The 102nd dalmatian

Local theatre-maker and puppet-master extraordinaire Fred Delfgaauw takes the back seat when his pretty dalmatian, Meis, takes centre stage on a bar stool at the ADK this afternoon.

Conversation in the cafe (owner Hans prefers to call it a "living-room experience") ranged from the Cyprus situation to insurance scandals. Ach en wee, as the Dutch say (oh dearie, dearie me).

E-number Sunday

So what do you do as nearly-9-year-old in Gorinchem on a bitterly cold, boring Sunday? If your parents had a well-filled wallet and were that way inclined, you could go to a museum, an amusement park or the cinema; if any of your friends were available, you could arrange a play-date (using your mother's i-Phone); you could - as a last resort - spend all day glued to the TV or umbilically connected to the internet.

Given to me (the mother) on my 7th birthday

Or you could do some baking, perhaps inspired by your mother's old cookbook "Look! I Can Cook!", published in 1972. There are recipes from all around the world, so exciting.

Has a real Italian ever made spaghetti with meatballs?

Or, you could make these: Cake Pops, purchased at the Lidl in a choice of two flavours. Mum chose orange. Mum really had no idea what she was letting herself in for. Mum had forgotten her reading glasses when she went shopping and there was no way in hell she could read the fine print on the package. As it turned out, these are chocolate-coated cake lollipops which are also rolled in sugar sprinkles. 

Mum was rather surprised when she found her glasses and read the instructions: firstly one has to bake a cake, which is then reduced to crumbs, mixed to a thick paste with melted butter and rolled into balls, thus (see left). After cooling, the packages of white and regular chocolate have to be melted and decanted into separate bowls. One then takes one of the provided lolly sticks, spears a cake ball, coats it in chocolate, rolls it in sprinkles and then.... "stick the lolly stick in an upturned empty egg carton so that it can dry", suggests the tiny print on the package. This DOES NOT WORK. The lollies are top-heavy. The only thing that does work is holding the lolly until it is dry, by which time the chocolate for the next one (you can make 16) has solidified.


But here are the results: a solid 10+ on the yumminess scale from the head chef. Her only issue was that there were only enough sprinkles for half the lollies, so we had to resort to our own Dutch breakfast sprinkles. Mum and Dad promised to taste them later on in the evening, they looked so scrumptious, but they really couldn't manage to eat anything just now ("another tapenade on toast, darling?", "Hmmm, top up the wine").

So there you have it: one happy, if slightly hyperactive nearly-9-year-old and two plates full of E-numbers. 

Dusty Springjob

On Tuesday the 5th of March, my husband & I (imagine QE II saying this) filled a skip with 15 cubic metres of rubble and scrapwood from an old shop on the Grote Markt.

We put this:

In this:

... after which it looked like this:

And then we had this:

Tuesday was the hottest 5th March on record: the whole square suddenly came to life. All the cafe employees scurried around, setting up tables and by half past three one had to jostle to get one. We certainly deserved our beer: after five hours of monomaniac rubble-shifting, we were coated in dust, but mercifully unaware of how much every muscle would ache later on in the evening.

The market stall

Across the river is a secret place, which very few people know about: not just the privileged readers of "The Elephant in Codfish Lane", but even the inhabitants of Gorinchem in general. It's the market stall on the Steenenhoek Canal. 

I've been taking pictures of it every time I walk past during the last year and every time there's something else on offer: from kid's toys, flowers, tools, purses and plates to watering cans and pepper pots. You takes what you wants and - observing the exhortation on the sign above the stall - deposit an amount which you deem reasonable in the letterbox of the houseboat opposite.

I have no idea where these people get all this stuff. I keep saying that one day I'll ring on their houseboat door and ask them, but that would perhaps destroy the mystery of it. The not-knowing is half the fun. 

I've bought flower-pots and plastic doo-hickeys for Josephine, plants and bags. Most recently Bart bought a pristine current weekend  edition of the FD (equivalent of the Financial Times) on a Saturday morning, apparently unread. He paid 1 euro. 

Rain or shine, snow or howling gale, the anonymous market stall ALWAYS has something to offer. I think I prefer to not research who maintains it and keep on believeing in a kind of Harry Poteresque  entrepreneur.

Not beavers

As a reprieve from wild animals destroying our trees, here is a little interlude of other creatures around the town. 

For starters: two of the remaining gaggle of white geese who used to terrorise Gorinchemers. Once, they would gather at one of the entrances to the city, arrogantly crossing the road in large numbers, honking at the stalled traffic and attacking passers-by and their shopping bags of fresh bread from Van de Grijn bakers. 'Twas too much: the powers that be captured most of them and supposedly carted them off to petting zoos around the country. I do wonder if they really wound up on the plates of the local civil servants.

These two managed to escape the cull, and have temporarily taken up home between the houseboats and the train station. Try to take a picture and they make a vicious grab for your trouser-cuffs. And when they're not doing that, they're presumably having it off with each-other, and hey-ho, maybe next year the geese rounder-uppers will have another slap-up nosh.  

Semi-domestic

... and here - in great internet tradition - are CATS! I've learned that every good blogger falls back on them when you can't think of anything else to post. These two are playing trains on the back of the armchair.

Bon voyage! All aboard! A bientot!

Very domestic