Marlies

I like the designs of Marlies Dekkers. Her designs are simple, no frills, no bows or little flowers, they are strong and stylish. They also seem to have the right fit and they are nice to wear. It feels like they were made with great care and that shows somehow.

She has been in the business for 15 years now, and so she was given an exhibition at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. It wasn't just about her designs, but also about the art that provided and provide her with the inspiration for her designs. Pieces by Mondriaan, Egon Schiele, Yves Klein and John de Andrea. The exhibition is nicely balanced. Lots of colour in some places, a lot of black in others. And it has a touch of the bizarre. Like Marlies' work. It gave a good impression of all her work.

I'm still not sure this work really belongs in a place like the Art Hall, but then again, you see all kinds of things in there. The Rijksmuseum bought the dress she became famous with, and this is very much design of our time. So I guess it's worth seeing as well as wearing....

Famous Last Words

Well, no more orange in the streets, it's all over.... I blame that supermarket that ran out of little orange lion cubs to give away just before this last game.

The Orange Epidemic

Just before a major international football tournament there is a certain atmosphere in the country. A small part of the population has absolute faith in "our boys" and starts to decorate house and street until all is completely orange. Weeks in advance the decorating starts and plans are made. Big screens out in the street, barrels of beer, the party is planned. Then you get the cynics, the ones who are sure that we'll be out first round, not a hope of winning anything. And they will not get carried away, they make an effort of ignoring the orange around them, they are way above such madness. And then there is the small group who is genuinely not interested, who really don't know when the games are, have no idea which other teams take part.

Then there is the commercial side, all the orange goodies that are given away for free by supermarkets, certain brands of beer, and other shops and companies. One supermarket gives out a kind of subbuteo dolls of all the players, yes, you can collect the whole side. The national lottery hands out cards of all the players. Another supermarket hands out plastic lion cubs with orange manes. It means that I had to avoid spending over 15 Euros there, for fear of ending up with one. I hear they've run out now. Another shop sells great roaring lion shirts, orange, of course. And this is a great time for ships selling big screen televisions. It is quite amazing to think about, really. Grown men and women must start thinking all this up way in advance. They need to decide what to do, get designers in to do the drawing, order everything from China. Lots of men in suits discussing little plastic toys to give away.



If you believe what you see on the news and television commercials the whole country is dressed in orange now and we have all decorated our houses. If you go out on the streets, at least here in Amsterdam, it isn't quite like that yet.

As the tournament progresses, if things go well, however, the party faction gains support and momentum. The cynics slowly get into the party mood, they start watching the games. Suddenly they also talk about "our boys". And the sea of orange gradually spreads across the country. Where last week you saw just a few orange flags outside the cafes, you already see a little more now. And as the tournament progresses that will increase. If the team keeps winning, of course.



The Dutch team won the European championship in 1988, and the whole country went mad. The team's reception in Amsterdam, and their tour around the canals meant a lot of damaged houseboats, some even sank. The best commercial I've seen about the championship so far is one where you see a couple sitting on their couch watching Holland win the final. You can see the fear in their eyes, as the camera slowly moves back and shows them through the window of their houseboat.

The Age of Satire Isn't Dead

In 1729 century the Irish writer Jonathan Swift published "A Modest Proposal". It was his simple and straightforward solution to the poverty and hunger in his country and the great surplus of children.

Supposedly written by a cattle breeder, the piece advocates the rearing of young children until the age of one, when they can be sold for food to the rich of the country. The writer can see only advantages to the scheme, good food for the rich, income for the poor, and no growing up in misery for the children. Reading it it almost makes sense. If you just stop thinking for a minute it all sounds logical. The piece is so well-written, it talks about the wrongs and injustices, but makes those an excuse for this modest proposal. The poor are miserable enough anyway, no hope of improvement, so why not? That is the reasoning behind the proposal.

The theme is picked up again, brilliantly, by the Yes Men. They are a small group whose mission it is to debunk some of the attitudes alive in the world today in the same way Swift did. They simply take these ideas and attitudes to their logical conclusion, describe them in different words, making good use of today's veiled business language, and, for example, advocate a modern variation on slavery.

The Yes Men don't disguise themselves as cattle breeders, but they put on a nice suit and become businessmen, representing major organisations and companies. They seem to have very little trouble getting themselves invited to a conference as representatives of the World Trade Organisation. They then come up with a presentation that takes global business views to the extreme. They know the form and the language, and they seem to get away with it.

I watched a documentary on their work the other night, and was both surprised and not surprised. Their so obviously ridiculous suggestions were taken seriously, and no other participant questioned their words or motives. When one of the Yes Man came up with the idea of enforced labour in third world countries, as in people working long hours for very little money under atrocious circumstances with the rich countries not taking any responsibility for what is happening. And if you leave them in their own countries you can put the children to work too. It is better and cheaper than importing slave labour.

The only audience that did come up with questions and that did point out the immorality of it all was an audience of students. Then again, the story told to this audience, the recycling of hamburgers to feed the third world really was too gross.

Sometimes there is a very thin line with what we have come to regard as normal, and what is so obviously wrong and unethical. We are slow learners.

Chairman Humph

I'm a great fan of English radio comedy, I think I've mentioned this before. One of the shows that can really make me laugh is "I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue". It is a weird mixture of the absurd, the obscene, and the silly. It is a panel game, but the rules are impossible, if there are any at all, and seem to change all the time. It can make me cringe and it can make me laugh out loud when I'm on my own. There also is a warmth about the programme, because at heart it has the feel of a group of friends getting together to have fun. More or less the same team created the programme for over 35 years, and managed to keep it funny and fresh.

Chairman Humph died a little while ago and I've been listening to the tributes people paid him. He played the part of the grumpy chairman, reading out his lines in a serious voice, pretending he wished he was somewhere else. He was in his eighties, but he sounded wonderful, full of humour, and very gentle. Listening to the tribute programmes means I now know a little more about him, and that has only made me like him more. I can't quite imagine the programme without him. Who else could possible explain the rules to "One song to the tune of another", quite so clearly and succinctly. Or be able to make the contestants stick to the rules of Mornington
Crescent so rigourously. And you have to admire a man, a very good professional musician, who can sit through Jeremy Hardy's singing week after week....

(Un)Easy Neighbours

I've been listening to the brother Cadfael stories on BBC 7 and to the stories of Father Baldi. All related to the monastic life. And then suddenly last weekend I found myself at an abbey, run by Norbertines. Walking through the grounds I almost recognized it all, and the place reminded me very much of Cadfael. I can imagine what it would be like to be here on a quiet day, and I can imagine what the place must have been like once.



At the same time this was a strange place, though. I was there on a Sunday, and found the Abbey shop open for business. You could buy bread there, cheese and medicinal herbs. The abbey is located in a very nice area in Belgium close to the Dutch border so on Sunday a lot of people from Belgium and the Netherlands drive down there for a walk. And where people go for a walk you need to provide refreshments and food. So just across the road from the abbey there is a small collection of the more traditional fast food stands, Belgian "frietkotten" (chip shops). A strange mixture.

Alpha

I am a proper Alpha person, as in into languages and the arts, not so much into science. I know about Shakespeare and Dickens, about Millais and Rossetti, but not much about the Palaeozoic. I'm trying to put that right, so now I'm reading about rocks, fossils and other ancients. I find it can be pretty hard going at times. Yes, I like history, but I've always read about the bits with people in, not about rocks, little animals and tiny plants. Or big plates sliding across the surface of the earth, moving all of us about at the speed of a fingernail growing. It is fascinating though, and as I read more about it, I understand it just a little better and I enjoy finding out more. It can be hard going though, because this requires a different way of thinking, really. You need to understand, and know how it all works. I had to read up on plate tectonics in various sources to get the idea, and I have the same with the formation of rocks. So many details and so much to remember. I'll get there, though, in the end. And we are definitely talking different time scales here....

A Change of Perspective

Somebody somewhere has decided that my backyard needs work, so it has been made almost inaccessible from the street where I live. I'm sure there is a reason for making a big city park difficult to enter for a whole summer, I just don't like it very much. I wanted to go on a picknick in the park with some friends last night, but considering the logistical difficulties we decided to go and have dinner up on the roof instead.



The roof on my house is lovely and flat, well-suited to a picknick really. Nice and quiet. From up there you get a different view of the city. You see the top of the trees in the park, the Zuidas in the distance, the city centre to the other side. If you walk on a little you get a different perspective of your own house and your own street.




I like being up on my roof...

A Grand Day Out

It was a lovely day today, maybe a little grey, but lovely and warm, perfect for cycling. So I cycled out of the city, to the south, to have a look round the polders there. More people had the idea to go cycling, and I ended up in some big flocks of cyclists at various stretches. There was a special tour around the villages in the area.

I ended up at the Waverhoek, a small new nature reserve. You can walk round it in about half an hour, I took a lot longer, as usual, just wandering round checking out all the birds. Some of my favourites there, the Avocets, the Lapwings and the Godwits. Avocets are some of the most graceful birds I know, very stylish in black and white. long legs, and the upturned bill. I also got to see some birds I hadn't seen for quite a while, Black Terns. Their nesting sites are near this area, and they were foraging. Terns are such graceful birds always, fast flyers, very beautiful.

Days like these always remind me of the fact that I need to get out more.