expert, but I would never have said that these were genuine Vermeers in a million years. And yet, the art historians at the time, notably one Dr. Abraham Bredius, fell over themselves in praise. There’s a book in the exhibition, a compendium of great works of art with texts by prominent art critics. It is open at the page depicting The Supper at Emmaus, and the text is by Bredius. It is no exaggeration to say that Bredius is fulsome in his praise, embarrassingly so. It is hard to read it today without bursting into laughter mixed with pity at poor Bredius’ total misjudgement.

Was this a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome or mass hysteria? Clearly, someone must have planted the idea that these were genuine Vermeers at the start. Was he mistaken, or was he in on the game? Whoever it was, I don’t think it was Bredius, as he seems to have been a target of van Meegeren. But Bredius certainly fell for the forgeries; hook, line, and sinker.

The video of the story on the museum’s page is worth watching, and the English Wikipedia entry is definitely worth reading for the full sordid story of greed on all sides. Strangely, the Dutch Wikipedia entry is less revealing… Perhaps the Dutch are still embarrassed by the affair, or they don’t want to view van Meegeren as anything other than a hero, when in fact he was a criminal and a Nazi sympathiser.

After the museum, we strolled down to the Oude Haven, passing the Erasmus Bridge, and there, in the shadow of the Kubuswoningen, finished off our jaunt with a few beers and bitterballen.

August 14, 2010
A Day Out

We had a day out yesterday, visiting a potter friend of ours in Flevoland, and then taking in a rather elaborate garden on the way back.

Gerda Grashuis had an open day at her pottery (Pottenbakkerij GG), which also featured the work of fellow potter Bert Wieman, the sculptures of Loes Kouwenhoven and the paintings of Carolien Kooi.

On the way home, we did a small detour to the village of Teuge in Gelderland, and visited the Levenstuinen van het Groot Hontschoten. Levenstuinen translates as Life Gardens, but I haven’t a clue what Hontschoten means.

I have to confess that what prompted me to visit these gardens was not the fact that the gardens have been planned “according to Zen Principles” and a walk through them will “give much positive energy”. You know that this sort of thing causes much eye-rolling with me. No, what caught my attention was the fact that my gaydar pinged very loudly once I learned that the garden’s owners were two men: Charles van de Nieuwegiessen and Hans IJzerman. Check out their bios on the web site and I suspect that you will agree that my gaydar was probably accurate for once in my life.

In any event, the gardens are certainly worth a visit. They are somewhat like a cross between a spiritual ghost train and a series of stage sets, managing to pack in an amazing number of different vistas into a relatively small space.

June 14, 2009
London Bound

I’m off to London for the weekend, hopefully to meet up with a couple of friends that I haven’t seen for many years. It’ll be my first visit to London in nearly five years. I expect that I will find some changes. Back next week.

April 24, 2009
Postcards Home

One of the careers that my father had was as a ship’s engineer. He began with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company on the ships that crisscrossed the Irish Sea. The Island at that time (the 1920s) was a popular holiday destination, which meant that during the summer months, far more ships would be sailing than in the winter. At the end of the season, the junior engineers would work on the overhaul of the laid-up vessels. When the overhaul on a ship was completed, the men were paid off, and as my father wrote:

We walked round the town until the next vessel had her overhaul. This happened every year, and meant that over 100 men could be out of work for between 12 and 16 weeks. This did not appeal to me – I had seen too much of it, and I applied for a seagoing job with the Ellerman Line. I received a letter offering me a post as 4th Engineer on the City of Wellington from the Ellerman Line and this is what I really wanted because I would then begin to get my 18 months sailing time in before I could sit for my 2nd Class Marine Engineer’s Certificate.

I left Douglas on the 11th November 1925 and joined the City of Wellington on her maiden voyage round the world. Our first port of call was St. Johns, Nova Scotia, where during the war a munitions ship had blown up and destroyed the town.

From there, the ship (and dad) visited Boston, New York, Newport, Panama, Honolulu, Yokohama, Kobe, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Suez, Gibraltar and Rotterdam. Dad bought postcards when he had the chance. Some he would send home – usually to his younger brother, Doug – but others he kept for himself, to remind him of where he had been on this, and subsequent voyages. After his voyaging days were over, he put them in an album where they’ve been ever since. They are a wonderful record of places and peoples that in many cases have changed beyond recognition or even vanished completely.

Dad wrote of Yokohama:

The massive destruction of the town by the earthquake in 1923 was there to be seen, and I will always remember the forts at the entrance to the harbour and the large blocks of concrete tossed higgledy-piggledy about.

I love the fact that the publisher of this postcard has pasted in, not very convincingly, some ships in the foreground…

This is just a small selection of about 250 postcards. I think I’ll post a few more illustrating the places he visited in other voyages another time.

December 14, 2008
Up, Up and Away

Last Monday, I managed to tick off one item on the "50 things to do before you die" list: I went on a trip in a balloon. The farmer next to us had organised it, and as well as taking his family, had a few places left over for neighbours. I was lucky enough to be able to join them. It was a terrific experience, and highly recommended. A few pictures are below – the full set of over 200 photos (well, you know me…) are here.

Looking at the full list of "50 things…", I note that I’ve only done six of the list. Mind you, most of the list I have no interest in doing whatsoever, so it’s no loss to me. I get more pleasure from a walk in the woods than contemplating the thought of such things as flying in a fighter jet, driving a Formula 1 car, or bungee jumping…

August 13, 2008
Misplaced Trust

When it works, SatNav technology is almost magical. When it doesn’t, then the road to Hell beckons. Michael Bywater, in this piece for the Independent last week, sums up the failings, and the inevitable gnashing of teeth, very well. During our trip last weekend we tasted both the good and the bad. It navigated us to our hotel excellently, but when directing us to our friends’ house told us confidently at one point to turn right. Luckily, I saw the bollards in time, and carried straight on instead of wrecking the car.

In most cases, this is simply fodder for humour, but there can also be serious consequences. A few months back, our neighbour (a widow living alone) fell ill in the middle of the night, and she called the ambulance out. They relied on their SatNav, which frankly, led them up a dead end in the middle of nowhere. They eventually managed to retrace their tracks, and find the correct road to the farm by following the old-fashioned signposts that said quite clearly that if you want to reach this farm, then don’t go that way, but go this way instead. Luckily, in this particular case, time was not of the essence. Although the delay certainly prolonged her pain, it could so easily have been more serious. I have sent in a correction to the navigation data, but as of the last check, nothing has changed. I hope it does before the next time that the widow has cause to call for an ambulance.

It’s the old story, GIGO.

April 15, 2008
A Day Out

We spent a weekend visiting friends in Sassenheim. On Saturday, we went for a stroll along the beach. It was the first time that our dog Kai had seen the sea. He was fascinated by the sand and the sea and spent most of the time galloping around and splashing through the surf.

April 14, 2008
Poor Max

Max Gogarty is 19. Just about to start a gap year, and he’s off to India to discover himself. He’s also landed a job blogging about it in The Guardian. Fun, huh? Let Mr. Eugenides take up the story. Poor Max. I feel a smidgen of sympathy for him. Only a smidgen, though.

February 18, 2008
Old Photos

Geoff Manaugh, over at BLDGBLOG, stumbles across a veritable treasure chest of old photos of the UK on the web. Wonderful to see that some of them were taken in the Isle of Man.

December 24, 2007