The Barber of Amsterdam

I was hugely looking forward to paying a visit to Mister Pasquale Capone, the Barber of Amsterdam. I wanted to go on my birthday, but he's only open Tuesday to Thursday, so I had to wait until I could sort out a day off work - today!

Pasquale's a true Figaro, who lists his skills as tailor, shoemaker, cabinet-maker, dentist, and of course, gentlemen's hairdresser. On his website, Pasquale gives a full account of his responsibilities, including:

"The most important standards in my trade are: personel attention and individuality. I practice my profession in a most natural way. This is in contrast with the operation of most of the present hairdressers À la minute: modernisation, rationalisation, complex machinery etc. They forget the real profession. SOCIAL and CULTURAL VALUES are neglected and the result is SOCIAL and ECONOMIC POVERTY."

This had all the hallmarks of being a classic Barber shop experience. What transpired was... educational, to say the least.

I turned up at 2 and was warmly welcomed into his delightful "living museum". Then I sat there for 40 minutes while he lectured / humiliated me about social responsibility, integrity and my being "an opportunist".

I was made to read aloud, to the assembled audience, a newspaper article in which he expounded his philosophy and vision - all very sensible and noble. You can read all about it for yourselves on his website.

Having ascertained what I did for a living and how much I earned, he wanted to charge me a cool €200! A little steep, in my estimation. I ended up leaving, unshorn.

As I opened the door to leave, and he addressed himself to one of his regulars, I caught sight of his face. What a transformation! The kindly-yet-playfully-antagonistic old codger had vanished - in his place, a sneering, judgmental old git of a man, happier to domineer and sermonize than to provide friendly service to his customers.

I won't be going back.

Sucking the Corporate Teat

My colleague Wortel Jones is unwell, so I'm gonna seize this opportunity to run this bitch on my own. Plan is to get the CFO shitfaced, then badmouth Jones to him in the hope of wangling a place on that inter-agency golf tournament next month. Not the sort of thing I'm proud of, you understand, but you know, a man's gotta get ahead in this game...

Corporate Whores - Promotion!

Once again, me and the mental merkin are playing songs in a bar. The CEO has been so impressed with my recent 7" performances that he's put me in charge of the 12" account. If you're very lucky I'll even play that Cylob remix.

Corporate Whore Happy Hour

Tonight at the Jet Lounge, Amsterdam - that's opposite the Westerkerk y'all - me and Cole are DJing.

Bring your spreadsheets, firm handshakes and unnerving amounts of eye-contact.

Me and my sevens

I'm DJing again. 7" records only. 

Why? Because they're great! They're small, light and robust, and they fit nicely into my gay little man-bag.

Nothing quite beats the fun of flipping through boxes of old shite records in a charity shop, waiting for the odd gem to jump out and beg for reincarnation. Nostalgia and oldies abound. 

I'm also building up a library of good new stuff too, like that mclusky record and Glasvegas and that.

But what's all this about the new Pete and the Pirates single not being available on vinyl yet? I need that one! Get it together you broke-ass pressing plants.

The final fun thing about DJing is my glamorous assistant Debs, who helps me pick my records and snigger at the flirtatious groupies I can't help but attract, what with my astonishing looks and impeccable technique, etc.

If you're very lucky you might catch me at the Jet Lounge of a Friday evening.

Any requests? No, I haven't got "Wonderwall".

Let's fight litter together

Second thoughts, let's not! 

I hate litter. In India I refused to chuck used bags out of the train window like everyone else. Instead, I'd make my life miserable by stuffing them in my pockets and waiting to find a proper bin. Sometimes, that took a while, but you know, I like to set a good example.

So why am I so annoyed by this article in our Stadsdeelkrant (local council newspaper) urging us to go out into the streets on October 4th, join forces with our fellow local citizens and tidy up the litter in our area?

Firstly because I already pay for this service. As part of our local council tax bill, Debs and I pay exactly €332.28 a year (the most expensive in the whole of Amsterdam) to have our rubbish dealt with and the streets swept by a dedicated and enormous team of refuse workers or whatever dustmen are called nowadays. 

Seriously, there are thousands of them in Amsterdam. I've never seen so many - not even in Paris, a city with even more dogshit on the streets than here. There's even a Milieupolitie who cruise around in cage-backed trucks waiting to imprison fly-tippers and putting stickers on terminally ill bikes threatening to euthanase them. 

I think they do a good job. Actually, they do a great job - Amsterdam is one of the neatest and tidiest cities I've been to. But back to the point...

I'm basically annoyed because I hate litterbugs. They're the problem, and I'm buggered if I'm going to spend my time picking up after these lazy, shiftless little snots. 

Apparently, I'm just a selfish git though. The council ran a similar "successful" campaign back in March where "dozens" (although this picture only shows about 10, of which 2 are kids) of locals happily wandered around cleaning up after messy eurochavs.

Some people don't even need a campaign like this as an excuse. Our nice neighbour across the street is always out on the pavement sweeping up stray bits of paper and fluff. It's like housepride taken to extremes... endless, thankless extremes.

So er... short of arming the Milieupolitie, my solution to this problem is to power up my usual muttered diss to littering to a properly Dutch, top-of-my-voice shaming of the mucky pups.

A-holes.

Trebles all round

Since starting life as a freelance copywriter, I've had the time, inclination, and inspiration to rekindle some old passions - including writing about music.

Via the magic of contacts and tipsy conversations at parties, I've landed myself an occasional gig writing music previews for the Amsterdam Weekly. It doesn't pay much, but that's not why I'm doing it. I just enjoy writing about something I get excited about.

Also, you can sometimes get into gigs for free. Secretly, this is the bit I enjoy the most: "I'm on the list, mate... yup, plus one, cheers!"

Here's a quick sample. Click to go big and legible:

Check the Amsterdam Weekly, er... every week, for more. Possibly also Time Out Amsterdam soon - depends how the networking goes at their launch bash this week.

Back in the jug agane

Goddamn, I got a job! 

This time last week I had little on the horizon and was beginning to run out of strings to pull in my extended network of lovely people (hello everyone!)... so on Thursday I sent a blunt email out to my fellow freelancers, which pretty much went "Er, got any jobs?"...

And before I knew what was happening I was catching a 7 a.m. flight to London yesterday to meet, get briefed in, and start working. Here I am, raring to go at 5 a.m. in Amsterdam:

Today I spent the day in Amsterdam beavering away on banner, email and site copy for a sweet little campaign.

It's probably pretty unprofessional to go into detail until the project is actually live, so suffice to say I'm working at "an agency" for "a client". Can you handle the non-specific sense of excitement this news generates? 

Oblique hedging aside, I'm enjoying myself: moreso now I'm back in Amsterdam after Monday's baptism of fire in the London HQ. Debs, meanwhile, is busy being a housewife, resisting the temptation to crack open a bottle of Alsace at midday, 2 p.m., "Put 3, that sounds better," (she says). 

I was going to end with a flippant "Life is tough" but being honest for a moment, the reality is that working full days for the first time in 14 months is tiring. Life is tough!

...but rewarding :-)

What no showers?

In June 1929, Mr L, Bierenbroodspot opened the Sportfondsenbad ("Sports fund baths") in what used to be the East Amsterdam Gasworks. 

In that first year alone, the swimming pool pulled in 136534 visitors from all over the Netherlands. Punters paid 50c a time for a swim, including bathing suit rental. In the winter, they made an ice rink behind the building:

In 2001, we moved to Amsterdam, living in Pretoriusstraat, not 5 minutes walk down the road from the Sportfondsenbad.

Seven years later, still living in the same area, we finally made our first visit to our local pool. It has just reopened after a 5 month renovation / retiling process. It cost €3.50 for more or less unlimited time lane swimming. We pulled off 1KM in half an hour - I did the last 2 lengths at full speed front crawl, booya!

It's great to have the time to get into stuff like this which we can include in our routine now and (hopefully) maintain when we start working. The idea is that it will help us remain lean and toned and healthy. This is especially important since we've done little exercise, but a lot of eating since we got home. 

The only problem was that we couldn't find the showers... either we're being dumb, or there just aren't any.

Score!

One of the best things about Amsterdam is the way people leave stuff in the street for others to pick up and enjoy. We have an ace chair in our bedroom that we found down the road, and this afternoon I caught sight of these two vinyl box sets propped up against a bin round the corner.


4 Duke Ellington concerts, and 5 discs of Glenn Gould playing Mozart - all in first class condition too. We've been tootling and tinkling ever since.