I just have to tell you all how wonderful DutchOma is

[giddykipper]

She has knitted DS a beautiful comfort blanket to replace the one he has loved to death. He has gone to sleep hugging it.

She's the best.

Oh no, please don't talk about these delicious dutch things! My DH is half dutch and we are nearly finished the rations that he brought over last time!

Haring is my particular weakness though, more of a savoury fan than a sweet one, but saying that, I would happily much my way through a couple of kilos of drop.

i have been to den haag en ik vond het wel mooi, maar de familie van mijn man in den helder wonen. Always windy!!

Yeah - but I'm allowed a high salt diet!

Pepernoten: do you play pepersnufferen with them?

PS - LMD, you would like my mum's oliebollen. They are divine!

what's pepersnufferen? sounds dodgy

It's a game you play with the pepernoten and dice. You put six rows of pepernoten out and throw the die; what you throw you can eat. First one to eat all the pepernoten wins

I like the sound of this game.

Mind you, when I was little and my shoe was full of chocolate and pepernoten, I'd have thought you were insane if you told me I had to roll a die before eating them.

Scoffed them all before breakfast, mostly!

They hurt when Zwarte Piet throws them at you, too. Is Zwarte Piet still allowed or has the PC brigade ousted him?

I don't know but there have been an army of Witte Pieten as wel with the arrival of Sinterklaas.
Oh yes, we only played pepersnufferen with a bag of left over pepernoten.
Did you do surprises and poems as well at St. Nicolaas?

oh no, we never did that. my parents had five children, I think once they'd waited for us all to be asleep and filled up our shoes they generally just collapsed in a heap.

our school always had St Nicolaas coming with Zwarte Piet and chucking sweets around.

My son's name begins with I and I'm amused to see that if you have an I chocolate letter, you get two! Otherwise I guess you'd really lose out.

And the year before he was born, when I was pg, my dad's girlfriend persuaded the local confectioner to make a chocolate question mark for us. Sweet.

Yes there were five of us as well, but once we were old enough we had a Sinterklaas feest which had the most enormous amount of rules and regulations, endless fun. but we had either a shoe or were part of the Sinterklaasfeest.

that sounds like fun!

I still cycle, too, but it's a rather different kettle of fish in Bristol. Lots of hills! But it does make me laugh when I see people all togged up in lycra to go cycling, it's such an ordinary activity in Holland, isn't it?

I remember my sister cycling off to her cello lesson with her cello strapped to her back

We were in Bristol at the end of July and are determined to come back next year, we thought it was such a lovely place.
Yes, cycling is a very ordinary activity in Holland, one of my nephews used to cycle to school aged seven or so with his two year younger brother on the back. Imagine that here?

I have had a thought about TSD pushchair, could you not attach complete new harness clips to the straps (I have done this in the past) I think I have a set of maclaren clips that may well work?????

Great minds, Cargirl, great minds. Only yesterday I remembered that there might still be a ghost of the old MacLaren factory in Long Buckby which is only ten minutes by train from Northampton. So I rang then and the were absolutely brilliant and sold me a complete new harness, which I think we will be able to fix to the straps of the yellow banana buggy. We live in hope. I only wish I had thought of it earlier, because we could have had the thing fixed before we went on holiday. Tomorrow eeek