NovemberI have been biking to work since last month and enjoying it immensely: it really perks you up and I found a nice route through the fields all the way to Amsterdam. When I started it was 70 minutes of hard slog, but the body gradually gets the message and I have got it down to 55 minutes and just a healthy sweat. It helps a lot that we have changing rooms, lockers and showers at work, so I can keep a shirt there and change into it.
Then came the dark day that I needed to go to work in a suit. The weather forecast was iffy, so I decided to take the train for a change. Doing my usual sprint would have been fine, but with the new, stronger legs it was faster than usual and the commune had thoughtfully scattered large quantities of fine gravel all over the bicycle path. I went round the corner and suddenly, with no appreciable transition, found myself half stunned and scraping across the ground on my face. My bike had flown out from under me. On autopilot I picked myself up, borrowed a paper hanky from a passer-by and walked on to the station. People looked at me funny, because I had a holes in my trousers and a fairly bloody face, but I (moronically) soldiered on.
When I actually got to work I discovered that the person I was supposed to meet had made a mistake about the location and was nowhere to be found. A colleague trundled me down to the company doctor, who spends her time listening to people’s tales of stress and woe and diagnosing (or disproving) RSI. She was quite surprised to see actual blood and had to recall stuff from way back at medical school in order to apply bandages (difficult, because she did not have any). Finally some first-aid assistants (EHBO in Dutch) turned up and carefully stuck sticking plaster right on top of my grazes. These guys are supposed to revive you if you do a cardiac arrest at your desk. I decided then and there that when I get mine I shall crawl across the road and call an ambulance.
I finally came to my senses, noticed that my wrists really hurt lots, called Marjolein and went home. We did a doctors visit and a hospital and I got diagnosed as being a silly bugger with a broken wrist and clapped in a good old-fashioned plaster cast, just like when I was a kid.
They pulled me back in after a couple of days to get a long-term cast in brilliant red plastic and the itchy time began…. Of course the person really suffering was Marjolein, who needed to lift and carry for two. Matthijs ended up opening jars for me (foreshadowing I fear) and I concluded that having a bike accident makes me functionally Dutch.
After all that the standard madness set in: singing for sweeties on Saint Maarten and the run-up to Saint Nicholas and Chrimbo. Falco of course cheerfully mixes them all up, driving Daniel in paroxysms of fury: Daniel likes things to be right and in their place, unless they happen to be his bedroom floor.
When Saint Nicholas turned up in Haarlem we took the kiddos along and they got to shake his hand. School has a stay-over bear that gets to stay with one of the children the for weekend and has a diary that you HAVE to fill in (worthy but more work, spit, spit). Bear got taken in to see the Saint too and even shook his hand, so it was a lucky bear. Falco also got invited to his first birthday party by his number one buddy Tessel, he got to be a knight and was super-proud.
Matthijs played his first basketball tournament. They lost because they are total beginners, but they did score some point, so Mama was chuffed. Matthijs is, supported by said Mama, currently planning to become a basketball star. Given the salaries they get I am pretty supportive too: I always fancied being elderly and objectionable on a yacht in Saint Tropez.
End of November Daniel and Matthijs got their school reports and they are both very good. Matthijs had moved all his scores on socialization and work-attitude up to satisfactories (that is real progress, given how they were) and Daniel had good scores for everything but work attitude.
