STRICTLY

Normally when out with my pipe in the very early morning I end up thinking that I should write an angry letter to the editor which I will never send. Something to the effect that "the frightful temperature at this time of year is inhuman, someone should do something, back in my day, it's the fault of all those cowardly weasels in congress AND the tariffs on China, why we used to have a decent climate until we started importing weathers from pissy turd-world countries like El Salvador, dammit!"

You can probably understand why this will never be sent.
No need to let the authorities know that I'm batshit.
That information is on a need-to-know basis.

And there is NO need to know.


That said, I suspect that Spring might finally be here. It's sunny, and not freezing at all, and was so even when I stepped out a few hours earlier. Which was rather disappointing.

Being grouchy while waking up with caffeine coursing through the veins, and my head is wreathed in fragrant whisps of aged flue-cured leaf, passing people pooing their dogs or rushing for the early bus, is part of being alive. Crucial.

Recently I have been remembering life in Valkenswaard an awful lot. That was when I was still not yet an adult. Forests. Fog. Hayfields. Grass. Gravel roads leading to vast expanses of heather. Marsh birds. Short trim high school girls before junkfood chains had conquered the world and people weren't so pudgy. And before the Dutch had become the tallest people on the planet, often making me feel like a freak midget whenever I run into Netherlandish tourists wandering around San Francisco today.

Even blond people were shorter then.

It's all that cheese, isn't it?

Can't be herring.


The last time I visited Holland I felt like a foreigner. Which I am, of course, seeing as we moved there from the States when I was a toddler and spoke English at home, but I am fluent in Dutch and speak like a normal person. So I should feel at home.
But if I were taller I'd blend in better.
In this day and age.



Dear Sir, Back in my day the coffee was better, as were pipe tobaccos and the weather.
And taller people knew their place, glandular damned freaks.
What on earth is the world coming to?
Sincerely.



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