Verandahs |
noun: plural of verandah; a porch or balcony extending along the outside of a building. Normally roofed. |
Plectrums |
noun: plural of plectrum; a small piece of plastic, metal, bone or similar, used to pluck the strings of a guitar or similar instrument. |
On 2 March 1987 my father cooked a roast chicken dinner to celebrate the 16th birthday of me and my twin brother, Nick. The two birthday boys had wrapped our scrawny little pinkie fingers around either branch of the wishbone and pulled. The bone broke in my favour and I kept my wish silent in the hope that it would come true.
Nearly 16 years later, in January 2003, I found myself en route to Holland to hang out with a couple of lesbians. Odd the way life works out if you give it time.
Sneek (which the Dutch sneakily pronounce ‘snake’) is a tiny town in the north of Holland. It’s in the Friesian region which is famous for its cows. Actually, that’s a guess, but relax, I’m not trying to write a guidebook, but it is called the Friesian region so there has to be some kind of cow connection.
I didn’t plan on spending very long in Sneek. Even Nene, the woman I was set to meet, had told me there wasn’t a lot to see here so I figured once I’d got a couple of ’whacks from her I’d return to Amsterdam for the night and work out my next trip from there. That way I’d be able to indulge in some less cow-based fun as well.
I’d never been to Holland before but my first impression was good. I bought a sandwich from a fast food restaurant at the train station. It wasn’t a special sandwich, in fact it was pretty much what you expect to find at a train-station fast-food outlet and yet it did possess one truly remarkable quality: it looked exactly like the picture that was displayed above the counter.
Wherever else I’ve been in the world it seems to be standard practice in these so-called restaurants to display pictures of food that look at least three times better than the corresponding item in real life. It might entice you, but it inevitably leaves you feeling disappointed when the fresh, juicy, plump item you plumped for turns out to be a stale, dry and limp imitation. Not in Holland, where the picture accurately depicts the thoroughly average and dull sandwich on offer. It’s less enticing to be sure, but I left feeling satisfied that I’d got what I paid for. My expectations weren’t dashed on the rocks simply because they were never raised high enough.
That seemed to sum up Holland for me. Nothing was spectacular, but everything did what it said it would do. The trains seemed as dirty and smelly and poorly maintained as British trains and the journey from Amsterdam to Amersfort to Leeuwarden to Sneek seemed to take an inordinately long time, but that was OK because the timetable said it would.
Sneek itself was beautiful. It was early evening when I got there and the light was drawing in, but a light dusting of snow was adding a highlight to the small turrets and spires of the old and ornate architecture and a comforting crunch underfoot. A huge watertower dominated the skyline looking like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s Caractacus Potts had turned his mind to designing a redbrick space rocket. In the sixteenth century the town had been a fortress waterport and what looked like a tiny fairytale castle was still standing over the waterway to the old town.
Beyond this the roads grew progressively smaller and more crooked. As I walked along the narrow lanes there were times when it seemed the sky had disappeared and I was alone with my frosty breath but I knew I was closing in on my target.
I knew Nene’s partner Corrie was an artist. She sold her paintings from a small artist’s studio in the old part of Sneek and the two of them lived in an apartment above the studio.
As well as their apartment the two shared a space on the world wide web and from my look around their site I was familiar with Corrie’s painting style: funny portraits of round-bellied, round-faced figures made with a clean line and bold colours in acrylic and ink. When I found a collection of these on small 10 cm square blocks of wood staring out at me from a window I knew I’d found the home of Verandahs Plectrums.
Nene welcomed me in. She had short, wispy blonde hair, a round face, a button nose and a big smile.
‘Come on in,’ she said. I was surprised to hear an American accent, one with a hint of a soft Southern, Gone With The Wind drawl. ‘Be careful on the stairs, they’re a bit steep.’
I clambered up behind her on the stairs that were more than ‘a bit steep’. Any steeper and it would have been a ladder. I gripped the banister tightly but it felt like it was just as likely to come away in my hand as it was to offer me any stability.
We emerged in a tiny living room-cum-kitchen. Actually it was more of a kitchenette. Come to think of it, it was more of a living-roomette too. It was tiny. And it was full. Full of homely clutter but also occupied by three people (Nene, Corrie and me), one dog (Mo), two guinea pigs (Elvis and Muk), six zebra finches (Coco and Babette and their four offspring Lola, Trudy, Boppi and Flo) and two computers.
I’d like to say that the zebra finches were proof of evolution; some hybrid as strange as Gish’s fictional whalecow, a stepping stone on the evolutionary journey from finch to zebra but, disappointingly, they’re all finch and no zebra. I examined Boppi, Lola, Trudy and Flo.
‘Is Boppi a boy’s name?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Corrie, a mop of curly dark hair atop another smiling round face and button nose combination, but with a Dutch accent.
‘They all look the same to me,’ I confessed. ‘Which one is the male?’
‘They’re all male,’ said Nene.
‘Before they got their adult plumage we thought three of them were female,’ added Corrie.
‘It doesn’t matter though. They’re all gay anyway,’ said Nene.
‘Sometimes they’re just gangbanging away!’ said Corrie
‘Boppi, Lola and Flo take it in turns to hump Trudy,’ said Nene, ‘like some spur of the moment orgy.’
‘But they groom him and feed him so he gets something out of it,’ said Corrie with a shrug.
‘The feathered slut,’ said Nene. A phrase that brought out the Scarlett O’Hara in her accent.
Any plans I’d had to return to Amsterdam were soon forgotten, I was enjoying the company too much for that. Nene and Corrie shared one mind, but what a lovely, funny, chatty mind it was.
They had a nice way of picking up each other’s stories and sharing the telling. If I closed my eyes, it was only the change of accent that gave away the change in speaker; the tone of voice, manner and timing seemed to be that of a unit. They’d shared that tiny living space for five years so I suppose life had forced them to integrate every aspect of their lives completely.
The two of them had met on the internet, an idea that summons up a mental image of fat, insecure male menopausees and their resigned-to-the-fact Thai brides, but nothing could be further from the truth here.
Nene is a writer and she’d been posting her fiction online. In fact, having only just discovered the genre of fan fiction, I was amazed to discover that, while Nene now penned her own entirely original work, she had been a part of the fan-fic world too, her chosen fandom being Xena, Warrior Princess. (I wonder how Dr Gish would feel if he knew he was the meat in a gay and lesbian fan fiction sandwich?)
Corrie had discovered Nene’s writing and written to say that she liked her work and they’d struck up a correspondence. They quickly discovered that they had a lot in common, a shared love of Mel Brooks’s movies and big band music for instance, and before long their emails contained love poetry.
The two fell in love long before they met, but then the one thing they didn’t share was geography. Corrie is from Sneek, Nene from the US. They started planning to meet one Valentine’s Day but it was May when Corrie finally ventured to the States.
‘I went with knees knocking and sweating bullets; I was very nervous,’ said Corrie, perhaps the less worldly of the pair.
Nene comes from a military family and had spent her life moving from place to place, but Corrie had spent her entire life in Sneek, and I don’t suppose you can find a much more sheltered environment than a fortress waterport.
As first dates go it was quite a commitment but it went well and that July Nene had travelled to Holland. That was over five years ago and she’s been there ever since.
‘We’re together 24 hours a day,’ said Corrie.
‘As you can see, we have very little space,’ shrugged Nene, ‘but we never argue.’
‘We’ve been rich and poor; we know it works,’ said Corrie.
Corrie sat at the computer and I sat on the sofa stroking Mo while Nene prepared supper. The conversation continued to flow, interrupted only by the occasional random word thrown from Nene to Corrie as part of a potential googlewhack.
‘We haven’t been visited by the old man,’ said Nene, chopping an onion, ‘…felicitation?’
‘Perhaps that’s because you’re here, Dave,’ said Corrie, typing.
‘Who’s the old man?’ I asked.
‘He’s the ghost,’ said Nene, ‘…oligarchy.’
‘He smells and moves around the room,’ said Corrie, ‘… no, Felicitation Oligarchy gets 26 hits.’
‘He smells and moves around the room? Are you sure that’s not the dog?’ I asked, deceitfully stroking Mo.
‘It’s not the dog,’ said Nene, she turned to Corrie, ‘…pernicious?’ and then to me again. ‘Occasionally you hear him shuffling around the room.’
I looked at Mo. She was a little smelly (inasmuch as she was a dog), she was certainly able to move around the room (inasmuch as she was a dog) and I’m sure you could describe her movement at times as a ‘shuffle’ (inasmuch as she was a cairn terrier).
‘Are you sure it’s not the dog?’ I asked.
‘No, it’s not her, said Nene. ‘juniper?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ I asked, unsure for a moment which thread of conversation was where.
‘Pernicious Juniper.’
‘No. 603 hits!’ said Corrie. ‘The dog can’t get upstairs. The old man can.’
And so the conversation went on. Part googlewhacking, part ghost story. I’m not really one to believe in ghosts but then Nene said the same was true of her before telling me three stories about them. Once, when she was living in the States – gargantuan – she swore – crevice – that she – 950! – could hear the sound of ten pin – hunchback – bowling. The next day – quoits – she asked around and – 19 – discovered that the apartment block was – caramelised – built – diphthong – on the site of an old – 2! Oof! – bowling alley.
It was like talking to someone who has a polite and verbose version of Tourettes syndrome.
*
I was woken in the morning by the sound of church bells. They were playing a Beatles medley.
‘That’s the bell man,’ said Nene.
‘He plays all sorts of odd things,’ said Corrie, ‘last week it was The Sound of Music.’
‘Come on, you have a long journey ahead of you. We’ll walk you to the station,’ said Nene.
‘We can show you the fortress,’ said Corrie.
*
When the Leeuwarden train pulled in I gave Corrie and Nene a squeeze and a hug. Ready for my long, slow-as-advertised journey back to Amsterdam and beyond. The train started to chug and we heaved out of the station. I stood between the carriages waving frantically.
‘Thank you so much,’ I said
‘Good luck with Psychosomatic Rambunctiousness,’ said Nene with a smile.