Four Days In The Netherlands: Rijksmuseum

The first time we tried to visit the Rijksmuseum last year, soon after it reopened, the queues were up the stairs and along the block. We passed. This time I had to wait about five minutes to buy a ticket. (I remind my readers that the National and Tate Galleries are free.) There were people taking photographs of the paintings, but you already know what all the Vermeers look like, and the Nightwatch (Rembrandt), and the Meagre Company (Hals) and the Swan and all that other stuff. So I took pictures of anything but the paintings.

Four Days In The Netherlands: A Walk to Utrecht Station

This is what “a walk to the station” looks like on a Saturday morning in Utrecht. The station and its surrounding area are being re-built, and it’s not going to be a few years yet, so this doesn’t end as serenely Dutch as it starts. The flower market is there every Saturday, and the food market is there every day.

Two ordinary residential streets in that part of town: are you going to tell me architecture doesn't make a difference to how we feel? For some reason Die Bakkerswinkel is a girl-only bakery, but I always get cakes there for Sunday afternoon; that's a narrow canal on the right, and a chunk of the University of Utrecht on the left; the tower of Utrecht Cathederal; two shots of the flower market; the Dutch leave bicycles everywhere; three shots of the food market; building works visible from the station: the Netherlands really is made of sand; and yet more bicycles at Utrecht station.

May 2014 Review

Well that wasn’t the month I thought I would have. The bit where I went for the second rep on the bench at 90kgs and lost it, and had the bar bang against my hands (rather than my teeth, or chest, or nose) was not in any plans I made for the month. And it happened the first Sunday morning. By about 10:15 I was in the Soho walking centre, where there were three girls sitting as invisibly as they could because they needed a morning-after pill. The triage nurse pressed and wiggled my hands, and said that since everything was moving and I wasn’t screaming in pain when she pressed or moved anything, I hadn’t broken any bones. She put a loose dressing on it and I carried on with my day.

My fault. Stupidity. The one and only time I’ve been that stupid in many years of hefting weights. No excuses. What with the gym closing for refurbishment, it wasn’t until the second half of the month I could even think about lifting weights. When I tried to heft a 14kg dumbbell off the rack, the tendons in my left hand told me to stop the insanity now. I could only handle 9kg. I could handle 14kg last Sunday. I’m not even thinking about playing the guitar.

Sometime the next week my left hand looked like this…

… while my kitchen mid-month looked like this…

So what with a 60th birthday, damaged hands, and making breakfast in the back bedroom for a week (which was the most irritating thing), I was having an emotional month.

Before going out to the Netherlands, I had a pedicure (really!), a manicure and a trip to the dental hygienist at The Gentle Dentist, where they took photographs of my mouth. Close-ups. You do not want to see those photographs. Nor did I. Teeth, like hands, don’t lie about your age. Still, my teeth sparkled afterwards.

In the Netherlands, I went to Zandvoort and walked along the beach, stopping for a healthy burger lunch at Tijn Akersloot

before wandering around a bit more and making my way to Utrecht. Saturday we walked through the flower market on the way to Utrecht station, went to Amsterdam, visited the Rijksmuseum, had lunch at the American Hotel, raided Art Unlimited for more postcards to make a collage...

and at Concerto I had coffee as a folksinger rehearsed, while my friend looked for DVDs, and we browsed the American Book Centre before making our way back to Utrecht, where we had supper at the Griftpark1. Sunday was a walk round Utrecht, with lunch at the Louis Hartlooper Complex, followed by an afternoon in the garden and supper at Te Koop. Monday was another stroll, lunch and a the journey back to Schipol and so home.

Where the kitchen wasn’t finished Monday evening because (insert unlikely story here), so I went to work Tuesday and took Wednesday off to put my house back in order. I asked the fitter if he could recommend a decorator, and by the time this is posted, he will have come, looked, drawn breath and quoted.

Sis and I had a birthday supper at Merchant’s Tavern in Shoreditch - thank you Sis - and then our regular monthly supper at Tramshed in Shoreditch. That’s our annual trip Out East for this year.

I saw Locke and Fading Gigolo at the Curzon Soho, Pandora’s Promise, Sexy Beast and the Jane Bown documentary through Curzon Home Movies, A Touch of Sin at the Renoir, and Edge of Tomorrow at Cineworld.

I read Black Gold by Anthony Wild, about the history of coffee; Undercover by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, about undercover policemen in the UK; Tea, by John Griffiths, a history of the Tea industry; Savage Messiah, by Laura Oldfield Ford, a compilation of her illustrated psycho geography zine from the Oughties; King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Doug Gilette, which is exactly as New Age as it sounds.

My left-hand little finger is still recovering but no longer hurts every time it comes into contact with anything.

Four Days In The Netherlands: Zandvoort

When I asked the lady in the ticket office at Schipol for a ticket to Zandvoort, she said “Single to the beach! Beautiful day for it”. The Netherlands is sand and its coastline is one long beach which changes name from place to place. Zandvoort used to be where the Dutch Grand Prix was held, but if the wind blew too strongly off the sea, sand got on the track and made it slippery.

If you get an afternoon spare in Amsterdam and it’s fine, hop on the train to Zandvoort and take a walk along the beach. Stop at one of the restaurants along the beach for a snack and a drink. Many of them are open all year. Enjoy the sunshine and the bracing North Sea onshore breeze. The sky is huge, the beach wide and long and it’s a refreshing way to spend three hours.

Four Days In The Netherlands: Friday Afternoon

I went for my annual birthday trip to see my friend in the Netherlands a few weeks ago. I’ve been over there a zillion times and never taken photographs, so this time I left the laptop behind and packed the Canon EOS1100D. For the next few weeks I’m going to post the results. Let’s start with the journey from Schipol Airport to Zandvoort, via Amsterdam Sloterdijk.

The industrial ("office") estates on the Schipol side of Amsterdam; there was a train cleaners' strike that day, so heaven knows what a cleaned train looks like; Amsterdam Rai station; industrial estate with lake; Sloterdijk station; errr... one part of Sloterdijk station, the other bit is along this path and the train I wanted was hidden downstairs; giant cheesegraters; Haarlem; Haarlem Station; overhead wires; college boys and a standard issue Dutch girl at Overveen station, which is the last stop before Zandvoort.

What does a young man born and raised in fog and chaos do?

This series of posts has been an attempt to find a way of talking about people’s behaviour without falling into gender stereotypes: “women do this, men do that”. Doing that involves some stylistic changes: use quantifiers like “most” and “some” instead of implicitly talking about “all”; give a swift nod towards the good before describing the bad in detail; talk about men, but not explicitly about women; talk about “people” rather than genders.

I can say most of the things Rollo Tomassi says, but without his generalisations and underlying assumption that there is an underlying Nature of Women That Is Just Different And Not In A Good Way. I see it as all part of a human condition that applies to and affects men as well as women.

Certain kinds of women do this, certain kinds of women do that. Sweeping generalisations do not help. We need to know what kind of flaws and chaos we are dealing with. If all women are like that, there is no point filtering. Rather, while all women have something wrong with them, they don’t all have the same things wrong with them, and it matters exactly what is wrong. Same thing for men, as well.

Throughout this series I have rejected dozens of generalisations and snarky comments about women and men, as well as whole paragraphs of theory about marriage, the effect of the development of digital-based cultures, and other such good stuff. I did that because I was rationalising my own behaviour and thoughts. And I of all people should not do that. Because I’m an alcoholic / addict / ACoA. I have a short attention-span, do things because it gives me a high, or am driven by a vanity only another formerly-pretty person would understand why I hold on to. (I do a damn good impersonation of a normal person. I pay my taxes and due bills, I wash and iron my clothes, I have a job and I even have a garden shed and a lawn. But get close and you will feel the self-centredness and dis-ease, the constant need for distraction and new. One day at a time I can do many things for many years, including staying sober, and one-day-at-a-time I might even hold down a relationship for many years, but that’s not what she wants.)

I started with the idea that everyone is flawed, and those flaws will turn into life-changing cracks. Everyone will mess up the lives of those around them: sometimes from malice or irresponsibility, and sometimes from sheer bad genetic luck. There are no right decisions for the long-term: the world will change in such a way that everyone will regret a choice made five or twenty or forty years ago. All we can do is cut our losses and change in response.

The idea that floated up while I was writing this stuff was the Marketing 101 thing. Women don’t want men, they want what men can do for them. And men don’t want women, they want what women can do for them. This has been behind all inter-gender behaviour since people started to notice that there was a difference. What is new, is that men and women now have the resources to do without each other, and that a fair chunk of them seem quite prepared to do so. What makes it hurt is that these MGTOWs and WGTOWs are reasonably high quality - who would care if they were only weirdos and un-dateables?

But they aren’t locked into it. If someone comes along who does what she needs doing, she may just team up with him. (The other way round is a movie fantasy involving Manic Pixie Dream Girls, so it isn’t going to happen.) Hence the need for self-improvement and Game: one of the things those career girls want is some fun and diversion. They are still women, and they still want attention, fun, diversion and fuss from non-creepy men.

What does a young man born and raised in fog and chaos do? There is no right answer. If there was, it would not be chaos and there would be no fog. Any given sequence of decisions might lead to bliss and fortune for one person, and horrors and poverty for another. Some are pretty slanted one way or another: becoming a junkie is pretty much going to wreck your life, but I’ve met some reasonably successful recovered addict-alcoholics.

He must filter potential long-term partners for psychiatric disorders and undesirable personality traits. I say nothing about children because I don’t approve of irreversible decisions. That aside, there is no decision that ensures the long-term, only decisions that can make the near-term a reasonable bet. Get into the gym, become familiar with the rich culture of our age, learn Game and don’t live in a distant suburb. Do what you want, have a way out and always be prepared to change.

Dysfunction and Dissatisfaction Are Normal In Domestic Life

In Marketing 101 you learn that people don’t want your lousy product, they want what it does for them. Nobody wants buses, but they want to get from A to B. Nobody wants vinyl LPs, or CD’s, or even MP3, they want to hear music. Nobody wants watches, they want to know the time and have some personal decoration. Nobody wants a Mars bar, but they do want a sugar kick.

Men want to be entertained, fascinated, distracted, and taken away from the awful emptiness of their day jobs and the thousand insults of daily life. The chase after a pretty girl and subsequent night of serious shagging is a pretty good way of providing all that, but so is Arsenal v Chelsea, Spiderman 2, GTA 5, supper at Picture, making a painting, taking photographs, or a quiet evening reading Ceaser’s Gallic War.

You don’t think so? Well, for most men, sex is like money: when he doesn’t have any, it’s everything, and when he has enough, it’s not an issue. One difference is that money is only useful for what you can buy with it, whereas sex is an end in itself, like eating good food. However, just as people can go for years eating insipid white food, they can also go for years without sex. Eating white food won’t hurt anyone, but much more than six months without sex, and men and women start to go sour (some are better at hiding it than others). Another difference between poverty and chastity is that it is almost impossible to distract oneself from poverty, while it is a lot easier to distract oneself from chastity.

People still get married, and they do so because of what they think marriage will do for them. Over twenty years, thirty per cent of the wives and ten per cent of the husbands find it does not live up to the promises on the packaging. I have no idea what the other sixty per cent feel, because they don’t talk about it. But I stopped going out on Saturdays because I found that the misery, snarkiness and crying children (always a sign of parental dissatisfaction) in the affluent shopping towns of Surrey was unbearable.

If we suppose that people are supposed to be married and raise children, then very little about the history of domestic life makes sense, and the development of a rich, diverse culture of entertainment and self-improvement is a puzzle. But there is an assumption that makes sense of the whole sorry story of human co-habitation.

Start with the recognition that reproduction is something a species has to do automatically, as our autonomic nervous system breathes and balances and regulates core body temperature automatically. Reproduction is an autonomic activity for a species, not a conscious one. That’s why there is sometimes such a huge gap between the intelligence with which a man will do his job and manage his career, and the utter idiocy with which he will choose his partner. He doesn’t think about her with the same part of his brain as he would think about a business deal.

Domestic friction, dissatisfaction and grunting teenagers who won’t do their homework are the natural condition of mankind. If the parents can avoid actually hitting each other, continue to have sex at least weekly with some enthusiasm and put on a good show of mutual admiration and respect in public, then they are doing well. If their children get median-paying jobs, stay out of jail and don’t knock up / get knocked up by the local heroin addict, the parents have done pretty well at child-raising. Half-functional domestic lives and children who have only a handful of dysfunctions are the norm, not a sign of failure.

Why? Because dysfunction and dissatisfaction are essential creative drives. After all, if you are smugly satisfied with everything around you, why would you invent the wheel? Or forceps for childbirth? Or even look for dead bacilli in a petri dish (penicillin)? Or bother to wonder what happens when you put those dried-up leaves into hot water? Or decide you were fed up with candle-light and work for thousands of hours to create the incandescent light bulb? That same drive makes it difficult to “settle down” in domesticity. It’s also the same drive that has been exploited by consumer marketers to make people buy useless crap since at least the ancient Greeks.

People are made to fight, create, invent, trade, get high, to entertain, to feast and laze and compete, to sit in contemplation and yell in anger, and to organise so that they can achieve things together which they never could working alone. Other animals do bits of this, but only people do it all. People are not forsaking families and domesticity for the siren calls of after-the-day-job entertainment and creative work, rather, in a post-modern urban economy where everyone is an employee and households are mere dormitories rather than small farms, domesticity is itself a distraction from consuming and contributing to human culture and institutions.

Women are, after all, consumers. It’s not husbands they want, but what husbands can do for them. And if they can get most of that somewhere else at a lower price, that’s what they will do. For the first time in history they are able to, and a significant minority are “focusing on their careers” until they are safely out of the way of domesticity, after which they will utter ritual questions such as “where have all the good men gone?”.

Men are, after all, consumers. It’s not wives they want but what wives can do for them. It doesn’t help that nobody knows what, beyond bill-sharing, that is anymore. So a significant minority “refuse to grow up” until they are safely out of the way of domesticity, after which they will carry on, but trading up from pizza, computer games, sneakers and sloppy jeans to good restaurants, classic literature, polished shoes and well-cut chinos.

Of course your wife loves you and the kids: she loves you because of what you and they do for her, and the fact that you chose to do it for her. Of course your husband loves you and the kids: he loves you for what you do for him, and the fact that you chose to do it for him. Of course if either of you stop doing what the other person likes you for doing, the love will stop as well. Love is like respect: it is earned, not given. The feelings that just appear and overwhelmed you despite yourself? Those were lust and infatuation and teenage dizziness. That’s not love, that’s drugs.