The Guli Guli Church

Posted on September 9, 2008 by Hails

On Saturday I took a trip to Haarlem with Tobias and Claudia, my Noordwijk dorm friends.

What a gorgeous place. It’s like stepping back in time! I said in wonder, as we walked past canals and through the old streets lined with thatched cottages and majestic churches. We found ourselves inside the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen, where the lady at the entrance told us that we were welcome to come back for a special service with the choir later on.

I’ve never experienced a church service quite like it. A large part of this is probably due to the fact that it was in Dutch and therefore made no sense whatsoever to me. But it was so much fun! We found ourselves laughing along with the rest of the congregation, not understanding the jokes but genuinely appreciating the humorous tone and warm expressions.

The church was absolutely enormous, so the sound of the four part choral harmony was a treat for the ears as the voices soared and mingled to fill every inch of the building. Abba, Vader was particularly moving. I closed my eyes and let the voices wash over me in the familiar tune; opening them again, I realised that my companions were doing the same thing. The serious pieces were followed by a bouncy rendition of Jacob’s Ladder (in English, so we could sing along with less confusion than during the opening hymn – although I must say that the three of us gave that a fairly admirable attempt, too!), towards the end of which a few choir members started spontaneously clapping. Before long, everyone was doing the same. There was swaying and dancing, smiling and clapping. You couldn’t help but smile and clap along.

The pièce de résistance, however, was the rather bizarre finale:

I have no idea why. Even more amusing was the fact that it was kind of like “rounds”, with the choir breaking into A Ram Sam Sam* as the rest of us sang Pease Pudding. It did not fit at all with the rest of the songs, and yet it blended perfectly into the fun-filled atmosphere. We loved it!

Leaving the church, Claudia and I happily hummed Jacob’s Ladder. An elderly bearded man in a suit was walking behind us, and he interrupted us when we got out on to the street. Excuse me, he asked politely and seriously, you did see the choir? We nodded. And, he continued in earnest tones, may I ask did you like?

Oh, yes, we chorused happily, it was fantastic!

The old man smiled in delight. Then I am happy! he said proudly. He gave us a gracious little bow, and walked away looking pleased, singing softly to himself.

* I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I hear “A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam, guli guli guli guli guli ram sam sam” my brain automatically launches into an immediate “McDonald’s, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Pizza Hut!”. Which only made things even stranger, really…

Filed under: church, culture, day trip, foreign languages, friends, fun, Holland, humour, laughter, lyrics, singing, songs, strange | Leave a Comment »

The Road Less Travelled

Posted on May 27, 2008 by Hails

“Let’s go this way,” says Riho, trotting off along a little sidestreet we haven’t seen before.

We are spending the evening exploring the Old Town. I am, by now, quite used to this type of excursion involving a weird feeling of having travelled back in time, but nothing could have prepared me for the gradual departure from reality that seems to have followed my companion’s seemingly harmless suggestion. One narrow, eerily quiet street leads to another, each with more abandoned, dilapidated buildings than the previous one. It’s strangely disconcerting, walking through this sort of place. I’m always heavily aware of the lingering presence of the past; my mind naturally craves stories and explanations. There are none. I remain silent, listening to the echo of our footsteps as we stumble along the uneven streets.

One of the boarded-up doors has been forced open, and I peer interestedly through the crack. “If you push it, it’ll open,” says Riho, close to my ear. I jump nervously and glare at him. “Shhh!” I hiss. Tentatively, I push the door. It creaks loudly, and I freeze. I am a product of Generation Teen Horror Movie, and I know that I should run away right about now, but I can feel Riho’s disbelieving stare boring into the back of my head. I give the door a firm shove. Crrreeeeeeaaak, it goes, falling slowly open. My heart racing, I step inside, and as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I realise…

…it is just an old, run-down house. Well, what did you expect? This isn’t the Famous Five, you know.

Having said that, we do seem to see more bizarre things in the space of a few hours than I’ve seen over the course of my life. Rhio is particularly bemused, as he has never seen this area before, despite being fairly well acquainted with the Old Town. His incredulity mounts as we see:

  • A Ukranian Greek Catholic Church (complete with prayer letter-box outside, for prayers to the Blessed Virgin with Three Hands)
  • A number of unidentifiable ‘secret’ doors into the thick stone walls, including one which seems to be a theatre inside the wall
  • St. Michael’s Cheese Restaurant, where everything on the menu is made from cheese (or just served with unnecessary whacks of cheese, so that it fits)
  • A series of Genuinely Odd posters, including one that is apparently for a film called Nazis & Blondes (not a comparison I’m overly familiar with), with the tagline “Acting evil was their destiny”
  • A little courtyard* tucked away down an alleyway, in what looks like the back yard of a house that is literally falling down and being supported by wooden scaffolding, where there is a bar, a chocolaterie, a ceramics shop, and an assortment of randomly distributed and utterly bizarre accoutrements with no explanation whatsoever.

“100 Contemporary Teapots of what now?!” exclaims Riho finally, when a casual glance through a window reveals the winning sight of the evening. His voice has taken on an almost hysterical tone, and I find myself being hoisted up in an attempt to see the end of the Oddest Title Ever. We are none the wiser, but greatly entertained nonetheless.

And is that a giant cigarette next to the random teapot poster, or have I reached the Desperate And Hallucinating stage of nicotine withdrawal?

What a very strange night. Forget your monuments, scenery and natural wonders: this is tourism at its finest!

* This courtyard was my personal favourite sight so far, and I intend to return very soon. My official reason is that it deserves to be written about in much more detail, but really I just want to experience the delights of a French chocolaterie in Estonia…

Filed under: children's books, chocolate, church, confusion, Estonia, fun, mysteries, tourists, weird | 3 Comments »

Rantless Rant

Posted on November 7, 2007 by Hails

I’m starting to wish I hadn’t told everyone about my blog.

I’ve spent the past few days in a hazy daze, and every time I’ve sat down to blog, I’ve found myself censoring my thoughts until there’s actually nothing left worth blogging about. I write best  when I’m ranting, and yet how can I rant about anyone when the likelihood is that they’ll be reading it in a few hours from now? And, to put it another way, if there’s something on my mind that I need to rant about, how can I possibly concentrate on writing about anything else? Possible rant subject matter:

- friends (friends read blog)

- work (work colleagues read blog)

- church (church people read blog)

- inconsiderate drivers (cannot do this any more as am starting to be portrayed as psychopath with out-of-control road rage issues)

So what do I normally do in this situation? I go to my Inspire Me post, where I’ve been working my way down the list of readers’ suggested topics. The problem is that, as Dirk helpfully and gleefully reminded me this morning, the next suggestion requires me to reveal my true feelings for him. I am not ready for the world to know, and yet if I skip it and go to the next one, people will jump to the conclusion that I’m having a secret affair with the boy next door.

Never mind the fact that everyone I know is now sitting reading this and wondering if I’d be moaning about them, if only I had the freedom to do so. And if you have to wonder about it…

Filed under: boys, church, complaining, driving, friends, rant, work | 8 Comments »

Cut It Out

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Hails

I was a bit miffed when He Who Brings The Coffee greeted me this morning by saying “I just love what you do with your hair in the mornings, Hails”. The sarcasm fairly dripped from his words, and I glared defensively at him. “I’m getting it cut tonight, OK?” He sniggered, satisfied with my reaction.

Honestly, just once I forget to get my hair cut in time, and it’s front page news around here. People are pointing out grey hairs, mocking my unkempt look and basically insulting me to my face. Last Tuesday night at the women’s group in The Madhouse, Jo looked seriously at me when I’d paused for breath in the middle of a very enthusiastic and – I had hoped – enlightening lesson about identity.  I awaited her insightful remarks. “Hails,” she said thoughtfully, staring intently at me and chewing on the end of her pen,  ”you really need your hair cut”. However, she is my hairdresser, to be fair.

The one that really took the biscuit was Mrs. M last Sunday morning. She came up behind me as I was sitting chatting to E1 and E2, and patted my gel-free, flat hair in the same way you might stroke a cute little puppy. Leaning down to speak into my ear, she said “Your hair’s lovely. It’s much more sensible like that. I actually get a little bit scared when it’s pointing in all directions. I can cope with this much better.” I looked at her face and saw her genuine distress when she made hand gestures to illustrate the general chaos of my hair when spiked. She seemed so relieved that I’d decided to go for “sensible” hair. My friends laughed at the horror on my face when she left. She might as well have said “you’re not a young thing any more, dear – you’re one of us, now.”

By this weekend the hair had gone completely out of control, and I was being steadily driven mad by a bit of once-funky-and-choppy fringe flopping floppily over my eye. McBouncy’s youngest, McGinger, bought a pack of multi-coloured hairgrips when we were out shopping on Saturday, and donated the red one to me (being ginger and unable to use red accessories). It kept me from developing a squint and preserved my sanity, but I was frowned at by an awful lot of people yesterday, all asking in confusion and disapproval ”Is that a child’s hair clip you’re wearing?”. I was tempted to scowl, fold my arms, pout and say “Yeah… so?”

Anyway. You’ll all be delighted to know Jo’s fixing it tonight. It’s a shame, really – what on earth will people have to talk about tomorrow?

Filed under: church, conversations, friends, hair | 10 Comments »

Exposé

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Hails

Sitting waiting for a meeting to begin last night, McBouncy looked at me with the smuggest smirk you ever saw in your whole life.

“What?” I asked suspiciously.

“It’ll ruin your day,” she said with barely masked pleasure.

“What?” I repeated, becoming nervous and fearful.

She leaned across and stroked my hair, then said in an uncharacteristically quiet whisper “There are three grey hairs right here”.

“WHAT?!” I exploded in utter fury, slapping her hand away from my head as she succumbed to a fit of mirth. She dodged my slaps and proceeded to rummage through my hair. “There’s one… there’s one… there’s one… ohhhh, here’s another one!”

McLovely leaned over her, intrigued. “Ach,” he snorted, inspecting my head, “sure there’s loads of them.”

I got up and stormed out (as best one can storm anywhere, when lame and limping), hearing McBouncy proclaiming my greyness to everyone in the room as I headed for the mirror in the Ladies’. Twisting and turning and muttering under my breath, I tried and failed to view the back of my head.

I am old. Old. And now my hair is letting everyone know about it. It’s normally clarried in so much hair gel that there could be green and pink hairs in there and you’d never notice. I’ve gone product-free this week due to reasons both financial (hair products very expensive) and personal (hair too long to spike up properly, haircut not happening until Monday night), and have been sporting a flat but rather chic sixties style instead.

Last time I do that.

Filed under: church, conversations, Fear, friends, old age, woe, worry | 5 Comments »

The Madhouse

Posted on June 27, 2007 by Hails

Most Tuesday nights I take part in a women’s group in the estate. It’s held in Ma’s house - Ma being Red (my ex)’s  mother – and she is a loon. I have said this to her face, and she doesn’t seem to disagree, so I don’t feel bad about saying so here. I’ve decided I need to keep track of some of the things that occur during a typical Tuesday night, lest I ever lose sight of the sheer ludicrousy of it and start to think my life is ordinary.

The main thing to grasp about Ma is her total lack of understanding of the basics of the English language. She’s particularly prone to pronouncing words incorrectly, spelling them unrecognisably, confusing similar-sounding ones (a favourite of mine is “It’s just a phrase I’m going through”, although I did also enjoy a recent conversation about “tarantula rain”) and, quite bizarrely, combining 2 or 3 different ones to form a whole new one. In the latter case, I’ve noted with interest that the words don’t even have to share similarities of meaning, e.g. “flemished”, which appears to be a combination of “flinched” and either “famished” or “blemish” and is said in sentences like “He was trying to pick a fight, but I never even flemished.”

Ma aside, there’s such a mix of characters in that group that sometimes I just sit in complete bewilderment, trying to take it all in. There’s Jo: hot-headed, direct, honest and highly-strung. Kate: innocent, gentle, polite and easily embarrassed. B: loud, often crude, says what she thinks and ends every sentence with “But do you know what I mean, like?”. Me: easily amused, giggly, unshockable and pretty quiet, all things considered. Others drift in and out of the group, but that’s the core.

One day, when I have less desire to sleep than I do right now, I may tell you some of the Madhouse Tales, like when Ma took off her trainers and the smell forced us out of the house, or when some Southern dudes called to see the washing machine doing a dance in the kitchen. For now, I’ll make do with sharing my top three snippets of conversation tonight…

Breast Enlargement: Ma’s way

Jo: I’ve prayed for bigger boobs.

Ma: You should book yourself into hospital for one of those… boob… transplants.

Me: (suppressing insane laughter) I don’t think they do those on the NHS, Ma.

Kate: Should we be carrying donor cards, do you think?

Friendship: Ma’s way

Jo: Ma landed round with a packet of chocolate digestives and a flippin’ multipack of crisps.

Kate: (soothingly) Maybe she didn’t know you were fasting.

Jo: (indignantly) Course she did, she sponsored me!!

Similes: Ma’s way

Ma: She’s lovely, but she’s as mad as a bag of nuts.

Me: (in delight) Mad as a what now?

Jo: (dubiously) I’ve heard of mad as a bag of monkeys…

Kate: (helpfully) Cross as a bag of weasels?

Ma: Half a pound of WHAT?

Tuesday nights at the Madhouse. Free entertainment by the bucketload.

Filed under: church, friends | 2 Comments »

That Sunday feeling

Posted on June 24, 2007 by Hails

Sundays would be fantastic if it weren’t for the thought of Monday morning. The sense of impending doom just takes away from the otherwise relaxed, comfy ambiance.

Have to say, I am particularly enjoying the fact that our communion time – once a 10.30am experience –  now happens in the evening service, meaning that I don’t need to be in church till noon these days. I took full advantage of this today, lying in bed till just after 11, my first real lie-in for months. I woke up at one point struggling to breathe, with a cat on my face, but apart from that one small incident it was a pleasant, lazy morning.

Went to the BonBons’ for lunch. One of the advantages of Singleness: you rarely have to cook a Sunday dinner. People feel sorry for you and allow you to experience a few hours of cosy family life with them. Made polite conversation about holidays and house prices, then came home to contemplate deeper issues.

For example, the toilet seat has fallen off and I’m trying to decide whether to repair it or just get a new one.

Also, it’s Monday tomorrow.

Filed under: church, laziness | Leave a Comment »

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