High social standards

Conscious now of doing a lot of things here for the last, or maybe the last, or the second last time, etc. More than half the time that's a cause for joy. But going to Amsterdam and having no idea when I'll go again, if ever (I've promised myself a few days exploring the Hague before we go and I have some ephemeral plans for spending a month kayaking the Netherlands' industrial waterways someday but who knows what the future will bring) actually really hurt.

Not least because the last time I went was the time I first discovered their lovely botanical gardens. Really small, the size of a postage stamp! Much smaller, I think, than the gardens they've abandoned here in Brussels for the Plantentuin in Meise. And yet they have so much good stuff there. It was a lovely combination of the uncanny Dutch genius for organizing space over time to the best effect, and of lots of butterflies and plants and things. And naturally me being high. Butterflies and lovely plants and being very high is a hell of a combination, I don't care how macho you are.

Speaking of being very high, all the marijuana is not even very high up on the list of things I'll miss about the Netherlands. However, it is sort of symptomatic of what I'll miss most about the Netherlands - a microcosm, if you will, or an ecological marker; in the same way that really awesome sex isn't the most important thing in a relationship, but it is a sign that you're doing something right, and not having any is probably fatal. And it's a marker, or a microcosm, of what seems to me like a sort of well-organized moral honesty that is really appealing.

Let me explain: last time I was in Amsterdam, I was with a bunch of visiting Canadians, one of whom remarked that the front curtains of people's houses were always open. So I told her something that could just be bullshit but which several Dutch people have told me: you always leave your curtains open so people can see that you're not doing anything wrong. And her response - natural from a Canadian perspective - was, well, what if you want to do something wrong?

But the thing about the Netherlands is, what is doing something wrong in a country that tolerates so much? When your most unpleasant, virulent right-wing, xenophobic intolerance is based on a conviction that the problem with foreigners is that they're not tolerant enough - when even the politicians who make it into the international press looking like white supremacist fascist zealots are still about twenty degrees more socially liberal than anything on the market in the Anglophone world - when you have not only legalized but commodified soft drugs - what would count as the sort of wrong behavior that you'd want to close your curtains and hide from the world? All it leaves is actual bad behaviour, because you've basically done away with the idea of 'naughty' being wrong, and there's a sort of honesty in that which is very, very appealing - as though they save moral energy/outrage for things that are actually worth it.

And here's the kicker. Belgians are tolerant too - tolerant to a fucking fault. They'll tolerate the most ham-brained stupidity from their institutions and from each other. They'll tolerate streets caked in dogshit, the horrible, horrible driving on and condition of their roads with the attendant high death rates, and all sorts of inexcusable inconveniences in their public life. The F-word thinks it's an unconscious national conspiracy to universally lower the bar of what is required in terms of being a responsible member of society. Maybe he's right. I don't care, I'm through analyzing; basically, fuck this fucking place; fuck its weather, fuck its landlords, fuck its city halls, fuck its utility companies, fuck its tax department, fuck its retard drivers, fuck all the old ladies who look the other way while their ugly little fucking dogs befoul the sidewalks, and fuck pretty much everything about Belgium that involves more than three of these fucking people congregating for a single purpose, which almost invariably involves the creation of some fucking Lord of the Flies-type pig fuckery.

My point is, not only are the Dutch tolerant - any lazy asshole can be tolerant - they're also sensible. To bring this all back to reefer, not only am I allowed to walk past a police officer sucking on it and smiling (which legally and theoretically I can also do in Belgium), but also that police officer is not going to react in some arbitrary fashion (police arbitrariness is actually enshrined in the drug laws here), and I will have purchased that reefer from an institution at least as much a part of the national taxation system as a bar. And then I can sit down and enjoy it on a clean public bench overlooking a biologically viable canal (Brussels' one river, the Senne, is almost completely covered over, biologically dead, and oh, by the way, apparently the sewage treatment plant they fired up THREE YEARS AGO has already gone offline again, so they're dumping their shit into it unadultered again, which is a major driver of North Sea pollution), and unless I'm in Rotterdam (which has compensatory charms) I'm not likely to step in any dog shit while I'm doing that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not in love with the Dutch; particularly in the north they have these atrocious loud, strident voices that makes them sound like some unholy cross between a donkey and a rooster. And as the product of a middle-class English mother I instinctively find their complete lack of tact horrifying. And that whole Black Peter thing is beyond the fucking pale, man. But still. I find their social, moral efficient honesty just so damn refreshing and special and I'll miss it a lot.

Rotterdam mijn liefde

We just spent the weekend in Rotterdam - pictures to follow. For weeks all and sundry who were aware of our destination, which I chose to go to with some passion to celebrate my 31st birthday on the basis that passing through Rotterdam on our way to and from Amsterdam was driving me crazy because I wanted to get out and look at the beautiful modern buildings, warned us we were heading into a grey shithole that everybody hated.

Now it may be because I'm incurably contrarian, but having spent a couple of days there I have to say anybody who doesn't like Rotterdam is a fucking asshole. Rotterdam is fucking awesome, I've never seen anything like it. I could compare it to Dusseldorf or some other German city that got completely wrecked in the last world war and rebuilt in a reasonably interesting and livable way, but Rotterdam leaves them behind: Dusseldorf and similar German cities were rebuilt in a very reconstructive fashion, comparatively, with an eye to recreating past glories and conditions: but in Rotterdam, somehow the clipboards ended up in the hands of people who had decided they would do everything they could to make their City Mark Two very fucking human.

Of course they had the natural advantage of it being a port town full of canals and the river, so it's a very watery town, and that makes for a sort of default pleasure for the eye: I don't know about you but I find it pretty hard to maintain a bad mood when there are lots of boats and pretty diving birds all over the place. And then there's the typically brilliant Dutch organization of circulatory space: bike paths coupling and outnumbering roads, ubiquitous footpaths, roads all nicely arranged to keep the cars out of everybody else's way, and comprehensive public transport that we didn't bother to use because this was very much a walking weekend: outside of meals, drinking, a couple of pitstops at the quick serve windows of coffeeshops, and a long visit to the terrific Van Beuningen gallery, we spent the entire weekend looking around the city at the startling architecture.

Take the cube houses, for instance. The cube houses remind me of Venice or the Guell park in Barcelona because they're something that can't be appreciated until you're in them. When I saw the pictures I thought they were a rather neat if ugly idea, but I wasn't particularly excited to visit them. However, when we ended up there on our Rondje Rotterdam stroll, seeing the way they were arranged, took (or failed to take) up space, and where they were on the Oude Haven (where, when I'm a multi-millionaire, I will definitely be buying a pied a terre) - why, it was just fucking lovely.

And the relative goodness of the food, ready availability of kibbeling, the friendly student/multicultural vibe, the utter lack of American tourists pretending they were being dirty by getting high, and the exciting fact that it only rained for about 1/4 of the time we were circumnavigating the city (the sun actually came out twice) sealed the deal. Fuck, what a great town. I loved it so much that while we were there I actually got my first pangs of panic at the prospect of leaving Europe. I haven't fallen for a city so hard since Barcelona.

The only stomach ache is in my head

We're on our way to Rotterdam tonight. Thinking about all the lovely modern architecture we'll see there (only a 20 to 40% chance of precipitation over the weekend! No better touring weather in the Netherlands!) and all the reefer I'm a-gonna smoke is helping me in the leadup to our first office group therapy session about my missing boss. I don't know what it will be. The thing is I'm absolutely blind in this situation. You know the parable of the blind men and the elephant? That's how I feel at the moment about how I feel: like I'm touching a part of it, but I don't know what the rest of it is like, and honestly I don't know if I'm going to be as fine as you can be in this sort of situation, or if tomorrow I'll be ripping off my clothes and smearing turd on the walls of an opera house.

Well, it's not likely. Rotterdam doesn't have an opera house. And right now I'm just annoyed. Just a burbling feeling of annoyance. But not the normal, garden variety Mistress-La-Spliffe annoyance; instead it's the sort of annoyance which turns into a headache around the front part of your head. The sort of annoyance that feels like hate. Which is unhelpful.

Anyways. Onwards and upwards.

Beneluxury

Dordrecht did the job. I'm almost back on the rag, have another week of absolute shit in front of me, and our washing machine gave up the ghost a few days before we left, but still both the F-word's and my own bad moods were gone by Sunday morning after hours and hours of bike riding on Saturday. And then the Sunday morning kayaking in the Biesbosch was rather grand, many many different types of birds and a fairyish mist coming off the water - also the channels were narrow and overgrown so one got double that little kayak thrill, of "I'm going somewhere other people can't." And flowers, and green, green, green.

As the morning wore on there were more and more people, so I was almost not upset the park centre had "fucked up" (read: "purposefully altered when they got an afternoon group booking") our reservations so we only got three hours instead of five. Not to mention, in the bigger channels my crappy little tub of a kayak handled like a donkey on amphetamines and made me miss my lovely Jemima, that big beautiful 14.5 foot bitch who tracks like a crow flies. But it was magical and it did the job.

We've decided, or rather the F-word has acquiesced following some very undignified begging on my part, to head to the other Stayokay hostels in the Netherlands for weekend trips over the rest of our tenure in Europe. I'm very fond of the Netherlands as a generality, and its proximity, impressions of wide open empty spaces despite super-high population density, and high-functioning marijuana market would be enough to make it a really attractive weekend destination in any case. But on top of all that it has something most of Belgium, northern France and Germany lacks: complete bike-friendliness.

I think it's only in the Netherlands, and possibly some of the Flemish parts of Belgium, that I feel absolutely comfortable hopping on a train, arriving, renting bicycle at the station, and then having absolute liberty and security of movement for my stay because the dedicated bike paths are everywhere, without having to fart around with unfamiliar public transport systems. And I don't have to wear a helmet so I can feel the wind in my hair. That's important. It's something I hadn't really experienced otherwise since being an uncomplexed child of the mid-80's and it's something that it's a goddamn shame drivers are too shitty and dangerous to let children experience now.

It's a feeling I don't doubt people who drive feel all the time, and explains why so many people (especially men) of my acquaintance insist on taking their cars everywhere, even to places like Paris where they'll beggar themselves in parking fees alone. So while I still can, I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of it here in the Benelux; I think it's quite unique in the world.

Weekenders in places with names I can't pronounce

Yesterday I called to book 'our' place in the Ardennes, and it was full . . . as was every other place in the area. And despite the dreadful yet fruitful agony of having obtained my full license, I'm not yet allowed to rent a car here - you need to have had the permit for two years - and the F-word won't, so I spent a panicked hour searching for somewhere else to kayak and get fresh air that we could get to with trains.

Well, thank god for this disorganized industrial shithole of a country being next to the Netherlands. We're going here. Dordrecht. An hour and a half away, I've managed to book some boats that look much nicer than the tubs in the Ardennes, and it's next to this, so it's going to be fucking awesome, I'm pretty sure. Even if it pisses down rain all weekend (and we seem to be in the grip of some sort of wildly geographically misplaced Indian summer here so I don't think it will), I'm pretty sure we'll get a lot out of going to a place with folklore this bizarre.

God, I love the Dutch. Not just for the social liberalism and their stunning good looks. I love their weird, too. I'd love Belgians' wierd as well, but it seems to segue into creep far too often for comfort. I think it will be a good policy to spend the maximum amount of time in the Netherlands before we leave. It's just so much less annoying. Shame about the food but one always manages.

Speaking of food, this site makes me hungry.

The limits of the zoological approach, redux

Today's the anniversary of Dutroux being sentenced. It chills my blood, that case, that Nihoul is already back on the streets, that Dossier X was let slide the way it was . . . This country chills my blood. There's charm in surrealism, but the surrealism here is more late Goya than the Marvellous Adventures of Amelie Fucking Poulain, that's for sure. The Lie Gaenen thing tipped me over the edge, that demonstrated a little too aptly the tolerance in this legal establishment for recidivist paedophilia despite all that street-hitting over Dutroux. The king (himself accused of paedophilia in the 70's) has apparently rejected his demand for clemency, but nobody knows if the public prosecutor has actually done its job and got him into prison yet to serve the 2/3 of his sentence that recidivist paedophiles are obliged to serve here (he was already condemned for paedophilia in the 70's, and then went on to have a successful career as a children's author and television presenter).

Well, it's not just paedophilia, there's a lack of proportionate consequences for actions generally speaking that allows the proverbially stupid national spirit flourish. Everybody complains about the wild-boars-on-the-rampage traffic and everbody drives around drunk, but what can you expect when there are no traffic cops and no penalties for drunk driving? I've got an acquaintance here who got pissed, totalled his car in a busy downtown tunnel, waited for the cops to come, they didn't breathalyze him and the whole problem went away. Why not? Nobody got hurt, miraculously; he was insured, the insurance company paid, because in the official documents he wasn't drunk. Simpler for everyone.

Especially because anybody here who gets a prison sentence under three years doesn't have to go to prison, they're too crowded. The F-word mentioned the other day that he'd like to teach in a prison, rather than a private school, which is a sentiment I can understand but I got rather insistent he not do it here, where they're over-crowded in a hellish manner and apparently you have to be the bastard of all time to actually get sent there if it takes that long to get a recidivist paedophile in. But my guess is that if Gaenen'd been a Maghrebin paedophile they'd have scraped together some room. Jamioulx in Charleroi is 50% over capacity, more depending on the source, and apparently with the latest wave of inmates coming in they had to stick a bunch directly into the tank - 2.5mX4.5m rooms without a window and just a concrete slab for a bed . . .

And how are they dealing with the situation at the administrative level here? Paying the Netherlands Euro 30 million to take 500 prisoners off their hands. Because the Netherlands doesn't have enough crime so they've got all these jails sitting around empty. Fucking embarassing.

If you aren't Dutch, you're not selling fast enough

Saw a Werner Herzog documentary last night, How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck . . . did I mention how much I miss weed? It was great but if I was high it would have been revelatory. As it was, by the end I was wondering what the fuck he was on in the 1970s. The film lingered on the auctioneering competition beyond the point that a straight person could be expected to be interested in. I think that's the great thing about the sort of drugs I like . . . they lengthen my attention span.

Anyways, there are no great twists or surprises in it, so though I recommend you watch it I have no hesitation in telling you it's coverage of the 1976 World Auctioneering Championships, and that the winner was Steve Liptay, who came from Bowmanville, Ontario, and who now runs an auction house for cars on the east coast. A great many of my intimates in Canada were from Bowmanville or its surrounds, and it did my heart so much good to hear that accent again - your standard Canadian accent but with a bit extra. Being away from Canada so long, working with a collection of Brits, and living with a man from a country where the word 'groin' is polysyllabic has made me very fond of my own accent, and the Canadian accent generally. There's a softness and gentleness about it. Like a sober, unprovoked Irish person.

But back to the movie. I liked it a good deal but I'm pretty convinced if Herzog wasn't high whilst putting it together he had been holding his breath and twirling. I have a certain distrust of it because in the English version, the subtitles saying what the people are saying in English whilst Herzog dubs them over in German are visibly not very similar to what the people are saying. It makes them seem rather more empty-headed than is probably quite fair. I also think it's rather odd he chooses the language of auctioneering as the new and perhaps final language of capitalism when - you know - it's awfully fucking old, isn't it? It's the oldest language of capitalism. The first language of capitalism. I think I either missed his point here, or his point wasn't very good.

Speaking of, have you ever heard of a Dutch auction? Flower wholesalers use it because flowers are time sensitive, and no matter how fucking fast an auctioneer goes, he can't be as fast as a Dutch auction. I went to a flower wholesalers with Elvis a couple of years back and I couldn't believe it, it was like a roomful of Jeopardy! contestants hitting buzzers. The idea is to start buying at a high level and then wind the price down; as soon as you see a price for the lot you're willing to pay, you hit the buzzer. Fast! Superfast.

I don't know why all auctions don't use it. I would love if there was some comparative study I could look at to see which style of auctioning fetched the highest bids - Dutch or English. My instinctive guess is that as a norm Dutch auction prices would be higher, but that possibly average English auction prices would be higher because occasionally you'll get buyers wrapped up in a bidding war pushing prices beyond projected levels. It would be very hard to imagine fine art sold in a Dutch auction, for example. It's interesting. There's a different idea in these types of auctions about how markets and competition work, though they're both capitalist, both competitive. It's just the Dutch auction appears 100x more efficient - if you're willing to do without occasionally hitting prices outstripping any reasonable expectation of what the price should be.

Die Flederbond

Dear oh dear. What a hilariously disastrous weekend. Well, it's hilarious now that it's over. Simply: the way the cookie crumbled meant that I spent Saturday night in an Amstelveen shell watching Quantam of Solace and You Don't Mess with the Zohan instead of Die Fledermaus, which I'll watch next Sunday instead in a a return visit to Amsterdam. Qualitatively, both Quantam of Solace and You Don't Mess with the Zohan were ridiculous, obtuse, and/or offensive in two or three ways each, but You Don't Mess with the Zohan actually made marginally more sense than Quantam of Solace.

Nonetheless I enjoyed Quantam of Solace more. It was funnier. The product placement was, once more, hideously intrusive, and combined with a two-hour search for cinematic grittiness that's just hilarious. The Jack-White-and-whoever-the lady-was-theme was yelpy, silly and helpfully reminded me why I don't like the White Stripes. And Daniel Craig is a peice of ass, which is always a pleasure.

God, what a silly weekend.

I now pronounce you unsympathetic

The Dutch intimidate me. But, as I've mentioned before, in the sort of way that makes me wish they ran the world. That's on my mind this morning not only because those crazy beautiful fuckers are talking about building islands to make their country bigger, and not only because it looks as though a mate of mine here is moving to Amstelveen, which rocks because then we can crash with him in Amstelveen, and not only because we're going to Amsterdam in a couple of weeks to see the Fleidermaus and some marionettes for my 30th birthday, but also because a high proportion of my acquaintance from the Netherlands are gay men, and I've seldom heard people express themselves so clearly about their animosity with certain kinds of ethnic groups as they do, because those gay men sometimes feel in physical danger from these ethnic groups whilst walking down the street being obviously gay, and now this morning MSNBC is blaming blacks and Latinos for getting rid of same-sex marriage in California.

In terms of those statistics or polling numbers or whatever out of California, it's really interesting, the way it's partly instinctual to think any socially marginalized group is automatically going to feel sympathy for and supportive of other socially marginalized groups. But it's also a completely unreasonable thing to think, because let's face it: if marginalized groups all felt sympathy for each other, they wouldn't fucking be marginalized anymore, would they?

The whole process makes me impatient. I'm a big believer in direct democracy, but I can't help but feel that matters of legal and familial obligations like marriage or adoption should be left for courts and religious groups to decide - it beggars belief that something so civil should be decided by political processes. That's like asking for a referendum on McDonald's being liable if I burn my twat by spilling one of their coffees on her. Marriage is either a legal contract or a religious sacrament with a direct bearing on the contracted parties, and not on the wider community - that's all it fucking well is - it's not stockpiling machine guns, for fuck's sake - and that means either religious figures should decide within their own religious community or that judges should decide for the secular community. Especially in a place like the States, that's blessed with civil law. Maybe I'm full of shit and I'd be cheering on another victory for direct democracy if California had voted the way that I'd sort of wanted it to. I doubt it though. I'm actually not that keen on gay marriage. I think it would strengthen an institution that outlived its usefulness, but not its iniquities, when women were given legal status as humans. Anyways, in this case it really doesn't matter what I think. That's sort of my point.

In a torturous sort of way this all comes back to the Netherlands in my head, where gay marriage has been legal since 2001, and civil unions for some time before that, and adoption laws are more or less straightened out (all through the political process, necessary as they're still having a Napoleonic hangover - but whatever, it seems to work for them), and there are no political parties on either side of the spectrum even mentioning taking these rights away again, and you can have a character like Pim Fortuyn dominate the political landscape for awhile, and then get murdered, apparently partly because of the way he laid into Islam, and whose party can sort of win the election after he dies . . . Super-gay, and not marginalized. Not at all. The splits are different and there are no illusions about mutual support among minority groups.

What's my point? I don't have one. It's just so interesting how things get so different from one democracy to another, from one developed country to another. And now I have to go keep writing about the economic meltdown at work.

Tired of playing the game as they fuck up again and again

My new fucking anthem, at least for today, at least until I manage a good night's sleep:



Not much news today. It will be the first day I get an editorial published through work. With my real name and my photograph and everything. Obviously it will revolutionize the industry and I will be in international demand, especially in warmer sunnier countries. Vanity google searches will become just that little bit more rewarding. And probably I will sleep through the whole thing, or at least want to.

Elsewhere - remember the Belgacom fiasco? I was reminded of it incidentally yesterday whilst making an effort to resolve a new fucking fiasco, this time with our former bank Fortis, another near-bankrupt Belgian corporate monster of incompetence. They sent our unpaid house insurance bill to a collections agency, which I found mortifying, by the way - I worked for a collections agency for a week once before getting a real job, and I hate collections agencies, and I had always resolved to not have much to do with them. And to be fair, the bill was unpaid, because they hadn't been sending us any bills, at least at this address - the address that

1) I live at
2) The F-word lives at
3) The insurance coverage is for
4) Our statements and promotional material came to.

No. Instead they'd been sending the bills to a defunct address (the shitty school we'd stayed at when we arrived). For the last four months. Willful fucking stupidity. Fucking pig ignorance. It's not even a scam, because the collection agency is only charging us an extra 10 euros or something - they're not making money off it - and in fact, Fortis is probably losing money off it because of selling the debt to the collections agency. A collections agency who obviously took one fucking look at the addresses involved and could somehow figure out that they could probably reach us for our house insurance bill at our house where we live and receive our correspondence.

And the cherry in the virgin is that just a month ago, the F-word had been to Fortis and inquired into the terms of our house insurance, and the very helpful cretin he spoke to took the time to print out our contract for him and explain some of the finer points. Without noticing, or at least saying, that we owed the bank over 200 euros and they'd been trying to get payment since April on that contract.

I was talking about this last night with San Francisca and her Dutchman who were all a-twitter with excitement and I was all a-twitter with excitement for them, actually, as he's just found a massively excellent job in Amsterdam and they are going to move there soon, fulfilling one her dreams. That means when the F-word and I buy our bit of rainforest we can house swap anytime they want some sort of Crocodile Dundee experience and anytime we want a bit of Olde Worlde Culture and legal marijuana.

I haven't met a nationality that wasn't happy to mock the intelligence of Belgians, but I've never met people who do it with more dedication and detail than the Dutch. The Dutchman was in full fucking flight last night - I'd set him off by innocently asking why he'd been concerned that Dutch employers might not place any value on his Belgian work experience. Apparently the idea, for the Dutch, isn't that Belgians are stupid in the flat sense of the word, but that they're utterly incapable of communicating with each other or other people once they're part of any sort of organizational structure, and utterly incapable of seeing any sort of broad, abstract purpose to that organizational structure in terms of what customers were using it for or in terms of money generally. It's a broad and uncharitable conclusion but I haven't yet found any evidence to contradict it.

Anyways, if anybody who is obliged to move to Belgium for work stumbles across this: quick word of advice, don't use Fortis; it's been a never-ending comedy of errors with them. ING has been great, and has the lowest fees as well, as in none, which may be unique here - I'm not sure.

God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland

Amsterdam is the thinking grownup's Disneyland. We started our vacationing there because I had a conference to attend, so work paid for my transport and the first couple of nights in our lovely B&B on a houseboat. Yes. You read that right. Fuckin' houseboat. What's more, because this fuckin' houseboat was just outside the city limits on a lake next to the huge and beautiful Amsterdamse Bos, where trees race up to the soggy gentle sky, a kind man rents you lovely bikes at great daily rates, and Schilpol's aeroplanes fly so low in anticipation of landing that their cocks are in danger of hanging out (fun because you can race them along the bike paths), it was cheaper than that revolting partitioned boiler room we slept in last September.

If you're considering a trip to Amsterdam, email me by clicking through on my profile, and I'll send you the owner's contact information - I'd post it here but I don't want to give them that much publicity, or else it will always be booked when I want to stay there, which will be often. The owners are in situ and were kind, chatty, interested without prying. I think ever so slightly disappointed that we were Canadian and Australian and not American. They had a real love for the States I've noticed in a lot of Dutch people - not only an appreciation for the personal, hospitable warmth of the typical American which otherwise isn't common in Europe, but also a love of the notion that you can do whatever you want there, make all the money you want, don't have to fight against any regulations. But then in the next breath they'll tell you how great their Dutch regulations are. And Dutch regulations are great. God, I wish the Dutch ran the world.

The conference was frightful and professionally useless; the focus was much more on marketing and it was like a flashback to my days in advertising. I skipped out on some of the more obviously useless portions of it and at one point struck up a very long and interesting conversation with the lovely woman who runs the business centre at the Hotel Okura. During the course of it she explained why Dutch organization and regulation tends to be so successful, though also frustrating to Dutch people themselves: the Polder Model. She explained it rather more concisely than Wikipedia by saying it meant that all parties concerned in a debate accepted the fact at the outset that they wouldn't be able to get everything they wanted. Imagine that . . .

The Hotel Okura was otherwise uninspiring, besides the doorman and his cat. The hotel has its own cat, a black and white tom who sprawls on the ground close to where the doorman stands, lazily watching him haul people's bags around, lazily inspecting the rich and the businesslike who go through the doors. It's a five-star hotel, but I would not call the tom a five-star cat, although he was great. I'm quite sure he still had his balls; he was a huge monster of a thing - more than twice the size of my Lexie, and less of it fat. And while his comfort with people means he's well-loved, none of that lovin' has been done with a wire brush or a pair of scissors; his healthy coat had some wild-looking clumps in it. Obviously he was the most charming thing I saw at the conference.

Another great thing about the conference was that it gave me a chance to be an Amsterdam commuter, as I rode my rented bike from the Bos to the hotel. I could have wept with the pleasure of it, as hundreds of bikes rode silently around during 'rush hour' and the number of cars on the road hardly changed. Not a helmet in sight - not on the grown-ups, not on the buckets of children in front-mounted baskets that their mums or dads were biking to daycare. The wind, for once, in my hair - wind largely untainted by the mufflerless effluent of shitboxes which so plagues my lungs in Brussels. Oh, it was lovely. How jealous I was of the people who get to live and work in a place where commuting is like that.

No complaints about riding our bikes around for fun, either, on the succeeding two days, except shockingly there still seems to be a certain class of tourist who does not understand the concept of bike paths. What a great, fun city. In terms of our touristy things, we went to the Rijksmuseum, again for hours and hours and hours . . . I don't get museum exhaustion in Amsterdam, it seems. And no, it's not the reefer. I usually get stoned before going to galleries and museums no matter where I am in the world. I don't know what it is. Great museum - my favourite bit, though, was a painting currently mounted close to the entrance showing the Dutch and Spanish signing a treaty concluding the Dutch revolt, which seemed to show the Dutch participants solemnly delivering the two-finger salute to their former overlords. Classy.

Also touristy: we went walking around Java Island, where there have been beautiful modern residential architectural things installed over the past 30 years - pictures and exclamations to follow.

God. Dutch people. The F-word pointed out to me that they had to be that good about organizing their space - making it that livable and that congenial - because if not they'd have all eaten each other by now, what with that little land being so crowded and the weather being so shitty. All the same though. How have we not ripped some serious pages out of their books yet?