Tuesday morning dawned bright and clear. A perfect a spring day as it is possible to have. With the only drawback having to go to work. I opened the curtains and go out onto the balcony, and find the sun just rising in the east, casting warm light over the dunes in front of me.
Time for a shower, pack my work case and go down to breakfast, ready for the stress of the day. As is usual, I begin the day with a buttered roll with sprinkles, and a coffee or two.
And so, here we go, back to the office and into battle.
The short drive past the yet to open fish markets, fish processing plants and fish factories, past the cruise terminal and to the office. All were there already, or so it seemed. I sign in, find a spare desk in ‘my’ office, and settle down for a day of slog and meetings.
In fact it was not that bad, regular breaks for talks and chats with colleagues, and where the project is. Since yesterday and flying over the farm, two more turbines have been installed, and it seems like it is accelerating. An out of control train is about the right description.
At three, I stop for the day: I have my caera, and am up to date at work, and I see that the world-famous garden at Koekenhoff is just a 40 minute drive away. And being a manager, I give myself two hours off, and so pack up, load the car, program the sat nav and set the air con to cool, and set off of tulip country.
I had imagined huge queues leading to the gardens, but they never appeared: if anything things were worse leading from the garden, and I arrived within 5 minutes of the estimated time, parked up and walked toe 100m to the entrance. €22 saw me pay the entrance fee and the parking fee, and so I walked in, joining the masses of Japanese and grey haired flower snappers inside.
Now I could describe in great detail the colours, textures and smells I encountered inside, but words cannot describe. It was a perfect spring afternoon, clear blue skies above, and beds and beds and beds of flowering bulbs nestling among the trees in the sunshine. As a school kid I got told off by a teacher for taking 24 pictures, a whole film, here alone back in 1977. What would they think now as I filled a 32 meg memory card with image after image of spring colour?
I did not care.
The beds are scattered around a series of ornamental lakes, under the shadow of mature trees, that have yet to produce leaves. It clearly is man made, and yet, it works. People are asked, and mostly, they do keep off. Paths wind their way through the woods, beside the lakes and inbetween the beds. It is glorious. Maybe it was because I was there in the late afternoon that the crowds were light, and thinning out as time went on. Surprisingly, there were few oportunities to buy bulbs: I saw one place set up, but you had to choose from a catalogue, and there was a mighty queue to wait in turn to see the selections. I decided to snap the names of what I liked and order later.
However, after a while there is only so much bulb on bulb action one can take, and after consulting the map, I see there was an orchid house, I walk there, via a faux canal, a transplanted windmill and a walled garden to the orchid house. Being mostly far eastern, they left me cold, as I know where hardly local orchids could be found. Heck, I might go and look at a few this weekend. Chances are 100%.
I walk back to the car, program the sat nav for the hotel, and venture out into the traffic, dreading hours and hours spent in queues. But, there were none. I took a winding road through picturesque towns, yet actal natual woods and past many, many fields of multi-coloured bulbs to Haarlem, and onto Ijmuiden. Back inside my room by half six, eating dinner by seven.
It was another one of those great days. And one I was paid to do. Two beers, a chicken burger. Perfect. And again no internet, so I spend the evening watching football before going to bed at a sensible time.
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