Do I look like a bank?




Don't think so. My monthly income hovers around 920 euro's. That's including child-benefit, single-parent tax return and the odd job. The total amount a month I pay for rent, electric, phone, insurances, healthplan, school, my kids' future studies and the likes comes down to 740 euro's a month. Should I on top of that all pay the 150 euro's a month for my daughter that would leave me with about 30 euro's a month for me and my son to live from. That's 1 euro (or 95 dollarcents or 67 pence) a day.

An other ex and neighbour asked me if I could lend her and her boyfriend 20 euro's for catfood.
Sure! When hell freezes over that is...




That's probably the same thing George W thinks when people talk about lifting the embargo on Cuba. Of course the fact that 800,000 of his voters want Castro out of Cuba has nothing to do with it. Nor the fact that his brother Jeb needs those votes to get re-elected as governor of Florida.
Sure. And the US president actually wants the world to become a nicer place.
NOT.




She sees me as her protector. I'd love to hold her and keep away all the evils in the world. Can't do that. What I can do is teach her that with her sweetness she can make this world a better place.


I love working with kids.





This past week we've been practising very hard for our Halloween-performance.
It started as soon as I returned from out holiday. I barely had time to go passed my house to collect my heels! Monday we did some bed-scenes at my place and wednesday there was another genereal rehearsal. I also had to work, my son had his karate and I skipped Pencak Silat to save energy for this coming week.
Next to that I got asked by Erwin Olaf to mud-wrestle the night after we've done the Timewarp on an Utrecht-stage. In Groningen.

Strange innit? That at times you can love your kid so much that it actually physically hurts. That faint smile with trembling underlip when he said goodbye to his "uncle Vike" at he Grove Park cemetery. That undiluted fun he had when he discovered the guy selling us a souvenir
was German and spoke Dutch. That hand squeezing mine with excitement as we cued up for The London Eye. Playing Air Hockey with his dad in an arcade at the Mumbles Pier. Sitting on a park bench, sharing a bag of Hula Hoops. Nibbling roasted peanuts we bought from a lady straight out of a Dickens book. Playing catch with his newfound friend Daniel: taking turns in shooting and catching a crossbow-dart. Ferdinand talked to him in Dutch, Daniel answered in signs. Only on occasion the boy's mom and I where asked to translate a question. At what moment in our lifes do we loose the ability to communicate? When do we forget how to have fun?











Mother Teresa has been beatified. To me a sure sign that the Pope will soon follow his predesessors and leave my beloved planet in his current form.
Not sure if his decision is the correct one, though. Of course she did do a lot for the poor and the suffering. On the other hand: "Love thy neighbour as thy love thyself" she didn't put in practise: If you were not a catholic she would hardly speak to you. Let alone help you. How's that for an almost-saint? Don't get me wrong: it's great what she's done in her life but IMHO your're wrong if you ask something back for your help
even if it's just expecting others to pray to your favourite god.


On the other hand I know this lady who's raising 47 children all by herself.
Their biological parents are either junkies, dead or have otherwise deserted their children. She feeds them, clothes them, makes sure they go to school, teaches them to take care of themselves and eachother. She swears and drinks but is not abusive.
She gives them a chance. Should she go to hell because she's not a catholic?
Come on! Jesus drank and I'll bet a couple of curses left Moses' lips when he dropped one of the stone tables to leave the world with ten commandments in stead of fifteen...

Am in London right now and (as you will have figured out for yourselves) haven't found/made the time to update this weblog.

So..sue me!




Will be going to Swansea for a few days, then back to England and back to Amsterdam.


Amongst other things neighbour Janine and I did a performance act in Medusa. She played the mythic namegiver and I was allowed to be her slave....




The night before Thura and I spent at Ruigoord, an artist freehaven just outside the great city of Amsterdam.
Tell you more later 'cause I'm late as it is for my appointment at a cemetery...




(Yes, with a dead person)
(

Mabel Wisse Smit, fiancee to Johan Friso, our crown prince's brother apparently had some kind of relationship with Klaas Bruinsma. He was the country's leading criminal.
Until his violent death in 1989 that is. Until recently she was in state of denial but Peter R. de Vries, host of a crime-investigation TV-show, found out she had stayed on Mr. Bruinsma's yacht on several occassions. He never allowed anyone on it who wasn't either a bodyguard, lover or close personal friend so she must have been one of those three.
Of course: everyone lies on occassion. Yes, my dear readers, even self-proclaimed saint and Christian George W. Bush. Who, by the way is gonna win the 2004 presidential elections according to this article.
In short: all four companies producing the ballot-machines being used are in the hands of his relatives or friends...


By the way: ever read "Into the Buzzsaw"?




Saturday the house got done. I cleaned the garden, vacuumed the bedroom, changed the sheets, mopped the kitchen...and all this while my son was having a good time at his friend Pjotr's birthday. He's the son of ex number three: Zanne. After I picked him up we went straight down to the opening of Erwin Olaf's latest exbibition called "Seperation". Thanks to Thura and Shirley, the photographer's personal assistent we got in. There we also met Sharon and her husband and I think I also fell in love on the spot. I can tell 'cause I didn't know what to say when I introduced myself to the lady in question: Michou. I gave her my card. See what happens...


Sunday neighbour Johanna came to see her son and Ferdinand joined me at the rehearsels. For the first time in years he saw his dad wearing high heals proclaiming:"I feel sexy". That evening only Bas showed up to play cards.
A few minutes after he had gone neighbour Angèlique came for tea and a chat.


Monday after an interesting dream I took my son to school. On my return neighbour A joined me for breakfast. She was followed
by neighbour Petra with whom I had a nice talk and a cup of tea. That evening I had time to read while my son had his weekly karate-lesson and started in Foucoult's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Try it!


Tuesday I had a very nice day at work and the commercial of Verkade-cookies featuring yours truly was first aired. After a few years I renewed the contact with Magda from Magical Pictures.


Wednesday one of the children at work celebrated her tenth birthday with very nice cookies and I had put together a birthday-calender that needed to be finished by the kids themselves.


Thursday in the morning I'd done some work for my son's school's first annual bookmarket. Good fun to see all thos old books like catholic shoolgirls etiquete-books from the 1930's and a course in how to make Eskimo-wants...;-)
Friday luckily my colleague Jennifer let me go home half an hour earlier so my son and I were only an hour late for Noah's (Thura's son) birthday.
Good fun seeing a few familiar faces and on top of that I got a bit drunk.
*Just a bit drunk and just enough...)