So I am back from the Amsterdamming, I had a nice time. You can see some exciting photos here. Had a nice evening out with Dean, at one point we went to a bar that had been converted from a bank and still had the big vault door thing down in the toilets. Actually it was in the ladies toilets, though I got to see it thanks to the lackadaisical attitude to toilet-signage the Dutch seem to have. I did wonder while pissing why there was a sanitary towel bin in the cubicle.

We went to the Anne Frank house, I was surprised at how moving I found it actually. There was a point where I found it all a bit overwhelming and nearly busted out crying. Luckily I'm too manly/repressed for that sort of thing but it did take me by surprise given me usually blithe attitude about most subjects. There was a nice quote by Primo Levi on the wall on the way out that sort of summed it up for me I guess; "One single Anne Frank moves us more than countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live."

Though the impact of all of that was slightly spoiled at the actual end when you came out into the Anne Frank cafe and bookshop. I don't know about you but I certainly love pondering the Shoah while munching on a delicious cheese and salad ciabatta. Totally appropriate. No prizes for guessing what they were selling in the bookshop. I wonder if there's a nice bistro on the way out of the visitor's centre at Auschwitz?

Overall I liked Amsterdam anyway. We did supertouristy stuff like going on a horse & carriage ride round the city centre, and going on a canal boat cruise. The city was full of tourists, god knows what it must be like in the middle of summer. All the people in the shops spoke perfect English, I overheard guys in newsagents who then switched from English into French and German when dealing with other customers. Kind of made me feel embarrassed about my standard English inability to speak any other language. Though we do have the best one, so maybe I shouldn't feel too bad about it.

Our plane went from Coventry airport, which I've never been to before, it was kind of cute. Looked like a bus station, and you had to walk across the tarmac to the plane and up some stairs. I quite dug it actually, going straight into the plane through those tube things is cool in a sort of "pretend you're going on a spaceship"-way, but using the stairs was cool in a "pretend you are the President getting off Airforce One"-way.

I spent a few days kicking about down south before coming back here, on the way back I stopped in Preston for Halloween and went out for a drink with Paul. He wanted to celebrate passing his driving test that day, we ended up in the 12 Bar. Sadly no random balaclava attacks occurred, that might have been exciting. I did run into a load of old familiar faces from my UCLan days though, that was a bit odd. No one seems to have changed at all... I guess I probably haven't either. That's a depressing thought.

It's fireworks night tonight, I'm not doing any crazyfun stuff though, spending the evening on my own in the bedroom by the looks of it. I should probably put some Smiths on to complete the picture. It's my own fault though, I went to Feedback last night to see the Superkings and drank too much booze, despite having fuck all money. Then went to Hustle and danced to Madonna and Paul Simon. Then came back here and stayed up till about 6am drinking scary cola-beer Christian brought back from Germany. As a result spent most of today feeling like I was just getting over glandular fever. Like Murtaugh was fond of saying, I'm too old for this shit. Well, I'm not really, I just have to face feeling like roadkill for the following 24 hours.

I couldn't find all the bits of my electric shaver before I went off down south so I've ended up going all extta-beardy over the last fortnight, I kind of look like Oliver Reed from Castaway (as Sian was kind enough to point out). I wouldn't mind looking like Oliver Reed actually, though I guess the days of the macho-fop hairy piss-artist loverman has probably been over since the 80s.