Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
The view from my study window this morning:
And walking in the woods later with Ollie, the dog:
I returned to read that Trump has declared war on Venezuela – who will be next? Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of War…
Oh well, Happy New Year to us all – what’s left of it…
We had a friend here at the farmhouse to see in the New Year with us, and typically with her, there were wide-ranging conversations about art.
She had just returned from Milan where she had been to see Nureyev’s staging of Sleeping Beauty at La Scala. She said that she had never seen Nureyev in person, so I told her the story of when Len & I saw him in the production he did with London Festival Ballet at the London Coliseum.
This had Rudolf Nureyev as Prince Florimund. It was the first time I had ever seen Nureyev dance live. He didn’t disappoint, although he (deliberately?) almost dropped Princess Aurora (Eva Evdokimona) at the end of a pas de deux to gasps from the audience and an exclamation from Len: “Careful, Rudi!”.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was to become good friends with the ballet dancer Kerrison Cooke, who was dancing the role of one of the Princess’s suitors. Ah – more memories. Thank you Kerry (and Len).
Today I looked at the programme I had kept from that evening – and dear lord, it was 50 years ago…
Eerie, disturbing, tragic, brilliant…
And watch the video on “The Making of…“. It took seven years to make this nine-minute film.
I woke up at around 3:30 am and heard occasional faint sounds while lying in bed.
I thought at first it was the old house creaking as the temperature was below freezing – we often get the wooden timbers doing that with changes in temperature. I finally decided to investigate because there were just too many sounds. In the living room, I found Ollie beneath the Christmas tree instead of on his cushion. Then I discovered the remains of a present – he’d torn it open and eaten its contents. Shock, horror, it was 200g of chocolate.
So I rang the local veterinarian practice (before 4am)- the vet on night duty told me to give him a full bowl of food then drive to the practice within 15 minutes. I did that, and she arrived a few minutes later to open up the building.
She gave him an injection to bring on vomiting. Ollie duly obliged and the contents of his stomach were discharged onto paper towels that she laid on the floor. After about 20 minutes, he had a further injection to stop the vomiting. He was just sprawled on the floor – he had no power in his legs at all. We had to carry him out onto the grass area by the practice to get some fresh air. I brought him back inside where he got a further injection to help get some power back into his legs. After thanking the vet for her ministrations, I drove him back home, and carried him into the outbuilding where he eats. The vet had given me some active charcoal tablets which apparently absorb the substances in chocolate that are dangerously harmful to dogs. I tried to persuade him to eat some food, laced with the tablets given to me by the vet. At first, Ollie didn’t want to eat anything, and it took a while to persuade him and get the tablets into him.
I then carried him into the house – he was still in a state of collapse – and got him on his cushion. I stayed with him for over an hour; he didn’t want to, or couldn’t, move at all, but at least he wagged his tail to show that he knew I was there. I finally went to bed at around 6am. At 8am he was able to get up – a bit shakily at first, but we went out to stretch his legs and have a pee (Ollie, that is), and he ate his breakfast without prompting. I think we’re out of the woods now, but it was a bit scary – and cost me €295 for the vet’s attention – but I was glad to do it for Ollie.
Four hours later, and after he had a longer walk, he’s now snoozing on his cushion behind me. In future, we will be keeping any chocolate well out of his reach…
Thank goodness for your prompt action, a smart and kind vet, and maybe some Christmas spirit to provide you and yours with this sublime gift of holiday happiness.
We had an Ollie too (now departed after a full and wonderful life) but he too had a few night time trips to the vet). I’m sure yours to will fully recover and being a Lad will refuse too learn that any food has to be fully tested and digested.
Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas time great 2026.
Brian
Thanks, both… Ollie is back to his old self again…
…Learn what the Streisand Effect is before you censor something to appease Trump…
2025 doesn’t seem to have gone well with the world, and I suspect that 2026 will not be an improvement. Nevertheless:
Merry Christmas to you and yours as well!
…for fact-checking Trump’s stream of idiocy. It is a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing… that the world as we know it is done for. The inmates have taken over the asylum.
Yesterday, POLITICO’s Dasha Burns interviewed Donald Trump in the White House.
This is the transcript of that interview.
It is a disturbing read. Not because he gave sharp and incisive answers to the questions, quite the opposite, but because, in a rambling and often incoherent interview, he clearly harbours fantasies and grudges against those whom he perceives as his enemies.
As a friend said, the most disturbing thing is that nothing/nobody is able to control him while he grows more extreme by the day, potentially touching the lives of every person on earth.
Fasten your seatbelts, 2026 is not going to get any better for the world, and that includes the USA.
Oh, and “NATO calls me Daddy”? – Well, Mark Rutte, that has come back to bite you, hasn’t it?
Only three more years — three long, long years ….
I just wonder whether democracy will be able to rise from the ashes…
Let’s hope so!
I see that the US Administration thinks that:
Europe faces “civilisational erasure” within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration, arguing in a policy document that the US must “cultivate resistance” within the continent to “Europe’s current trajectory”.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the current US Administration would espouse the Great Replacement Theory along with its other dubious morals.
I await the time when I’m deported back to India, because that was where my great-great-grandmother came from.
The Reith Lectures is a series of lectures given each year by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Radio. Named after the founder of the BBC, Lord Reith, they began in 1948 with lectures given by Bertrand Russell.
This year’s lectures are being given by the Dutch popular historian and author Rutger Bregman, and he’s run into a spot of bother in his opening lecture.
Bregman’s claim in the lecture that Trump was “the most openly corrupt president in American history” was removed from the lecture’s broadcast, after the BBC sought legal advice.
As he says, it’s a clear case of self-censorship driven by fear of legal action from Trump:
“The truth is that the sentence wasn’t inaccurate – it was removed because of legal fears. And that’s exactly the concern my lecture raises: when institutions start censoring themselves out of fear of those in power.”
Trump’s tantrums and tactics are having a chilling effect on free speech in many areas. The BBC is just the latest organisation to bend the knee.
Lord Reith will be spinning in his grave.
Addendum: This episode of The News Agents covers this story, and also has Bregman giving his view on the situation:
This seems to be getting worse. We really have messed up more than just the USA, now it’s spreading all over. Sorry.
I see that the Trump virus that causes the rewriting of history has apparently reached the Netherlands.
The Guardian reports today that displays commemorating African American servicemen in the visitors’ centre at a Dutch War Cemetery have been removed.
At least the local community and others are up in arms about it. The provincial government of Limburg will be formally asking the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), which runs the cemetery and the US Ambassador to put the commemoration panels back on display.
“Lest we forget” – well, unless you are a member of a group in Trump’s crosshairs of course – then you will be marginalised and swept aside at the earliest opportunity…
Addendum 12 December 2025: It’s now been reported in the Dutch newspaper the Gelderlander that it was the then Secretary of the AMBC himself who caused the displays removal out of fear following the publication of Trump’s “Anti-Woke decree”.
On March 19 of this year, he emailed the staff of ABMC about Trump’s decree, which put an end to the ‘discriminatory equality ideology’. Although the ABMC was not mentioned, the then Secretary Charles Djou emphasized that the committee had to comply with Trump’s anti-woke policies to avoid negative publicity.
He wanted to make sure that the databases on fallen African Americans and Native Americans did not violate the decree. And he asked the head of the visitor service, to check whether there are “panels” in the visitor centres in the overseas cemeteries that could cause problems for the committee.
A day later, the head of education and public information, responds saying that certain texts have been removed from the ABMC site and that the database is not accessible to the public. He also suggests the removal of the panels from the Visitor Centre.
The Deputy Secretary at the time, Robert Dallesandro agrees, saying in an email: “That panel has to go. Frankly, it never should have been there in the first place.”
I note that Charles Djou has since departed from the ABMC, and Dallesandro has taken over as acting Secretary. He clearly sees no problem with rewriting history.
It’s that time of the year when flocks of birds are migrating south. There have been many flocks of geese passing overhead during the past couple of weeks, but a few days ago we had a flock of Cranes pass by.
I was out working in the garden, when I heard their distinctive calls in the distance. I grabbed the camera and got a few shots of the flock as they passed by high overhead. There were more than 180 birds in this flock.
There’s been a severe outbreak of Bird Flu this year that has struck the Crane population, so these were lucky survivors.
The last time I saw migrating Cranes was back in 2013, in March. That time they were going North for the Summer, and they were flying lower and circling over the house.
The dust has now settled following the Dutch election. While the result won’t be officially given until next week (after the postal votes from Dutch ex-pats have been counted), it seems almost certain that the D66 party, led by Rob Jetten has got the most votes.
It was a close-run thing, with the PVV of Geert Wilders matching the 26 parliamentary seats garnered by D66.
For a governing majority in the Dutch parliament, Jetten needs more than 75 seats, so, as usual in Dutch politics, he needs to form a coalition with other parties. And there’s the rub. He has said that his ideal would be to form a coalition with the Groen-Links/PvDA, VVD and CDA parties. That would make a Centrist coalition, with the GL/PvDA on the left wing and the VVD on the right, However, the fly in the ointment is the leader of the VVD, Dilan Yeşilgöz. She has made it clear that she won’t work with the GL/PvDA party. Her party has been moving increasingly rightwards, and the gulf between it and the socialist GL/PvDA is now seemingly too great.
Personally (because I am a life-long socialist, just like my parents were), I would be happy with Jetten’s preferred coalition, because it would seek to serve the broadest spectrum of the population. He himself has said that he wants to serve all of us.
Yeşilgöz on the other hand will want to supplant GL/PvDA with a hardline Rightist party, such as JA21, which would push the coalition to the Right.
If that happens, then I fear that Dutch politics will remain in the quagmire of blaming all the country’s ills on immigrants, and fail to address the real issues and problems as happened with the last government. Ironic really, since Yeşilgöz herself is an immigrant.
We have a general election tomorrow to choose who will lead us in the next government in the Netherlands.
I can’t say that I’m looking forward to the outcome; after all the good people of the USA voted in Donald Trump for a second term and similarly in Argentina they have just voted for Javier Milei in the Midterms, thus doubling the number of seats he has. It seems that rational thought is a diminishing resource in humanity.
Here, people say that they are losing their trust in politicians, yet the last time around they put Geert Wilders in front. On the other hand, I can quite understand the loss in trust – it’s just been revealed that two government members of Wilders’ PVV party have been behind some truly slimy AI-generated ads attacking Frans Timmermans, leader of the GroenLinks/PvDA party. Of course, they lied in parliament about it, so I can totally understand the loss of trust in some politicians.
Martin and I will be casting our votes tomorrow in an attempt to restore balance towards a society that believes in equal opportunities for all and one that does not demonise migrants.
Here in the predominantly rural region of the Netherlands known as the Achterhoek, the traditional concept of Noaberschap (neighbourliness) is still very strong and much-touted by many.
It does rather beg the question of “who is my neighbour?”, though.
We are starting to see demonstrations against immigrants and asylum seekers in many places throughout the Netherlands. This has arisen because the main asylum seekers reception centre (azielzoekerscentrum or AZC) in Ter Apel is often in the news because of overcrowding and local authorities are seeking to build new AZCs.
With a general election just a few weeks away, the PVV of Geert Wilders and other right-wing parties are focusing on the issue of immigration, engendering fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of voters.
The result has been demonstrators demanding that their local authority scrap any plans for future AZCs. There have been threats made to local councillors. Violence is in the air.
Just in the last few weeks there have been demonstrations in Aalten and Eibergen – two places not very far away from us.
In Eibergen, a local figure and conspiracy-theorist, Ton Koenderink, called for solidarity with the demonstrators from all Achterhoekers:
Wij bunt Achterhoekers, en as-ie een Achterhoeker bunt, dan kum-ie op veur Achterhoekers!
Which is Achterhoek’s dialect for:
We are Achterhoekers, and if you are an Achterhoeker, then stand up for Achterhoekers!
I’m not a Christian, but I think I would remind Mr. Koenderink of the answer that Jesus gave to the question: “Who is my neighbour?” with his parable of the Good Samaritan. A good neighbour is someone who shows mercy towards his fellow human beings, rather than hatred or passing on the other side of the road.
Are they playing four-dimensional chess? Well no, the simpler explanation, and the one that fits, is that the entire top of the US Administration is staffed by stupid, incompetent and vengeful people. I wonder how the USA (and the rest of us) will ever recover from this?
A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0 | Donald Trump | The Guardian
My last post concerned the rise of the extreme right in the UK. It turns out that the UK is not the only place where the extreme right is feeling emboldened. As I was writing it, anti-immigration protesters were gathering in the Hague, and things turned ugly.
The rioters were shouting slogans such as “We are the Netherlands”- er, no, you are not. You are right-wing thugs.
The problem is that the political discourse is becoming increasingly right-wing populist. A motion put forward in the Second Chamber last week by the oxymoronically titled Forum for Democracy to ban AntiFa as a terrorist organisation was enthusiastically adopted by all the usual suspects: the PVV, BBB, Ja21, and they were joined by the SGP and the VVD. The latter was originally a centrist party, but has moved rapidly to the right over the past few years.
The motion was passed (just) with a majority of 1 vote.
This resulted in an article in the Volkskrant with the headline “Dangerous Bravado Say The Experts“.
Fortunately a member of the CDA party has now raised sensible questions with the Justice Minister concerning the hurdles to this motion actually becoming law.
We have a general election coming up next month. We’re in for a bumpy ride.
So what do they think AntiFa is? It is not an organization here in the USA and I doubt that it is an organized effort anywhere else. It is no different than being anti-hunger or anti-poverty. Outlawing an idea only strengthens it.
I know – some of our politicians are not the sharpest tools in the box.
Despite living for more than half of my life in The Netherlands, I still follow events in the UK closely. And recent events, such as the sudden proliferation of St. George’s flags and the far right march in London have proved both unsettling and depressing to me.
Chris Grey, as usual, provides an excellent analysis of what seems to be happening in the UK – I urge you to read it.
The Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam has a vast collection of items, of which only about 6 to 8% of which are on display at any one time. The rest were being housed in a variety of locations in the Netherlands, including the basement of the museum.
The basement was flooded in 2013, thus prompting a plan to build a new storage facility close to the museum that would be capable of housing the entire collection.
This became the Depot Museum Boijmans van Beuningen – simply and aptly known to Rotterdammers as “De Pot” (the Pot).
Unlike most museum storage facilities, it is open to the public and I visited it yesterday for the first time in the company of two friends.
I was most impressed by it. It has a central atrium criss-crossed by stairs connecting the six floors, with some of the collection being displayed in glass cases around the atrium. Information about the objects is revealed via the Depot App used to scan QR codes next to the objects.
There are passenger lifts and a massive freight lift used to get the pieces to the storage rooms. All the storage rooms are climate controlled, and short tours of small groups are given by the curators.
There are areas where themed exhibitions are held, and the current programme is to be found on the Depot website.
The rooms where the curators and conservators work can be viewed via windows in the atrium.
The Depot is topped off with a roof garden and restaurant.
When the Depot first opened in 2021, the Architecture critic of the Guardian was a bit sniffy about it, but I found it an interesting place to visit and learn from. Of course, with over 155,000 objects in the museum’s collection, each visit can only make a tiny scratch on the surface.
The Boijmans van Beuningen museum itself is currently closed until 2030 for major renovations. When it reopens, there will be more space to reveal their collection. If I’m still here, I look forward to that.
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