Do Jackdaws Nest in Planes?

While we waited and waited to be allowed onto our plane at Schiphol, this jackdaw caught my eye. It was waiting to get up the stairs ...

It tried several times, flying up to peer inside the aircraft door. 

Each time, someone came out and it flew off.  Its mate was sitting watching from the roof over our heads.... the bird had about three or four goes trying to get into the plane. Each time it was shooed away.  Then waited and tried again.  Sorry the pictures are not terribly good - snatched on my phone.   A few seconds later, we were all allowed outside, so the birds flew away.   But is this a well-known thing?  An amazing bit of wildlife... a mystery.  

Design and language

Design - and language - affect so much of our experience.  The ancient centre of Amsterdam is wonderful because of the repeating design of the ancient houses, each one different, but each offering a similar story in its own way. It is a wonderful place to walk, just looking.  But....

I wanted to change the time of my flight home, to travel earlier. That was partly because I was really tired after seeing those two extraordinary and powerful exhibitions, and partly because I wanted to get home in time to go to Duncan Grant's What a Liberty! party in Faversham. My original flight would be landing far too late, after 7pm at Gatwick.

The Easyjet app promises I can change flights myself if seats are available, and at a moderate cost - €30, which is enough to feel like a penalty but not too punitive.  However, the app threw up an Error message saying 'Normal manage booking operations are not allowed with early flight transfer [4400008]'.  This kind of jargon is extremely frustrating. It's preventing you from doing what it says you can do, in fact what it was specifically set up for you to do.   And the wording is obscure and meaningless... What is 'early flight transfer'? What does 'Normal manage booking operations' mean?  Aggh! Here is 'language' not working properly.

Anyway, I decided to leave the city early, abandon plans to mooch for the morning and get to the airport.  There was a chance that if I was there in person, they could change the flight for me.  I needed to be there as soon as I could. I went down to pay my bill. The hotel reception suddenly had a long long queue, another little glitch.

My Easyjet info was telling me of yet more traffic delays due to roadworks south of Amsterdam, and also said some trains weren't running at all. The text was not clear... some or none?   The hotel receptionist said to use the bus and explained it wasn't far away.  So I lugged my now heavier bag along to the bus stop, weighed down with art books.  (Why didn't I bring a wheeled case?).    I got to the bridge, I could see the bus. But, between me and the bus station was a massive tram-line installation thing going on... the new tramlines were set in gleaming new concrete beds, and the whole road was fenced off in both directions as far as the eye could see.   I was going to have to walk right down to the far end - almost out of sight - and then back again, to get to that bus.  I was weary and worried. (Damn those synthetic sheets! Hot and sticky nights make for poor sleep and bad moods). 

      
The bus driver was kind. He doesn't handle money - you can buy a ticket using a bank card.  He drove so swiftly and surely through the streets, it was a joy to watch.  The morning was light and sunny, the streets quiet and gentle. Amsterdam looked lovely and here I was, leaving it.   At the airport, unlike the London set-up where the name EasyJet is emblazoned everywhere, I couldn't see it at all... had two or three goes at finding a desk... But, the young lady put down her phone where she was evidently canoodling with someone, swallowed her chewing gum, and swiftly changed my flight. And when I asked how much, she shrugged. She meant 'Nothing!'  Hoorah!  Win!!!!

I had to queue to check in, in one of those ghastly sudoku-type zigzag lines, which in me at any rate arouse deeply depressing moods.... but it only lasted about 15 minutes. Then up and through the amazing security checks, where - unlike London - you do not have to unpack half your suitcase and spread it out in those heavy plastic trays. It all stays in the bags. I had inadvertently left my waterbottle in my bag, and that went through fine.  As you walk through the X-ray arch, you have to lift your hands high in the air... not all that easy for some I imagine, and humiliating... the staff were laughing. 

Inside, I bought a sandwich and smoothie (delicious!), and made a drawing, and eventually with long delays and lots of standing made it onto the plane and hence home.  The gay guys next to me did not want to chat till they needed to borrow my pen to fill in their Non-EU passport forms. This was their first trip to London. One was interested in royal history, asked where they should go....  I thought how much I love London, how rich it is, how impossible to explain all the feelings, but listed a few obvious destinations and said they'd have a great time.

On the train to London, the pretty girl sitting opposite me had three bottles of fruit-flavoured cider with her, and proceeded to open the crown tops with her teeth.  I bet she won't be pretty for long.

At home at last, with a swift change of clothing from travel-baggy jeans into gladrags, we were off to Duncan's Private View... he had swatches of his beautiful cloth there, 100% silk from Liberty of London, and Tana Lawn, in his lovely friendly designs.   This very day, it was announced that Faber, printing the Booker Prize winner 'Milkman' by Anna Burns, had chosen one of his designs as the jacket cover.  A big day!  Liberty have 'first pop' at all his other designs now too.  He makes these sitting in a van, at night, on the road somewhere, waiting with the road-mending gangs, as he is by training a geologist and materials engineer... he helps with the pouring of new road surfaces, and does these amazing doodly drawings while he's waiting. (If he was Dutch he might have been working with that tramline gang in Amsterdam).  Now his genius has been recognised and he'll be world famous.

Art

Hotel breakfasts in a foreign country are something of an adventure. You never know quite what is going to be presented. Even when they're doing their best it may not be what you're expecting. In Holland, they like to offer you hard-boiled eggs, kept warm under a kind of towel, and then served on a plate - which is fine, but a bit awkward. I used the glittering toast-making machine which was very efficient, and got my coffee from a machine which offered macchiato – this turned out to be a cup of hot milk with a tiny drip of coffee poured in at the end, not what most Italians would call a macchiato, but still....
My walk to the Van Gogh museum was very pleasant, since the marauding mobs of football fans had all gone home. My friend the caricaturist Mark Thatcher arrived and we spent a happy couple of hours looking at the paintings and drawings. The Hockney/Van Gogh exhibition is absolutely fantastic. I've always been slightly put off by Van Gogh, by the slightly deranged appearance that his work presents, but Hockney has clearly seen in him all the dynamic enthusiasm, colour, movement, and love of nature which also inspired his own work. The parallels between some of Van Gogh's paintings and Hockney's own are really remarkable. I love the vivid colour and the fresh brilliance of what Hockney has done with his landscape works and his reverence for VG.
As he says, if they had been available, Van Gogh would almost certainly have used iPads to create his works.
I was also very struck by how Hockney was able to assemble groups of works in say charcoal, or watercolour, and show that as a group these works have greater power and more meaning than any of the individual works could have produced.
Mark and I found a great deal to discuss in the exhibition and enjoyed exchanging ideas as we wandered round.
When we came out we looked at the extremely expensive gift shop and decided that the 10 cent plastic bags were the best value.
We then wandered off and found some lunch in an Italian café. Exploring that district was very pleasurable. But eventually we made our way back to the Rijksmuseum to see the Rembrandt show. This could not offer a greater contrast to the works we had seen in the morning. The rooms were really crowded which was rather frustrating as it was quite difficult to see some of the works.There are literally hundreds of tiny engravings which Rembrandt made over the course of his life, as well as set pieces and portraits  of such glittering power and beauty that we were spellbound. There was in fact far too much for us to take in in one day and we emerged about 4 o'clock absolutely exhausted.
I feel, at the end of the day, that I'm not really doing justice to the extraordinary day we have spent, looking at works of such power and importance.
We had a beer in a cafe where a customer built up such a debt that in the end he paid the owner by installing a statue of himself as a kind of attraction. It's rather good but a bit small.
Mark eventually headed back to the station to go home to Harlem. I came back to the hotel to drop off my things and then go out for supper. I made the mistake of going back to last night's café which was much more crowded than last night, and I was persuaded to choose a different dish which was more expensive and not as nice as last night's supper.
I now also know that there are big disruptions to the public transport tomorrow so I have no idea how I will get back to the airport.
 One good thing about the day is that I have made a series of ink and wash sketches at various points which is always pleasing.  Mark did a couple of caricatures of me, while I was drawing buildings, motorscooter, bicycles, and the funny statue outside the café.

The sounds of football fans

If you're flying from Gatwick North terminal, it's always a relief if they send you to gate 54 because you don't have very far to walk. My flight to Amsterdam was said to be fully booked but amazingly, I had an empty seat on either side of me, which made for a very spacious and pleasant flight.
However on arrival, I found the bus system was disrupted due to a huge celebration in the city centre for the Ajax football team. After several aborted attempts to find the right bus I finally got onto one which took me to Amsterdam south. Even then I made the mistake of not clicking my bus ticket as I got off the bus. We were told on the bus the entire city centre was closed! Along with a few other confused visitors and tourists, I found the Metro and asked for help to get as near as I could to the hotel. A girl in the ticket office was extremely helpful and taking my ticket went through the barrier herself with her own ticket in hand in order to click my ticket into the 'getting off' mode.
The centre of Amsterdam is so breathtakingly beautiful it's difficult not to just stand and stare. The streets were filled with chanting roaring drunken football fans whooping and calling like animals, and parading along in groups, throwing beer cans and generally having a great time. I was glad to find my hotel was away from the centre in a slightly quieter area.
My room is right at the top of the building three floors up and looking onto the back which is quiet – I can hear birds singing and I can see one tree. Having established myself in the room I went out to have a walk round. While I was sketching the street scene over a glass of indifferent wine, I had a great idea - that there might be a branch of the wonderful Danish shop Tiger somewhere nearby where I could look for more sketchbooks which I had failed to find in Canterbury yesterday. This turned out to be the case and gave me a great excuse for walking through into the centre again and exploring further. I was really pleased to find they had some of the little books so I bought eight and lugged them back. Around me the football fans chanted and shouted. Street cleaning machines could not clear all the litter. The police stood in groups, or rode past on huge horses.
Back to my quieter area!  Then I found a place for supper, had another glass of wine – much nicer than the first one – and ordered a vegetarian moussaka and salad which I ate looking over the Prinsengracht canal and feeling very content.
The whole of Amsterdam is very trendy, young, fashionable, funny, and stylish. Not unlike Covent Garden in London or the Ramblas in Barcelona. I really love it.

Amsterdam

In a moment I am setting off on my own to go to Amsterdam for a couple of days. My plan is to go and see the Hockney/Van Gogh exhibition, as recommended by more than one friend. I'll be meeting up with Mark Thatcher, who lived in Faversham until last year when he located to the Netherlands with his Dutch wife and their daughter - he is both a witty caracaturist and a fine artist and we'll go together to the exhibition, and then on to the Rembrandt. 

I booked my flights without realising that the cost of hotel rooms in Amsterdam triples on Friday and Saturday nights. I could have avoided the extortionate hike in prices if I had booked from (say) Tue-Thur, but chose Thur-Sat instead. Thus the cost of my trip is about double what it might have been but it would have been even more expensive to change the flights. Darn it!

Coming back on Saturday I hope I'm not too late to get to the Private View/Party which Duncan Grant is holding in the Hot Tin in Faversham - a celebration of the contract he just won from Liberty of London, for some of his designs to be made into Tana Lawn and Silk... the Small Town drawings look wonderful as fabric. I feel rather chuffed that I started buying his pictures before he was so famous!

For the last two days I have been grappling with my usual pre-travel anxiety, made worse this time by knowing I will be on my own. All travel in the last 3-4 years has been with Andrew. I fully understand this is irrational, but it's an insight into how other people say they feel... normally I am not anxious (much) about anything at all.  This feeling makes me prowl around, almost shaking. I need to understand why this happens. It's fear-based, but why.    I discovered that once I knew how to get from the airport to the city centre, and then how to walk to my hotel, I calmed down. So - it's fear of the unknown..... 

Amsterdam, here I come!