Magazine

Instalment 54: The ‘I’m not talking’ campaign launched by Axel’s father from his TV chair on Christmas Eve, is only being interrupted by granny Reuser.

I had wanted to write about a course in Humming-at-Important-Moments. Imagine: you are the PM and you’ve just announced you’re resigning; you point towards the building behind you, which will be occupied by someone else tomorrow, and what do you do next? You walk over the threshold humming a tune.

Instalment 53: On the morning of his eighteenth birthday Alex discovers a bright red parcel next to his bed.

‘Bow Tie’ had already warned me. Bow Tie is a man of about eighty years, and I’ve nicknamed him Bow Tie after his ever-present bow tie. Every Saturday, he comes to our stall on Portobello Market for a chat. He talks to many of the stallholders. He has been a market trader himself.

I am one of the three million citizens from the European continent who live and work in your country. I’m not allowed to cast my vote in the referendum, but your country is the one I prefer to live in.

Instalment 52: The thick smoke from Reverend Uncle’s Hofnar cigar has finally reached the booth space of the rented VW Beetle. Axel has been sitting there for hours wedged between the fishing rods and live fishing bait.

I have to admit that, to kill time, I regularly watch Come Dine with Me (the way others go fishing). And I also watch its spin-off Couples Come Dine with Me. The programme consists of ‘ordinary’ people going for dinner in each other’s homes and, in addition, rating it. The winner receives £1000.

‘Doctor, I’m an Anglophile, do you think that’s dangerous?’ Every time I visit my GP I’m tempted to ask this question. But, at this practice, you keep seeing a different doctor. The last one I saw was called Georgios, and I don’t think Georgios would get my question.

Instalment 51: Clouds like orange candy floss float over the Sacred Heart Statue on Temps Square. A giant copper-green Saviour watches over Axel…

Instalment 50: The last night freight train changes track, grating mercilessly, on the
railway near the 2nd Daalsedyke and it wakes up Axel from a sweaty
half-sleep on his grubby green IKEA futon.

As you may know, every Saturday I’m on Portobello market with the Holland Park Press bookstall, and I don’t want to keep from you what happened there last week.

In the past few days my knee has been giving me trouble, which means that, at the moment, I’m leading the life of a partial cripple. Yesterday, I caught myself muttering: ‘I’m a bit like the EU.’

Instalment 49: During the Introit, the crippled sacristan, rubbing his hands, separates the sea of children who are making their First Communion, in the midst of it, the top of Axel’s head is bobbing up and down.

We were on our way from London to Rochester by train. ‘It’s something different, this UKIP safari,’ I said to my travel companion. And after this, as Rochester station loomed large, I added in a David-Attenborough-like whisper: ‘I believe I’ve spotted two of the species. They’re males.’

Proverbs and expressions are tricky to translate. This is a great commercial opportunity: a Dutch–English dictionary of proverbs and expressions.

Instalment 48: On their way, Reverend Uncle Peer had to leave his mitre with a waitress in the Crowned Cock, but…

This competition closed on 31 August 2016

I’m 53, and my first relationship, which lasted about as long as WW2, has just broken up. It sounds like the opening line of a novel.

Instalment 47: While the dental nurse, dressed in a harsh pink trouser suit with a wide white belt and platform shoes, takes him to the dentist chair, Axel left fist tightly grips Virgil Tracey, the Thunderbird 2 pilot.

People from the Netherlands regularly ask me if I think the UK will leave the EU. The date for the referendum still has to be set, but already they sound concerned when they ask me the question. Others sound a bit sarcastic when they pose this question, as if to say: ‘Well, in that case we’ll be better off without them.’