Week 12

House Progress...

Week 12 (to be continued)

A very young spouting man came to line the spouting at the front - we had heavy intermittent rain downpours during the day - and hailstones! - mid afternoon, he came to me dripping wet and said "I'm going home" - I just laughed and said "no wories", wondering how he had lasted as long as he did...

Week 13 (this coming week)

Last of the new windows to be placed

Week 14

Plastering to be finished (The walls with the new windows)

Week 15

The floor heating - and any electical wiring that will be running through the floor - a fair bit as it turns out.

Week 16

The final floor concrete - with a "plaster" finish - this has to be done at the same time as the concrete. It will give a decorative floor that we can use without any further floor coverings - but we then have to wait 5 weeks while it cures and hardens.

The kitchen is due to be installed on 23rd of May...

...and Grandson Tom is due to arrive on the 24th! 

It will be interesting to see just how far we have come in the meantime.

In the apartment, Tjeerd and I have been replacing the radiators after the last of the insulation work - very time-consuming!

The deer are getting closer - our view from the Day Activity workroom

Our youngest Day client had his 21st birthday - we got him a radio-controlled car within budget- I think we all want one now!

The weekend kids 

8 this weekend

One of our kids started when he was 7 - and suddenly he's 14. I've been promising him a tractor lesson for a couple of years now - so we finally got around to it on Saturday. I take great pains to explain that it is just a tool - the goal is to do the work - not just have fun driving the tractor around! So, that and the safety aspects covered, he actually did quite well for his first time - I had the gears set on low, low, so he could probably fall asleep at that speed...but it's a start - I promised him much more if he wants to help out with the work. I'm always wondering just what they are going to do in the future...

The Boat

I've arranged for the boat to go into the water this coming Tuesday - we have Easter Weekend free and so we can sleep on board (with the heater on!) and do the cleaning and maybe a short trip.

I was surprised (well, not really) to learn that there is a UK Watchdog group called Who Targets Me

https://whotargets.me/en/

I was reading an article about German elections and the way the various algorithms target people

ZDF Royale's research into online political ad targeting practices by German political parties during the federal election campaign revealed how parties, in relative secrecy, can target us with different, at times contradictory, messages based on what Facebook knows about us.

Their research showed that political micro-targeting can threaten the integrity of our elections.

ZDF MAGAZIN ROYALE publishes what Facebook keeps secret

Facebook keeps information about how parties “target” their voters secret

Fires involving animals

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Some 37,000 animals died in factory farm fires in the Netherlands last year, well down on the 130,000 deaths recorded in 2022. However, the number of fires remained virtually unchanged at 43 compared with 42, according to insurance industry figures.

The downturn in the death toll is due largely to the lack of fires at poultry farms, where far more animals are affected. This January, 50,000 hens were killed in a fire at a farm in Gelderland, beating the 2023 total in one blaze.

Soldier of Orange

A few years ago we went to see a stage show called "Soldier of Orange" . Suffice to say that I cried during the performance - it was so moving - about the resistance movement during WWII.

(The stage show was going to be produced in London - but Covid intervened - I don't know if the plans have been revived).

I was however, probably more impressed by the technical aspects of the presentation - the whole audience sat in a moveable seating structure - so that the whole structure rotated to the various scenes. One of the scenes was actually real water with a small dinghy - depicting resistance fighters who were trying to escape to England. They were caught and shot - with even the smell of cordite wafting into the audience. 

This week, via one of my boating emails, I came across a War History website that includes a story of the Netherlands' people who tried to escape during the war - like the people in the play. They were known as "Engelandvaarders" - literally "Sailors to England", but they went by many means other than just the sea.( It might be better translated to "Englandbound" - however they could get there).

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/

This is the story of “trois jeune filles” who did everything they could to come to England. It was on a Wednesday evening, August 6, '42 that Babs and I decided to leave. On Thursday morning we courageously boarded the train with our suitcase to Tilburg. I don't think we realized during this train journey what we were leaving behind, but the idea of ​​going to England to work had become so deeply entrenched in us for two years that we thought of nothing else."

Travelogue of the three women.
Crossing three borders

Scammed

Their first destination is Toulouse from where, they are told, it is possible to continue to England. They met a young man, a certain Jan Smit, who knows a route to get there. On Smit's advice, the Musaph sisters take the train to Tilburg, where they meet Tox Waterman. Tox was also sent to Tilburg by Smit. Once there, they pay 500 guilders per person to Smit and take a bus to the town of Hooge Mierde on the Belgian border. Smit would exchange their money and then follow them. The three women wait there for him in vain: “ the young man had disappeared without a trace with money and all valuable information .”

Despite this bad start, the three decide to move on without papers and with the little money they have left. They manage to find two smugglers who help them cross the border at night. They go on foot to Poppel and from there to Turnhout. There they take a tram to Antwerp, then a train to Brussels and further south. Adversity continues to haunt the women, so much so that they come up with a name for it: the daily “ blow on the head ”. In Mons, for example, the hotel they had been told does not exist, in the café where they end up the innkeeper is assaulted (nipped in the bud by "strong action") and they are in danger of being arrested by customs at the border with France. However, they manage to avoid all controls and cross the border on foot. The three women are then again unlucky, because they miss their train. They have to cross the fields on foot to avoid police checks. With blisters on their feet and their hands from carrying suitcases, they finally arrive in Maubeuge, where the train to Paris appears to have just left. They are forced to spend the night among the ruins of the city, which was set on fire by the Germans in 1940, after which they leave for Paris by morning train. From Paris they can quickly move on to Tours where they are again forced to spend the night outside. There they finally get lucky because they meet a man who can take them across the Demarcation Line. On August 12, they reach Free France “after five days without food with NLG 50 (guilders) in their pockets ”.

To Spain

But their problems are far from over. Immediately after crossing the demarcation line, Babs, Carla and Tox are arrested by French gendarmes and sent to the Chateauneuf-les-Bains labor camp. The conditions here are bad. In their report they speak of “ unsustainable hygienic conditions ” and “ that girls were not expected at all ”. After two months they are able to escape the camp to Toulouse, but they are soon brought back by the alerted gendarmerie.

 However, after two weeks the three are given permission to leave the camp. They go to the town of Capendu east of Toulouse, to the villa of the widow Lil van Wijhe. Freddy Wolf Musaph, Babs and Carla's brother, knew her from before the war and had already passed there a few weeks earlier. Van Wijhe is a flamboyant woman who is said to have worked for the British secret service during the First World War and to have known Mata Hari. She offers the three young women shelter for a while.

 After they have regained their strength in Capendu, they move on, still without papers. On foot and without a guide they enter the Pyrenees and after 48 hours of wandering they appear to have passed the border. Once in Spain, they are quickly arrested by border guards “ who found us even more suspicious, as they could not understand that three girls came alone ”. Once again they spend months in prison in Figueras, Gerona and Barcelona. There they are eventually liberated (“ransomed”) by the Dutch consul and sent to Madrid. “ We have crossed four borders illegally, we have fought for our ideal and we hope that our reward will be that we can help in the great struggle for final victory. Long live the Queen .”

"In prison we continued our hunger cure. For 5 weeks we lived on soup, 5 weeks we waited for word from the consul. We spent our time catching lice and fleas and watching how others ate - people who had money for it. After 5 weeks the consul freed us. As a result, we are going to Suriname tomorrow."