Gone Dutch...

I got back from Amsterdam yesterday.

Didn't have time to blog anything while I was there. Actually that's a lie - the one time an internet cafe was immediately apparent, it was also shut due to technical difficulties. Maybe it was waterlogged. Amsterdam is 6.7m below sea-level, so they spend most of Holland's environmental research budget on working out how not to spend their entire lives underwater. (Something which the UK will probably have to start doing after this summer.)

Anyway, here are your Top 10 Dutch Icons as seen over five days...



Bikes and Flowers...
(Millions of bikes everywhere. Where's Katie Meluiliulia when you need her to write a bloody song...)
(Not appreciably more tulips than anything else...)



Canals and Windmills...
(Some canals are crossed by these swingy-style bridges. Water doesn't go foetid or smell as clever Dutch hydrologists have worked out how to refresh it every three days...)
(Windmills are just tourist attractions nowadays. These three have been moved on the back of lorries from various parts of Holland to a kind of Home for Retired Windmills ...)



Heineken and Clogs...
(They don't brew it in Amsterdam any more, they just charge you €12 to go in and look at some old adverts sitting in a Star Trek chair...)
(Man does not spend days hand crafting clogs now, he just puts a big block of wood into big version of machine that copies keys and that makes them for him...)



Red Light District and Narrow Canalside Houses...
(Admittedly a very general, daytime shot of the Red Light District. If you try to take anything more specific or at night time, you might get killed...)
(On bus tour, canal barge tour and cycle tour, three different guides pointed to three different houses and said they were the narrowest in Amsterdam...)



Anne Frank's House and Cheese...
(Never having read her diary, and been berated for not having done, I thought she hid on her own in a tiny attic room. Turns out she hid with quite a large number of family and friends in quite a sizeable granny-annex. I'm not saying that made being Jewish during the occupation any easier, or made her story any less tragic, just exposing my ignorance...)
(Two for the price of one here - the cheesemaker is wearing clogs...)

(I suppose Van Gogh should be in the Top 10 as well. And Rembrandt. But Van Gogh was a miserable bugger by all accounts and Rembrandt was a bankrupt, so they can be 11 and 12 and not worthy of further comment.)

22:30 (Post lectum)

Finished the book.

Don't worry, I won't give anything away... Was it any good? Well, it was an entirely satisfying ending, with lots of loose ends tied up.

Loose ends tend to be tied up with the in-yer-face italics of lines from the previous six books (and earlier in this one) in case you had forgotten. Or were remembering the films, rather than the books, which is probably more likely.

What there's too much of...

There's too much Polyjuice Potion, too much apparating and disapparating and way too much Invisibility Cloak. So much so that when they come to make the film, Daniel Radcliffe will probably only have to turn up for a couple of days.

There's too much that's convenient for purpose but which doesn't quite sit right in terms of believability. And believability has to be important, even in fantasy.

What there's not enough of..

There's not enough Hogwarts, but what there is, is spectacular.

As a result of there being not much Hogwarts, there's not much Hogwarts' students - beyond the main three - or Hogwarts' teachers either, and some of the fun in those interactions is missing as a result.

But it's still a great read!

Of course, you get to know about the remaining Horcruxes and you get to find out what the Deathly Hallows are (they're on the cover of the book...); you get the back stories of a couple of very important characters and you also get the deaths that J K Rowling promised - in fact you get lots of deaths. So many more than the two she alluded to that it's a veritable bloodbath.

And while the ending of the book didn't make me sad, the ending of the books is quite sad. It will leave me at a loose end for a day next July. I shall just have to Potter around.*

* That's such a bad joke, I'm glad it wasn't mine...

00:01

Because it was the last day of work, and because it was the last time we'd be able to, and because there's a Starbucks, and because we actually wanted to read the book, Cesia and I went to the Harry Potter Launch Party at Borders in Southampton.



Surprisingly, the books were not in this large packing box, which had been in the shop for a number of days, but it does show that the staff at Borders had really made an effort. Bits of the shop were labelled up in "Harry Potter" font, they were playing the soundtrack and they said "Good Evening, Hogwarts" every time they had to use the tannoy. (Which got a bit irritating after a while, especially as the things they said afterwards - "Good evening Hogwarts! Could Rob please call extension 204?" - were, like, totally off-role.)

And they dressed up.



Mad-Eye Moody, very effective; Hagrid, on stilts and not in any way fat enough, less so.

Anyway, we made the dreadful mistake of going to Starbucks to have coffee (which they weren't serving hot, because you need a licence to do that after 11pm, which they didn't have, but were serving iced... ) and then browsed round books which weren't Harry Potter for the best part of an hour, so that when we finally joined the queue to get served, it snaked round the shop, like a snake, right back into Bargains and Romance.



No matter. The countdown to midnight came and went and Minerva McGonagall and a fat bloke with greasy hair (who would have been better as Hagrid) wheeled the real palette of books through to general burblings of excitement...



...and then it must have taken them bloody ages to get the plastic off because the queue steadfastly refused to move for about another half an hour, leaving us stranded with nothing to read but yards of Georgette Heyer.

Past crime and travel and Diana, reverential pause, Princess of Wales, 10-year anniversary remembrance gift books and we finally got there...



...which only left the decision about whether to buy the children's cover or the adult cover. Being as anyone seeing you reading it with an adult cover still knows that you're reading a children's book (even if you don't), this decision was easy.

Back home by 1.30 and read four chapters before dozing off...

Hello Auntie...

I went on an official tour of BBC Television Centre yesterday.



Well, some it.

There are bits you don't get to see. You don't get to see the Blue Peter garden. Presumably in case you vandalise it, or dig up the time capsule or tell everyone about Petra. And you don't get to go inside the news studios, in case you are a lesbian and Nicholas Witchell has to sit on you. (This was the official reason given by the tour guides, Simon and Debbie *)

We start with the very low budget Walk of the Dead Entertainers...



Dame Thora, Arthur Lowe, Ernie Wise, Marti Caine, Jon Pertwee... Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly **

And then on inside, where no-one could accuse them of cashing in on recent remakes...



Actually, the last one is Gordon the Gopher. They keep him in a glass-fronted cage now. Perhaps they could do the same with Andi Peters.

We got to see TC1, which is a really big studio where they were rehearsing for Dance X, and TC8, where they were recording the Catherine Tate Christmas Special. In July. "Whadda f***in' liberty!!"

It's all a bit pedestrian. These days no-one really needs the whole "don't wear blue if you're a weather forecaster" thing explaining to them...



...but they do it anyway. And they let you read the news...



(Lisa Kaplinsky)

...of course they show you where Roy Castle did the tap dancing...



...and you get a good look at the Holby Plastic People (don't look if you are of a nervous disposition...)



Now... dinner time!

* Simon is what happens when you're no longer convincing sitting on a bar stool in the background of the Queen Vic, and Debbie is what happens when you're too old to present CBeebies.

** Well, it can only be a matter of time for one of them, and the Strictly Tragic Accident where the other gets a good kicking and falls forever into Len Goodman's handbag is not far off.

Dosh; Bosch; Posh; Slosh; Wash... Gosh!

I have a digital camera, digital radio and digital television. I've had a digital clock for ages. (And digital watches are a bit 70s, aren't they? Despite being a pretty neat idea...)

And I've now got a digital washer. With touch sensitive buttons.

God knows if it's any better at getting clothes clean than the old one, but it has the advantages of working, (which the old one had stopped doing), being whisper-quiet (it says in the advert) and beeping when it's done.

It saves the Earth too.

A bit like Madonna does.

Probably.

So here it is...

...Merry Christmas! Everybody's having fun!



Yup, it's officially Yuletide and it gets earlier every year. The Holiday Inn in Southampton is going for the festive crowd, even though it's only June. It must be time to book!

This pleases me, as I think I probably have Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. I like the winter and find summer a bit depressing. But now the longest day is over and the nights are drawing in, it must be time to get your big jumpers out, light the fire, eat hearty soup and cheer up!

So, what do you want for Christmas...?

What am I bid...?

A different slant on rip-off mobile phone charges. I was very pleased to see that my old mobile phone sold on eBay. And was somewhat surprised to see what it sold for...



Of course, as it was a bog-standard mobile phone, and not one of those Vertu diamond-encrusted ones which someone tried to nick on the motorway this week, the reason it sold for so much was that someone had been a bid ham-fisted with the keyboard when making a bid and then been, quite frankly, a bit scared that both eBay and I would hold him to it...

Hi i,m a freind of *** he is efin stupid portugse he is very sorry but he f*cked up I am english and just come back from the beech can we sort this out please yours in hope ALAN P.s. my e.mail is ************@hotmail.com

Anyway, I didn't - partly because I'm kind and partly because there was no
chance of me getting that much money out of him. But for a while, it did entertain other bidders...

is there a mistake on this phone over 1000 pound email me please im in stiches

...but only ones who can't punctuate or spell. Does that count as positive feedback?

Grrrr...

Yes, all right, dear...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6625581.stm

Now learn to talk...

The Emperor's New Clothes...

OK.

In reference to a recent post, sometimes, it takes Marcus Brigstocke from The Now Show to make you see the light...





...and, although it pains me to admit it, he's actually right.*

*About the Marmite, not about America

Haven't I seen that on "Friends"...?

Yes, you probably have...

Most of what you see in New York is familiar to you because you've seen it all before on the television or in films. You can walk round almost any corner and see one of those iconic shots that they slip in for a few seconds to remind you that you're there, even though it's all filmed in a studio in Hollywood.

Friends is a perfect example because it's littered with them... (You can do those accompanying bits of "Ross and Rachel on a break...", "Phoebe slightly weird..." incidental music in your head as you look at them...)



North up 5th Avenue, 16 blocks to Broadway and the Flatiron Building, another 10 blocks to the Empire State Building and another 11 blocks north (and a couple west) to Times Square....



Washington Square Garden (it's rectangular, but is a garden) with its miniature Arc de Triomphe, a staple of the Friends library shots. But you can watch 10 series (on E4 over the course of about a week, probably) and not see any of them actually walking past any of these places.

And, of course, the corner of Bedford and Grove Streets in Greenwich Village.

("Where?" I hear both readers asking...)

You see you'll recognise it now...



It's their apartment building. No honestly, it is...

When you are there, it doesn't look much like it, but that's 'cos you've only ever seen it in 2-D. It was only when I looked at the photo on the digital camera screen that I was sure we were in the right place.

If you just want a sit down and a coffee when you get there, what you might expect some telly-savvy entrepreneur to have rebranded as Central Perk is actually still the very bijou and refined Little Owl restaurant.

So take a flask.

Served by Pat at 8.29am...

It wasn't a pilgrimage, but it wasn't really tourism either. Part of it was curiosity, but not morbid curiosity; part of it was compulsion.

We went to Ground Zero.

And actually, the renewal which is going on there is quite uplifting.

The big hole in the ground is no bigger than the big holes at any number of major construction projects...



...and the things which remind you of why it's there are round the corner or along side streets...





So it really wasn't morbid, at any point. And it wasn't really particularly easy to relate what happened here to what we all watched on television six years ago. Not because I'm heartless or unfeeling, lacking in sympathy or empathy; just because, initially at least, it was like visiting a film set. But, as I realised later, only because up until this point in my life, everything in New York was just a film set.

And then we went into the temporary visitor centre and listened to some of the personal testimonies and looked at some of the belongings of the victims discovered in the wreckage. But it still seemed like a story, something unreal.

But it was the receipt which did it...



Until I found it again on the exhibition website, I'd remembered it from the exhibition as a train ticket, one tiny bit of paper, recovered from the rubble with a few other belongings.

And for me, it was seeing 9/11/2001 on the receipt which actually made it all real. Something which happened to real people on a real day. Served by Pat at 8.29am...

Tall, Tall, Tall as big as a Wall, Wall, Wall...*

I think if you've never been to New York before, and I hadn't, I'm not sure any number of photographs, scenes in films, news reports, stories from other people etc., prepare you for actually being there, the actual impact of what you see at street level, what you see when you look up...

It may sound crass and predictable and touristy, but the city has a "Wow" factor which perhaps nothing prepares you for. In fact, I guess it'll still be there when I go a second or third time. Which I will.

So, let's start by getting in the queue for the city that never sleeps...



It's the Empire State Building and it's iconic New York. Photos don't do it justice. They don't make it look as tall or omnipresent as it is in real life. And at the back of your mind is always the reason it's now, once again, the tallest building in the city.



Quick tip... don't bother to book tickets in advance on the website. You don't get to skip the main queue, just the ticket booth, which saves you about three minutes out of two and a half hours.

So, up the lift, and here's the reassuring, "Oh bugger, we're 86 floors up, I wonder if it's safe..." view you get when the doors open...



Please excuse our appearance while we make our visitor facilities even better... And is that another queue to get outside? Yes! Never mind, queues don't worry me. I've tried to buy a newspaper at WHSmith in Southampton on a Saturday morning enough times to know a life-sapping queue when I see one, and this wasn't it.

So, outside and Manhattan is spread out before you just like it is on the postcards, in the films, just like it's supposed to be... There's hundreds of photos to take, each one only slightly different to the next (and I took them...) and each one only slightly different to the ones taken by everyone else who's been up there.

But here's a few anyway... by day...



...and by night...



...and no, I didn't go up there twice, it just got dark.

It's a great place to go within a few hours of getting to the city, 'cos (a) it gets the longest queue you're likely to stand in the whole time out of the way early and (b) you get your bearings and see where everything else you're going to see actually is.

But it's not the best view of the city. More about why another time.

* Fetch more water, fetch more sand...

Biltmore (and Booze...)

Biltmore is America's largest private residence. It's also quite old for America.

This means it gets quite busy and you follow Americans round who say things like "Oh My God!!! It's, like, so AMAZING that they could build something like this 100 years ago...!!!"

I think if you took them to, let's say, Chatsworth, or a castle, they would probably go into meltdown.

None of this is to say it's not impressive...



...because it is.

But it's not really that old.

It was built with proper plumbing, lifts, electricity, central heating etc., by the Vanderbilt family on the proceeds of their trade and commerce. (So at least it was earned and not just inherited...) Today, they don't live there, it's just a going concern as a tourist attraction. You can't take photos inside so if you want to see what it's like, you'll have to look at the website. Or go yourself.

Some of the best views are from, and in, the formal gardens and grounds...



...which are huge.

About three miles from the house, but still in the grounds, is a converted dairy which is now a winery...



If you're not driving, you can taste up to eight wines, guided by a professional wine professional. Ours didn't seem to be counting how many we tasted. The plan is that if you taste eight each, you buy eight each, thus enabling the whole enterprise to do better as a winery than it ever did selling milk. We tasted at least eight each and bought three bottles in total, so we probably weren't the best customers.

But back in Greensboro later that evening, we drank the wine and discovered that it was cheaper in Harris Teeter anyway...