A score years from Amsterdam

Arrival Schiphol

Twenty years ago, today was a Saturday, I had packed a suitcase, left for the airport and boarded a flight to Amsterdam. At Schiphol Airport, Dick van Galen Last, now deceased, who I had met in Paris some 3 years before was waiting to collect me having offered to give me boarding for as long as it took to find my feet.

Thus, began my over 12-year sojourn in the Netherlands, the culmination of a series of events that began in January 1999 when a relationship of almost 7 years came to an end. It presaged a turbulent year of career upheavals, house moves, job changes, and a period of interesting adventure.

I was in London, having gone back to work in Ipswich where I rebased myself for 6 months thinking things had changed in my head from the 3 years before, but I learnt that situation was not a solution to turmoil. The job I took up was not offering the fulfilment I had hoped for and so I resigned as the end of November, just at the cusp of the Millennium, depending on where you place it.

Mid-life marauding

In the New Year, I returned to my original lodgings in London and found that the search for work was fraught with difficulty, applications going out by the truckload, responses returning by the trickle and interviews rarely leading to offers. That was when John Coll, also deceased, suggested I see an occupational psychotherapist.

We met for a chat in Central London whilst I relayed what my circumstances were. His view was that I was doing quite well even if I was not getting the results I wanted. It was also a difficult realisation of having gone through probably half a million pounds in earnings without having much to show for it. There are two things I took away from our conversation, that I was going through a mid-life crisis a decade early and the need to change something radically in my life, location, career, or purpose.

A romance in Europe

That set me on the quest to look for work outside the UK, something I was quite reticent to consider for years. In that same conversation, I was informed that Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands presented the best choices for opportunities. Soon, I was on a flight to Munich for an interview with Compaq, I was not as forward-looking as was expected, I dismissed Intellisense in its infancy as bunkum. I stayed in Munich for a week, it was just before the Dot-Com bubble burst, how I tried to persuade a stockbroker in a Munich sauna to cash out as if I was that prescient.

Back in the UK, I scored an interview, it was conducted at the office of a recruitment agency where set questions were posed to us and the whole charade recorded on video for the customer to review in a team of technicians before selecting those they thought knowledgeable enough. I got the job and was commuting the Reading whilst still looking at prospects on mainland Europe.

A clean break

For the first time ever, I was in a shift pattern of work, 12-hour days every 4 days and 2 days off. The pay was not close to my peak, but the hours made up for it. In the second week of taking the role, I heard back from a prospect in Amsterdam, they wanted a face-to-face interview and as luck would have it, it fell on the days I was off. I took an EasyJet flight to Amsterdam, attended the interview and returned the next day when my laptop suffered a battering at the hands of baggage handlers.

I have not flown EasyJet since then. On my return, I received an offer for the job in Amsterdam. On having a conversation with my manager in Reading, we decided on a quick and clean break, it was fine with me. I hated the work environment, people were promoted beyond their capabilities to manage the team, it was cliquey and toxic, I was glad to be shot of the place.

That is how I began the Dutch phase of my life history, it would be one of the best decisions I ever made; the opportunity to begin again, make a new life, find new friends, and live new experiences. Much as I tried, my conversational Dutch was poor, I became an Englishman abroad.

Thought Picnic: Disowned in life and loved in death

Ipswich was hardly a wish

A few years ago a serial killer was nabbed in a town I once lived in, Ipswich, well, I usually say I died in Ipswich for 2 years – a big town, quite parochial, very provincial and I could not say I was welcomed with open arms when I was there between 1995 and 1997.

When I returned for 6 months in 1999/2000, I thought I had matured enough to handle the idiosyncrasies that defined the capital of sleepy Suffolk but that really presaged my decision to leave the United Kingdom for good – on May the 20^th, that was 10 years ago – I got bored of living in the United Kingdom, I had done all that I thought I needed to do.

On the advice of an occupational psychotherapist, I was to try something completely different like change my career, change my residence, change something that resets my comfort zone – moving to the Netherlands was it.

A convenient narrative

Anyway, only yesterday, there was the arraignment of another alleged serial killer but this time up North in England, Bradford in fact, where he gave his name as the Crossbow Cannibal drawing gasps from the public gallery and garnering every news headline possible for the day.

However, my concern is about the narrative that follows the discovery of these serial murders, in all cases the victims were women, whose complicated lives included prostitution for all sorts of reasons.

Whilst I will not say that people engage in prostitution as a matter of choice, I find that a template has been provided for these stories, the women are supposed to be social misfits, on drugs and needing to feed a drug habit, so never in control of their life situations.

They by fate meet a malevolent patron who butchers them and dumps their bodies somewhere. It is a sad tale and a very heart-rending situation that is not exacerbated by the activities that follow the discoveries of the deaths.

Suddenly they have family

In both cases, what throws me is that these women suddenly have family after death, a good deal of them come out clamouring for justice, blaming the authorities and hardly reviewing their responsibilities – it is a damning note on the sense of family and community that we all sometimes pretend to espouse.

Here are women who in life were outcasts, disowned and literally abandoned by omission, commission or some situation not too evident that at death suddenly are loving daughters, mothers and beautiful friends to be remembered as victims who no more bring embarrassment to their survivors – it is all too convenient.

There is a need for great reflection on this, death should not be the path to redemption, the presence of life most offer hope and long before the dangerous and heinous overtakes events – I am in two minds as to whether the families of the brutally murdered do really deserve condolences, sympathies or a stern talking to.

Between London and Ipswich without passing out

In London incognito

I can imagine that friends, cousins and relations would be cross with me visiting London and not informing them – I have reasons, which might not sound valid to them, but are essential for me.

The last time I was in the UK, I informed so many people and got so swamped that it was impossible for me to get anything done talk less of spending quality time with all these lovely people.

This time, the ones who know are so far out of town that the obligatory visit would not be exacted on the little time one has.

Ma’am and I this morning

So, I spent the morning reviewing the passing out parade of Prince William with the Queen by my side, sometimes one has to step out to grace royal meetings, even Ms. Kate Middleton’s hat was well-worn as it crossed my mind that if she tried to appear more glamorous than her prospective step-mother in-law she might accidentally prick her finger on a spinning-wheel as one does and a hundred years would pass in the bliss of being the 21^st Century Sleeping Beauty.

Though, that is an apt reference considering the Prince could not exceed the 2 guest quota to the dinner celebrating his passing-out, my having rescinded a place did not mean Ms. Middleton could step up to that plate – such is life with the Firm.

Ipswich Town going down

One piece of news pervading the headlines in the UK concerns Ipswich, at one time in my life, I died in Ipswich for 2 years – it is my opinion you cannot live there – times when I tried to make friends the prospects ended up being hostile.

In fact, I slept over at one such “friend’s” place having worked most of the evening helping to recover data, just before 3:00AM the next morning, an armed response team broke down the door and entered the building with assault weapons, I could have been on the set of Lethal Weapon VI; the day before he had threatened his business partner with whom he has disagreements with a possible gun attack.

That put paid of trying to make friends in Ipswich, you make one and you are in a mysterious world of fear and terror, ever to loath all moments – that is just my experience.

Cardinal Wolsey, the catholic cardinal who could not arrange a divorce for Henry VIII bequeath some things to Ipswich, Ipswich is definitely an old town, Chaucer, martyrs and witch-burning in nearby Manningtree a charter that dates back to 1200.

The Suffolk Strangler

So, 5 women who probably were prostitutes and had drug dependency problems have been found murdered and dumped in rivers and fields around Ipswich and there is the possibility of another missing woman, who has been found safe and well.

Somehow, if anyone is missing for more than 5 minutes, panic first and think after, that is the pall of fear that fill the townspeople with irrational anxiety.

Not to talk of just one new opportunity to play up xenophobia as some now suspect a Polish builder who drives a Be My Wife (the irony of seeing prostitutes) – BMW – might have been sowing his wild oats and turned Jack the Ripper – err – the Suffolk Strangler, a good distraction till the facts are better gathered.

In all, if I have nothing to contribute to improving the reputation of Ipswich, I might as well end here – what a place, what a tragedy.