The Master and his Apprentices

The Master Carpenter overseeing his apprentices, Bart and Michel, and not on the picture: Sven, Robbin (with 2 B's), Twan, Jacco, and little Mart.
They all admired the wooden toys of Twan, that we brought as examples of what can be made by an attentive and diligent apprentice.
The Master works as a volunteer in the communicty centre. As usual all the doors where locked and nobody knew where to find the keys and the (well-payed) social worker that would be there to open the door wasn't there.

A horse and a wife...

A horse and a wife,
a fork and a knife,
thats the way you spell real life, ride on...

or was it

a knife a fork
a bottle and a cork
thats the way you spell New York?

With this cocaine running around my brain
I realy dont know what I meant to say with this picture
Salvador Dali climbing the step-ladder to
paint one of his light paintings perhaps?

Or is it Bert Strootman trying to make the picture that will win a prize?
Or is it Bert, just doing his job,
taking pictures for MIDI, a famous dutch magazine?

This is the result, a horse and a wife, thats real life, ride on...

Trampling the green garbage container

Sometimes weight can be usefull. In our town the garbage is seperated in a green and a grey container, the green for compostable waist, the grey for the rest. The man and the dog are not to be waisted, they just ad their weight to compact the green litter. The dog jumps in on command. He would jump anywhere, if I tell him to. He loves jumping on haystacks, on trailers, anywhere. Now I mention the dog, he is on 4 out of 10 pictures.

Vertigo

I am afraid of heights. Hitchcock's film "Vertigo" came out in 1958, my year of birth, maybe thats the reason. I hate climbing up the scaffold to fix and paint the gutter. The view is beautifull, but I dont care about that. All I feel is this sinking feeling in my gut, this vertigo.
And why do people walking and cycling by feel the need to shout things only they think are funny?

On the cyclepath downunder they pass, shouting their wits to me, while I am clamping to the scaffold and paint the gutter.

Gutterman!

Water kills our house. Through this broken tile, the crack not visible from the ground, water dripped on the woorden roof underneath, dripping and trickling further on the planks of the gutter and soaking everything.
This is the result, after removing all the rotten wood, a beautifull hole.
This means a challenge for GUTTERMAN! And there he is, on his scaffold, the one and only gutterman in his beautifull white coverall! Can you fix our gutter GUTTERMAN?

Corrections by fax...

The faxmachine became obsolete when internet and e-mail was used by almost everybody. But still, the fax is used by some people so, I keep it in order. This week I recieved almost 40 metres of fax, containing all the pages with written corrections of the book I worked on.
Thisis whats left, a box of paper and several empty beercans.

Long time no see...

Hi guy's, its getting darker and so we get inside earlier. We worked very hard here. Got a new horse, got a new piece of gras land that needed attention, the voltige team won the third prize in the National Championship, that meant a lot off work too. I finished two books and started writing another. So, we where pretty buzy this summer. Oh yes, we have sailed two weeks and had a lot of fun.

But now, back again on the internet, hope I will find the time to write and work on the blog.

The Greatest Voltige Show on earth...

More than 150 people watched the annual show of the Prinsepaard. The children from age 6 to 16 gave away a perfect show of almost 2 hours. On the websiteyou can see more pictures. Bert Wijers also send some pictures.
It was a lot of work, but it payed of!

Six centurys of salt water through my genes...

Pieter Moorman had a school-project about the VOC, the first company ever to be financed with stocks and during almost 200 years the wealthiest and most powerfull trade company in the world. The class organised a trip to the Batavia, a real wooden build replica of a VOC trade ship that sunk on a reef in Australia.

On the picture he explaines some details about the ship. I was the main sponsor of the project, I supplied the tickets. (I got them free with a beautifull barter deal with the Batavia ship-yard.) I also drove one of the cars with kids.

Standing on the main deck I felt the salt water running through my vaines and genes. I felt very at home on this deck and wanted to sail away, searching for treasures, pirates, slaves and trade. I wanted to command the crew in the mast setting the sails. Damn the British and to hell with the Spanjards, lets sail to the Indies!

Another dead owl

Beautifull blazing and biting I held this owlschick in my hand two days ago. It was pushed out of the nest as every year one ore two chicks are. The real struggle for life is everywhere around us. Today I found it in the barn dead. The mother sometimes brings the fallen chicks a mouse, but the chicks in the nest go first. It is complete and has a wingspan from almost 60 centimeters. A beautifull bird. At night I watch the parents fly in and out, very silently and smooth.

The next party, a beach party?

The day after. Another party, Nicky's birthday-party. Let's use the tent again! There's only a slight little problem, the party-animals decided that sleeping on a party was not their idea of having fun. So after the usual formalitys and a brief introduction around the table the party became a real beach party. Playing volleybal, eating, drinking, kissing, chasing horses, and playing more volleybal at four in the morning, and having breakfast at six in the morning and playing more volleybal.
Members of the party-gang were Yvonne, Jenna, Angela, Britt, Caspar, David, Willem and Nicky. Because of messing with sneezing powder David ended in the swimming pool, cooling down as you can see.

A Pyama Party

A pyama party in a tent, a birthday party can't get any better. The flags guide the way to the tent. And what do you do all night? Messing with fire is always entertaining for little boys. This is the gang, from left to right, Job, Gillian, Lars, Stan, Wei Lei,Twan, Stijn, Alwin and Robin. The party was given by Stan, Job and Twan.
The next morning breakfast with daddy's pancakes. Looking very sleepy, but being a man at night means also being a man the next morning!

Our new old boat

This is our (Twan and Me, Father and Son) new project. This is a very special boat, called a 'Leukothea'. It sails, with a sloop rig, you can realy row with it and it has a beautifull round shaped hull, in Dutch we call it a 'vlet'. It's very seaworthy. We use it as a tender and for fun, and to learn how to sail and row. I hate to see little kids in rubberboats with an outboard engine, looking bored, making noise and learning nothing. Give them a boat like this and they learn everything while playing and fiddling around. We debatted a long time about the name and the colour. The one followed the other, it will be black with yellow stripes, and the name will be 'Black Pearl'. And yes, we have a pirates flag.

Never intended to make...

By accident you press the button, or it's still on timer, or whatever, but you didn't intend to shoot the picture. Sometimes you remeber the moment, like the day I wanted to take a picture while driving from behind the wheel.. Sometimes your kids mess around before a mirror. This one I don't remeber, but its obvious that it was taken on board the boat, as was this one, showing someones foot. The floor is always a fine subject for a picture, and the furniture or the waterhose in the stable. And last but not least, the out of focus and out of frame faces of people, mostley your narcistic daughter trying to make a self-portrait. For some stupid reason all these pictures still stand on my hard disk, using precious space. Now they even made it to the internet!

What do I do to make you love me?

Artist: Anupama Bagwe

The gallery of your mind
Still hangs on
Without your smile
It came out strong

The color of your thoughts
From the canvas it came to me
Not prepared I was
Not allowed to see

Now I long to stare
But nowhere you are found
Just the shade of paint from where
I feel that you ‘re around

The tears I felt
Where they yours to shed?
The pain I saw
Do I have to forget?

The picture of your mind
Still burning on my soul
Wondering if we’ll ever meet
And make each other whole

The Deer, The Car and I...

I met this Deer on a beautifull evening on the road to a party where I was going to. The Deer didn't survive our meeting. All I saw of her was a brown flash. I heard a big bang and that was that. This was not the meeting I had in mind.

The Car is made in France and as everybody knows the French have a lot of style, but are not very practical. This also affects their way of building cars. Their cars are beautifull styled, but technicaly not very practical. Beautifull solutions for problems, but nothing easy to fix. And a lot of plastic. This is what needs to be fixed.

And I, whell, I have to repair another car. The parts that need to be replaced cost alltogether almost 600 euro's. So with a lot of glue, polyester, tape and pieces of leather I will tinker everything on its place.

it runs again

It runs again, yes, I put in another engine, because the old one could not be fixed. It runs again, better than ever! I got help from Cor and from Niek. It went in faster than it came out.

Use what you have

My father was a shoemaker and he learned me to use the tools and the materials you have to fix something. In every odd-job we did he used a little piece of leather. Not intentionaly, but just because it was always at hand. Now I am a publisher, I make newspapers, so why use wooden blocks when there are plenty packs of unused newspapers to stuff under the car? I want to overhaul the engine of my van because the distributionbelt broke and some valves are bend. The engine comes out downunder the car, so the car has to go up. With lots of packs of newspapers and a hydraulic jack the engine came out.

Queensday in Groningen

Tired after walking along the traditional street flee market in Groningen. We are having coffee in a pavement on the market in Groningen. We came by train, just for fun, and saw lots of music groups and bands playing on the streets and markets. Queensday in Holland is very special, everybody is on the streets, selling stuff, playing an instrument, eating, having fun. This year is special, because our queen Beatrix celebrates her 25 th anniversary as a queen.

The truth about potatoe chips

I took potatoe's, peeled them and cut them in thin slices. I dried the slices carefully, not to break them. Meanwhile I heated peanutoil in a pan and when hot enough I carefully put the slices potatoe in the oil one by one because they tend to stick together. You have to wait till they are brown, then they are crispy. Kids love to help, Twan helped me with these. When the chips were ready, we wanted to fry more, so I made a dough and we made fried banana balls.

Now an other story. You take a lot of potatoes, don't mind how they look, dehydrate them and grind them to a powder. Then add wheat starch, flavour, sugar, flavour enhancers: monosodium glutamate, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, milk proteins, flavourings, onion powder, lactose, colour: paprika extract, garlic powder,lactic acid, rice flour, corn flour, maltodextrin, emulsifier (E471, this means a special food add, allowed bij the EEG) salt and dextrose. This mixture makes a paste. With this paste you make a chips like form, that is fried in vegetable oil. Each one exactly the same, so they fit beautifully in a tube. People will love these fake potatoe chips because off the amount of flavour enhancers that are put into it. In fact people become somewhat addicted to these enhancers. So they are willing to pay almost 2 euro for a tube.