A good Saturday

10 days ago, very early in the morning, this is what I saw as I was eating my Pret breakfast. Seeing hen parties as you sit and wait to board an 8am train is a bit nerve wracking, as all you want is a quiet carriage and a pleasant journey. Fortunately the two groups we saw were getting on the Paris train, and not ours to Amsterdam.

It was time for a repeat trip to my home from home with D & A, a year later. A had the foresight to bring playing cards and we warmed up with this game, where you didn’t want to end up with the queen of hearts. Such a fun and simple one, with lots of tension. And yes, D picked it up here.

The four hour journey goes really quickly when you play cards. We realised that we might be the last generation who play regular card games, as I can’t imagine today’s kids being that interested, when you have games like Exploding Kittens etc. I have to teach Oomoo this though, which I hadn’t played in 20 years. Shithead is such a brilliant game, the perfect mix of strategy and luck, and the fact that your hand can change very quickly, from good to bad and back again makes it really fun.

Arriving in Amsterdam is really easy now that my friend Z lives in Noord. Once we arrive at Central Station it’s a five minute tube ride, and boom there we are.

Just like last year we headed straight to Liever Hier for lunch, and this time we got a great table, so great that we stayed there for a couple of hours, eating incredibly well and catching up.

The table was hidden amongst the tall grass (much taller than last year)

and Z picked some to take home

as well as some cow parsley.

I asked Z to take a seat here as I wanted a picture of the café (to the left of yellow tree) and just as I took the picture this woman and her dog walked past and made it complete. Smiles all around.

We then heard the unmistakeable sound of a Solex tour.

Look how happy they are! Such a good idea.

Here’s a clip I filmed last summer when we got overtaken on our pushbikes by a tour. If you cycle north for 10 minutes from Z’s front door you arrive in the countryside. Didn’t manage it this time round, but there’s always the next trip.

After our long meal we needed to stretch our legs so we walked around this little inlet and admired the light catching on the lily pads.

A did some tree bonding too.

We then spent the evening on Z’s balcony and felt very pleased by the fact that we hadn’t even ventured into the city centre. I realised on the last trip to Amsterdam last August that I can’t keep up my usual tempo on city breaks anymore, and that maybe less is more after all.

So here’s to more balcony hangs in the future 🧡

Low lights

Haha! Love that the title of my last post applies to both spring and me. I don’t know what it’s been like where you are, but here in the UK we’ve had an abnormally cold and wet spring, with the occasional warm day to confuse us even more. So these pictures from March actually still feel relevant. One Tuesday evening I met with my old magazine crew (not pictured - my old boss) at the Holy Tavern pub in Clerkenwell.

I’m not sure if they’ve always done this, but this winter they had “Candlelit Tuesdays”, as a lot of pubs have done (to deal with the insanely expensive energy bills).

It makes it incredibly cosy, and gives you a bit of a flavour of what hanging out in pubs pre-electricity might have been like. This particular pub is faux-Georgian, in a real Georgian building from 1720, but re-decorated in a Georgian style.

Of course we ate better than they would’ve in those days.

Even though some of us might have fitted in table manner-wise.

A and I used to sit next to each other at work some 20 odd years ago, (when we were kids basically) and we’d always make each other laugh, occasionally singing (more often than not this) and dancing, but on the hush. A knew the whole Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation dance routine, and I would answer with my Michael Jackson face in the Thriller video, when the camera pans round to show him having turned into a zombie, with the following shoulder shrug, sideways hip thrust and claw hands (starting at 0:44). I need to see her do that routine again, for old times sake. I’ve had the (not) joy of having a frozen shoulder since December, so I feel jealous of anyone able to to a shoulder shrug right now.

We’re off to Amsterdam again in a couple of weeks time, and that trip has been my dangling carrot this whole winter. It always felt a long way away, and now we’re in the middle of May, and almost there.

When we met up a couple of days ago D was still wearing the same hat. So come on spring, make your mind up, and don’t pass on your moodiness to summer this year. That would just be too mean.

A Sunday morning walk in Stockholm

We stayed in the Kungsholmen neighbourhood, and one morning me and mum went out for a walk along Norr Mälarstrand, in the sun, which I think was only out twice the whole time we were there. I spotted this lady resting in her boat, and had to get closer.

Oh wow, she really had it worked out. An old record player playing I can’t remember what, coffee, not just in a thermos but with an actual cup, and is that a toaster I see below it? Impressive.

Ahh, just looking at these pictures is a sight for my sore eyes. I’m so over this winter; it’s been incredibly long, cold and weird, but spring will come one day, and hopefully the sun too.

A dog on a bench is always funny.

And a dead rat maybe less so. We couldn’t see that it had been injured or killed, so maybe it just died of old age, a bit too publicly.

Concertina building.

We made sure we captured the autumn colours.

Some people really know how to make the best of Sundays, don’t they? I need to master that.

I saw a couple of people swim, and as usual I hadn’t packed my bathing suit. When will I learn?! My friend M (my Swedish cold water swimming buddy) moved back to Stockholm last summer, and has kept up with it. It doesn’t seem like it’s as popular there as it is here, but maybe that’s to do with it being a lot colder there in winter. She’s sent me beautiful footage and pictures from her new swimming spot, and in one of the pictures she’s hacked herself a hole in the ice, by the ladder going into the water. She’s got a massive smile on her face and there’s just enough space for her to stay holding on to the ladder, with solid ice all around her. If that’s not a Viking I don’t know what is.