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

Beaver shots*

Returning to the quite incredible news that there are beavers in the city of  Gorinchem: 

Beaver photographer Bas Breetveld changed my mind about how a beaver could have reached our town: apparently there is a colony just south of the river - almost under the motorway bridge near Woudrichem - who have two lodges. This most probably indicates  that the Gorinchem beaver (or beavers) made their way eastwards from the Biesbosch along the south side of the big river and then did a Big Swim northwards to reach our over-populated shores. 

Good on ya, beavers!

Bas sounded somewhat surprised in his e-mail: apparently beaver families usually kick their young, recalcitrant offspring out in the summer, giving the 3-year old youngsters the chance to set off and establish their own families in the balmy warm months. Whatever possessed these guys to start chewing on trees in the middle of Gorinchem in February? Perhaps overcrowding: these could be "Tramp Beavers". 

Heaven help us: beavers who just wander around with no sense of community and set up shop wherever it best suits them. What is the world coming to?

One thing's fer sure: these animals are DETERMINED. Read this account of how a North American town tried to get rid of them: 

Dang and blast them beavers!


... and here are Bas's quite breathtaking photos of beavers in the Biesbosch:

Beavers in the Biesbosch.


If you want, you can go on a beaver-safari with him. He guarantees a 100% chance of seeing the little hooligans for yourself. Check it out here:

Beaverwatch.

* shameless effort to generate more blog-traffic

City Beavers

This photo was taken this morning from the Zwaanswal, looking out across a scrubby promontary. At the base of the tree you can see a bright patch of freshly-chewed wood: an almost cartoonesque example of beaver activity. I couldn't believe my eyes. If it wasn't for the fact that this patch of no-man's land is virtually inaccessible for humans (the only way in is completely overgrown with brambles), I would have thought it was a practical joke played by local kids.

But a bit further on I found another poor tree which I could photograph from up close: check out the gnawing technique! See the giant beaver in the background! (Just kidding: that's my dog's bum...)

Beavers have been reintroduced in several locations in the Netherlands over the past few years and one of the most successful populations is happily chewing its way through the Biesbosch, a wetlands nature reserve south-west of us across the river and a good 20 km away. How on earth did this beaver (or beavers - could only one have caused this much damage?) find its way to Gorinchem? At some point it must have swum across the busiest inland water route in Holland, then paddled upstream along the shore, avoiding earth-moving machinery and construction crews who are renovating the dyke and keeping out of the way of dredgers digging a new canal. Then it negotiated the Vluchthaven, ignoring the river traffic in and out of the Grote Merwerde Lock, the screaming metal saws from the industrial park (see previous post) and the boat owners who are just starting to spruce up their sailing yachts and motor sloops for the spring. It chose a spot where it would be in full view of any people out taking a stroll, dog-walkers, their dogs, teenagers sneaking a fag or boys on their cross bikes. If anybody bothered to look, that is.

I was very excited: I reported the sighting of beaver activity on the report-sightings-of-beaver-activity website, but felt I had to share further, so I called up the local council. 

The receptionist was rather put out: "But why do you want to report beavers?" she asked. I was momentarily thrown off-course: why indeed? Because it's pretty bloody cool, actually. Obviously this argument wouldn't carry any weight, so I said "Because they're chopping down trees!" (Local government are obliged to respond to complaints, not cool stuff). Reluctantly, she put me through to a charming lady who thought it was pretty cool, too, although she was already aware of the beaver's presence. Apparently the Waterschap* are keeping an eye on the situation, but they haven't yet seen any evidence of a lodge being built. 

I think it's pretty unlikely that the beaver and friends will set up home here. Apart from the challenging location, there just aren't enough trees for them: on that little strip of land there's probably only a dozen, and they've already destroyed two. Where will they go from here? Further upstream to Vuren? Swim through the lock and head inland? 

Good luck to them, I say. It won't be easy.

Photo from Fotosloep.nl

* Waterschap: Dutch water board.