Happy New Year!!!!

Yep, 4 exclamation marks and random capitals. That’s how Happy I wish Your New Year to be.

So… how are you?
Yes, you.
I do hope you’re well. I meant to visit you, but somehow never got round to it. I’m sorry. I will be a better blogfriend this year and visit you all regularly again and even write posts myself. Starting with this one:

Do you know that television show The Voice Of… ? The one with the revolting revolving chairs? In which the judges sit and listen to the voice of the person singing without seeing them, so as not to be dazzled by the incredible good looks of that person and think: ‘oh well, the singing is shit, but he/she looks good, so we’ll vote YES, because he/she will be very popular and every boy or girl will dream of being his/her boy/girlfriend and all that will make us a lot of money’.
That show.
Is there a version of it in your country? I do know there is one in the USA and one in Great Britain.

Well… that show is a Dutch invention. Did you know that? Sadly I haven’t invented it (I’d be filthy rich by now if I had), and neither have I performed nor judged in the competition. But… there is also a ‘The Voice of Holland Kids’ version of the show and I know a then 10-year old girl who entered the competition. She didn’t win, but we of course had to watch all the episodes and are since then a bit of a fan of the children’s version of the show. Not only the incredibly talented kids, but also the judges, Marco Borsato, Nick and Simon, and Angela Groothuizen, make the show fun to watch.

We missed the first episode of the series that is currently running, but did watch the second episode last Friday. One of the boys who entered the competition had a wonderful voice, and was a handsome little chap too by the way. Already proudly presenting his long-time girlfriend to us, so cute.
One of the presenters asked him how he started singing and the boy said: ‘I used to hyperventilate a lot so my mother put me in a children’s choir.’

‘My mother put me in a walking club. Had she put me in a children’s choir, I could have been an Angela Groothuizen. Another missed opportunity.’, I said to hubs.

‘First my mother tried putting me in a gymnastics club, but after one afternoon everyone involved knew that gymnastics wasn’t and would never be my forte. I had told my mother that I didn’t want to go to a gymnastics club, but she didn’t (and still doesn’t) listen to me. My not-so-happy-face and reluctance to come near any of the torturing appliances (rings, ropes, beams, bars and vaults) convinced the gymnastics teacher to tell my mother that she wouldn’t like to see me again.

So then my mother decided that I should join the walking club. A couple of kids from my class, I think I was about 8 years old, were in the walking club too. I remember a nice kid called Eddie Stickfish (I kid you not, that was his name. Or actually, his name was – and hope still is – Eddie Stokvis, but I literally translated it for you.) was in the club and that is about the only one of the other walkers who I can remember.’

Hubs said that since that story made him laugh, I should write it down and post it on my blog. Which made me think back to my walking club days to try and remember more details. Without much success though, I don’t remember very much about my childhood, but this is what I do remember about the walking club.

So… my chance of becoming an Olympic gold medallist winner in gymnastics was an incredibly tiny one. Not so much a missed opportunity there.  But walking isn’t even an Olympic event. We weren’t race walkers you know. Fortunately not, because how silly do those athletes look! But they are athletes.
We were just walkers.

Each Saturday we were dropped off in the Amsterdamse bos (a large wood/park in Amsterdam) where we did our training rounds under the inspirational guidance of our Chief Walker, who’s name I can’t remember. He was a large, elderly man (mind you, I was 8 and when you’re that young you consider everyone over the age of 30 elderly). But thinking back I’m convinced this man was in his fifties. Nowadays no parent in his/her right mind would dare to send their kid into the woods with a ‘strange man’, but those were different times.

In our walking club nothing out of the order happened.
We just walked.
About 10 kilometres (6 miles) each time. And when there was an official walking event somewhere not too far from Amsterdam we had to join in the collective walking ‘fun’. Since we were a club and Chief Walker decided we needed to be recognized as such, we did have to wear a uniform when we took part in those official events. Red shorts for the boys, red skirts for the girls. With white blouses, white socks and white trainers. Not the sophisticated trainers with air-filled, bouncy soles, but the simple linen ones with flat rubber soles that have no bounce action at all. Flapflapflap… they could hear us from far. I wonder why no-one wears these things anymore. I also wonder if the inevitable sore toes, sore and sweaty feet and huge blisters that developed where the edge of the heel of the linen trainers from hell rubbed against your Achilles tendon have something to do with that. Slopslopslop… the sound of our blood soaked trainers alarmed the first-aiders assembled at the finish line to get ready for action.
And we of course only were allowed to wear them when we were in our uniform. To keep them nice and white (apart from all the blood stains). For our training rounds I had to wear the almost opposite end of the shoe-spectrum. Ugly brown leather things that offered support on all sides of the feet. My mother insisted on me wearing ‘good shoes’ on all other occasions, except when I had to walk 6 miles for a medal. Sigh.

I can’t remember if I enjoyed the walking or the walking club. I simply went and walked. It probably wasn’t too bad. I did get lots of medals. And we always got ‘roze koeken’ (pink cakes) and chocolate milk at the finish line. Also… our parents were instructed by Chief Walker to hand us each a bunch of flowers before we reached the finish line, and we got strict instructions about how to carry those flowers. That I do remember. You carry them in your left arm, stems clasped between your ring- and middle finger (oh shoot, suddenly I’m not so sure about which fingers anymore, could also be between your pink and ring finger) so that the flower heads rest in your bent left elbow. See… I’m a fountain of half-knowledge.

I’m still a good walker.

Just a random photo that I shot in the Dutch town Zwolle, on a day out with fellow photography-fanatics: