More Moore

I went to see the great man again when he played in Amsterdam. He was back in the Carré theatre, the same venue he played last year. This time I had a seat quite close to the stage, right in the middle of row 6. So a good view of the man and of Declan. He was in good voice, and sang some of his most beautiful songs again. "Bright Blue Rose" got to me this time, and Declan singing "I Will". Christy sang "Joxer", one of those funny story songs you can hear over and over again. I guess to a Dutch audience not all the reference will be all that familiar, but I love the images, and they do work.

There were some technical problems, men walking to and fro carrying guitars on and off the stage, which didn't really help. I think it made Christy a little uncomfortable, and you could feel that throughout the concert, he never seemed to feel completely at ease. He promised a jukebox early on in the concert, but he never quite got round to that. He did pick up the Bodhran at some point, to play "Well Below the Valley", something he doesn't always do either.

I was a little distracted by the audience at times. To my right were a couple of real fans, singing along to every song, swaying on their seats. And right in front of me a lady spent a lot of time taking pictures, both with her camera and with her mobile phone, sending the pictures to friends straightaway. The little lights and beeps were a little distracting. I wonder if she really enjoyed the concert....

Development

For a while I worked on a project developing a new residential area to the east of the city. When I started on the project it was all still water apart from a small experimental island. The island at the time was home to a colony of Gulls and Terns, my kind of island really. Then slowly, other things started to appear. More land, bigger islands, bridges, roads, houses, a popular city beach, schools, restaurants, shops. I was back there the other day, cycling around, and I was surprised. The area has become a real city, a place where I could find a bottle of rose to bring along to the friend I was about to have dinner with. The big square I just knew from all the drawings and designs was suddenly there, children playing in the playground. And it looked really nice.

Then I went on to the park next to the development, now a good place to go cycling or walking. And I cycled across the new bridge, built especially for cyclists. It is a beautiful bridge, it looks lovely and light, and it is easy to cycle across. But it still is strange to think that some ten years ago this was all still water...

Ophelia Was Here

Years ago I went to see her in London, I travelled to the great Tate to see her, and was impressed. This mythical lady, Hamlet's beloved, sent to a nunnery and drowned. I went back to see her several times, and when last year her creator was granted an exhibition at that same Tate I went back again. It turned out to be a long walk from where I was at the time, but I went to see her. And discovered and rediscovered some of Millais' other great paintings. I met Louise Jopling. And I got to see Mariana again, standing at the window in this stunning blue dress. Only when you see the painting do you realise just how blue it is.

They all came to my city, and I got to see Ophelia, Mariana and Louise again here. It was nice of them to come and see me for a change...

Mysteries and the Limitations of the Web

It sometimes feels as if you can find just about everything through the internet. You just type in the right word or phrase and there it is. And sometimes it does work. You find the things you least expect to find in more detail than you thought was possible. I am forever reading and learning about the Antarctic, and I cannot keep up with the material I find.

But then sometimes you think you must be able to find the information you want, and it just isn't there. You get so used to being able to find out about everything, that you get surprised if you type your next query, and there is nothing. Or nothing that actually gives you the information you want. Suddenly you have to go back to a book, to a real library, and if you don't live in the right place you may have to wait for a while to be able to find out what you want to know. I'll have to wait a little to be able to pursue my quests. Or can somebody out there tell me about Black Patie and the women in his life?

Logic and Philosphy

I was watching this programme where police chase drivers who drive dangerously or much too fast. One man who was stopped had the following to say:

Policeman: "What is the reason you are speeding?"
Car driver: "I need to get to a petrol station, my tank is almost empty."

Now, I have a colleague, and this might have been his reasoning. His philosopy is, that the slower you ride your bicycle, the longer the distance you have to cover. We get on very well. We both understand that if you get to work a little late you can leave early...

Patterns

I was out cycling in the countryside to the north of Amsterdam today, wearing my sandals. I used sunblock on my arms and face, but not on my feet, so they now have a lovely new pattern.

Acrobatic Swifts

They were foraging outside my office window again today. I'm a little higher than most of the buildings in the area so I get a good view of the sky over the city. There were three Swifts close to my office again, like there were last year, apparently chasing each other, but really chasing insects. They fly at great speed and are just so incredibly agile, it's hard not to keep getting distracted by all of this going on just outside my window.

And then when I was on my way home they were way overhead, high in the bright blue sky. No clouds, just blue and those silhouettes.

Girl from New Jersey

Last week I went to see Nicole Atkins in concert. I didn't really know her very well, I heard her new, and first, album on the Luisterpaal. Great website for people like me who don't often listen to the radio but who are interested in discovering new music. Without the Luisterpaal I probably wouldn't have discovered Bright Eyes, Eleni Mandell or Mondo Leone, three firm favourites now.

Anyway, Nicole played with her band in a small venue quite close to Amsterdam Central Station. Just a small hall, bar in the corner, balcony, table at the side to sell t-shirts and cds after the concert. The stage was just big enough for Nicole and her five musicians. The band did not just consist of base, guitar and drums, but also included violin and keyboard.

I got there quite early, so I had a good view of the stage, I was about one step away from it. The only person in front of me was a lady photographer, who was quite small. Standing so close to the stage I also ended up right next to one of the speakers, which meant that once the music started I could not only hear it, but I could feel it. The base sound was literally thrilling, and it affected my legs as much as my ears. The legs of my jeans were moving about, so to speak.

Nicole is a singer from New Jersey and she has managed to create her own sound and style while reminding you very much of the music of the sixties, especially of the girl groups. If you check her out on YouTube you will find her singing some original girl groups songs. And she does very well. But she generally writes her own songs, and they are good. They stick in your head and keep popping up. It's phrases, both words and music that seem to keep coming back.

Someone in the audience made some short videos and put them on Youtube:
Together We're Both Alone
The Way It Is

And there are two more. They don't quite catch the strength of the live show, but they give some idea. She's coming back to Amsterdam in July, so I have another concert to look forward to.

After the Party

To my utter amazement I managed to cycle to work and back today without getting a puncture. Considering all the broken glass in the streets and in the park after all the festivities that can be called a minor miracle.

Happy Shopping

I was out shopping at my local supermarket earlier today and for some strange reason I suddenly felt blissfully happy. I can think of no real idea why. There were no special sales I was interested in, they were out of rice and cream crackers, the shop was very busy, so there was absolutely no reason. Or maybe it all started earlier, when I saw the flag in the street, out to celebrate Liberation Day. Or those cheerful flags on the tram. Or maybe it was just the sunshine and all the bright summer clothes everywhere. Or maybe it was the man I saw in his summer shorts there, who looked very happy, that might have been contagious.

And then I turned into observer mode, always an easy thing to do in a supermarket. It's a place where you need to go even though it is not a place you want to be. At the check out, just as I had finished putting my shopping up, ready to be taken to the cashier, a man stood behind me who was probably in a hurry and he needed to put all his shopping up there too. Straightaway. There wasn't much room, but he did make a start, pushing me aside in the process. The people just in front of me took a long time organising their change, using their debit card, so we had to wait a while, and this man behind me was very carefully stacking as much as he could on what little space there was, reorganising it all to fit more on. And of course, after a few minutes all my stuff started to move, and there was a lot of space, more than he could possibly need. And we all had to wait anyway, so I was wondering what the point of the rush and the stacking was. All part of modern life, I guess.

After my exciting trip to the supermarket I treated myself to a short visit to a second-hand bookshop just round the corner, one of the few here in Amsterdam I had never visited before. It was one of those shops that isn't really a shop, doesn't feel or like a shop, but where they do sell books. An elderly man was carrying some boxes outside, then took a seat in the sun with his newspaper to recover from this strenuous work. He was explaining to an acquaintance that he would be working on the shop sometime, to try and organise the stock, but today he just intended to enjoy the sunshine. When I walked into the shop my fingers started to itch. Piles, boxes of books, all in complete disarray, just screaming out to be organised, and a lot of empty and half empty shelves. And one of my life's passions, my therapy, is organising books on shelves. I had to muster all my self-restraint not to start organising there and then. I found a big pile of National Geographic Magazines in the corner, which I went through, trying to complete my Antarctic collection, and I ended up buying two. And I left them all nicely organised on three small shelves. They looked very nice like that. No cash register in the shop, of course, so I just paid the old man sitting outside in the sun. Just for a moment I was tempted to volunteer my services, but then I remembered my own bookcases. And I can't deprive that nice old man of the joy of reorganising his own bookshelves, that would be too cruel.

Antarctic Attitudes

I fall for it every time. I read a book written by one of the Antarctic explorers, and then they mention seals and penguins, and their joy at encountering the animals. I know how that feels, I think, because I've felt that joy. I know what it is like to land on Aitcho Island and be welcomed by a huge crowd or Gentoo and Chinstrap Penguins carelessly ignoring you and going about their own business, raising their young. I've sailed into the Lemaire Channel, with the Mate navigating through the ice, full of Leopard Seals, and half the people on the ship standing on deck filming or taking pictures. I've enjoyed the sight of seeing Skuas and Giant Petrels flying high above my head, inspecting the penguin colonies. I mean, what can you do apart from just stand there and be amazed by the sight.

Well, you can do what Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and all the others did. They may have enjoyed the sight of a Weddell Seal coming out of a hole in the ice, or the sight of Emperor Penguins heading for their colony, but what they saw was meat. What they did was kill the animals, so they would have the food they needed to survive and not to succumb to scurvy. When I was reading Shackleton's "South" it took me a while to catch on to this, being a vegetarian this is a totally foreign way of thinking to me. It is a bit like my always explaining to people how to get to my house on foot, by bike or by public transport, and not by car. I don't have a car and I wouldn't know how to get around this city in one. But that is something else again.

It is impossible to go back to that way of thinking from where we are now, even though all this happened just around 100 years ago. Nowadays the Antarctic is seen and treated differently from 100 years ago, and none of the people on the ship think of food when they see the animals. Then again, I do get asked about the taste of penguin meat and penguin eggs...

Amundsen was evidently a great fan. I've been reading his diaries of the Belgica expedition, and at the moment they contain little else than descriptions of seals and penguins spotted, killed and eaten. And he talks about the weather a lot. I guess you would do under those circumstances. There just are very few personal thoughts or ideas, and relatively little about other people. This is a man who knows what he wants to achieve, who knows where he wants to go, and who will not be distracted. I've nearly finished this one, and then I will read Frederick Cook's book on the same expedition, and I wonder what idea of the expedition I will get from that.

4 May

It is always spring when we commemorate our dead. When people dressed in black gather in many places in this city and this country to remember those who were killed during the second world war and the wars after there is silence. And that silence is always broken by the birds, singing at the top of their voices in the early evening. It is never this quiet, and you can never hear them better. And somehow they never sound more joyful.

When I visited Auschwitz I was overwhelmed by the atmosphere, knowing about all of the history, but obviously never sensing it so clearly. Looking out over the huge area that was once Birkenau, you feel the complete emptiness and desolation, the enormity of it all. you cannot really even begin to imagine what happened there. The sight renders you speechless and almost numb. Here the Redstarts inhabit one of the pavillions where women used to live, and it was their sound I heard. Again, it was the only sound.

Separate Lives

I've been back from the Antarctic for about two months now, but that feels a little odd. On the one hand it feels like I was there only yesterday, on the other hand it feels like a lifetime ago. And now it looks like I might start preparing for another trip, another season.

Antarctica, and life on board the ship, are always a part of me somehow. In my house there are all the physical reminders, my knitted penguin from Tristan da Cunha, my bottle-opener penguin from Port Lockroy, a Penguin postcard from Vernadsky Base. But it's a way of thinking almost that you don't seem able to leave behind. The views, the openness, the cold. There still is much out there you cannot control, and that you simply have to accept. The weather can still be so bad, that it isn't simply a matter of the wrong kind of clothes, you can be stuck on the ship, unable to land as you might have planned.

It just seems so strange to be in the middle of a big city, surrounded by a lot of stone, where you can't seen further than a few dozen metres most of the time, enjoying the sunshine, and with so many people all around. Sometimes I miss the emptiness, the views, the quiet, the close community on the ship, but here it is nice to have the freedom to go out, see different people, go for a really long walk, go to a museum or even to go shopping. You always have a choice. And I guess that makes life rich, but sometimes it is nice to have the simplicity of no choice.

I feel at home here, this is where I live, but at the same time I know that when I go back on board the ship within a day that will feel like home again. I know the ship, I know many of the people, I know the routines. After four seasons on board that is hardly surprising, but it remains strange to lead two, almost entirely separate, lives.

Welsh Pilgrimage

At University I wrote a paper about Welsh poet R.S. Thomas. He always seemed to be one of those angry old men, a man with a mind of his own, and with little, visible, sense of humour. But if you Google for pictures of him the first few you get are ones of him smiling, and people who knew him well have described him as "warm and humorous". He lived and worked as a priest in Wales, and in some ways had a tough life. He was a man of strong convictions. His poetry is fascinating, a mixture of the lyric and the down to earth, a celebration of natural beauty and a representation of the darkness of everyday life in the Welsh countryside. He wrote some of the most beautiful poems I know, and some keep coming back into my head over and over again.

A few years ago I visited Wales, quite some time after writing the paper, and, even though I still read Thomas and have some of his poems in my mind at odd moments, I didn't initially make the connection about visiting his homeland. Then, at one of my first stops, I met an American priest out on a journey to take pictures of the places related to Thomas. He told me that the church Thomas worked in from 1954 to 1967 was just down the road from the Bed & Breakfast we were staying in. The next morning, on my way to my next destination, I made a short detour to see the church, St Michael's at Eglwysfach. It was a small church right by the roadside, not a very quiet place. It was raining when I was there, and it didn't feel very cheerful. It did suit the man and his work somehow.



From then on the trip became partly about R.S. Thomas though. I moved on to Snowdonia, and from there to Angelsey. I camped at a site near Aberdaron, where Thomas was the vicar from 1967 to 1978, when he retired. He preached at the local church, St Hywyn.



He also preached at a small church two miles down the road, St Maelrhys' Church at Llanfaelrhys. This is a small church built in the middle of nowhere, where Thomas came for quiet meditation too. He found inspiration for one of his most beautiful poems here, he wrote "The View From the Window". Standing inside that church I knew why he would come here.



THE VIEW FROM THE WINDOW

Like a painting it is set before one,
But less brittle, ageless; these colours
Are renewed daily with variations
Of light and distance that no painter
Achieves or suggests. Then there is movement,
Change, as slowly the cloud bruises
Are healed by sunlight, or snow caps
A black mood; but gold at evening
To cheer the heart. All through history
The great brush has not rested,
Nor the paint dried; yet what eye,
Looking coolly, or, as we now,
Through the tears' lenses, ever saw
This work and it was not finished?



Thomas was a birdwatcher too, and he spent a lot of time at the bird observation centre on Bardsey Island. just a short boatride from Aberdaron. Visiting there was a real pleasure too, both because of the birds and because of Thomas. It's the kind of island where I wouldn't mind spending some time, even though it is very small. What I didn't know at the time, but have learned since, is that it is a breeding ground for Manx Shearwaters, who have their burrows in the hills on the island. Sometimes everything just comes together.