This weekend is the long weekend of Koninginnedag or Queen’s Day, that annual Dutch excuse for exuberant debauchery and hard selling.
By the evening of Queen’s day, Monday, the residents of Amsterdam will mostly be totally legless, wearing tacky inflatable orange crowns on their heads and swaying drunkenly en masse to Andre Hazes songs long into the night, having first divested themselves of unwanted tat and made some beer money earlier in the day selling their unwanted goods in the street in the nationwide flea market.
Martin’s parents will be here for the weekend and as this always elicits a flurry of window-cleaning, floor-polishing and fluffing of towels expect light posting from us.
At least my MIL is a little easier going than my own late mother, who was affectionately described by me and my sisters as “the skirting-board police”, a title I’m doing my best to perpetuate. (My younger son’s moving into a new house this weekend and I have a stock of white gloves ready for the first post-move inspection.)
But this weekend, we shall be sitting in the garden barbecuing, as the weather is glorious still (cheers, global warming), then it’s off into the mad crowds around the grachten to watch the canal parades.
See you again Tuesday am sharp, or possibly before if I need to retreat from the orange frenzy for a while. Have a good weekend.
