Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Today was a real treat, as I had front row, centre seat tickets to see Mamma Mia in Carré. And not just two of them, either, but also a third, so that Eloïse could enjoy it, too.

It was another freezing cold day, with snow falling for most of the morning. After lunch, we dropped Lucas at Mina’s house, as she had kindly offered to babysit him, and then biked through the snow to Carré for Eloïse’s first adult musical. She’d seen Nijntje Op Vakantie a couple of years ago, but this was theatre for grown-ups; the real thing!

She did very well, I must say. It’s a three hour show with only a short intermission, which is a long time for a four year old to have to sit still and not talk. She seemed enthralled, overwhelmed even, by the action taking place on the stage just a few centimetres in front of her nose. We really did have the best seats in the house and saw every aspect of the show in glorious detail.

We’d played the CD of the musical to her a few times in the days leading up to the show, and we’ll try to engrave in her mind the memory of the experience today with a few more plays in the days ahead. Eloïse says that her favourite songs today were Mamma Mia itself, Dancing Queen and Zo Ben Ik, Zo Ben Jij (better known as Knowing Me, Knowing You).

This was my fourth time to see Mamma Mia and, like the music of Abba itself, the show never loses its sheen through repetition. The song-writing genius of the Andersson and Ulvaeus partnership is an enduring cultural legacy, no matter how uncool it may be to confess such a belief.

An unusual experience for us all today, as Sarah and I drove to Ahoy in Rotterdam to watch a tennis match, of all things.

Our bank had given us tickets for one of the semi-finals of the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament, in which the Swede, Robin Söderling, took on the Russian, Nikolaj Davydenko.

Although I drove us there wondering why on earth we were even bothering, I have to admit that, once the match got under way, I quickly became involved in it. The players were very well matched and there were some breathtaking rallies.

We had great seats and there was plenty of free booze and grub to go around. In the end, Söderling beat Davydenko with 7-6, 6-4.

Perhaps the most newsworthy element of the day was that we were without our children for no fewer than seven hours, an absolute record to date. Many thanks to Rachel and Brian for babysitting.

Rachel even went so far as to say that Lucas was so relaxed, she thinks she could have taken him overnight. Proof once again, if any were still needed, that our son has quite a different personality to our daughter, especially when adjusting for age.

It seems as if it were only yesterday that I was registering my daughter’s birth in a stuffy office somewhere in Sunnyvale, California (if I remember correctly).

How can it be, then, that I’ve already had to renew her passport?

I picked up new passports for Eloïse and myself today. The old ones have certainly seen a lot of action since they were granted back in 2005 by the embassy in Los Angeles, courtesy of the consulate in San Mateo (which has just moved to the altogether more sensible location of San Francisco).

She once again resembles the girl in the photo, the previous one having been taken in Los Altos, when she was just two weeks old. Border guards have been taking it on faith that she was the person pictured in the passport.

How time flies.

I wouldn’t normally blog about the weather. Even by my standards, it doesn’t get much mundaner than that. How old and farty can you get?

Today, though, I feel compelled to remark on the winter we’re having. I can’t recall a winter in Amsterdam that was this cold and during which snow fell on so many separate occasions.

Not only has the temperature seldom crept above zero since early December — it’s -3°C as I write this — but snow is an almost weekly occurrence. That may not sound very impressive if you live in a part of the world used to cold winters, but it’s quite unusual here. Here, an entire winter can pass without a single snowflake falling. We don’t usually get many days under zero, either, never mind the -10°C we’ve felt this winter.

The children love it, of course, but biking Eloïse to school through the snow is getting tedious, particularly on days that it has melted and refrozen. There are few things more treacherous than frozen slush. I’ve had a few skids this winter, but haven’t yet fallen off. Touch wood.

Our car hasn’t been so lucky. There was an occasion in mid-December that I had to take the car out and it happened to be the morning after the first snowfall. At the forefront of my mind was the thought that I should drive cautiously and deliberately. Applying such commendably wise circumspection, I pulled away, drove slowly around the corner and skidded out of the first bend, barely 100m from our house. I trashed a bike rack, but somehow managed to spare the bikes parked in it.

As I got out to inspect the damage to the car, I nearly fell on my arse. As I regained my footing and rose above the level of the car door, a cyclist who had passed me was now lying in the road, having fallen off her bike. It was really, really slippery.

Anyway, I had managed to catch that bike rack really unfortunately and one of the curved, steel wheel holders had punctured the front of the car body. I feared that this had caused more damage than was immediately obvious and it soon turned out that I wasn’t wrong. Once on the motorway, it became apparent that the adaptive cruise control no longer worked. More specifically, the radar could no longer detect cars in front of mine, causing my car to try to accelerate through the vehicles in front of me as if they weren’t there.

The only positive element to this story, if you can call it that, is that I managed to prang the car so soon after the very first snowfall. This meant that I was able to book the car in for repair in late January.

Since that day, snow has fallen many times and there have been a huge number of accidents across the country. We’re not used to this kind of weather, you see. If I were to prang the car today, it wouldn’t be up for repair until April.

The damage also had the unfortunate consequence of short-circuiting some part of the car’s electrical system, which caused its battery to completely drain within a few days. I had to drive it every few days, just to keep the battery alive.

On precisely the day that I had to take the car to the garage to be repaired, the battery was stone dead and I had to make use of my Audi mobility guarantee to call a mechanic out to come and start it for me with jumper leads.

The car is repaired now and I’m several grand worse off, but at least no-one was hurt in the accident. The battery also no longer drains, which the garage thought was unrelated to the damage I’d incurred, but in view of the fact that the problem hasn’t reoccurred since they fixed the adaptive cruise control, it must have been related.

Last night, snow fell yet again and, proving Sod’s Law, today was, of course, another day that I had to drive. The car had to go to the garage again, this time for periodic service and to undergo its first APK, which is akin to the British MOT, in other words a road worthiness test. New cars don’t have to have an APK until they’re four years old, so this is our first.

I made it there in one piece, but I’ve already seen a couple of accidents today. And as I write this sentence, it’s starting to snow again outside my window.

The snow certainly is beautiful and bestows on the world outside a pristine quality otherwise sadly lacking, but I’ve had enough of it now. I’m ready for the spring.

Ian just informed me that he got a bill from the health insurance company.  Apparently his recent operation and hospital stay weren’t paid for by the insurance because he has a deductible.  I immediately thought that it was unfortunate that he’s got the lower plan instead of the higher one that the children and I have and that maybe our reasonably-priced insurance wasn’t so reasonable after all.  He has one of the lowest coverage options because he knows that he’s very unlikely to go to the various voodoo doctors that I favor.

Anyway, I cringed and braced myself for the damage.  The amount?  €146.97.  That’s the entire cost of the laproscopic hernia operation and anesthesiologist (it was a general anesthetic), prep time in the hospital beforehand and about four hours in a bed afterwards.

It makes the €550 that my midwife billed for pre- and post-natal care and Lukie’s birth seem downright expensive.