This week's been a bit of daze. I was 27 on Friday and by 7:20pm I was on my way to Amsterdam with my good friend GeordieKieth.
Our three nights in the Dam were absolutely mint, just like all the nights I've had there. One of the best places we visited was the Dampkring, one of the special breed of coffeeshops we were hunting, a chilled one with a bar.
Also attended my first book launch last night. 'Ideas Above Our Station' is a new collection of short stories, including 'Reading Into' by yours truly, published by Route, a Yorkshire based, indie publishing house.
get it here:
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292
That's a pic taken with my phone as I've finally managed to connect it to my laptop, the idea being to illustrate these blogs with some real life examples of things. Not sure how that'll go but we'll see.
Anyway, the launch was a great success, which was good, and I spent pretty much all of today in meetings, thereby avoiding any actual work. So here I am, a week since I left for the dam and not a post in sight!
Spent a lot of time talking a lot of shit with GK and the odd complete stranger last weekend but thought I'd just pick three random things that I thought about and explore them a little.
D eeper differences...
Despite having visited the Dam a few times before, it still took a day or two to get used to smoking in public. As we couldn't smoke in the room however, (not until the last night anyway 
) that was pretty much the only kind of smoking we did.
Turns out laws of the land leave quite a mark and it takes a while to fade. For UK tokers there's an inherent causal connection between the lovely stuff and criminality.
Whether in your face or at the back of your mind, you're always aware that you are coming into contact with dodgy people and dodgy places, however remotely.
Now as I say, that took a couple of days to fade, and by the time we were heading back on Monday I felt much more comfortable with the whole thing.
The thing is that toking in of itself is an intimately familiar thing to me so it was only really a circumstantial shock.
The other famous vice which so unfairly dominates Amsterdam's reputation is of course sex.
I've always seen Dutch legislation regarding prostitution as a twin of their soft drug laws and approved accordingly.
I can find no solid ethical argument against prostitution. As long everyone's there through choice and no-one's getting hurt I don't see the problem. At least that's the theory.
Walking through the Red Light district with this in mind however, makes it a bit weird. Being in the reality of a social policy is a significantly more intimate experience than thinking or debating it.
As I write this it occurs to me that I have come to feel like this because I have committed the economist's sin: I have neglected the human aspect.
Whenever I've considered the issue of prostitution I have never thought about what it would actually be like to walk past it in the street.
Another, more invasive example of experiencing political policy made flesh was forced upon me much earlier in the trip however...
A ctually, my bag was picked by pixies...
We do love to queue don't we? Well one queue I did not enjoy was security leaving the UK at Leeds/Bradford Airport.
Yes I got picked out of the queue, and body searched and then yes, my bag got opened up and the contents removed.
Now you might expect me to bitch on a bit here about unfair it is that I was singled out just because I'm a scruffy hippy, maybe a whining rant about how morally wrong profiling is and racism and fascism and waving a big flag...
Well I'm not going to, partly because I can't be bothered but mainly because I don't need to. There is nothing I can say about these people that they cannot trump with their own actions, check this out.
I took my clothes in the same rucksack I use for my shopping and walked out the house wearing the same coat and clothes I always do.
Subsequently the guy found a pen knife in my bag. It was a corporate gift my dad got years ago, with a bottle opener and a corkscrew etc. I hadn't packed it, it was just always in that pocket of my bag, handy and that.
So I could either give it up or go back into the airport, post it to myself, and then start the whole security process again. Who cares yeah? Fine mate, you keep it.
Anyway, I get to the Dam and realise that I have just taken the following objects, for the most part unwittingly, on an international flight DESPITE BEING 'THOROUGHLY' SEARCHED AND MY BAG EMPTIED OUT!!!
pressurised gas lighters from my jeans pocket x 3
another penknife from my jacket x 1
a tube of toothpaste (aka a prohibited liquid) x 1
from a compartment in my bag that the guy didn't find!
See what I mean, how can I be angry with those guys? They suck!
If I had been a terrorist evil-doer, (I do have a beard, maybe I am one and just don't know it!) I could have had me a nice tube of explosives disguised as toothpaste, a detonator or two disguised lighters and a knife disguised as, well, you see what I mean.
So you can throw all the arguments about civil liberties and personal freedoms out of the window, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.
As much as those arguments mean to me and many others, they're just not even on the radar with so many people that they're never going to be effective tools for changing minds.
And changing minds is what's required to rid ourselves of social policies and structures that do nothing but make things worse.
Again, it's an opportunity to howl about nature UK airport security policy, I now have a much more effective blunt instrument however, the practical approach:
IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!
Everyone can get on board with that I think.
M aybe not today, maybe not tomorrow...
Did I mention I loved the Dam? Well despite what some of you maybe thinking it wasn't just the gear. We saw the controversial BODIES(1) exhibition one day and a few Rembrandts the next.
So much of the city looks old and quaint in a European fairy-tale kind of way, and yet the ultra modern is all around as well, seamlessly woven into the fabric of the city.
You're stood in front of yet another big impressive old Dutch building but you're looking at an absolutely enormous plasma screen hanging on the side that, for some reason, seems to spend most of the day showing a road busy junction in Japan.
You're stood there waiting for a tram, one of the slightly rickety looking contraptions that rattle back and forth all day.
To your right there's a billboard poster for a new film on the side of the tram stop. All perfectly normal and oldschool, apart from the fact that this billboard has a plasma screen built into it that's showing a looped trailer!
The vibe is great too. There's a genuine if-you-don't-fuck-with-me-I-won't-fuck-with-you thing going on.
We sat with a Dutch student on the flight over and she was mocking us as a nation for our politeness.
This had come about because I'd pointed out how ridiculous it was that the Dutch word for please has three syllables.
Turns out no-one really says it, in fact the only time I heard it was during announcements at Schipol airport, ie. a formal context.
Somehow however, this didn't feel rude, as if there was a kind of inherent assumption of mutual respect.
The city just looks and feels so cool, with plenty of interesting stuff going on all the time.
Due the brief nature of our stay the mission was obviously to take full advantage of the opportunity to get wasted and ridiculous. I did get a flash however, of how it might feel to be there all the time.
The new dream then, is:
become successful novelist,
move to Holland,
around mid morning each day go for wander,
get paper or book,
stop somewhere, read it,
have a bit of a smoke and a think,
wander back,
write like an infinite number of monkeys at one typewriter,
bitching no?
Who knows, in the future I may be writing this blog from my local coffeeshop having long since forgotten about being a civil servant or stressing about families, realtionships and the future.
That sounds a bit optimistic for me I know but I think I'll let Ian Clayton, one of the Route authors who read at the launch last night,(2) explain it for me.
Via his reading he told us about a trip he taken to Cork in October many years ago.
He and his friends had noticed that the christmas lights were all up and lit and so quizzed their taxi driver.
The driver proceeded to explain that bin men of Cork had been on strike for some time.
In response to this, the town had decided to turn the lights on early to get people to look up at the pretty colours, rather than down at the shit at their feet.
footnote
(1) check out the BODIES exhibition here:
http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/bodies.html
(2) check out Ian's new book, 'Bringing It All Back Home' here, it sounds ace:
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=316
