Windmills and tulips

Plasters and asprin.

I soon found out that many of the 'over the counter' cures sold in England were only available at chemistsin the Netherlands. I say soon I had searched every supermarket I knew for paracetamol before someone told me where I was going wrong. Then on arriving at the chemists on a very busy morning I found that it was all behind the counter and Id have to ask for what I wanted . Oh dear more red faces.
It was Ryan who really got us introduced to the health system though. I have no idea why but Ryan was always accident prone, if there was a hole he would fall down it, stairs were a nightmare and even when my mum took him to the park and warned him to be careful near the pond he immedietly turned round and fell in.
Not suprising then that his first accident landed him in hospital. James had already crashed the bike into the headmasters car but had done no damage to himself Ryan was riding the same bike when he hit a post, the handlebars twisted and cut him badly . We had to rush him to the hospital and he needed stitches. The doctor at the hospital told us that he had been very lucky, if the handlebars had cut a bit deeper or a fraction to one side Ryan could have bled to death.
A few weeks later the old paper container arrived in the square. It was one of those big ships containers and of course all the kids climbed on it even though they had been told not to.
It was Ryan who fell, leaving a graze from under his navel to his collarbone where his body had skimmed the side of the container his stomach just grazing the big steel latch that locked the door. If the lock had been in the open position he would have disemboweled himself.
Then one afternoon I was at home playing with Abigail and thinking about starting tea when the doorbell rang, it was that frantic constant ringing the sort that you know isnt good news. I went to the door Abby at my heels to see about 15 small children outside the door. As I opened the door they all started talking at once and I could tell by thier faces that something was wrong but I couldnt understand what they were saying . Then I caught Ryans name and the word school "yes Ryan " I said There was just a moments silence and then a chorus of small voices said "yes Ryan blood BLOOD' and one child held out his hand to say I should go with him. I didnt need any further coaxing, with Abby one one arm and keys in the other hand I followed the group of children across the square to the school.
Ryan was laying flat on his back next to the slide another boy stood looking after him holding a tissue on Ryans face which was very bloody. I scooped him up and rushed across to the doctors surgery where his nose was cleaned checked and steri-stripped back together. Ryan was recovered enough to want to play outside after dinner and after a few days the strips came off the black eye faded and all that was left was a very faint scar.
It was at about this time that I had to start dying my hair in order to hide the grey!

Back to school

September was approaching fast and I knew that I had to knuckle down and learn the language. So far I’d managed about three whole words of Dutch.
That just wasn’t on I couldn’t carry on as if I was one long holiday. I knew I would have to learn Dutch somehow. The answer came via a chance meeting that the boys had while swimming.
They came home one afternoon after being off swimming with Marcel and told me that they had met some other English-speaking children at the pool. “They live just round the corner and we are going to play with them tomorrow ” they told me
They explained to me that although the children spoke English it was funny English “ funny how”? I asked but they couldn’t explain the accent. “Was it like people on TV”? I asked thinking maybe they were Americans. No that wasn’t it. Australian then like on neighbours? No that wasn’t it either.
I was at a loss about where their new friends might be from and left them to go and play.
The following day the boys came home and said that their friend’s mother had asked if it would be ok if she came to call.
That was a funny way to put it I thought, coming to call? But nosiness got the better of me and I said, “of course she can I’d love to meet her” When Beverly turned up on my doorstep the strange phrasing and funny accent fell into place. She was white South African and how!
Her favourite phrase was “you know what you should do”? Followed by the 'Word' according to Beverly.
She did know of a school where they did Dutch lessons for non-Dutch women in a local church hall though.

We went along and I signed in for classes, which were on Monday and Wednesday morning 9.15 –11.45. So that we all had time to drop older kids off at school before the lessons started and time to get to school again by 12 to pick them up.
Coffee and biscuits were included in the price of 50 guilders a year (about 13 pounds) This was great, the only drawback being that Beverly now seemed to think I was part of her brood and needed her guidance and warnings of all things bad.

Abby was by now nearly reaching the terrible two stage and liked to touch everything, one afternoon Beverly was there having called round to tell me there was a special offer on chicken at one of the shops. “You know what you should do”? “Get round there and stock up for a few weeks” she advised.
Abby pulled at one of the pot plants plucking off one of the leaves “ Oh naughty “ I said putting on my stern face.
“You know what you should do”? said the familiar voice “Stick her with a sharp fork in her hand , I did it to my kids they never touched anything again”
I bet they didn’t but it wasn’t advice that I had any intention of following.

Not wanting to be rude I put up with Beverly for far longer than I should have. After all I reasoned she couldn’t help the way she was bought up maybe she didn’t know any better.
Peter was far more direct; he didn’t like her and told her so. As a result Beverly made a point of never being around if he was home but continued to pop in when he was at work and give me unwanted advice.
Most of it was awful and racist and I wont even justify it by writing any of it here but theres just one incident which goes to show how her mind worked.
Beverly had been into hospital for a hysterectomy and on coming home was told to rest. A home help came in and did all the housework and cooked a warm meal for the family in the evening.
I went round to visit one afternoon and she lay on the sofa like some regal lady of leisure while the nice young lady from home help did laundry. We drank tea and Beverly told me how awful she felt about this woman working so hard, cleaning and fetching and carrying for her family while she did nothing.
But I said, ” you should be used to it. After all you had servants in South Africa”
“ Yes “ she said in matter of fact voice “ but they were black”

The boys setteld into the school on the corner and I had started Dutch lessons twice a week.
We learned how to introduce ourselves and to tell everyone how old we were and where we came from.
The boys were learning fast too. They would come home and say guess what we learned today and reel off a list of words Peter and I could only nod and “say well done boys” we had no idea what they were saying.
Then one day they came home with mischief in mind.

They waited until dinnertime so I know it was deliberate. Peter sat down and before we could start they chimed up “ dad” “ do you know what a fuck is” It was at that moment that the boys learned what a clip round the ear is.
They were surprised at just how fast dad could move and nursed sore ears as they explained they meant a desk drawer (vak). Peter apologised but I know they meant it exactly as it sounded.

They had started out in the class for 5 year olds but kids being kids and having no fear of making a mistake or failing they embraced the new language with all the gusto of learning a new computer game. By Christmas I was called to the school and told they would be going into a new class after the Christmas break. One with children of their own age group It had taken my boys just 3 months to get to grips with this new language and I was still saying “ how do you do my name is Debbie”. Life’s not fair.
Even now I’m often told sympathetically that Dutch is a hard language to learn. I take that as meaning I’ve made a cock up and the person is too polite to tell me so.
But in the beginning I thought how hard can it be? Well let’s see begin with the basics A-B-C easy right?
Not in Dutch.
A= ah B=bay C=say D= day E=a I=e IJ =i but Y is also i and TZ= ch ! I couldn’t even read place names, just try asking for directions to Tzumarrum, or Dronrijp it was a nightmare.
The school group I joined was for women only whilst Peter went to an evening class that was mixed.
The reason for the women only group was two fold firstly we could study while the older children were at school and the younger ones stayed downstairs in a crèche. Secondly lots of the women were Moslems and so were not allowed to be alone with strange men. All the teachers were women and it was a fun friendly group from all over the world mixed ages and backgrounds. We had one thing in common though, I took a poll one morning during the coffee break and found that regardless of religion, race or background all men wear their socks to bed! It was a good ice –breaker.

One of the ladies was from Bosnia and spoke only odd words of Dutch so with the few words we both knew and a good dose of sign language I asked her how long she had been in the Netherlands. She paused to think and then held up her fingers to indicate the number of years 22. My heart sank. Bloody hell I thought, people had warned me that it was difficult thing learning Dutch but 22 years?
Luckily she was the exception most of the women had only been here for 3 or 4 years and the Dutch classes hadn’t long been set up when I arrived.
If you were to go now it would be a much more high tech experience or so I’ve heard all computers and such but we made do with what we had.
Which is how we ended up in the hall standing in a circle like 3 year olds at nursery school singing “ hoofd, schouder, knie en teen “ head, shoulders, knees and toes”! We played pretend games like ordering food from the chip shop or granny went to market. We learned the day to day stuff to help us live in our new country without making complete fools of ourselves all the time or at least that was the idea.
Maybe I have a secret wish to make a fool of myself or maybe I just try to do too much too soon.
I’d learned about how to ring the bell at the back of the supermarket when I had empty bottles to return because glass and plastic bottles have deposits on them just like when I was a kid in England. So you would ring the bell and one of the assistants would open a hatch count you bottles and give you a receipt for the returned bottles that you handed in at the till.
I now remembered to save all the paper and advertising folders that came through the door in the shed until the end of the month when a container would arrive in the square and everyone would troop across with their paper ready to be sent for re-cycling.
I’d even figured out the fruit and veg set up at the supermarket. The first time I’d gone in I’d put my fruit into a bag and then seeing one of those scales with the ticket printer in it thought that there must be somebody around to weigh the goods for you and stick a price label on. I waited around but couldn’t see anyone. Then to my amazement a couple of Dutch ladies came in selected their fruit weighed it and stuck the labels on it themselves.
I followed suit fully expecting someone to stop me and ask just what I thought I was doing but nothing, no checking it at the till or anything. They trust you not to stick the price on and then add a couple of apples to the bag!
Armed with my new confidence at my skill in speaking Dutch I went to the greengrocer where the fruit and veg was much cheaper than the supermarket but of course I would have to stand in a shop full of people and ask for what I wanted.
It started well enough “ one pound of tomatoes” “ one lettuce” “ one cucumber” I felt quite proud as the salad took shape on the counter in front of me. No one was laughing or tutting that I was taking too long, but then I needed celery.
I couldn’t remember the name and worse still I couldn’t see any to point at.
I would just have to describe it I thought so I smiled at the young man behind the counter and took a deep breath.
“ I would like” I paused “ one of those long white things, with green bits on the top, very crunchy”. I said hoping he might grasp what I meant.
“Oh” he said in perfect English “ you mean celery, sorry love we haven’t got any in today”
“ You speak English, “ I said as if he had committed some kind of crime by not telling me until now.
“Yes” he said “ but you were doing so well I didn’t like to interrupt”!

I spent the first six months thinking that no-one in Harlingen was married. It is still the custom in the Netherlands to have a little name plate on the wall outside your house and as I walked with Abby or the dog I would read the names on the houses we passed. S Huzinga and J Bloemstra , G de Vries and L Wierstra ect ect, Gerard and his wife had one but they also had two different names on the plaque. It wasnt until we started talking about surnames at school that I learned that most Dutch women keep thier maiden names even after they are married. This does lead to confusion. You phone little Jimmys mum to ask if he can stay to tea and instead of Mrs Brown ( jimmys last name) you get Mrs Smith on the phone !
I have spent the last 15 years trying to explain that I dont use my maiden name and why its so unusual for English women to do so. Even now I get official letters adressed to Mvr Allen- Allen because they are determined that I must have a second surname.

There were some things we didn’t learn about at school, one of which was St Martin. On Nov 11 the children take to the streets carrying lanterns which until recently were always home made and lit by a candle and they knock at the houses and sing. In return for which they get sweets. Now having two boys at school I’d heard about this and must admit that at first I was really worried about the idea of primary school children roaming the streets on a November evening knocking on doors asking for sweets. I asked Amelia and she assured me it was normal good fun and very safe. The boys would walk with a group of friends she explained.
Knowing roughly what to expect I made sure I had some lollipops and toffees in a bowl by the door but even then I was shocked by the number of children out and about all singing and waving their lanterns.
I must say it was all good natured and still is, no child expects more than a sweet or a satsuma in their bag and they all remember to say thank you.

When I hear some of the things kids in England get up to while trick or treating my stomach turns I hope it never gets like that here.

Arriving at school on Monday I found that some people had not been so prepared for the celebrations as I had been. One woman who was from Vietnam seemed very stressed by the whole event. In a mix of broken English and Dutch she explained
“ Door ring” she said ‘children sing and I give sweet I give and give I not got no more sweet, but children come and come and sing. I give apple but then no more apple. Still children come and sing so I go bed I turn out light I go hide under blanket.” She just didn’t understand why everyone else was laughing so much.

Meet the Neighbours
It was late by the time we pulled up at the house we got the kids in and off to bed as quickly as possible.
After bringing in the cases and having a well deserved cup of tea we headed off to bed ourselves.
It was a short night however as the boys were up at the crack of dawn. They wanted to go out and see their friends and if you’ve ever tried explaining to excited 6 and 8 year olds why their friends and their mums are not going to be pleased to see you at 6 am you will know its no easy task
I managed to delay them for a while with unpacking, they had to choose a wardrobe and have breakfast
A lot of Dutch kids eat hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles) on their bread but it was new and exciting for my two. Even so by 8.30am I couldn’t delay them any longer and off they went to find the friends they’d made during half term. “Stay in sight of the house” I warned them “don’t go out of the street” I was worried that if they strayed off they might never find their way back. After all they didn’t speak Dutch. It turned out that I was worried about nothing.
As we unpacked we were introduced to a stream of kids that the boys bought home, local kids who were very curious about the new boys and their parents who spoke no Dutch. Some how language is no barrier to children they chatter away and seem to just know what they are saying to each other.
We had arrived at the beginning of the summer holidays so the boys had 6 weeks of playing with friends to learn Dutch and they seemed to find it quite easy, even if we didn’t.

Thank goodness for nice nieghbours, next door to us lived Amelia and her two boys Lemmy and Jeffery.
Lemmy and Jeffery were about the same age as my two and the four of them got on like long lost brothers.
Amelia spoke some English although I think she was quite shy, but she stopped to say hello one morning and after exchanging remarks about the weather and admiring Abby she took my arm “ our boys fight “ she said and I must have looked quite alarmed so she quickly rephrased herself “ our boys might fight” she said, “ they will say bad things and cry and fight but you and me we don’t fight “? She continued “ because the next day children are friends again, they forget the fight but adults don’t forget”
If only more people were like her. It was true our kids did fight sometimes mine against hers sometimes Lemmy and Ryan against James and Jeffery but Amelia and I stuck to our promise and never got mixed up in it.

Then one morning she turned up at the back door and had a handful of forms with her “ is for getting money for having children” she said. I was confused, was there some sort of Dutch breeding program going on?
As we sat and drank coffee she explained a bit more and I realised she meant child allowance.
I had had Peter find out some things I thought were important before we had moved but child allowance hadn’t been on my list.
Armed with passports and birth certificates we managed to fill in the forms. “Now” she said as she stuffed the forms in the envelope “ you will get money for children”.

Amelia had promised that when the school term restarted she would take the boys and me over and introduce us to the headmaster.
A week before the start of term the boys were out playing James had borrowed Lemmy’s bike and had somehow crashed into the side of a parked car. There wasn’t much of a dent but the was a fairly nasty scratch on the door. We knew nothing until Amelia rang the doorbell with the car owner. He had seen it happen and the boys had told him where they lived. He was very nice and said he would get a couple of estimates for the damage and we could give them to our insurance company.
After he left I asked Amelia what he meant and she explained that nearly everybody in the Netherlands has a sort of third party insurance so that if the kids or the dog cause an accident the insurance pays for the damage. Of course we had never heard of this. The man returned 3 days later with two garage estimates and told us he had put his car in to be repaired at the cheapest of the two, but that we didn’t have to pay until the work had been done and the bill sent. Within days we had arranged insurance to make sure we never got caught out again but in all the years we have had it we have never made a single claim.

The school term started and true to her word Amelia took us across to meet the headmaster but she needn’t have bothered, we already knew each other. He was the man with the damaged car!

Another friend the boys made was Marcel. Marcel was a bit older than my two but he spoke English and seemed to like the idea of taking them under his wing and showing them all there was to see and do in Harlingen. He also got great joy in getting me to repeat words that he knew I wouldn’t have a chance of pronouncing.
Like the time the boys went fishing “not just to the little canal but to the big one with Marcel” they explained.
“What big canal” I asked Marcel “De Van Harinxmakanaal” he replied smiling “ shall I say it slowly “? He asked. I had a go, so what if the kids got a kick out of hearing me make a total fool of myself. I had to learn somehow and this was as good a way as any. Marcel took the boys all over the town they learned a lot of Dutch from him and enjoyed their new found freedom.
Then one day Marcel came over as usual and said, “ my mum would like to meet you to drink tea together”
That sounded ok I mean what harm could there be in drinking tea with his mum he was a nice polite boy so his mum couldn’t be that bad. How wrong can you be?
Their house was on the other side of the square to ours on the corner so I hadn’t really noticed it but as we walked toward it I realized that I could just about see the front door through all the overhanging bushes and trees in the front garden.
The front door was open and the first thing to greet me was the sound of someone singing. It turned out to be his mum; the living room was a mixture of recording studio verses hippy commune with weird paintings and candles dotted around the place. Bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling above the kitchen worktops and tea wasn’t PG Tips but some strange brew of her own making. Pumpkin and tangerine or something.
Marcel’s mum was a left over hippy, flowing skirts and strange hats were her style and although that didn’t bother me when she started telling me about her family I started to worry about her sanity and my safety.
She insisted that she was the secret love child of royalty! She would hold pictures of the man she claimed was her father next to her face and say “ don’t you see how much alike we are”? I thought it best to just nod politely and leave it at that.

Amelia lived on one side of us and on the other side lived Gerard and his wife (I never did catch her name). They moved in after Peter but before I arrived with the kids.
They were polite enough always saying good morning and exchanging small talk.
Then one weekend Peter and I were in bed, our bedroom wall backed onto their bathroom and, council houses being the same the world over we could often hear noises through the walls.
On this particular day we laid in bed not quite believing what we were hearing, our neighbours were having full on raunchy, kinky sex in the bathroom. The water was splashing around and the screams of delight and giggles and groans were truly X rated they were at it for about an hour and a half before the noise died down.

I didn’t think they looked the type, she was nice enough but I always thought she wouldn’t do anything that might mess up her hair!
It wasn’t until Monday that we got an explanation.
Peter arrived home and I opened the door to greet him when Gerard appeared and asked if we had been disturbed by any noise from his house over the weekend?
Well Peter and I exchanged glances. What do you say? We heard you and your wife going at it like rabbits on speed? So we innocently said no nothing had disturbed us.
“Oh” said Gerard “Only we were away and had burglars. They didn’t take anything but made a hell of a mess in the bathroom”!
Gerard and his wife decided it would be a better idea if when they went away that I had the key so that I could look after the house, turn on a light at night and collect the post. Just to insure that there wasn’t a repeat performance of the horny housebreaker and seeing as how we had sat listened and giggled at their antics it seemed the least I could do.
Gerard gave me the fright of my life one evening. I heard the back kitchen door click and saw the figure of a man peer round the cupboard. Now coming from London I know that anyone creeping into your house day or night is up to no good and that the best thing to do is scream, set the dog on him and call 999.
Not so in Friesland, its normal to have your back door on the latch and people call “folk” as they enter so you wont be suprised by them. Of course at the time I didn’t know that so Gerard very nearly got clobbered with a chair.
He had he explained not called out because the kids would be asleep but he just wanted to borrow a beer, if that was ok? Totally embarrassed by almost killing my neighbour I handed over a beer. “ Just one” I asked.
”Yes one was fine,” he said and he sloped off back to his own side of the fence. It was the first of many times that he appeared and asked to ' borrow' a beer. I never did get to the bottom of it, maybe his wife forbade him to drink or maybe he was a recovering alcoholic who sometimes slipped off the wagon but the fact was he only ever came round when his wife was out for the evening.
Sadly they later divorced although he last time I saw him he was dating a Russian lady and they both looked very happy.

They say that the Dutch do everything on bikes and its true really. Ive seen people move house on a bike .Its normal for people to cycle round with a baby on the front in a seat and a school child on the back. Men would cycle with thier girlfriends on the back , most women did the shopping on the bike and even people who would exersise the dog by cycling along with the dog next to the bike I tried that to my cost. Sheba our battersea rescue dog had come with us and I decided to try this new way of letting her out, slowly at first then a bit quicker up and down the street, we were doing really well. Then we went along the canal path and were fine until Sheba saw a rabbit, being too foolish to let go of the lead I was dragged over the handlebars and almost landed head first in the canal. It was my first and last attempt at that method of dog walking.
Amelia was pregnant but would cycle off with the two boys every morning drop them at the school gates and then go off to town and do her shopping or whatever. She was getting really large and I kept saying to Peter that she would have to give up soon surely?
One afternoon I was watering the plants on the windowsill as she cycled off towards town she waved as she went and came back a couple of hours later with piles of baby stuff.
Later that evening I heard comings and goings next door and there was a strange car outside.
The following morning we heard from the boys that its was the midwifes car. Amelia had had a little girl during the night.
A couple of days later when I saw her I mentioned the fact that I’d seen her on the bike that afternoon “yes she said ”I had some contractions but I needed some more things so I just popped into town”!

Before I had arrived Peter had made friends with Erik who was local taxi driver.
Erik is not his real name but easier to say, his real name is very Dutch and totally unpronouceable for most English people.
After a night on the town and feeling just a wee bit too wobbly to risk walking home along the canal Peter had had the good sense to call a cab. It turned out that the taxi driver spoke good English he explained very proudly that he had spent some time in a great place called Basildon in the county of Essex and had perfected his English there.
Maybe it was Peters London accent but Erik seemed to take a liking to him and they became friends.
Erik pulled up to the house and was shocked at the state of it. Having only just moved in Peter had arranged a bed and a couple of chairs but not much else because we hadn’t yet decided how much and what we would be bringing over from England. This is terrible said Erik“ you have no sofa, no TV, nothing , don’t worry I can fix it” he said and drove off.
The following afternoon Peter arrived home from work to find a sofa and two armchairs piled up outside the front door a little later Erik arrived with a TV set in his arms. “ Much better “ he said as the two of them arranged the new furniture and then settled down with a beer in front of the TV.

Sometimes Erik wasn’t quite as helpful as he liked to think. Shortly after I arrived I asked him about a television license. “No we don’t have that here “ he assured me “you just pay for your cable TV and that’s it”.
Some months later after I’d been at school a while I was standing in the queue at the post office and my eye fell on a brochure with a picture of a shocked figure watching a TV. I tried to translate the headline while I stood waiting my turn “ Kijkt u zwart”? Which literally translated read “look you black?” that couldn’t be right I thought, could it be advertising about colour TV I wondered, but surely everyone had colour by now? I picked up one of the folders on my way out and when I got home I translated it with the help of my dictionary.
It turned out to be a government information folder about the risks of a huge fine if you were caught without a TV license. The word black refers to the Dutch way of saying something is not quite legal like working without paying tax “ is to “work on the black”

Erik could be very kind though and that winter when the ice formed on the canals and all the Dutch children got their skates and sledges out he turned up at the house. He had skates in one hand a sled in the other “ come’ he said to the boys “time for you to learn to skate”.

Would the last one to leave turn off the lights?

It was one of those jokey one-liners that were going around at the time “ Would the last one to leave the country please turn off the lights”?
So we did. We switched off the lights and left.

It had all started about a year before . The school had sent home a letter asking us to make sure that the kids didn’t walk to or from school on their own because at least one man had been seen trying to lure a child into his car and there had been reports of others. Then the man at the corner shop was arrested for ‘interfering’ with little boys.
For crying out loud this was Surbiton all net curtains and BMW’s in the driveways it was a 'nice' area and now the kids couldn’t even walk to school alone.
Peter was running his own plumbing and heating company working really long hours to make sure we didn’t go belly up the way a lot of small companies were going at that time. He often left home at 7 am and didnt get back until 8 or 9pm often working weekends as well because you had to keep the customer sweet. This all resulted in the children and I not seeing much of him.
When I had been pregnant with Abby I’d even had to go on holiday without him, taking the boys to Littlehampton in the caravan with my mum to help out. I had started to identify more with one-parent families than with couples and I’m sure that some of the other mums at the school thought that my husband was a figment of my imagination. He was never able to attend parent evenings or school sports days, jumble sales or even the christmas play.

It all came to a head one Sunday. We had taken the boys swimming and afterwards as a treat we went to Mc’Donald’s. as we stood in line he asked the boys what they wanted to eat. James had no problems giving his dad his order but Ryan shy anyway and having taken to heart my warnings about talking to strangers refused to speak to his father. His little hand clenched my trouser leg and he whispered to me “ can I have a burger and some cola mummy”?
Enough is enough we decided.

So the hunt for a new place to live started. We did look in the UK but where you could find work there was nowhere to live and visa versa.
Our thoughts turned to emigration. Peter thought Australia or New Zealand would be nice I thought that was just a bit far away and besides didn’t they have strict rules about who could and who couldn’t get in?
What about Europe we thought? We liked France, we had been there on holiday once or twice but we couldn’t speak French. That would be a big hurdle because the French were a bit funny about letting people in who didn’t even speak the language.
Then Peter suggested Germany, he had worked there before we were married and thought it might be ok. So he went off to take a look at the possibilities. It didn’t work out and I picked him up 3 weeks later from Heathrow. He was almost blind with welding eyes. This is something caused when a welder catches a flash ie; looks directly at the welding arc of his own or in Peters case someone elses torch, the light from the welding torch is so bright it causes a sort of instant sunburn on your eyeballs. I had to grab him as he stumbled past me at arrivals and keep cold flannels on his swollen red eyes for the next 24 hours. The place he had been working at employed foreigners but then flouted all the safety regulations making it an accident waiting to happen. He had been lucky to escape with just a bad case of welding eyes one poor man got hit in the side of the head with a hook, he hadn’t been wearing a safety helmet at the time and left never to return.

Then we thought about the Netherlands we had been over on holiday several times and really liked it. The Dutch always seemed a friendly relaxed sort of people and a big plus point was that most of them spoke English.
Peter set off on his motor bike at the end of April. He toured around for a few days asking about work and looking at various towns. We really didn’t want to swap one big city for another so Amsterdam and Rotterdam were out of the question. Someone advised him to try going north over the dike to Friesland.
Just to explain the geography a bit;
The Netherlands is split into various counties or provinces one of the most northern is Friesland.
Dutch people from the rest of the country always joke about needing a passport to go there. The province is now connected to North Holland by a dike over 30 km long with an inland-sea on one side and the North Sea on the other. But until 1925 the only way to get to Friesland was either by boat or by driving hundreds of kilometers around the edge of what is now the inland-sea. The Ijsselmeer. The county is quite rural with many tiny villages and small towns one of which is Harlingen.

Very popular with German tourists, Harlingen is a small coastal town just 8km from the end of the dike. Tourists go there and take the ferry to one of the small islands off the coast there or stay in one of the local campsites and just enjoy the Friesian countryside.
There was also a fairly healthy ship building industry and it was at one of these shipyards that Peter ended up. . Now Peter is really a heating engineer but he can weld. So he walked into a local shipyard that needed welders and just like the boys from the black stuff said, “ Gis a job”.

To his surprise they did, firstly though an agency and later they gave him a contract. It wasn’t the best job in the world but the hours were 7.30 ‘til 4 p.m. That meant there would be no-one phoning in the middle of the night to say that their boiler was making funny noises or to order a new gas cooker. That was something we had regularly had to put up with in London. We advertised a 24hr call out service which lead to some people thinking that they could call at 2am and discuss bathroom planning.
Peter found that he was one of a group of English guys working at the yard and all of them stayed at a hotel in the middle of town. There wasnt much to do in the evenings except play darts or drink at the bar.
One of the women who worked at the hotel had a huge black Bouvier dog and Peter lost for anything else to do of an evening offered to walk her dog for her. He would phone me every evening to let me know how things were and to catch up with events at home.
After walking all round the town he decided that while he was out he would phone me, after all the dog seemed quite placid . We were chatting away and he had told me about this very nice dog when all of a sudden I heard a grunt a crash and a 4-letter word then silence! I was quite panicky thinking that some thug had dragged him out of the phone box to beat him up or mug him
” Peter”? I called “Peter are you ok”? After a few seconds he returned and breathlessly gasped “sorry about that the fucking dog saw a cat and took off down the road after it. Ive been hanging on for dear life"

A few days later he noticed a slight leak in the trap under the wash basin in his room so on his way out to work he stopped at reception and told the girl there “ there is a leak under my sink”. He watched in amazement as the colour drained from her face “a what”? She asked “A leak “ under my sink “ said Peter slowly. What happened next was like a scene from a sit-com the girl ran off yelling in Dutch to someone in the office.
Peter picked up the words leak and Police and wondered if he had committed some terrible crime by reporting leaky plumbing. The manager then came forward and asked Peter to repeat what he had told the girl at reception. Peter repeated himself slowly “there is a leak under the washbasin in my room,” he said hardly daring to think what the managers reaction might be. To his suprise the manager started to smile. The explanation was just a matter of faulty translation.
Peter had said, leak the girl heard the Dutch word lijk ( corpse ) which explained her panicked reaction.
It was one of the first but by no means the last time that the language barrier would cause us problems and laughter.
After a couple of weeks at the hotel and with the help of some Dutch friends Peter put our names on the housing list and after 6 weeks got a letter inviting him to view a house. It was a nice 3-bedroom house in a fairly new part of the town with a useable loft space, which was handy when we had visitors coming to stay. It also had a garden for the kids although they never played in it. They much preferred to be outside. The house was in one of 4 streets, which formed a square with a playing green equipped with swings slides and a roundabout in the center. On one side of the square was the school and on the other the doctors surgery with the supermarket 2 streets away.

Back in England it was half term, so with the two boys aged 6 and 8 and baby Abby 18 mths one buggy and a huge backpack I traveled in the rush hour by tube across London to Liverpool St then by train to Harwich and finally with the boat to Hook of Holland. This journey is now much improved with the introduction of the high-speed boat the HSS but back then it was an 8-hour journey. The boat was packed with drunken American students who were “ Doing Europe” and as a result we arrived at the port feeling dreadful. Peter was there to meet us in a tiny car he had hired and we strated off on the final leg of the journey.
Friesland is a good 3 hours drive from the port or at least it was in the tiny hired Daihatsu and really warm with all the kids crammed in the back. We had been travelling for over 17 hours and the Americans had kept us awake the whole time by either singing or puking. So by the time we arrived I was hot and worn out the kids looked exhausted but as we got out of the car outside the house the boys saw the playing field in front of the house with the swings and climbing frame just 5 yards from the front door and thought they’d landed in heaven, “ can we mum can we? I said yes and they played outside nearly all week. They made friends with the other kids who lived around the square,went fishing, had tea at friends houses and thoroughly loved it.
All too soon it was time to go home. We re-packed the backpack and headed off back to the port. The boys moaned about going but it all broke loose when we got to the port.
I stood at the Stenaline desk with my ticket the boys howled that they didn’t want to go they didn’t want to leave daddy or their friends or the new house or the swings or the fishing rods they’d been given. Then Abby started crying .She didn’t know why she was crying but if the boys were so upset it must be serious. As I handed over the ticket and the tears started rolling down my cheeks the girl at the desk stamped the ticket and in her best English asked “ are you sure you want to go”?
´ I don’t want to go but I have to ‘ I replied tearfully. We waved Peter goodbye and made our way onto the boat. By the time we got to the top of the boarding ramp we were all crying buckets and people were staring.

Then to cap it all there was some idiot in one of those furry costumes welcoming all the child passengers and having pictures taken and before I could do anything he had an arm round each of the boys “ smile” he commanded in a syrupy fake friendly tone. They wailed even more as the camera flashed.
Needless to say I didn’t buy the resulting photo.
We got back and Ryan started packing, he was ready to leave right there and then.
A few days later I officially notified the school that the boys would be leaving at the end of term. Unofficially they had known by 9am on monday morning because Ryan, unable to curb his enthusiasm had told everyone he was moving. The way he described it I’m sure most of the kids thought he was off to live at Euro Disney. His Birthday fell in June and we gave a big birthday /going away party both boys invited everyone they wanted to. Katie nanny (my mum) helped out organizing games and party bags for about 30 6-9 year olds.

The boys were disappointed that they had to wait a while until I’d arranged things. Like turning off the gas and electric.
Honestly you would think that no one had ever left the country before the way the utility companies behaved “where do you want the account moved to “? they would ask when I phoned to arrange the shut off date. “No where” I would say, “we are leaving the country” ‘Yes but what forwarding address can I give’? they would ask and I would give our new Dutch address, to which they would reply “I’m sorry madam I can only accept a UK address”, Good god! Give me strength!

My best friend cursed me. She had just bought a flat 10 minutes from where my house was and now I was moving
Who was she going to go to aerobics with on Thursdays now? It was a ritual; I’d been going since before Abby was born and carried on until I was nearly 8 mths pregnant. After stretching and toning our bodies we would go home via the chippie still dressed in gym clothes. As my belly expanded the Chinese lady at the chip shop became horrified, her advice was to “ put feet up let and husband do work” But we didn’t care. It was our girls night out, aerobics and chips!

I also made an attempt to at least learn a bit of Dutch. I went out to buy one of those teach yourself courses.
I trawled bookshop after bookshop and found that they had everything under the sun, Chinese, Japanese, Zulu, Russian, Croat, Icelandic, and some I’d never even heard of but ask for Dutch and the shop assistants shrugged their shoulders, shook their heads and more or less laughed at me. After all who wanted to learn Dutch? As one woman told me “ you’d be much better off learning German dear” Eventually I did find one a taped Teach yourself Dutch course.
I’d been to every bookshop I could think of and more and eventually walked into a small place in Kingston and asked for the umpteenth time “ Do you have a Dutch language course”? The shop assistant frowned, chewed her lip a bit and said “ Yeah the place with the windmills and tulips right”?

Not that it did me much good. The idea is that the nice lady on the tape (snooty cow) says something in English then in Dutch and you repeat it. Lesson one; How to say yes, no, thankyou. Yes/JA no/nee thank you/dank u wel. I was beginning to think I might just stun the natives with my command of the lingo. Then I tried lesson two; the snooty cow (sorry nice lady) said “wilt u alstublieft wat langzamer praten”? I must have rewound and played that bloody tape a 100 times but it was no good she rattled it off so quickly and it all sounded like one long word to me and I gave up. Ironic that she was saying "would you please speak more slowly".

At last he big day dawned. Everything we wanted to take with us was packed away in boxes and our clothes were in suitcases ready to go. The dog had had her vaccinations and was declared fit to travel.
My mum had come to help pack the last bit and bobs and to wave us off but as the day wore on I think the realization that we were really going to leave hit her. It all got a bit much and she sat on our bed and cried. In the end she gave herself a headache. It was no good our minds were made up. So a bit later than planned (she wouldn’t get off the bed) we waved goodbye.
Our nieghbours had managed only a faint interest saying “ bye bye then have a good time” as if we were off on holiday.

Peter had bought a car by this time, an old Talbot which as I had no idea how Dutch numberplates worked I couldnt tell how old it was but I guessed that antique status was not far off. Peter’s dad helped us move. The plan was that we went first with kids and our clothes and he would follow on the night boat with the rest in the van and trailer.
We had decided to leave a lot of large furniture behind so the sofas and dining room table and chairs stayed behind so did the wardrobes and dressing tables.
Peter’s dad had put the suitcases on the roof rack of our car with those stretchy elastic hook things and we were making good time down the M20 when other cars started flashing us. At first we took no notice thinking it must be the foreign numberplates doing it. Then a Volvo flashed us, cut in front and slowed putting his hazards on. “ What the hell!” said Peter as he pulled over. The man got out of the Volvo and walked over to us pointing at the roof. The stretchy things turned out to have been as old as the ark and the elastic had perished. Somewhere along the motorway they had snapped and our suitcases were loose on the roof rack. Worse still the man explained, one of the cases had come off and got lodged under someone’s car. Just at that moment an Astra pulled up behind us with a young couple in it. They jumped out and laughed as they handed back our case saying “ We thought you might like this back” and assuring us there was no damage to their car at all and they were fine. They drove off smiling and waving but I couldn’t help but wonder if they would have been so nice if they hadn’t thought we were foreign just been glad that we spoke English?

When I reached forty I decided not to ask for birthday presants anymore but to try to do something each year on my 'wish list'.
I dont want to get to 70 and think I wish Id done that or if only Id done that. I want to look back and think I did as much as I could of the things I wanted to do. No putting off until tomorrow the things I can do today.
So for my 40th birthday I had a tatoo. This year I want to take a lesson in a glider or small airplane. \

One of the things Ive often heard said is that everyone has at least one good book in them and so I stared writing the story of how my family and I came to be living in the Netherlands. Its something I get asked about a lot so I thought well why not write it down then?
It might be nothing it might be awful reading but at least Ive tried and thats whats important to me..