Party preparation

The house smells of jam tarts. Girlish laughter sounds from various rooms as daughter and her friend prepare notices, food and dresses for tomorrow's fancy dress party. This is a belated 21st party now that daughter has returned from France, and it's on the theme of

Alice in Wonderland.

I've been volunteered into sewing an Alice style white pinny with a lace and a big bow, and somewhat to my surprise, I find my sewing skills are up to it, despite having no pattern. I've cut the material to size, gathered the waist, tacked hems, and sash, and am about to hand sew the last seams.

Daughter and friend have produced some wonderful cut-out and carefully lettered signs, such as

"Down the rabbit hole"
and
"Caterpillar's lair"

The atmosphere is fun and anticipatory, and the raspberry jam tart smell whets the appetite for the fun tomorrow.

Amsterdam

We've been to Amsterdam for an academic conference held at the Vu University in the suburbs of the city. It's a city of wide flat streets and cycles, the main streets separated into several lanes for each category of user, s tarting from the outside,

• a path for pedestrians on each side, then
  
• a cycle track with cyclists (nearly) always on the right hand side of the road, so single direction, then
  
• a lane for vehicles, and
  
• in the centre perhaps two more lanes for trams.

Yet despite so much apparent traffic, few cyclists wear helmets, even when transporting one or two children in seats in front and behind them. Perhaps this is because each type of traffic is physically separated, and cyclists feel safer than amongst the aggressive, arrogant pompous road-owning drivers of the UK. But on the other hand, husband didn't know which way to look where when he cycled through Amsterdam.

On the trams, friendly Dutch people made eye contact, sometimes chatting briefly and smiling when I attempted to read Dutch, "Houd uw karte hier" meaning "hold your travel ticket here" so it can be checked as you get on and off the tram.
Dutch food had not held much to invite me, but I discovered two delicacies:

• karne milch
• haring

Karne milch is akin to a drinking yogurt, slightly source, very liquid and thirst quenching. I think it's a drink made with the rennet that we used to have in England until the 1970s when it disappeared with the marketing invasion of yogurt from Europe. We called it buttermilk.

Haring is herring and new herring arrives in Holland in early June. It's a soft fish to be eaten raw with plenty of finely chopped onion, the idea being that you pick it up by the tail and lower it into your upturned mouth. It is so revered and delicious that our conference host treated us to new herring one evening. Yum.