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Instalment 30: While sitting on his father’s lap, Axel is being told that grandpa started as a horse driver in the mine.

Arnold Jansen op de Haar wrote Not a Declaration of Intent, a poem about writing and reading poetry, to celebrate Dutch Poetry Week 2015.

Instalment 28: During the midnight mass Axel is being told that the Word has become flesh.

Who will it be: Harry Potter, Basil Fawlty, Paddington Bear, Mr Bean, Dr Who or James Bond after all? I don’t believe there is another country with as many fictional celebrities as the United Kingdom. To select the greatest fictional celebrity is rather difficult because there is a long history.

This competition is now closed

Instalment 27: From the leatherette back seat in Roy Heijnens’s, the red-headed owner of driving school ROY, dual control Daffodil, Axel watches fearful sweat drops trickle down his mother’s neck.

My neighbourhood here in London accommodates more women wearing burkas than the whole of the Netherlands. There is even a woman in a burka living in my apartment block. She emerged giggling from the lift because she couldn’t immediately locate the front door. I found the giggling reassuring.

Instalment 26: One summer they are not holidaying at the Nolle beach in Flushing.

2014 was the year when I officially still lived in the Netherlands but actually stayed in London. Here, I have a view across a green. That’s also the place where I smoke my cigars. Cigars that are four times as expensive as in the Netherlands. That’s why I smoke four times less, so that I spend the same amount of money. Sometimes, while having a smoke, I think of the Netherlands.

Instalment 25: ‘Well, we simply have to make a new one,’ the reverend father, a short fat cigar clenched between his front teeth, had told grandma Reuser after little Frans had gone to heaven on the very first day of his life on earth.

I’ve been in hiding for a bit. This came about because I was up to my neck in a swamp of estate agents and solicitors here in London. My sister was selling a lovely, small, sunny apartment with a balcony. A sought-after item in a raving mad housing market.

Instalment 24: Aunt Joep’s birthday party really takes off when Reverend Uncle Peer with his dark, bass voice starts a polonaise, waving its chain through auntie’s living room.

Instalment 23: A soft pink haze, like a sea of orchids, covers Kunder Hill.

Instalment 22: During the National Art programme, mummy pulls Axel onto her lap and whispers into his ear that she has some lovely news.

Last week, reports emerged from the Netherlands about Big Bird being seen at an over-18s festival surrounded by naked female dancers and men in bondage gear. This sprang to mind when Labour leader Ed Miliband began to get involved in the Scottish referendum. It was as if Eddie laddie had gatecrashed the wrong party.

Instalment 21: When mummy has to have an operation on her womb, Axel is allowed to stay with mummy’s best friend Bea Buitendijk.

Last weekend, after having lived in London for three months, I was in Amsterdam with Holland Park Press for the Uitmarkt, which is the opening of the cultural season. ‘The opening of the cultural season?’ you may well ask. ‘Summer is one big cultural event with all those tourists and busy theatres!’ Yes, in London, but in the Netherlands many venues are closed during the summer. It’s like having dinner on the dot of 6pm. It’s set in stone.

Instalment 20: Reverend Uncle Peer is quite tipsy. While he’s sitting on the green leatherette two seat sofa, he pompously drowns another Bacardi…

Instalment 19: Axel sprints panting through the fog homewards by way of a labyrinth of back passages.

Recently my sister, based in London, had to get her picture taken for her new Dutch passport. So we headed for a photographic shop which specialises in passport pictures. It was called Snappy Snaps. Photos for British passports were less than ten pounds. Pictures for baby and foreign passports were twice as expensive. This is an advance warning for the Scots.