October

Matthijs got his B-level swimming certificate this month, in the Netherlands they start with A and get harder until you get to level X where you have to hold your breath for 20 minutes while doggy-paddling through molten lava. Most children get A and B. Strange, fanatical, driven children go further… Matthijs was justly proud of his accomplishment but is not one of those and will stop at B. He worked very hard to get it, encouraged by the promise that he could start basketball and stop swimming lessons once he had passed.

Swimming tests are, as I have previously noted, a semi-religious coming-of-age thing in the Netherlands. The kiddos go through a series of motions (getting out of the water in clothes without using the steps, swimming through a hole under water etc.) that have some purported relationship with real situations and get applauded for each step. I cannot quite decide whether the things they do are mere agility tests, measures to try to work out if they are capable swimmers or more like the formal movements you practice when starting to learn a martial art.

We thought that Matthijs might have acquired an aversion to swimming from all the obligatory lessons, but he was enthused by the display of water-polo that concluded the event and immediately added it to his huge list of stuff-he-wants-to-do. Surprisingly none of this stuff ever turns up when he is bored and lying around the house like a disaffected sack of boiled spaghetti.

Daniel is still toiling in the shallows of “Pool Two”, but is ambitious to go further. He got into a knock-down-drag-out row during the school swimming lesson because they insisted he wore floats when venturing into the deep water. He disagreed in volume because he could already float and therefore the rest was just forward motion… Engineer inside.

Falco keeps asking when he can start swimming, but he has another six-month on the waiting list before he gets his shot. Apparently the average wait is a year…gasp.

Amazingly they have all three fooled the school into thinking they are doing well right now. Falco has apparently built up a sufficient network of buddies/serfs to feel at ease: two playdates already this month. Daniel’s teacher describe him as “sweet”, which is accurate and we are just waiting for the equally accurate “amazingly pigheaded” to turn up. Daniel is starting to learn words, so we are hopeful that he is getting down to some real work.

Matthijs is doing amazingly well, according to the united opinions of his teachers, classmates and play-therapist. His current evil is limited to reading and sometimes PC-using until all hours (we suppress the former with great feelings of hypocrisy). His teacher is satisfied so we are looking forward to the next 10-minute talk with teacher with less trepidation than usual. Perhaps he is an alien and “real Matthijs” will be swapped back soon…

The upper school (8-11 years) classes are doing a project on pre-history: making things, writing stories and doing lessons around the theme. Matthijs was very enthusiastic and showed us all the things he had made (pottery, painted “bones” etc) on the parent evening.

We had a quiet autumn holiday break, the weather was good and the monsters played outside a lot. Falco went and stayed with his friend Tony and we took the opportunity to take the older two children on a visit to the “Cruquius” (said Crew-key-us) steam mill. It is basically a massive pump, coupled to a gigantic steam piston, thinly covered in building. I was tickled to notice that the steam engine was actually Cornish and that there was a little counting device welded firmly to the mechanism. Apparently the users of the pump had to pay the Cornish engine company for each stroke of the pump.

I girded up my loins this month and started biking to work. After the first few times I found a nice route, away from the roads and running through some forest and across a couple of lakes. It is about 18km each way, so I am gradually building some muscles and doing my heart some good too undoubtedly. It also means that I arrive at work very awake and energetic and come home completely stress-free. It was perfect weather to start doing it, dry, warm and light winds. It has rather put a mocker on jogging with Marjolein, but that can probably be fixed once my fitness ramps up.