The Nether Netherlands

Where do we go from here?

There's a silence surrounding me

I can't seem to think straight

I'll sit in the corner

No one can bother me

I'm at Scheveningen, some four kilometres out of The Hague.  I'm gazing west across the water towards the town of Southwold (home of the Adnams family).  But I can't seem to think straight...

I've just seen a dead parrot, hanging in a church,

But no amount of Monty Python can drive  Pink Floyd out of my mind....

I think I should speak now 

Why won't you talk to me

I can't seem to speak now 

You never talk to me

Which could be because I have just had a near death experience, of sorts.....

I visited the Hotel des Indes, (at Lange Voorhout 54-56, 2514 EG Den Haag, Netherlands, doubles from €169.90 a night) and asked to see the cigar lounge.....  

It was here, on the night of January 23rd 1931, that Anna Pavlova, the inventor of Australia's national cake (but also, coincidentally, my mother's godmother) last asked for her Dying Swan outfit.....

And there, with her favourite swan, Jack, she is!  I see her spirit, lingering in the smoky atmosphere, having just descended the Stairway to Heaven....

My spirit soars.  I feel brushed by the feathers of death....

But I can't show my weakness 

What are you thinking

I sometimes wonder 

What are you feeling

Where do we go from here

And the answer is, perhaps, I would go to church, to sit quietly in a pew having lit a candle, looking up at the vaulting arches, pretending I am a spiritual being.....

But the churches are gesloten..... closed!

Even on Sunday.  

In the beautiful city of Delft there are two major churches - The Oude Kerk, with its leaning tower...

and the Nieuwe Kerk, with its restored 100 metre rocket launcher tower....

And, on a bright Sunday morning, both are firmly closed....  Except that a couple of black-clad close-shaven extremely-pure-looking young (?) men are carrying an electric keyboard into the New Church (which dates from 1381) and I slip in behind them, snaffling a picture of the elegantly rising columns.....,

Peeking towards the last resting places of the Dutch Royal Family, from William the Silent (aka William I, Prince of Orange, assassinated 10th July 1584),  to Queen Wilhelmina (Queen from 1898 to her abdication in 1948: died November 28th 1962)....

But the transporters of electric pianos will have none of it.  We will be having a wonderfully happy clapping service at 12 and a half to which you might be somewhat welcome, but you may not be looking at this building internally at this time, nor resting your spirit, nor quietly meditating the demise of your mother's godmother 88 years ago....  

Out!

(Lord save us from the Evangelicals....!  Release the dogs....!)

It doesn't have to be like this

All we need to do is make sure we keep talking

I have better luck in Gouda, where the central Markt is ripe with cheeses, which the people smoke in clay pipes.  

Here I am allowed into the great St Janskerk,  St John's, which at 123 metres long is the longest church in The Netherlands.    It was built as a Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, but became Protestant after the Reformation.  

The church is part of the Dutch Museum Churches, a collection of religious buildings which bring together the variety of religious heritage in the country's history, from early Catholicism, to Calvinism, back to Catholicism under Spanish rule, then back to Calvinism and the Dutch Reformed Church.....

Not that it was that simple....  In the 1940s the majority (around 100,000) of Dutch Jews were destroyed by the Nazis.  Since then the number of adherents to Islam (5%), Buddhism (2%) and Hinduism (1%) has risen, and the number of Christians has radically declined.  Around 70% of the population of The Netherlands has no religious affiliation, leaving churches closed, or empty.....

(or vulnerable to Evangelism....)

St John's Church in Gouda is remarkable, as it has 72 wonderful stained glass windows - the Gouda Glass - some of which were created by Catholic artists (Dirk and Wouter Crabeth, working between 1555 and 1571) and others which were created post-Reformation (between 1572 and 1603).  

Among the images in these windows there are moments from the lives of Jesus and St John, depictions of Judith slaying Holofernes,   Philip II of Spain and his wife Mary Tudor,  and of the Relief of Leiden in 1574.  

One great window was a gift from the city of Haarlem to commemorate participation in a crusade in 1219....

And The Liberty Window was designed by Charles Eyck to commemorate the Second World War.

My soul flickers in the shadows, a tiny glimmer in the vastness of this building. The great eighteenth century Moreau Organ towers over my head, but it is silent.  

There's a silence surrounding me

I can't seem to think straight

So, swallowing my spirituality, I take refuge in Gouds Beleg on the Nieuwe Markt, and wash some old gouda cheese with cumin down with some Dutch beer. The natives are friendly. Very friendly. Sans prejudice..... I feel welcome....

My kind of church.....

What are you thinking

Where do we go from here

It doesn't have to be like this

All we need to do is make sure we keep talking

 Keep Talking

Pink Floyd

(from the aptly named album 
The Division Bell)

What are you thinking 

We're going nowhere

What are you feeling 

We're going nowhere

Why won't you talk to me

You never talk to me

Dave Gilmour/Polly Samson/Rick Wright