 Mexican Dancers and Band in Front of the Stadhuis |
Rex strived to wash all his trousers in the morning. Why he brings a dozen pairs with him I don't know, perhaps he is a dedicated follower of fashion. I noted he no longer says, "Nelson never had this trouble", maybe he secretly enjoys it. However he was thwarted by a Dutch lady who had beaten him to the washing machine, and seemed to be washing the entire town's laundry. Poor Rex quietly muttered in his best Dutch - silently! What did please me was that the Diazepam had started to take effect, and the number of crippling spasms he incurred each day was declining.
I ventured off to find more milk, only to discover the town seemed shut; the supermarket did not open until noon. I hiked up to the nearby promenade to find a choppy Waddenzee crashing on the outer harbour piers. Cutting round by the Zuiderhaven, I discovered it had been excavated around 1600 in order to expand Harlingen's maritime facilities. Indeed at one time it was the base for the Friesland Admiralty. Shipyards, warehouses and the usual spin offs such as mast makers, sail makers and chandlers had crowded the harbour quays, the last business disappearing in 1994.
A couple of hours later I successfully bought food supplies. In the afternoon I heard music playing in the distance. Since Rex was having a nap, I went off to locate the source of the melodic tunes and singing. On a small chained off area in front of the Stadhuis by the Noorderhaven, I found a troupe of Mexican dancers accompanied by a band. They wore colourful attire and clearly enjoyed performing.
 Mexican Performers |
Meanwhile a troupe of Maori performers emerged from the same hotel, crossed the Radhuissteeg to the same chained off area, and proceeded to perform a series of Maori dances, enthusiastically singing and smiling ear-to-ear. They were magical. The piece-de-resistance was the men performing the haka.
An appreciative crowd had by now gathered to see the spectacle, and applauded enthusiastically. Children were mesmerised by the antics of the men who displayed their customary wide eyed stares, shrieks, shouts and thrust their tongues out as far as possible. Sadly, the event had not been advertised anywhere. I sent a text to Rex encouraging him to come along to enjoy the show, but his dedication to his trousers came first.
The Mexicans returned for another stint in different costumes, and finally the Maori group returned again. As well as the singing and dancing, they performed a series of their war dance rituals and mock fights. One Maori explained in English what the actions were to a Dutch Master of Ceremonies, an elderly chap in a smart red blazer and black trousers, who translated the words into Dutch for the audience.
 Maori Performers |
 Rex Enjoying His Smoked Eel |
I found Rex back on the boat complaining that he was fed up living in a land of haze. He was convinced the Diazepam was putting him into a permanent, drousy stupor, and considered stop taking the drug altogether. I saw red at this, and took pains to explain to him that the extra drousiness was due to the alcohol he had been consuming in conjunction with the drug. I reminded him again that the chemist had carefully explained that alcohol would induce much deeper sedation than that experienced by the drug alone. "Rubbish, she said it may induce deeper sedation!" he cried. He had been over 200m away sipping coffee when she informed me, and I told him so. He was determined to continue to enjoy his amber nectar.
Words fell on deaf ears, and in the evening we returned to De Lichtboei. Folk now acknowledged us as we walked in, a few asking Rex how his back was. In my feeble attempts to speak Dutch, I had let slip into one of the conversations one of the colloquial expressions I had come across in Rex's Dutch phrase book. The landlord translated what it meant literally. For decency reasons I shan't even give a hint of the translation here, suffice to say I was embarrassed. Neither of us could see the connection between the English words and the Dutch expression. We sipped our beer, observing the custom in Holland that ice served in drinks was pulled out of the ice bucket by hand. Hmm... for a country obsessed with cleanliness, that seems a tad unhygienic to me.
We enjoyed a meal at the Eetcafe Nooitgedagt again. A smartly dressed English chap arrived and sat at the bar. Judging by the way staff greeted him, he had clearly been here many times. I detected what sounded like a Liverpool accent from the chap. "Do you hail from Liverpool?" I asked.
"No, I come from York," was his reply. He had clearly lost a lot of his Yorkshire accent. We chatted for a while. He had once worked as a sheet metal worker in the rail industry in York, but somehow had ended up captaining luxury yachts for multi-millionaires. His current vessel was 54m long. He had picked the craft up in Barbados, brought it across to the Mediterranean, and was now in Harlingen with it for four months while it was having a refit.
Normally he and the crew had to be fully prepared to sail to any part of the world at the drop of a hat, depending on the whim of the owner. Once he'd established the trust of the owner, he could influence him by showing weather charts indicating bad weather coming in. The fellow liberally aired his views on the British political affairs circus, but I chose not to spend all night going down that blind alley.