Bikes, Cane and a Concert.

    I drank too much tea last night and consequently rose twice to use the toilet. I also had a strange dream afterwards, I dreamt I was sat on the loo, with the door open, when a slim dark haired woman with glasses, dressed as women did in the 1940's or fifties, walked into the room. Before I had time to cover myself, or even feel embarrassed, she walked into the bookcases and through the wall in the lounge, at this point I realise that she is a ghost. It is a very vivid dream. Around half past six. I can hear noises from the kitchen and finally stir myself around seven, Graham has had another restless night and is taking Frankie for a quick toilet walk, before we eat breakfast, continental style, with salami, ham and cheese, Louis would love it here. After breakfast we take Frankie out properly, walking him past the allotment and alongside the network of canals and dykes, that one finds everywhere in Holland. Graham throwing balls for his dog to retrieve, Frankie is a border collie and so needs lots of exercise. The day has dawned cloudy and somewhat cooler than yesterday, but the cloud will no doubt burn off later. After our walk, it is decided we will go for a ride on our bicycles, I draw the short straw and have to ride a mountain bike, that used to belong to Kenny, Graham's son, who now lives on Osterwyck, about a hundred kilometres away. Lilliane hasn't been on a bike for ages, so we take it slowly, and she manages OK. The cycling set up in Holland is first class, with discrete cycle paths adjacent to the road on most highways. We cycle to Capelle, the nearest town and a suburb of Rotterdam, by a circuitous route and then sit outside in a cafe and order coffee, which we drink and watch the world go by. At the next table are two English women, a mother and daughter, the older visiting the younger, snatches of conversation are occasionally blown in by the breeze. I need some face cream and a few more pairs of short training socks and Liliane needs groceries and a birthday card, so we divert into an adjacent mall, where we find what we want, Liliane also finding a pair of sandals along the way. On our way back, we pass the swimming pool and Graham highlights the route for me, all the long roads are called lanes and named after famous composers and the streets that come off them, are streets named after instruments. We progress down Schonberg, Beethoven and Sibelius Laans, each connected by a mini roundabout with a statue of a musical instrument, a harp a trumpet and a semi quaver, (I think). It is a town planner's version of Trumpton, or else he or she may have been on some sort of benign chemical trip when they pulled it all together. Anyway it works, but if John Betjeman had homicidal thoughts about Slough, God knows what he would have called down here! Anyway we all arrive back at Graham's house unscathed and celebrate with more tea and the other half of the apple pie, which we eat sat outside. The cloud cover is starting to burn back, but it is still pleasantly cool. It is now midday in Rotterdam, but only eleven at Trent Bridge, so Graham plugs in the radio and we inflict the Test Match on Liliane. In a fit of enthusiasm, Graham planted some bamboo in a raised bed a couple of years ago, and it has now grown twenty feet high and very thick, he has made a start of hacking it back and the results are lying on the floor. When I was a boy I used to pick Rhubarb to earn extra pocket money, our area of West Yorkshire being the best rhubarb growing country anywhere, as it is very wet, and very cool, much like the foothills of the Himalayas, from whence rhubarb was originally imported. ( Being in the rain shadow of the Pennines). We used to stack the freshly cut sticks of rhubarb on tressles, before tying the bundles with string and the memory of this gives me an inspiration, could I make a tressle by tying bamboo canes together and then stack the cut bamboo on top, before tying them together with string? Between several mugs of tea, supplied by Liliane, I assemble a tressle, having to tie three or four canes into a bundle to make each part strong enough and then lashing all the parts together. It keeps me happy for an hour, while Graham hacks more cane, but while the principle is sound, my execution is lousy and the tressle collapses when any significant weight is added. Graham, having now grasped the principle, produces two tressles from the garden shed, they normally support a wallpapering table and these work wonderfully. We set up a production line, Liliane cutting lengths of string and Graham and I stacking and tying the bundles of cane, before storing them by the back gate. The sun has finally burned off the cloud and it is hot, but we decide to carry the bundles to Graham's allotment, where they can be stored for use or burning later. By now it is three o'clock and we make a tossed salad for lunch, using fresh produce that Graham brings from the allotment. The cricket has stopped for Lunch, Australia finally out with a fifty run lead. We are going to a concert tonight at Sint Lambertuskirk, the Catholic Church in Rotterdam, so after taking Frankie for his evening walk, we wash and dress before driving into town. Graham parks by the Botanical Gardens and then we walk the short distance to the church, which was built in the late nineteenth century of brown bricks. It is very impressive and recognisably monumental architecture from a very confident era, the first phase of globalisation, which terminated with the First World War and has only recently been renewed. It is of a similar architectural style and design to those other cathedrals of progress in the Victorian era, railway stations. It also has a beautiful white marble altar and impressive stained glass windows. We take our seats twenty minutes before the concert starts, in the centre of the church, the organ, on which the concert is being given lies behind us. The first piece is an original composition by the organist, composed in 1980 and is quite modern, with hints of Schonberg and the usual reference to Bach, this is followed by a piece by Faure, which is hauntingly beautiful during the adagio sequence and then another piece by a well known German composer, whose name escapes me. The only down side to the experience are the chairs, which are wooden and very hard. It is only during the interval that I have the inspiration to borrow one of the kneeling cushions for Mass and use it to protect my bottom, which is losing padding as I get older. The organists receive a standing ovation at the end, and half the audience move off to the Protestant church round the corner for the second half of the concert, which is, of course, pieces by the great Johan Sebastian Bach. Graham and Liliane are tired, so after a quick beer in an adjacent pub, we return to the car and drive home. Graham giving Frankie one last spin before bedtime. We turn in around ten thirty again.