Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands announces her abdication

The Dutch monarch has just a short time ago announced her abdication as Queen of the Netherlands, in favour of her son, Prince Willem-Alexander, with the change taking place formally on 30th April 2013 - see (*) at end. The Queen said in her television broadcast to the Dutch people that she had been thinking about this for some time; she is approaching her 75th birthday (which she will reach on Thursday 31st January). She herself succeeded to the throne in 1980, when her own mother Queen Juliana abdicated at the age of 70, whose own mother Queen Wilhelmina abdicated in 1948 at the age of 68. Prince Willem-Alexander is currently 45, so if recent tradition holds and he enjoys a reasonably-long life he will presumably be on the throne for 25-35 years. The BBC has a report here.



This practice is very different from our own in the UK, where the monarch normally reigns until He or She dies.

(*) 30th April is celebrated as "Queen's Day"; about Princess's/Queen's Day - this has since 1885 been celebrated as Princess's Day, later Queen's Day, although it was originally observed on 31st August, the 5th birthday of the then Princess Wilhelmina, being moved to 30th April in 1948, on the accession to the throne of Queen Juliana as this was her birthday and this tradition has been maintained by Queen Beatrix, although her own birthday is on 31st January.

Now if only the English and Scottish FAs followed suit ...

- a television advert by the Dutch FA lamenting the lack of 'out' gay footballers.

My brother named "Carnival Prince of Sweikhuizen"

My brother becomes this year's "Carnival Prince of Sweikhuizen", South Limburg, The Netherlands, the village where he now lives; it is quite a big event locally. You can see a video-clip of the event as shown on a local television station in the Netherlands by clicking here.

You can see a local print article about it here (obviously the article is in Dutch, which I'm afraid I can't help you with, but there is a nice photograph); the young lady in the photograph is the Carnival Princess for this year, Lorelle I.
Congratulations to them both!

Nanny-State Netherlands says 'No!'

From a British perspective it sometimes seems that we have the most complete 'nanny-state' in the world (why, there's even a blog dedicated to the premise), but we have a close rival in the Netherlands, whose government apparatus has stepped in to prevent a 13 (going on 14) year old girl from launching her attempt to sail solo around the world. Here are a few excerpts from the BBC report which illustrate perfectly the suffocating effect on a young person's courage, when even the judge admits her sailing-skills are not in question:

Judges at the Utrecht district court said Ms Dekker's sailing skills were not in question. But they said her safety plan was not fully developed and that she had no experience with sleep management.

- the final sentence really takes the biscuit! Just how much 'experience' do the judges at the Utrecht district court have with this thing called 'sleep management'? And just what does this thing about her safety plan not being fully developed mean? Not all risks can, or necessarily should, be ironed out before anyone steps out of their front doors in the morning. I might be involved in an accident later this morning when I go out in my car to do some shopping; perhaps this (I hope!) non-existent accident will be 'my fault', or perhaps not. Does that mean I should just stay in bed all day, to avoid the risk?

Interestingly just yesterday Prince Edward's off-the-cuff and perfectly reasonable if infelicitously-expressed comments (about the untimely death of a young person walking in the bush in Australia) seem to have sparked off both remarks about 'another Royal gaffe' in the style of his father The Duke of Edinburgh, who started the 'Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme', but also challenging the [obvious to me] fact that some young people do seek out thrills and yes, DANGER, quite deliberately. There are other points of view, however. Poor Price Edward - his youthful folly with the "It's a knock-out" games is never likely to be forgotten, nor his petulance when criticised for the flop it turned out to be. But however clumsily he may have expressed himself recently in Australia, I think youngsters do relish a certain element of 'risk' and being taken out of their usual 'comfort zones'. It's just a pity that 'the State' seems to want populations to be totally-insulated and docile 'consumers' unable to think for themselves or to do (or be allowed to do) anything for themselves. Would we have ever travelled to what is now the United States or Australia, for example, if the explorers who undertook those quite dangerous expeditions (not to say fatal for some of the early pioneers!) had not had the courage to sail off in pretty small and flimsy craft with none of the modern technologies we take for granted such as GPS or satellite-internet? With this attitude is it ever likely we'll make a return visit to the moon, never mind attempt visits to Mars and beyond?! Rant ends ...

Finally, I wish the young Dutch person mentioned at the beginning of this article every success when she finally manages to escape the clutches of the Dutch 'State' next summer.

European Parliament elections - 4 June - day 1

The elections for the European Parliament start today, with voting taking place today in:

Netherlands
United Kingdom

If you have a vote, please (please!) use it! Don't waste it by not voting, whichever political party or grouping you choose to support. The more people who vote, the more accurate will be the result. That's all I ask - that as many of us as possible exercise our right to vote. Thank you!

I'll be off out in the next hour or so to vote myself - obviously I'd like as many as possible in the UK to vote Conservative. I know that many readers of my blog vote for other political parties. Fair enough, but the important thing is that as many of those entitled to vote do so. In my area (Scotland) there is certainly plenty of choice and the same applies in every region of the UK.

In the UK, 'Polling Places' remain open until 10pm tonight (22.00 BST). Please exercise your right to vote!

Bill winds down in Spain - if only briefly!

Well, I've been here in Spain since 11th August, but this all too brief stay comes to an end on Friday, when I leave here to return to Scotland. However, as Arnie said:
"I'll be back!"

In fact I am going to be back here in less than two weeks, staying until the end of the month, to permit me to participate in the AGM of Mazarron Country Club, scheduled for 26th September; more about that in due course, I've no doubt. Apart from attending the AGM I hope to accomplish a couple of other things next time I'm here, too.
javascript:void(0)
To round things off for this time I'm going to end with a photographic round-up since I left Nairn on 11th August of a very few of the things I've experienced since then. The first photograph relates to my brother's 60th birthday party in the Netherlands (where he lives), which I alluded to here:

The table with a few of the gifts my brother received; the centrepiece is a commemorative card which our mother had made with photographs taken when he was young; I actually appear in one of the photographs, as indicated - Click on the image to see an enlargement -

Now moving on to Spain!

- The disc of the sun seen from my terrace at sunset one evening - an almost mediaeval goat-herding scene very close by - an amusing name on a van parked at the restaurant one day (I think the firm makes biscuits and the like) - Click on any image to see an enlargement -

Finally some photographs of a typical lunch for me here in Spain; the photographs were in fact taken yesterday. I like food to be presented attractively, even if I'm going to be eating on my own; it should be a feast for the eyes as well as for the taste buds. It can also be a little 'whimsical', as the third photograph of my 'pudding' (a choc ice) shows. That's my attitude to food, at any rate.

- A plate of Serrano Ham with some herbed green olives and some small gherkins ('pepinillos'), all drizzled with virgin olive oil - a salad arranged like a flower or an emblem, made up of endive leaves, a sliced tomato, a thinly-sliced radish, on a bed of rocket and chopped endive, sprinkled with virgin olive oil, chopped parsley and low-sodium salt - a choc ice in which the sugar is mostly replaced by 'polyols'(*) - a small coffee cup of ground decaffeinated espresso coffee with cream - Click on any image to see an enlargement -

(*) - Polyols are discussed here; I am not and never have been diabetic, but I follow a low-carbohydrate diet, often known as the Atkins diet, an approach to eating I have been following since June 2003.

Flags flying in the Netherlands

Well, I am now safely ensconced in my house in Spain, arriving here in the middle of Monday-night/Tuesday-morning; the flight into Alicante (from Maastricht-Aachen) arrived bang on schedule at 11.30pm and my luggage was delivered fairly rapidly. However, I then had to stand in the queue to get my rental car and whilst there were two counter-staff on duty at the company I am using, one had to leave the office on a couple of occasions to sort out problems for previous renters. In any case, by about 1am I was on my way, arriving here at about 2.30am (ouch!) - the sensible thing would have been to get off to bed more or less immediately, but I was too 'hyper' to do that, so ended up unpacking my suitcases and getting some other things out of boxes and storing it all away, then I read for a while in bed before finally putting the light off at at 4.10am . Oh, did I mention there was no water when I arrived? There was power, though, so I was able to put the air-conditioning on as it was still very warm, probably about 26 degC outside and several degrees higher inside. Up again at about 7.30am, surprisingly refreshed and apart from a brief nap in the afternoon, made it through the day and evening more or less normally. However, I had a good sleep on Tuesday night!

My journey from Scotland began last Wednesday morning (6th August) with a flight down to London Luton from Inverness, with a delayed departure of about 90 minutes, but as I had such a long time to wait for my Amsterdam flight at Luton, it made no difference to my connecting flight, which left on schedule. After a lengthy walk through Amsterdam airport (and a scrum waiting to get through passport control), I got a train (clean and, of course it being the Netherlands, absolutely bang on schedule) for Sittard in the Limburg region in the far south of the country, not far from Maastricht and by just after 10pm was sitting in my brother and sister-in-law's house. The next five days were given over to entertaining and parties, with an excursion onto the water on my brother's boat, mainly to celebrate his 60th birthday and their fifth wedding anniversary, as well as her birthday, which all fall withing about a month of each other. Today 14th August is in fact his actual birthday, although the celebrations were held last weekend so as many as possible could be there (roughly 80 people attended the main party in the village hall last Saturday evening) and as it's the custom in the Netherlands to fly flags outside homes to mark significant events in the lives of the families who live there, my brother and sister-in-law followed this very nice tradition, as the photograph taken of the front of their house last weekend shows:

To celebrate a 60th birthday, a 5th wedding anniversary and a birthday

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a supporter of Scottish independence/separation from the UK so I would of course have flown the Union Flag, rather than the Scottish 'Saltire', although I am just as proud of my 'Scottishness' as I am of my 'Britishness', just as I expect most English, Welsh and Northern Irish people are proud of their respective heritages too. However, my brother used to live in the Westminister constituency of Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP and currently First Minister of Scotland and there is no doubt that his voting history is one of the reasons for the handsome majorities that Mr Salmond has achieved both as an MP in Westminster and latterly as an MSP in the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, even though like Sean Connery he has chosen not to live in the country whose political separation from its current arrangements he supports; this is just a friendly brotherly 'dig', of course - and shows that within families there are healthily differing viewpoints on many matters without affecting the basic friendliness of our relationship. Happy Birthday!

Bill signs-off from Mazarron - tomorrow my journey home to Scotland begins

I shall be departing Mazarron tomorrow morning to begin my journey back to Scotland, which I am scheduled to reach on Tuesday 6th May after having driven north through Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands, spending some nights in hotels, others with friends and/or family.

Earlier today I recorded a couple viedos of my preparations for my final lunch in the house here; the last videos I uploaded (see here) had music tracks, but no spoken content from me and someone made a comment that he would prefer to hear me talk, rather than have music - so you are duly warned, that is what you get in these latest videos! Whilst preparing lunch I run through my itinerary for the next 10 or so days in some detail - I hope you find it informative even if not precisely 'enjoyable'; I'm no professional as you will readily observe!

In the first video I prepare a salad and provide a running commentary of the food I am preparing and the itinerary I shall be folowing for the first several days of my journey to Scotland (as with the lunch in the earlier videos, although I prepare the salad first, I eat it after what you will see me preparing in the second video):



In the next video I'm preparing some salchichon (a little like a sliced chorizo sausage) and continuing my narrative of the rest of my journey back to Nairn:



I'll be in Nairn until the first week of August, then flying to the Netherlands for a party, then flying on to Mazarron for several weeks until early September. No doubt there'll be enough to pique my interest in doing some blog posts during the time I'm back in Scotland. Probably I'll manage to do a few blog posts during my journey home, assuming the hotel wi-fi is working. However, until then, this is Bill signing of from Mazarron for the present ...

Gay kiss no-go at the Coliseum and homophobia in the Netherlands

A male gay couple who kissed in front of the Coliseum in Rome have been arrested and charged with 'lewd conduct'. If convicted the men could be gaoled for upto two years.

It won't surprise anyone that the police have naturally denied their action was motivated by homophobia, but it will also be no surprise that they have nevertheless been unable to demonstrate that a heterosexual couple has ever been arrested for kissing there. Gay group Arcigay has called for a "national gay kiss-in" at the Coliseum on August 2 to highlight just how ridiculous are the police's actions.

Meanwhile in Amsterdam a 'hetero boat' is to be added to the city's gay parade on water to show solidarity with gays and lesbians who have been attacked physically for the similar 'crime' of kissing in public; it seems that homophobic attacks have been increasing recently in Holland.

Bill signs off from Murcia ... but, I'll be back !

To coin a phrase. I leave from here (near Mazarron) late tomorrow morning, heading for Valencia as the first overnight stay on my road trip up to the Netherlands - I hope to reach Sweikhuizen, not far from Maastricht, during Sunday afternoon and back home in Nairn the following Saturday afternoon. I'll probably be crossing over the border from Spain into France sometime in the late morning of Friday, having started off from Girona after my second night away from here, heading for St-Rambert d'Albon (about 60 Km south of Lyon)

No more just now, though, I've got to get some (late even for me!) lunch and I expect the technician from the internet office where I stay to be here around 5.30pm to take back the broadband modem which they so promptly installed for me way back in January. So this evening I will be sans-internet; I'll just have to find out what happens in this evening's edition of the Archers tomorrow evening in the hotel in Valencia, assuming I can get a wi-fi connection in the room there; wi-fi is great, but if you don't have optimal reception I find it can disconnect at irritating moments.

My next likely visit out here to Mazarron (Murcia) will probably be sometime in the late Autumn to complete the formalities for the purchase of my house here; it should be ready, I supect, well before then if current progress is a guide so I may bring my Autumn trip forward a little. That'll just be for a couple of weeks, though, as the prelude to another 3-month stay beginning late-January of early-February next year. However a lot will be happening in Scotland between now and then, both in my personal life (about which I may write a little in due course) and Scottish affairs generally, assuming the May elections go the way they seem to be shaping up at present.

¡Hasta luego!

Nairn to Beaune via the Netherlands

The journey down from Inverness to the ferry terminal at Rosyth (just north of Edinburgh) last Friday was uneventful although it was very cold - there was snow at the side of the road over the high mountain passes (Slochd and Drumochter) and the rain was mixed with sleet for quite a while, but the road itself was clear and fortunately there was no ice. A bonus is that there was very little traffic, so I had a pretty clear run down.

Check-in to the ferry was rapid and pleasant and the cabin, as expected, was excellent - as was the food on board (always an important consideration for me). However, because of strong winds (in excess of 60-70mph gusts) departure was delayed for about two hours, as was our arrival the following day in Zeebrugge. However, the crossing itself was relatively smooth, a tribute to the effectiveness of the ship's stabilisers, as the sea was VERY rough.

On arrival in Zeebrugge and after exiting the ship, it was simply a matter of setting my SatNav to the address in the Netherlands (near Maastricht) where I wanted to go and about 2 hours and 20 minutes later I was driving up to the front door. I had a great weekend in the little village of Sweikhuizen, visiting with family and friends and a full weekend of activities had been planned, including a very enjoyable birthday party for the hostess of the house where I was staying. Sunday afternoon was spent walking in a group of 10 with frequent stops for coffee and cake and for beers and wine, zigzagging back and forth across the Dutch/Belgian borders.

This morning I left the Netherlands at about 9am and after about 7 hours (with a couple of breaks for coffee and for lunch) I arrived in Beaune, having driven south past Maastricht into Belgium, before arriving about 2 hours later in Luxembourg (where I re-filled the tank with fuel as petrol is much cheaper there); shortly after that I crossed over into France, passing Metz and Nancy before having a break for lunch and to give the dog some water and let her have a walk. Then it was on the road again, passing through Dijon and Gevrey-Chambertin before arriving in Beaune where I am happily installed (along with dog) in a comfortable room with wi-fi access. I've already given the dog her tea and once I have taken her for a short walk will go down to the restaurant for what I hope will be a nice meal, but certainly accompanied by a glass (or two) of rather nice wine from the Cote d'Or region; the hotel has some nice wines in its list (yum yum!).

Tomorrow I head south for Vaisons la Romaine in the Vaucluse (not far from Orange), where I shall be staying with friends so shall not have internet access again until at least Wednesday, when I hope to be in Girona for my first night in Spain.