Flying the flag

by Marianne on 11/05/2012

School is having a ‘themaweek’ next week and the subject is Great Britain. Apart from hooligans, vandals and arsonists and, at the other extreme, over-thanking and over-pleasing, and maybe at the interface of the two, vandals who say and hooligans who say sorry, I am stumped when asked to come up with British things.

They want to decorate the classrooms . ‘You’ve probably got lots of British things at home,’ someone said. A scan of the house gave us a pound coin, a 1977 Silver Jubilee coin, a small Union Jack flag, some fossils from the Jurassic Coast (although it’s questionable as to whether they count as British because Britain didn’t even exist in the Jurassic Period) and stacks of books in English.

I didn’t find any London buses, Beefeaters, busby-wearing Buckingham Palace Guards, Stonehenges or Morris dancers lurking in the cupboards either.

The week is going to be kicked off by hoisting the Union Jack and singing the British national anthem, which I’m looking forward in terms of surreal moments that brighten an otherwise dull existence.

However, the whole idea of hoisting the flag and singing the Union Jack doesn’t feel British either. I do know the words of the British national anthem, it’s true, but the most I have ever sung it is this last week as I have waved the flag and marched round the kitchen irritating the children by singing it in my most patriotic voice followed by ’Rule Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.

I feel like Margaret Thatcher. I’m probably starting to resemble her too. And that’s the point about waving flags and singing patriotic songs it’s been hijacked by the Right, or has always belonged to the Right, and fits an 18th century view of the world that I can’t take seriously.

To fly the Dutch flag more normal, so for the teachers it seemed reasonable to ask if I had a Union Jack flag they could borrow. Maybe it’s just the people I associate with but I think that flag flying isn’t something the general public goes in for in Britain. Yes, you might get children out with little Union Jack flags if a member of the Royal Family is in town, certain pockets of tory-voting society will want a village flagpole and village flag, and the Union Jack seems to be popular as a cushion cover at the moment but proper flags that you hang in your own front garden? I’m not so sure.

Our house here has a flagpole on the front drive that is as tall as the house. We certainly didn’t put in. I can’t imagine ever thinking, hmm I have some money saved. What shall I buy? I know! A flag and flagpole! The biggest one in the street! I’ve always coveted my own flagpole and now I shall have one.

We also have a Dutch flag to fly on our flagpole. The previous owners left it behind.

Our house isn’t the only one with flag-flying accoutrements either: the apartments next door have a flagpole that is even higher than ours, and their flag is the size of an olympic swimming pool. Most of the street have some kind of equipment. It’s a flag-flyers paradise.

 

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Chimes of doom and inner children

by Marianne on 20/04/2012

It was clanging chimes of doom – to quote Band Aid’s ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ – here this week as the children appeared with letters announcing the avondvierdaagse (see here or here for my annual avondvierdaagse moan), although looking back at last year’s avondvierdaagse post I claim to have enjoyed it then. Must be all those narcotics in the hagelslag.

To make it even worse it’s on my birthday this year. What more could one wish for than a birthday traipsing gezelligly through the woods with four million other people, probably in the pouring rain, followed by a bit of swaying to Marco Borsato/Jan Smit/Frans Bauer and even an oompah band on the last day? Who needs presents? Who needs cake? Who needs circles of doom?

‘Would you like to do the avondvierdaagse this year?’ I asked the kids. ‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to.’

That tactic didn’t work. They wanted to.

Then out later I saw some reiki centre offering to help me find my innerlijk kind (inner child).

Maybe that would help. Maybe my innerlijk kind would help me enjoy the avondvierdaagse. So I got home and did a spot of diy innerlijk kind seeking.

It took a bit of tracking down my innerlijk kind but I finally found her playing on the swings in a dark corner of my soul.

After telling me to stop my cheerful rendition of ‘my old man said follow the van/ don’t dilly dally on the way’ and then arguing with her brother (I have two innerlijke kinderen I discovered) about who got to go on the red swing, she presented me with a letter about an innerlijke avondvierdaagse. Fuck that, I thought.

I sent them to bed early and went out for a few beers with my inner adult instead.

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How did she know?

April 17, 2012

The other day I’d arranged to pick up Daughter’s friend from school and give her a bit of lunch. When the children’s friends come to lunch I always have minor dilemmas about accidentally cooking up something dauntingly British. This time I had already considered the hagelslag element and decided, seeing as it was Daughter’s birthday, it would be [...]

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String and rope

April 3, 2012

The other day Son was packing an old suitcase to go on the Titanic. The suitcase doesn’t have a handle and, after he had endeavoured to weave a new handle out of string, we decided a length of rope was what he needed. Rope being man stuff , I asked Husband if he knew where any was. This led [...]

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Haringhappen and kipper horror

March 30, 2012

Despite living here so long, I have never done haringhappen. It is too close to a moment of kipper horror as a child: school lunch at infant school/ the kipper on my plate/ the moetish dinner lady/ the kipper on my plate/ the dread/ the kipper on my plate/ my pudding the last one on the counter/ the kipper on my [...]

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Barn and church doors

March 26, 2012

We spend the cold months calling after the children as they run out of the kitchen, ‘shut the door’ or ’deur dicht’. This is from when we first need to put on the heating sometime in the autumn. It takes until the beginning of March to train them. During that time, as we need to convey [...]

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Cockroaches and government men

March 20, 2012

The doorbell went the other day. It was two men in overcoats each carrying a thick book. If our house had the equivalent of caller ID, one of those spyholes I guess, I wouldn’t have opened the door. ‘We want to talk to you about the regering,’ said the one standing in front. This threw [...]

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A wal on the wal

March 5, 2012

Last week in Vlissingen we found a porpoise on the rocks next to the breakwater. Apart from a small graze on its nose, it had no obvious injuries. It looked as though it had fallen from the sky, but we thought it more likely that it had been thrown against the rocks and had stranded [...]

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Singing in English

February 23, 2012

I’ve always been irritated by Dutch bands singing in English and wonder if I’m being slightly irrational. As soon as I hear a Dutch band singing in English I’ll be trying to find the mistakes. I think this is a way for me to justify my irritation but, if I’m honest the irritation always arises [...]

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Welcome Pack

February 16, 2012

I have made two recent discoveries, the first of which I should have known about a long time ago: gestampte muisjes. How could I have missed a product the name of which translates as crushed mice? And, more importantly, how could I have missed the sheer deliciousness of gestampte muisjes on buttered toast? (Although I [...]

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