Week 52 End of Year

End of year and best wishes to all for 2024! 

Fireworks

One highlight (of many)

Audio books

The Cathars

Doing nothing

Boat musings for 2023

Ben

Opinion Panel

On New Year's Eve, we went to the house of one of Janny's sisters - 3rd night out in a row - luckily, I have to get home early (midnight!) to let Boeke out.

Buying fireworks for personal use is a "thing" here - I am always amazed at how much money some people spend...It is fairly regulated and only permitted on New Year's Eve. Some Local Governments are trying to change the culture and have banned them altogether and put on a professional display instead,

A nephew of ours organised a professional show for Wijnjewoude just to prove that it can be done - without the individual expense and the risk of injury...

...speaking of which, they also do Carbide shooting...

The carbide is wetted a bit and the churn closed off with a synthetic ball. A gas is produced in the churn. Then a little flame is held at a tiny hole in the churn. The result is an explosion, shooting the ball many metres away. The strength of the bang also depends on the duration of the gas forming.

A 23-year-old man died on Saturday during a carbide shooting in the Brabant village of Diessen. The police announced this on Saturday evening.

The accident happened around 4:40 p.m. The man suffered serious injuries and was taken to hospital in critical condition. There he died of his injuries.

In many ways, this "turn of the year" (jaarwisseling = year changing) resembled that before the corona pandemic. Despite the local bans, many fireworks were set off. Dozens of victims have been hospitalized and dozens of people have been arrested in major cities. The fire brigade also had to extinguish large and small fires.

Fireworks were banned in many places, but that was completely ignored. And hospitals report seeing higher numbers of victims than during the corona pandemic.

Seventeen victims with eye injuries from fireworks were brought to the Rotterdam Eye Hospital. Five people have now undergone surgery, a spokesman said. According to her, the injury this year is more serious than in previous years, but the spokeswoman cannot say anything about the exact severity of the injury.

As I rode my bike home at midnight, I had to dodge the fireworks on the street and I couldn't help but think about the people in the Ukraine...

One highlight of many...

Another busy year... are they getting busier?, or does it just feel that way because of getting older??

I think the highlight for me was the boat trip to Rotterdam - and the trip back again!

(But so many highlights that it doesn't seem right to single out just one - and so much to be truly thankful for!)

Week 52

I found this article about listening to audio books and podcasts... apparently becoming much more common...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/29/listening-reading-audiobooks-podcasts-generational-shift?utm_term=63ad8f5a91bb4ba9a8e466d855d1c13e&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email

Listening, that is; and perhaps more specifically, listening to things you might once have read instead. The growth of audiobooks, podcasts and even voice notes – those quick self-recorded clips that are steadily taking over from typed messages on WhatsApp and range, depending on the sender, from something like a brisk voicemail to a rambling internal monologue – reflects a steady generational shift away from eyes to ears as the way we take in the world, and perhaps also in how we understand it.

I'm averaging 8kms per day and reading many more books than I would otherwise - not to mention the endless stream of podcasts....

We had a delightful week - doing NOTHING.

We did a bit of paperwork for the end of year - although some of Janny's Computer sites wouldn't let her enter our bills until the actual end of year. Some of them allowed the information to be "parked" until the end, so it's just one click to finalise them. The few that I have to do are all out of the way.

Some of the organisations, particularly the Youth Care, require us to submit our financial report nice and early - to prove that we are still financially viable as a further safeguard for the kids.

So that's the next step - to tidy everything up for the accountant.

The rest of this week is just me writing things down - to get them in line for myself as much as anything else.

Meanwhile, it's not long to go for the boating season.

I want to have the propeller looked at re size, pitch, gear ratios, etc. Our boat expert knows such things, so he'll be looking in March and then we'll do a trip to Dokkum - no bridges that have to be opened on the way - and cheap electricity for the heater of an evening :-)

The trip to France seems to be taking a bit more shape re dates at least.

I'm hoping that Janny and I can get to Utrecht before the 15th of  May. There we pick up Frank and Pam -and Ron and Annette on Houtrib and head off to Maastricht - and beyond.

Janny will have to use public transport to get back home - presumably to be picked up by family when she gets back to Heerenveen. - or a taxi back to the haven where our car will still be waiting....ahh, the logistics of it all. Including getting sister-in-law Ankie to mind the business and a niece to look after the house and Boeke - and be a "presence" for Janny's Mum. The apartment dwellers will just have to manage (for about 5 days).

Aside: Speaking of apartment dwellers; Therese has been with us for about 5 years now - she said that she is going away for 3 months  from the start of May - to do a "cycling trip into Germany and then to the south of France". Wow! 

She has a very nice electric bike and has bought a trailer to carry her camping gear and other stuff.

She mainly wants to see the castles of the Cathars (800kms from Paris) - a bit of history that I have not heard of before...

It may have been that they got their own name from the Greek....

(Merriam-Webster)

Catharsis and cathartic both trace to the Greek word kathairein, meaning “to cleanse, purge.” Catharsis entered English as a medical term having to do with purging the body—and especially the bowels—of unwanted material. The adjective cathartic entered English with a meaning descriptive of such a physically cleansing purge. It didn’t take long for people to start using these words figuratively in reference to emotional release and spiritual cleansing.

https://about-france.com/tourism/cathar-country.htm

Thus a large part of the Languedoc, people and nobles, adopted the Cathar heresy, and by so doing distanced themselves from the French and from Rome. By the early 13th century, Catharism had taken such a strong hold in the area, that in 1208 Pope Innocent III launched the notorious Albigensian Crusade - a crusade aimed not against the Infidels, but against the "heretical" Cathars. For twenty years, crusaders, led by the Barons of France including Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, sacked and pillaged the area, massacring Cathars or converting them by force to Catholicism. In the early 1220s, the Cathars' fortunes revived, prompting a second wave of Crusading this time led by King Louis VIII and later Louis IX. Finally, most of the area was subjugated, and in 1229, the Treaty of Meaux-Paris was signed, bringing almost the whole of Occitania into the realm of the French crown. Pockets of Cathar resistance held out for the next twenty-six years.

Impregnable Puylaurent

    "Cathar country's" fortified hilltops, castles, villages and towns remain to this day as a stark reminder of the the area's turbulent history. Many of the castles predate the period of the Cathar heresy, having been built in earlier centuries as defensive positions along the changing border area between Aragon and France. During the Albigensian crusade period, many castles and other fortified positions served as strongholds for beseiged Cathars, and many witnessed atrocious massacres. 
   The Albigensian Crusade has been described as the first act of genocide in Europe, though this is surely an exaggeration; medieval wars were cruel, and acts that would be classed today as crimes against humanity, were in those days part and parcel of the strategy of conquest. The castle at Montségur remained a Cathar stronghold until 1244, when it was finally taken and 200 Cathar prisoners taken were burned alive. The last Cathar stronghold, the Chateau de Peyrepertuse, fell in 1255.

Back to boating...

Getting to Utrecht will be the longest trip (distance) that Janny and I have done together. We're also trying to plan when she can join us along the way in France - presumably by train and bus to wherever we might in be at the time. We can even consider closing the business for a week which would give her 10 actual days off.

I'm not sure yet just how I am going to get the boat back again! -😲 Brother-in-law Sipke and son Ben are two possibilities - again, it has to fit in with business and work. 

Ben can continue some of his work if we can get on line.

Other options may arise...but I think by then I will be keen to get back to Janny and the business. But again, I am reminded that she can usually do it all on her own - with help from family and the clients themselves. We're also thinking of asking for a volunteer driver to be part of our team...

It might even come to me leaving the boat somewhere and bringing it back the following year. As usual, we shall see...

I've been reading books and now blogs for many years about European boating - even before coming over here - my current research reminded me of older stories about people meeting up for various stages of a voyage - and how it all had to be arranged by letters and Post Restante, maybe a phone call or telegram...how totally wonderful the internet is these days for things like this. A far cry from "meeting under the clocks at Flinders Street Station"!

Ha! Logistics... I'm even saving Hello Fresh recipes that would be suitable to make on the boat. I'll make a list soon... One particular writer (Jack) says that he often had trouble getting bread in France - sometimes having to "book" it to be picked up the next morning.

I also have a book from Andrew and Terry about cooking on board - we might not be as extravagant if fresh food is hard to come by in some areas. Not sure about that, but many villages have been closing their "normal" shops...might mean that a bike ride is needed occasionally - fuel being more important than food, as I think about it...

Ben had New Year in Sydney and will be heading off to Hawaii before too long - then Mexico... he won't be home until April, so that gives us a target date for some things to get done...

Getting anybody to do anything, however, is the problem. For example, we ordered replacement double-glazing - but it won't get done until JUNE! And June feels so far away in any case, with the war, energy, cost of living and climate change all playing a part in our daily lives.

Our clients and to a lesser extent, our apartment dwellers all give us a sense of doing something worthwhile as we try to get through this together.

On one of the daily current affairs programs, they often do an "Opinion Panel" - doing surveys of people to get thier views on any number of topics.

One last night had the observation that "77% of people expect a lower standard of living in the Netherlands". A large percentage are also scared that government support will be reduced...