Norse code

Australians typically find the prospect of a white Christmas very appealing. So Ned Nederlander and I agreed and decreed respectively that Norway would be a fitting destination for the 2013 festive season.

My certainty that Queenstown, New Zealand was the undoubted winner of Most Spectacular Aircraft Landing in the World title was shaken by our mid-winter afternoon approach to Tromsø, at the opposite end of the planet. Land at both at least once in your life if you can.

 



On our first night inside the Arctic Circle, we drove teams of huskies through a dreamy snowscape, lit beautifully by a hazy bloated moon. As the cold air pinched my face, I kept pinching myself to make sure I was really there. I wondered if I could ever again appreciate the sweltering heat of an Aussie beach Christmas .

Dashing through the snow ...

When I needed to slow or stop, the lead dog would look at me over his shoulder with utter disdain. The rest of the team bounced impatiently on invisible pogo sticks, straining incessantly against the harness, yelping to be allowed to run some more. These dogs were not going to give up until they were airborne. Second star to the right and straight on till morning.

Later that night we retired to a communal tent, modelled on those used by the indigenous Sami people. We tried not to think about Rudolph, that famous Christmas helper, as we lay on the deliciously warm skins of his cousins, spread over a thick bed of cut branches that had been piled into a wooden box bed. Fur on fir. A pot belly stove in the centre of the tent made us forget that we were actually arctic warriors at all.

Please can we keep him?

After breakfast we visited the dogs, who were clearly grateful for the remarkable leadership we had demonstrated to them on the previous night. De Jongens both reminded me that over two years earlier, when they had so stridently resisted our planned move to the Lowlands, I had glibly promised them a Dutch dog, if only they would let go of the nice Passport Control Officer’s leg and calmly get on the plane. No dog had been forthcoming. Suddenly they were demanding a five-dog team of huskies, which apparently equates to my abandoned promise, with interest. 

I soon distracted them with a cunning display of my previously under-valued snow-mobiling skills. I raced oh so competently through a scene reminiscent of a James Bond movie, blissfully unaware that Kleine Jongen was developing hypothermia on the seat behind me. I was mesmerised by the sight of the sun standing on her solar tip-toes while trying, and failing, to peak over the horizon at 11:30am. Instead she left a taunting golden stain low in the sky, and cast an eerie blue light over an endless tub of vanilla icecream.

 

 
 

 

On another night we ventured a hundred kilometres or so further north of Tromsø, and were treated to a spectacular northern lights display that justified my fifty year wait to see it. Just remarkable.
 

 

 

 

 

Undoubtedly, we peaked too early on this holiday, so the next few days in Oslo were always likely to be underwhelming. We wiled away a half day at the Polar Fram Museum, and learned much about the people who had made the Arctic and Antarctic areas accessible, including the Inuit people, who gave me the quote of the trip. "The one who listens to his parents will live longer ... and have a better life". Lovely script too.

Inuit wisdom

Yet somehow learning about all those wild and crazy exploits just made me want to go and have a lie down in a hot bath with a good book, a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Ned and I also made a lightning visit to the Nobel Peace Centre in the hour before it closed one evening. Should you ever need it, I recommend a visit as a good way to humble oneself. Being confronted with the stories of every Nobel Peace Prize winner and their actions and noble motivations puts one’s own antics in a sad perspective.  It left me wondering what my personal contribution to world peace should be...

Then, we took a train to Bergen on the west coast. For a large part of the seven hour journey I was a character in The Polar Express.  Grote Jongen confirmed my fantasy when he leaned over and said “I keep expecting the train to be stopped by a herd of reindeer, and for someone to pull the engineer’s beard”. Sadly, the trip was tarnished somewhat by an unfortunate incident involving a laptop, a down jacket, a sudden lurch (perhaps someone pulled the engineer’s beard after all?) and a full cup of hot chocolate. Dear reader, I can reveal that it was NOTHING like the hot chocolate scene in The Polar Express.  However, my calm (numb?) response to our incident and my handling of the hysterical protagonists, albeit through clenched teeth, in a carriage packed to the rafters with people who politely pretended they hadn’t seen a thing, may very well be my contribution to world peace.

Bergen was the final stop in our tinselled triumvirate of Norwegian towns. Clearly it has the potential to be a quaint and charming town, but its main claim to fame appears to be that it has the highest rainfall of any town this side of the Amazon. I believe that a good proportion of its annual rainfall fell during our visit. The fjord cruise operators (who had lured us to Bergen in the first place) had given in to the weather, cancelled all trips and gone home two days earlier than their websites suggested. 

Bergen; quaint, yet somehow not ...

In the end it probably didn’t matter, since Kleine Jongen surprised us all on our first night in Bergen with a spectacular middle-of-the-night vomiting performance with multiple encores. The spectacle was increased as a consequence of the combined affects of a dark hallway, an open suitcase, some bed-swapping earlier in the night, and an unfortunate case of mistaken parental identity. We concluded that it must have been caused by something he'd eaten on The Polar Express.

The following morning Kleine Jongen awoke, exhausted and lacking Christmas cheer, although with a much improved constitution, so we ventured out to see what Bergen had to offer. Not much, it turns out.

Not a single restaurant in the entire town was open on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.The few shops in town that were open were staffed by people who didn’t really want to be there.

“What a stupid time to come on holidays” growled one woman when she learned of our intention to spend Christmas in her town.  The fact that she was pocketing a good proportion of the Norwegian gross domestic product after selling us the ingredients for our Christmas Eve hotel room picnic did not seem to give her any cause to smile.

The hotel that we were staying in, which claimed enough stars to know better, didn’t even offer us a Christmas drink. Ever self-sufficient (especially when it comes to Christmas alcohol), I approached the decidedly un-festive hotel receptionist on Christmas Eve and asked if I could borrow a corkscrew. I’m quite certain she considered stabbing me with it. “A corkscrew???” Deep sigh. “I’ll see. Wait here”. Ho ho ho. Good tidings to you and all of your kin.

Minutes into our family festivities, we realised that we had been wrong after all to blame the train food for Kleine Jongen’s demise. Ned, Grote Jongen and I found ourselves BERRRRGEN  in Bergen for the next twelve hours. Being sick far from home is never fun, but I must say that there is a certain joy that comes from being able to drop a pile of “soiled” towels and sheets outside a hotel room door and have them magically disappear by morning!  When I staggered to the foyer at 2am and requested some clean sheets and towels, my receptionist friend gave me a look that left me in no doubt that she thought overuse of the borrowed corkscrew was the root of my problems.

I collapsed into my bed again, and passed Christmas Day alternately snoozing and staring at the rain hammering against the window. And just like that, the prospect of a sweltering Aussie beach Christmas suddenly seemed very appealing after all.

 

Another time, another place

Can I have a word please?

January always seems to be a very busy month for lexicographers. It is the month in which many of them make learned pronouncements on the Word of the Year (which seems to be frequently abbreviated to WOTY – an acronym surely destined for WOTY status itself; you heard it here first).

 

The American Dialect Society has voted “because” as the 2013 WOTY.  While I confess to a strong desire to be a member of something as grandly named as the American Dialect Society, and I have spent hours today pondering what they discuss at their meetings other than the annual WOTY, I am quite sure it must be a society that is closed to parents of adolescents. Can you imagine any parent of an adolescent choosing “because” as a word to be celebrated? Personally, I think it is a word to be banned.

“Why did you not hand in that assignment?” Because.
“Why are you home so late?” Because.
“Why did you hit your brother?” Because.
“Why is your vocabulary limited to single word answers?” Because.

Taking a somewhat different approach, the Oxford Dictionary’s editorial board has declared “selfie” to be the word of 2013. I am still wondering how such an invariably unflattering act (what’s to love about a triple chin, an elongated shiny forehead and an enormous forearm?) came to be so popular in the first place, so I am a long way from understanding the popularity of the word itself.

Australia’s lexicographic authority, the Macquarie Dictionary, announces its WOTY in February each year, after a month of furious voting in January, so I am unable to share its decision with you this early in 2014. However, I can tell you that last year the Macquarie editorial board came up with “Phantom Vibration Syndrome” or PVS as its nominated word. The use of three distinct words as a single WOTY says a lot for Australians’ counting ability, or more likely their disregard for international WOTY rules. Be that as it may, I have been intrigued to learn that PVS is a clinically recognised phenomenon whereby you think your phone is vibrating but it's not. This concept is so incomprehensible to me, a woman regularly criticised and abused by her nearest and dearest for consistently failing to respond to an actual vibration and/or ring tone, that I cannot begin to comprehend the notion of a phantom vibration.

In addition to WOTY’s, I have also noticed a trend among etymologically-inclined journalists to fill the many slow news days in January with insightful opinions on the worst words and phrases from the previous year; a sort of Anti-WOTY-Votie.

Thankfully, YOLO (as in “you only live once”) seems to have topped many A-WOTY-V lists for 2013, a feat that I hope will ensure its demise. It brings out the grumpy old woman in me to hear people use it as a justification for any indefensible action or inaction:

“ ... so we stole his school bag and hid it in the library. It was SOOO funny. YOLO”.

"I didn't do that thing you asked me to do because I was a bit busy, sorry. YOLO".

You're low.

“Twerking” is also high up in the unpopularity stakes, as measured by the A-WOTY-V brigade, which I’m happy about. I firmly believe that people who use that word (the sound of which is almost as bad as the concept) should be forced to watch back-to-back Miley C video clips whilst chanting “I will not say ‘twerk’ again” and being force-fed Brussels sprouts mixed with pickled herring. I would however like to popularise the word “twerk” as a term of abuse. For example, “You are a stupid twerk”. I believe it could very well become a WOTY 2014 contender, should it catch on.

I would like to submit a personal A-WOTY-V; the outdated but infuriatingly persistent “LOL”. I understand it is widely used in social networking circles to express (inaudible) audible amusement, but it tends to have the opposite effect on me, making me want to Scream Out Loud (there’s a thought; could I be single-handedly responsible for the establishment of SOL in our language, I wonder?).

I am not sure if it counts as an A-WOTY-V, but I am also keen to stop the emerging trend of using full stops as a form of emphasis.

As in “Stop. It. Now. "
"It’s. So. Grammatically. Irritating."

Full stop. No more.

But back to words. January words.

About ten years ago, my sister-in-law told me about a tradition that she and some friends had of nominating a “word for the year” (as opposed to a Word OF the Year) every New Year’s Eve. A WFTY if you will. This is an addictive initiative whereby New Year’s resolutions are shunned in favour of nominating a single word that reflects your hopes and intentions for the coming year. Sort of like a personal mantra. An annual theme. A vocabularial self-definition.

Ned Nederlander and I immediately stole the concept and have imposed it on each other and every person we have spent a New Year’s Eve with ever since.

Selecting a single word to set the tone for the coming year is harder than it sounds. It requires an honest assessment of your multiple and varied goals and challenges, and a focussed definition of the common element of all of those. The best words are discreetly ambiguous and discursively applicable. Having just discovered that word, I think I will store “discursive” as a potential future WFTY.

In 2013 my word was STEADY. I chose it at the end of a tumultuous and wildly exciting year. A year previously we had moved across the world, leaving everything and everyone we cared about, and had plunged into a new culture, new language, new lifestyle, new group of friends, new opportunity, new challenge, new hairdresser. I rode every emotion imaginable day after day, sometimes minute after minute. Overall I loved it, in the way that sailors love to negotiate a storm, but it was a chaotic and crazily unpredictable year.

But the chaos and unpredictability of my first year here was nothing compared to Ned’s. He had struggled to get traction in his new professional role and so he walked through the door most evenings looking not only soaked and frozen, but also totally bewildered and utterly demoralised.

To cap it off, I suddenly had two surly adolescents stomping through my house as well. Overloaded with the adjustments they had made, the new experiences that had been hurled at them and the hormones that their bodies were involuntarily producing, they saw our new home as a place to offload their frustrations, confusion and excitement. Terrific.

We gave them some rope. They took it. And stretched it to breaking point.

Clearly, a year in to the adventure, someone needed to step up and be the grown-up in that scenario. That unfortunate person needed to take a firm hold of the tiller and see the family through the turbulent waters of life in a foreign land, far from home and without the support of trusted allies. Who would that be?

I was the last woman standing. Me, the flighty, spontaneous, ungrounded one in the family. The one who until then had made “emotional roller coaster” a daily mantra. The one who thought Con Sequences was just another boy to be ignored.

So I chose “steady” as my word for the year last year. And it worked. It stuck in my head and I relied heavily on it to steer us through what looks like being the middle year of our Dutch foray . Whenever panic rose in my gut throughout 2013, I chanted that word. When De Jongens tested me, I chanted it. When Ned slumped through the door after banging his head against yet another corporate brick wall, I chanted it. When I died of embarrassment yet again, because of my inadequate Dutch, and was tempted to give up on my linguistic folly, I chanted it. When I realised that life back in Australia was progressing perfectly well without us, generating a major crisis of personal relevance, I willed myself to stay steady.

And somehow we hit December 31, 2013 a little calmer and a little more balanced than we had been a year earlier. We were steadier somehow.

But then 2014 loomed large. Being steady suddenly seemed SOOO last year. I relished the opportunity to get back to my roots and be flighty and frenzied again. I needed a new WFTY by midnight on December 31. In the preceding weeks I had toyed with various options. At a dinner party on New Years Eve, embellished with the most incredibly spectacular and dangerously unsteady display of street fireworks I have ever seen, I announced that my word was “RENEW”. I retained however a nagging feeling that it was not in fact my true WFTY. Too little energy; too much arrogance.

Others around our table announced worthy WFTYs; challenge, persevere, embrace, consolidate.  My inbox pinged with commitments from friends in Australia. Health, surrender, gratitude. A friend confessed sheepishly that she had assigned “READ” to her ten year old, non-bookish son. He probably wanted "pizza".

One doesn’t decide on a WFTY; a WFTY has to decide on you. It has to embed itself in your sub-conscious, to niggle away until it can’t be ignored. But it seemed that my true WFTY was being a little tardy this year.

On the evening of January 1, it announced itself. My WFTY was “LIFT”.

When I announced my WFTY modification, Ned Nederlander’s eyes lit up. He glanced at my sagging breasts, my flabby backside and my drooping jowls and he smiled with satisfaction. “Great word”, he nodded.

I hurried to clarify my intention. In a 2000 metre rowing race, of which I have completed many, the first 500 metres tends to be fast and furious, the middle 1000 metres tends to be strong and STEADY (huh!) while the last 500 metres, as you bear down on the finish line, calls for a lift in both stroke rate and will power. You have to delve into new parts of yourself and give everything you can possibly give, collapsing on the finish line if necessary, confident that you could have contributed nothing more to the effort.

I explained that I am determined to make our last year in this country really count. I want to lift my effort and my commitment to squeezing the last drops out of the great privilege we have been offered in coming here. I feel compelled to lift the family energy levels, to lift my own expectations of what we might achieve together and importantly to lift my sights beyond our current horizon to a future life beyond this most amazing of cities.

It’s not too late to come up with your own WFTY, or come to think of it your own A-WOTY-V. I'd love to know what you decide - can I have a word please?

A shirt for all generations

I’d forgotten about the shirt.

“Where did you find that shirt?” I asked, feeling like I might lose my balance. “That’s my Dad’s shirt”.

“Yeah, I found it in the dress up box” he replied.

Why my fourteen year old son, with his strong sense of “cool”, should be fossicking in his childhood dress up box was unclear. But there he was, wearing my father’s old checked flannelette shirt. 

. . . . . .

My father died twenty years ago today. His big, generous, under-functioning heart finally burst, sending him slumping onto the kitchen floor.  My mother and my sister were there when he fell.  My sister, the only one of my parents’ four children to still live at home, called the ambulance. She was fifteen. Meanwhile Mum crouched beside the man she’d shared her life with for over thirty years and urged him to hold on. The ambulance officers took Dad futilely to the local Accident and Emergency Department, muttering unconvincing, non-committal words of vain hope to my mother and sister. Shortly afterwards, my brothers and I received head-spinning phone calls and we independently began our journeys home.

Life without our father began.  

I miss him, although it’s no longer the acute, furious, wretched sense of loss that it once was. It’s become more of a fond recollection of times shared. And a dull regret for opportunities missed.

Two other brothers. My dad (left) and his brother, circa 1940



Mostly, I regret that I haven’t been able to share my sons with my father. I despair that I never got to hand them to him when they were newborns. I didn’t get to see him rock them awkwardly for the first time or hear him say quietly “Huh. Hello mate”.

I can almost conjure a picture of him wrestling playfully with two young boys before swinging them onto his towering shoulders as they shriek in delighted fear, just as he did with my brothers decades earlier. But it wasn’t to be.

The blazer. First grade premiers 1958

I hate that he never stood on a football sideline and cheered his grandsons on to Under 6 glory. I’m sad that he’ll never know that one of those grandsons recently captained a Junior Varsity team in an international competition on the other side of the world, where we now live. Dad played first grade football sometime last century, well before I was born. His club blazer hangs in the “Heritage Items” department of my wardrobe, right beside the wedding dress he didn’t see me wear. He should have seen me wear it. He should have seen his grandsons play football. He should have at least kicked a football around the backyard with them.

How proud he would have been of their passion for football; how he would have delighted in their interest, their determination, their dedication, their sportsmanship, their resilience. When Kleine Jongen returned from a trip to the UK earlier this year, having watched his beloved Liverpool FC win a Premier League game, I desperately wanted him to be able to phone my Dad, also an ardent Liverpool FC fan, and talk him through play by play (only partially because it would have saved me from needing to hear a play-by-play description of the entire ninety minutes myself).

“Did you see the Liverpool result from yesterday?” he’d ask. “ I was there! Did you see that second goal? Nah, it wasn’t offside. No. Yes. I know. But he did the same in the second round game last year. Mmm, should have been a red card. Maybe. But I think they should have played him up front. Oh well, at least they’re second on the table now”.

And so it would have gone on. And on. And on. Our phone bill would have been astronomical. I wish.

I wish my boys had had the chance to go to the Sydney Cricket Ground with Dad during long hot Australian summers. I wish he’d seen them swaggering to the crease and wielding the willow themselves in their own neighbourhood on countless Saturday mornings. Whenever I hear the excited trill of a cricket commentary, I picture them all sharing a companionable silence in front of the television, slinging occasional sledges at the Poms and chuckling at the combined familial wit and wisdom that they shared. Ned Nederlander would have been there too. He only met my dad a few times, but his comments and stories now make a brilliant contribution to keeping Dad’s memory alive. When we talk about him with the boys, we call him by his first name. He’s Graeme. My mother gets annoyed by that, wants them to call him Poppy, like the other grandchildren do. She thinks it is disrespectful to call their grandfather by his first name. On the contrary, I think it conveys huge respect. Our boys know that their maternal grandfather is a man called Graeme who died too soon. He’s not an unknown old dead bloke with a generic title. He’s a real bloke whose legacy includes a couple of boys who know they would have been adored by him.

Sometimes I find myself wishing that my boys had had to endure their grandfather’s unpredictable musings on politics and current affairs. I would have loved to have seen them gradually realise over the years that his infuriating switching of arguments mid-tirade was a cunning ploy to show them how to understand different viewpoints. It’s a life lesson valued highly by my siblings and me, albeit only now that we are adults. But my boys won’t ever learn that from him.

Nor will they ever learn how it feels to be held as unwilling prisoners in the back of a car on a long road trip with my father behind the steering wheel. They will never know the agony of being forced to listen to him reciting stanza after stanza after stanza of Australian poetry, as we drove for hours along  Australian country roads. Or worse, listen to him singing. Oh, Lord the singing. How many times in my youth did I desperately want to hurl myself from a moving vehicle in order to escape my father’s singing? And how broad would my smile be if I knew he was torturing his grandsons with his automotive baritone renditions today?

Each time I hear Grote Jongen’s articulate diatribes about some obscure topic, I marvel at how debating skills can be handed down from dead grandfather to living grandson with never a moment shared between them. Each time I see Kleine Jongen pick himself up after a disappointment and calmly and resolutely dust himself off, I marvel at how emotional strength can be handed down from dead grandfather to living grandson with never a moment shared between them. Not a single moment.

But earlier this week I was reminded that they share a lot. They share a heritage. Grote Jongen came home from football training, showered, dressed and came downstairs for dinner. He walked casually past me and sat down. I gasped.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Where did you find that shirt? That’s my dad’s shirt”, I smiled nervously.
 
“Yeah. Found it in the dress-up box”, he replied casually.

Thankfully, even though he knew its pedigree he didn’t wear it with a spirit of reverence or solemnity. He wore it with a silly grin on his face and not the slightest bit of sentimentality.
 I was torn between giggling and snivelling. Then, with a flash of emotional perception that defied his years, my boy-man strode towards me and enfolded me in a wordless, spontaneous embrace. For a brief frozen moment, an old checked flannelette shirt with a tattered collar and a rip in one sleeve entwined three generations.

Then he was gone, back to the digital world of a fourteen year old boy, leaving me standing in the kitchen inhaling a heady concoction of childhood memories, maternal pride and gratitude. I realised that my son – Graeme's grandson - is suddenly mature enough, tall enough and broad enough of shoulder to wear an old man’s shirt without looking like he’s playing dress-ups. And it occurred to me that it is indeed a shirt for all generations.

Have a safe flight

I am what is known in the business as a nervous flier. Apparently, I have an over-active Newtonian Gravitational Theory gland. My condition means that I simply cannot accept that big things will stay up in the sky for up to half a day. Especially really big things weighing several tonnes. Especially really big things weighing several tonnes that are carrying my family.

One of the symptoms of my condition is an obsession with safety instructions. I hang on every word of them. I count the rows to my nearest exit, often before I sit down "bearing in mind that it may be behind me". I study the safety card which is handily located in the seat pocket in front of me.  In fact I am quite confident that should an emergency ever arise, I will have those plane doors open and slides activated before anyone can say "So, old Isaac was right".

Admittedly, my confidence in my emergency response skills was a little shaken on a recent flight. Whilst casually perusing the safety card, Kleine Jongen noted that in the event of a crash landing, I might be challenged. "Huh, look at this Mum", he smirked. "It says here that you should only open the plane door if you have a clear view of your external surroundings after a crash."  He paused for dramatic effect. "Apparently, you should NOT open the door if you can see water, smoke, or fire outside the aircraft, or if trees or other objects are impeding your exit," he warned.

At the time, I had been surreptitiously feeling under my seat to ensure the promised life jacket was in place, but his announcement stopped me in my tracks. "What do you think our chances are of good visibility immediately following a crash?" I squeaked.

He smiled and shrugged. Children can be so cruel.

On another occasion, I glanced over at Grote Jongen, who was sitting across the aisle from me on a plane preparing for take-off. The safety briefing was being delivered. As usual, and because apples don't fall far from trees (just ask Mr Newton ...) Grote Jongen was riveted to every word of the safety briefing.

Only joking; he was riveted to the very electronic devices that the cabin crew were suggesting should be turned off. I immediately pressed the call button. "Excuse me!" I yelled to the cabin attendant. "That boy hasn't switched off his mobile phone even though you clearly asked everyone to!!!"

At least I wanted to do that. For my own comfort and safety during the remainder of my life, I decided to instead shoot Grote Jongen one of my aeronautical maternal death stares. This is similar to a terrestrial maternal death stare, only more desperate, with impossibly high eyebrows, panicked hand gestures and silently mouthed cross-aisle threats.

Temporarily defeated, I slumped in my seat and waited for the clatter and jolt as we careered off the end of the runway, certain that our take-off was about to be rendered completely ineffective due to "interference with the aircraft's navigation system". Interference potentially caused by my defiant son.

When it became fairly clear that on this occasion we seemed to be taking off without incident, I switched to waiting - somewhat desperately - for the clatter and jolt of the drinks trolley instead. 

While I waited, it occurred to me that De Jongens are cruising down the runway of life. They, and we, know that very soon they are going to be soaring on their own.  Right now, they are magnificently and naively confident in their own flying abilities, in a way that I envy. As young adolescents, De Jongens pretty much believe they are just about ready to fly solo. To make this point they have a tendency to push buttons - generally mine - like pilots carrying out a pre-flight check. Between them, they manage to test the responsiveness and effectiveness of every control in the parental cockpit. Multiple times.

It struck me (where IS that drinks trolley??) that an adolescent, impatiently preparing for take-off, could take many useful life lessons from an aircraft safety briefing, particularly one lovingly prepared by a nervous flyer with a vested interest in the safety of her passengers.

So I offer the following advice to my gorgeously, frustratingly, impressively invincible boys, as they gather speed on the runway of adolescence, ready to embark on the tricky flight to adulthood.

"Good morning and welcome on board flight 1214 to adulthood. Ned Nederlander and I are the head stewards on your flight. We are here to ensure your safety and to assist you to get the most out of life while making a constructive contribution to society. In that regard, please be aware that we are entitled, under the Parental Aviation Act, to use reasonable force to stop you engaging in behaviour that is deemed at any time by us to be "stupid". It will be a more pleasant and comfortable flight for all of us if you simply accept that. However, since we know that you won't accept it, please keep listening. That includes the boy in seat 11A still playing on his phone, and the boy in Seat 11B who is laughing at his quivering mother.
 
While we are happy (at times convenient to us) to dispense drinks, snacks and in-flight entertainment, you will increasingly be expected to adopt a self-service mentality. Therefore, we ask you both to be aware that misuse of the "Call" button on this flight will not be tolerated.
 
Your seat belt should be fastened low and tight.  That is, your attachment to your family should not necessarily be on display for everyone to see (we understand that that gets embarrassing when you are at cruising altitude), but it is best to maintain a comfortable connection at all times.  Even though you might doubt the need for it at the moment, the familial seatbelt is one of the most effective security devices,  particularly in times of unexpected turbulence.
 
Please store all your adolescent baggage in the overhead lockers during take off and landing, to prevent others from tripping over it. By all means take it down during the flight and do whatever it is you need to do to deal with it. Of course, Ned and I will be happy to help you deal with it, but we suspect that we are probably the source of much of it, so you might not find our assistance particularly helpful. In any case, please take great care when opening the overhead lockers, as your baggage might have shifted during transit, and metamorphosed into something quite unrecognisable.  There is a high probability that it could injure other people if it falls out unexpectedly. The cabin crew will be happy to dispose of any unwanted baggage at the end of the flight.
 
Electronic devices should be switched off whenever we ask you to, as they can interfere with personal navigation systems. Instead of texting and playing mindless games, may we suggest that you work on developing the art of a spontaneous face to face conversation; one that can't be edited or deleted at your convenience. Or stop and ponder something of a non-digital nature. Or do absolutely nothing for a while. Better still, do your homework.
 
Fit your own mask before helping others. If you do not look after yourself, you can not expect to be of much use to others. Be kind to yourself. Figure out what's great about you - see Ned or me if you'd like a starter list; we are your greatest fans and after observing you both for many years in the departure lounge, we have gathered very long lists of your attributes.
  
Should there be a need to change direction suddenly, or undertake an emergency landing, which is common on flights to adulthood, you will hear the command "Brace, brace".  If this happens during the flight, plant your feet firmly on the floor, hold your head in your hands, stow that damned electronic device under the seat in front of you and await instructions from the cabin crew.  We are trained in emergency responses and will usually be able to get things back on track relatively quickly.
 
Now please, settle back, relax and enjoy your flight. Ned and I will try to do the same, which should help all of us on board this flight.
 
Finally, thank you for all the times you make this steward's heart soar. Thanks for the times when you lift me above my own fears and you help me to fly at my best. It's a pleasure to have you on board."

Flight 1214 ready for take-off. Cabin crew, arm the doors and cross-check.

The king of all marketing campaigns

I have learned this week that an impending royal inauguration can turn the mundane act of grocery shopping into a thing of joy and wonder.
 
I'm not particularly fond of grocery shopping.  I cope with it by sending myself into a Trolley Trance - a little known meditative state that sees me absent-mindedly strolling the aisles, half napping, half eyeing off the chocolate bars, looking at all the pretty colours, until I end up at the check-out with a full enough trolley.  It is generally only after I return home that I realise I purchased everything except the very item I went in to buy. As a consequence, and to avoid returning to the supermarket too often, I have developed an enviable level of domestic culinary agility, including the production of low down family favourites such as fish stew with sausages (but no fish), lasagne-less lasagne and herb-crusted lamb with missing herbs.
 
Having said that, grocery shopping in the lowlands has been extra challenging for me. Although there is no shortage of supermarkets, they are typically quite small, with aisles that are really too short  and too few in number to induce a sustained Trolley Trance. Most Dutch supermarkets also stock a limited range of products, which can at times necessitate visiting three different stores in order to source all of the ingredients required for a simple meal.  This often invokes a growling Trolley Troll, rather than a peaceful Trolley Trance.

Adding to the complexity, the Dutch approach to product placement is something I have not yet been able to fully understand. It takes quite a bit of skill to work out that the pineapple rings will be beside the corned beef and bottled frankfurts . . . on the off chance that you might be in the market for bottled frankfurts.

It's also handy to know that the spring rolls can be found next to the icy poles in the freezer section.

 

And that the laundry detergent is beside the pet food, which is conveniently located next to the potatoes.

But all of my petty frustrations with Dutch supermarkets evaporated this week. It seems there's nothing like a big Dutch occasion for bringing out the very best in the big Dutch marketing departments.

To give you an example, and to get you in the mood, let me backtrack a few months. I feel it's not too insensitive, now that the national devastation has eased a little, to highlight one of my favourite examples of Dutch marketing brilliance.  One particular personal hygiene manufacturer added to the anticipatory frenzy and performance pressure on the Dutch national football team during last year's European Cup by producing toilet paper printed with cute orange football-kicking dogs and the encouraging words "hup Holland hup". Ned Nederlander took a roll back to Australia for a friend who gave it to her 12 year old son, with instructions that it was to be put on his special "treasures" shelf, never to be used. It was cute; we all felt a little guilty using it for its intended purpose. The fact that Holland got well and truly poohed on in the opening round made it even more special.

But it's Queens Day that really gets the creative juices going in marketing departments. Especially a Queen's Day with a baton change between a mother and her son.  Inauguration-inspired grocery marketing has made supermarket shopping fun again.

I nearly fell into my trolley when I spotted this gem yesterday.

Talk about taking advantage of the extended cold weather - just rug up and make a nice big pot of King's Soup.  Five hundred grams of carrots, an orange capsicum, a brown (let's call it gold) onion, a couple of gold-wrapped stock cubes, an orange, and a sprig of rosemary, all together in a right royal orange packet. Had I been asked, I would have suggested they add a sweet potato.

The next aisle brought more jewels.  The 30 April (Queens Day) edition of cream of tomato soup. Note the little crown on the left of the label, because let's face it, tinned soup makes anyone feel like royalty, right?  On the right of the photo you can also make out a lovely biscuit tin bearing Queen Beatrix's face. So many collector's items, my trolley runneth over.

The biscuit manufacturers are clearly pursuing a strategy of packaging diversity. Not only have they produced a lovely tin with Queen Beatrix's smiling face (above), but they have also produced one with Wil-Al and Maxima (right), which is certain to appeal to younger generations. Personally, I couldn't choose between them so I had to get five of each.

I was truly delighted to also find that the local coffee makers weren't going to be left behind in the marketing stakes, offering a free unique spoon, and some special orange packaging for Tuesday's coronation.

And should you like a small treat to accompany your coffee, may I recommend King's Waffles?  Same recipe as last week, but a different - orange of course - packaging.



It's almost too obvious, given that we are celebrating the Oranje-Nassau family's rule, so I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that orange juice was not immune from the Queens Day treatment either. Like so many things in life, it benefits from the addition of a little French flair because after all, "sinaasappelsap" is a word somewhat lacking in regal grandure. So, if we call it jus d'oranje for a week, and add a crown to our logo, who knows what might happen?





For comparative purposes, the non-coronation packaging is also shown (right). The subtle addition of a crown is obviously perceived to be the key to a good logo upgrade.



  

The canny manufacturers of this bottle of €4.99 merlot seem to be targeting those with a taste for understated elegance and an inability to recognise that floral undertones are not usually associated with merlot. All power to them.

 



 

Of course, as any Marketing 101 student will tell you, the real test of a successful campaign is being able to sell something that consumers didn't even know they needed.

 

So, I've saved the jewel in the Koningennedag marketing crown for last. Orange revellers, I give you Royal W's. 

 

Who knew that we all needed something as unbelievably brilliant but undeniably essential as Royal W's? Of course we do. I certainly hope we do, given the number of packets that I squeezed into my shopping trolley! What an honour it must be for a king to have a "savoury corn snack with a cheese taste" produced in the shape of his initial.

Inspired by all of these irreverent Dutch marketing types, I find myself desperately hoping that the Duchess of Cambridge gives birth to a son. I trust that her people will approve my application to use a photo of Prince William and his son on the label of my gourmet bottled frankfurts range, to be sold under the "Little Willy" label.

Wachten, wachten

Waiting . . . waiting. Only two more sleeps.

The excitement in Amsterdam has been palpable in the past few months, as we all count down to the re-opening of the Rijksmuseum, the iconic national museum that invited the painters and decorators in ten years ago. Ten years. Really? That’s one year more than it took to build the thing.

There’s a part of me that can’t help wondering just how good I might look after a ten year restoration program. And a €375 million expense account.  I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had a one hour massage and a half hour facial on  two consecutive days over Easter.  I thought about following up with a pedicure on day three, but with temperatures still below 10^oC here, and a strong likelihood that I’ll be in boots for a while longer, I thought it a little self-indulgent. 

Anyway, for months now, the outside of the neo-Gothic Rijksmuseum has sported a huge, neo-digital clock, counting down to the neo-opening day and generating a level of anticipation that this country probably hasn’t seen since the ultimately devastating (from a Dutch perspective at least) World Cup Final of 2010. That ended in a 1-0 defeat of the Netherlands during extra time by their historical arch enemy, Spain (who appeared keen to avenge their loss of the lowlands in 1648 following the eighty years war. Eighty years. Talk about extra time!) To add insult to injury, the Dutch football team was subjected to accusations of foul play, bad sportsmanship and unseemly conduct.  Same thing happened in 1648. It makes it even funnier to me that a firm of Spanish architects won the tender for the restoration of the Rijksmuseum. Neo-attitude.

The clock pronounces “Nachten Wachten”, or nights waiting, a witty reference to the museum’s priceless centrepiece – Nachtwacht (The Night Watch) by Rembrandt. I remember staring at that clock for several minutes one day, grappling with a possible translation at a time when my repertoire of Dutch verbs would have numbered no more than twenty (it's now rocketed to about twenty three).  Suddenly I experienced a memorable linguistic lightbulb moment, realising that “wacht” could translate as either watch or wait. Nights waiting . . . Nightwatch.  I laughed out loud as I realised, quite smugly, that I had understood the irony, and I looked with pity at the passing tourists whose heads it must surely be going over.

 

Hence I retain a strange affection for the gaudy, neon hoarding. Of course, it signifies my coming of age as an unstoppable linguist, Antipodean expert in 17th century Dutch art and all-round aficionado of cultural wit. Setting that aside though, the clock  provides a taunting reminder of the inefficiencies of modern construction – the renovation commenced in 2003 and was expected to take three years, not ten.  Had the clock been counting upwards, marking the days since the museum closed in 2003, it would today announce something like “Jullie hebben gewacht: 3,400 nachten”. You have waited 3,400 nights. Thanks for your patience.

The renovation has been stymied throughout by the usual tendering controversies, some major asbestos problems, the resignation of the museum director, a misplaced hammer and the day to day challenges posed by tinkering with any building that has its foundations below sea level. It is rumoured that there was also a major disagreement on tile colours and floor coverings, in common with domestic renovations all over the world.

On top of all that, the project managers seem to have forgotten to account for the Dutch tendency to overleg. This broadly translates as “to consult”, but in the case of the renovated Rijksmuseum, translated instead to a seven year overrun.  The Dutch, bless them and their egalitarianism and tolerance of alternative views, have a tendency to widespread consultation on most matters, particularly administrative and professional.  This can be a fabulous thing, whereby a culturally ingrained openness to different opinions leads to a genuine meeting of multiple minds, a robust tussle of ideas and the generation of some amazingly innovative solutions. On the other hand, poor Ned Nederlander, my innately inclusive but efficiency-driven man, is regularly frustrated in his Dutch workplace by the need to grin and bear yet another round of suggestions and comments from a large number of colleagues and unsuspecting passers-by on something that really should have been done and dusted and at the printers last week.

In the case of the Rijksmuseum renovation, some eighty licences needed to be sought, all requiring considerable overleg.  Don’t ask me why those licences didn’t need to be sought, consulted on, modified, agreed and granted before construction began.  

There was another stereotypically Dutch sticking point in the whole Rijksmuseum project; bicycles. You see a cycle path has cut through the middle of the museum, via an elegant archway, ever since it was opened in 1885. The path was temporarily closed off during the renovations. I can’t imagine the outcry such a closure must have generated.  Nor can I imagine the clamour (nor the over-overleg) that ensued when it was announced a couple of years ago that, come to think of it, the cycleway would need to be permanently closed.  Even as a relative newcomer to this country, I know that some issues just aren’t worth “overlegging” about, because you’re simply never going to win. The preposterous suggestion that cyclists should be forced to ride a few hundred extra metres around the museum, instead of pedalling straight through it, is one such issue.



As the museum's Collections Director noted after the cycling lobby emerged victorious from the discussions, "The bicycle is folkloric in the Netherlands. Touch the bicycle, and you touch freedom." 

What I believe he really wanted to say, but didn't (probably because he lacked my insight into cultural wit) was "Amsterdam cyclists are the hub of this city, and they have generated a chain reaction that has forced us to find a bespoke solution to this controversy, meaning we have had to back-pedal on our plans to saddle people with an extended route around the rim of the museum".

So bicycles, that most beloved and undisputed Dutch icon will once more wheel along the path that bisects the Rijksmuseum.  I am so pleased. The cyclists, and the collisions with pedestrians that the museum’s director is convinced will occur, will be on exhibition for museum visitors to observe through renovated glass walls, in what I personally think will be a magnificent piece of constantly moving art, which could well become the Rijksmuseum’s greatest contemporary masterpiece.