Week 44
Week 44
On Sunday, I made the roast lamb and Janny made the cranberry cheesecake.
The Albert Heijn supermarket had a traybake in their easy meals selection. It was more than enough for three people and costs only €3,99. The New Zealand roast lamb was from a specialty catering chain and cost €30,00 - we ended up with 5 meals - 3 for the roast and 2 for bubble and squeak. My own mint sauce, the way Mum used to make it. Very occasionally, I find mint sauce in a remote shop, but they are not big lamb eaters over here.
The Boat
On Tuesday, Tjeerd and I sealed up the boat and took the doors and other wooden bits home for varnishing. The motor has been fixed. I'm now trying to learn about calculating propeller sizes. My boat specialist is going to have a look in March to see if anything can be gained by changing it. (Just a niggling suspicion on my part).
I still can't believe how bad the wood oiling turned out. This time it should be good with the two pack varnish - something I have not used before.
On Tuesday evening we had a visit from the Chairman of Wijnjewoude Energie Neutraal. I thought he was going to discuss our proposal to buy the solar panels on our roof... but it was totally something else! He has his fingers in a lot of pies - It seems there's a feud developing in the village...it sounds so small-minded to me, but perhaps it's just as likely to occur in a small village as anywhere else. Or even more so...
Apparently some costs can be reimbursed by the Local Government - so one side is claiming "fraud" and the other side "just an honest oversight" - all over a "round of beer on me". It doesn't help that one player just received a National Award and the other side probably reckons he deserves one, too. Oh dear...
So, Janny was asked for her views on how it might be resolved - because she has been for many years on various Committees and Work Groups involving both parties.
On Wednesday evening we had a much more gratifying encounter...
Janny and the clients have been assembling little cardboard houses - keeps them busy!
Janny put them on Facebook and Whatsapp - and has sold 30 of them already! - packs of 3 - as Christmas decorations...
One village girl (young woman) came to pick them up and was talking about different things, including that "one of my clients used to come to stay with you".
Just on Monday, we had seen a little blond girl and Janny said "gee, she looks like Semantha", who used to come to us 14 years ago. And two days later we got to hear what has become of her!
She's now 18 and still under care - she's receiving training to help her live in an "assisted living" situation.
Semantha was one of of our earliest kids and I remember being quite moved with the thought that we would have enormous responsibility in her upbringing. She could barely talk - at age 4.
Some of my reading...
"When America finally comes up with some pathetic excuse to abandon Ukraine, Europe will have to step up".
“Is anybody there? Does anybody care?” (American Politics)
A quote about Brexit (By an Australian)
That quote is from an Australian reader on Medium - and once again I remembered a history class with Miss Anderson in Grade 3 - in 1958- she had been talking about how "Australia had been riding on the sheep's back" for much of it's prosperity in the early years - she went on to describe Australia as "a nation of hole-diggers" - in 1958! with the lack of tertiary industry even then.
I have no idea why I remember - perhaps because I have often thought of it over the years.
The internet is the greatest crime against humanity, ever. Historically, the more our communication channels have improved, so too has our ability to spread unrest and stupid ideas.For all the good that the internet can and has delivered, somehow bad news spreads faster and in a far uglier way.That a lot of that bad news is fake just proves that deep down there are a lot of lemmings posing as concerned citizens.
A 51 year old furniture maker living on a ship.
(right click translate to English)
Ukrainian Refugees in one of our apartments?
No. We had asked the Local Government to cover the energy bills instead of the "all-in" reimbursement they are offering. They said no and so we said no. I'm really disappointed because I wanted to help - they keep saying there's a crisis, but it has dragged on for about 6 weeks now. The young chap we were dealing with couldn't make any decisions and so it all had to go back and forth. The real decision makers are obviously aware of the energy situation these days and so they didn't want any uncontrollable costs - and we didn't want to be constantly policing someone else's energy consumption. End of (that) story.
One of our existing tenants is a young woman with 2 kids - she is going to move into the much larger apartment - despite my warnings about the extra costs. She can get it covered with an increased housing/rental subsidy, she says. ( I don't know how all that works - but we did discover one time that the rental subsidy was actually more than what we were charging!).
And there's already another chap wanting to move in to the smaller apartment.
(I think one of our permits allows us to put up some holiday-only chalets - we'd probably fill them too with the current divorce rate and housing shortage).
Jigsaw Championship
The now yearly "Opsterland Jigsaw Championship" was staged at the Swingel (Local Community Centre) - Janny, sister Bertha and two nieces Jente and Marrit - came 2nd!
My Sunday morning so far has included lighting the fire for the kids out the back. One couldn't come this week because he had been bashed at school - charges are to be laid, apparently...
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