5 Days in Bath

Just a quick login now under the stairs in our B&B. Photos once I get home tomorrow. I think we have just about well and truly DONE Bath... From the spa to the Pump Room, to a Dancing Like Jane Austen class to the theatre (with Martin Shaw!). Lots of Running Bath stuff too (see other blog).

Joep(ie)

In July I met Joep in the Soesterduinen. I told his owner that if he ever needed someone to look after his beautiful big blue Dane he could call me. I'd said I was full with lodgerdogs till the end of August but after that he was welcome.










Last week he called and we arranged to have a trial run to see how Joep and I got on. We met in the car park this morning and walked for a while and then Joep jumped in the back of the Wee Blue Van and I followed his owner to his house where he got his breakfast.

Turns out he lives just round the corner so we walked back here and now Joep is lying snoring on the settee.

For the Boekgrrls

My harvest from the Big Book Festival that's now in Utrecht.

Hair today, gone tomorrow...

When Rianne, Rinyand I were walking back from my post-birthday high-tea in Bagels and Beans in Hilversum Riny decided she needed a photo of her hair as she's going to get it twisted into dreadlocks this week.

Rianne and Redmond at Sail

We had tickets for the premiere of the film 'Darwin's Verstekeling' (stowaway) which was really just a way of cobbling together lots of the bits Redmond O'Hanlon featured in during the VPRO serie about the journey that was made with the ship Stad Amsterdam following in the footsteps of the Beagle. Redmond his very self was there to see the film, along with Sarah Darwin and her children (who, it just now occurs to me, were remarkably well-behaved for the size of them).

Before the film there was a short concert with a full version of the theme music from the series alongside some other sea-themed pieces. And before the concert we had a brief look around the ship itself and saw some of the other tall ships which are docked in Amsterdam for the 5-yearly Sail festival. I'm glad we got there early as when we came out from the film it looked as if the whole world was walking from the station to the harbour.






























































Rianne had brought her copy of his first book along with her in the hope that he'd have a chance to sign it and during a pauze she did indeed get into conversation with him and he signed her 'Into the heart of Borneo' and my 'Trawler'.

Sushi + Smurf

Rianne had been busy for hours preparing her own sushi for her birthday guests. Her 2 young nieces were more interested in the Smurf village, one of the inhabitants of which I've just spotted in this picture I took of the food.

Pillock on a phone

As I was happily making my way round the Rondweg (priority road) in Houten a pillock in a brand new Audi Q5 (think huge 4-wheel drive) pulled out in front of me. I'd spotted him behaving oddly, half pulling out and then stopping so had already started to brake and thought I could manage to steer round him, but when he just kept on pulling out onto my road I couldn't stop a collision no matter how hard I braked. My ancient Opel Combo (my Wee Blue Van!) now has a big dent in the bonnet, bumper and bit-behind-bumper. It's probably an insurance write-off but ach, it still goes and no-one was hurt. Pillock admitted immediately he'd been on the phone ('to someone who usually never answers so I was confused and not paying attention'). He picked up the bit of his bumper that had fallen off into the road, popped it back into place and has no visible damage. It was like hitting a very solid object - thank goodness it was just me and the dogs in a fairly solid wee van and not some young inexperienced driver in a biscuit tin with a baby or, even worse, a motorbike. He was phoning handsfree but still wasn't paying attention to the fact that he was on the road in a small tank-like vehicle. He said that he phones all the time and has never had an accident before and that 'if I'd been having the same conversation with someone sitting next to me it could have happened as well'. Eh, no - because the person sitting beside you would have seen that you were being a pillock-in-charge-of-a-tank about to do something stupid and would have been able to shout at you to stop before you mowed into me.