The Secret Garden

I've walked past the entrance to Sorghvliet Park several times on the way up to Scheveningen. Scheveningseweg, like your traditional Dutch road, is a multi-decker sandwich of pedestrian paths as bread, a bike path, highway, duo tramlines in the middle, bike path, and another pedestrian path, which separates Sorghvliet Park (in the Zorgvliet district of the city, just to add confusion) from the Scheveningse Bosjes.

Well, I say I've walked past the entrance, but what I really mean is that I've seen the entrance from the other side of the road, but never took my life in my hands to cross the Highway Sandwich From Hell and actually go inside until today. I was inside for all of twenty seconds - the amount of time it took me to read that Sorghvliet park was a walled enclosure, open only during certain hours of each day, and solely accessible if you had a yearly pass, one of which you could buy at the tourist information in the centre of town. But not there at the park itself. Of course.

Well, determined to get my walking hours in, I set off to the public library that houses the tourist information, bought a pass for the year at seven euros, and walked back.  

The park itself isn't huge, and although it was once part of massive landscaped estates (including formal gardens said to have rivalled Versailles) owned by the statesman Jacob Cats, then by King William II, (and now houses the official residence of the prime minister in its own private part of the estate) it is now more wild woods than anything truly park-like. But I love the atmosphere and the light there, and considering you're bang-slap next to the nearly 350-year old original highway between the city and Scheveningen, you lose sense of where you are once the noise of the traffic has quickly faded away.

Legend has it the show of snowdrops later this month, and bluebells in May are not to be missed, but I have to say I fell in love with the starkness of the trees reaching up, en déshabillé, to touch the piercing blue of the sky. It's a lovely, quiet, almost secret wood, and I think I've already had my money's worth just from my first visit this afternoon!

Cheap Frills

"Nic made the difficult decision to buy heavier dumbbells instead of trawling eBay for smaller clothes that fit. Difficult because... clothes that fit versus another means of getting smaller!! Argh!!

Meh, it's not like the clothes would fit for long anyway!"

Tricky, though. Losing weight on a shoestring. I am so thankful for the skills I learned both with a needle and thread, and a sewing machine, because they've saved me a LOT of money. I have enough simple tops and skirts that I've been able to take in down the side seams to stop me feeling like I don't have a stitch to wear!  

It's handy that I made a few of my skirts using an old panelled skirt as the template - it was made up of ten sections that were straight up and down at the top, then swept around to the side, widening out slightly at the bottom, to give a flattering fit-and-flare shape. I have to admit that the ones I made are not, shall we say, as finished as some bought items might have been, but hey, because of their construction I've been able to remove panels to make them a smaller size and sew them back together again, and thus taking them from unwearable back to wearable, so I'm not going to complain about tiny things that no-one except myself will ever notice!   

My infamous shirt collection hasn't fared quite so well, however. Picking apart and resetting sleeves is just a tad over my non-skilled pay grade, and I have had to say goodbye to some favourite shirts after they got just too ridiculously voluminous to wear. Yes, belts are handy in situations like these, and lord knows, I've worn a couple of pin-up style wide elastic belts to death already. Belts are fun, but you know a shirt has to go when you end up looking like an extra from an 80's film: all big shoulder and cinched-in swathes of fabric. Nope. Eighties fashions are best observed on golden-oldie film channels and should never be recreated unless the intention is an ironic one.

Shirts occupy that weird and dangerous no-man's land of clothing for me; they need to be wide enough at the bottom to fit, you know, my bottom, but fitted enough at the top to stop me losing things down the front, like pencils, fruit, and empty pint glasses. The shirts that I had managed to keep wearing for so long had survived to make it through to the other side because they were neither too baggy, too tight, or too reminiscent of early Meg Ryan films. Goldilocks shirts! But even my favourite favourite black, slightly fitted shirt with pin-tucks and gentle ruffles down the front, somewhat similar to a men's dinner suit shirt (which sounds rather naff and reminiscent of every cheesy prom you've ever been to, but I loved it so I did) has had to be retired from active duty. Pensioned off. Consigned to that big clothes rail in the sky. 

Okay, I lie. It's still sitting in my wardrobe because I couldn't bear to just throw it out, or give it away. I really keep it because it was me, that shirt - I wore it constantly. It saw me through some interesting times, interesting couldn't-fit-into-anything-else times, and it'll stay for a while longer for the dual purposes of being a then-and-now size comparison (because there's no better pick-me-up when feeling overwhelmed by what's still to lose than trying on formerly fitting clothing and finding yourself swaddled in excess fabric), and to remind me that a) not everything black is flattering, b) there's a time and a place for pin-tuck ruffles, and c) that time and place should never, ever return.

Chillin' With The Royal Wildfowl

Oh my, but it's nippy outside! Hovering around freezing when I went out, it's been slowly dropping; I got to the lake at the centre of the Haagse Bos and the ducks, coots and seagulls were all bobbing on the surface, expecting a crust or two from the toddler in the pram and her mother next to me no doubt, but by the time I'd made it round and back again, the seagulls had obviously taken offence at something and were sitting on ice in the centre, and complaining to one another of their lot in life. I'd say in consternation at their nice soft water being slowly turned into a treacherous landing- and taking-off platform, but who knows? I might have been witnessing their tribal song of ice-welcoming.

Fear Of Heights

"Nic is finding it increasingly difficult to tell whether the aches and pains felt the day after a decent workout are caused by good old-fashioned muscle soreness, or the more insidious approach of decrepitude!!"

I can't tell. I'm at that age where I think I could still be invincible, but aren't entirely, one hundred per cent sure any more. For as much as I know I'm not in my girlhood any longer, I'm certainly a long way away from being in my dotage. Or am I?

Is that sore knee a continuing symptom of teenage joint woes, or the first indication that cartilage is wearing away? Are those muscles and tendons that complain and collapse when attempting a lunge just chronically underused and merely needing time and effort to bring them back to strength and stability, or have the supports (for want of a more technical word) just become too weak and will only get more fragile as time progresses? Has losing weight enabled me to feel those bones for the first time, or have I done something strange and suffered a bizarre painless dislocation? Surely I'm too young to contemplate joint-replacement surgery for an increasingly belligerent hip? And has my shoulder always clicked like that? 

Is this Top Of The Hill syndrome. (A syndrome I've just made up, no less.)  That heady mixture of knowledge of what's gone before and awareness of the potential wonders which the fates may still throw at us, mixed in with the unshakeable feeling that our tiny little spark of life will soon be on the decline metaphorically and physically. I'm thinking the symptoms of this fictitious syndrome should somehow be more euphoric, but instead of I HAVE REACHED THE TOP OF THE HILL AND SEE ALL! HEAR MY ROAR OF CONQUEST AND LOVE OF LIFE, it feels more like I HAVE REACHED MIDDLE-AGE WITHOUT DYING FROM MY STUPIDITY! HEAR ME complain about how kids have it easy these days, and surely there should be more fibre options in the cereal aisle.

But right now I still think I could be invincible. Maybe. Although I might just buy another box of All-Bran seeing as they're on special offer.

Home On The Range

It's minus three C outside. I was waiting to see whether the sun was going to make an appearance, and use that as inspiration to spur me on to an attempt at walking off some of yesterday's indulgences, but instead the haar turned into freezing fog. Rather than accepting defeat and settling down in front of the telly with a pile of edible presents, I pulled on my big girl pants (especially useful, even in metaphorical sense) and made another stomp around my old stomping grounds.

And I'm glad I did. The fog wasn't bad enough to render all visibility down to zero, and the temperature was just on the turn when I came across a patch of gorse that had been covered in spider webs. The webs had obviously caught moisture from the fog, had frozen, and I walked past them just as they were beginning to thaw. I've never seen anything like it, and I'm glad I had my trusty Galaxy SII with me to record the melting beauty!

Magus Muir

These woods, the scene of Archbishop Sharp's murder in 1679, always felt a little eerie when I was wee... 

Being older I can appreciate how wild and beautiful they are, but I think they'll always feel a little creepy!

An old iron "To Monument" sign is slowly failing the test of time

Someone in April 1962 showing just how well they could wield a penknife...

Arch-Bishop Sharp's monument

Autumn's Final Fling

There's a nice walk I sometimes take up through the Scheveningse Bosjes, and round by Westbroek Park. Well, it's more like a theme and variations, because there are a myriad of routes to take around this part of the city that will give you a goodly supply of woodland eye-candy.  

Today's foray took me through the middle of the bosjes, around the park, and back past the lake (of which I can't find the name.) This whole area was part of the coastal defences called the Atlantikwall, created by the Germans when they occupied the Netherlands (and much of the European coast) during the Second World War; the woods were raised to the ground (as well as much housing), and the lake became part of an anti-tank ditch. It shows the massive fortitude of the Dutch that the many woods and parks of the city have been re-planted, and allowed to heal some of the scars left by the Nazis.