Kuenkenhof gardens are in Holland. Near Amsterdam. Where every year they plant 7 million bulbs. Which guarantees that in springtime they will have ‘one or two’ flowers knocking around. Or even 7 million. Which also guarantees that there is no-where else in the world where you can see, at one time, more crouching Orientals than you can anywhere else at any one time. If you factor in (fucking-)selfie-sticks, then no-where else even comes close. Every single flower, shrub and sculpture in Kuekenhof comes as an installation with its own Oriental(s)-with-(fucking)-selfie-stick. Its simply magnificent. One of those ‘isn’t nature wonderful’ moments, brings tears to your eyes and then ‘I’d like to shove that (fucking) selfie stick…’ just creeps in.

Photographs are a wonderful thing. Memorable. Inspirational. Magnificent. Fabulous. A ‘selfie’ is none of those things. A selfie is an act of moronic vanity and self-obsession which basically says: ‘well, you reckon the Taj Mahal/Moon Rocket taking off/winning goal at Wembley/Northern Lights/whatever are brilliant?? Well they is much much more betterer with my stupid fucking grinning, pouting, ugly face stuck in front of it. Innit?’ Who needs to see 7 million amazing flowers; you can do dat on google images. But ME in front of them? Fucking priceless.

Fucking worthless, more like. Fortunately you can find one or two flowers without the added extras and then outside the park, seeing fields and fields of flowers growing is rather special.

But its not just tulips, though they get all the publicity. There’s more daffodils than you can imagine and fourteen zillion hyacinths. Because Holland, this part of it at least, is bulb central. They produce 62% of the world’s bulbs here. Tiny bit of a tiny country. Amazing what you learn reading the ‘stuff on the walls’ in the ‘bulb centre’ at Kuekenhof.

I love Holland. They gave me a funny little black’n’yellow Fiat 500 to play with and everyone here is really nice and really… Dutch. Except for the Orientals. And the French, Germans (loads of Germans here), Italians, Spanish and even a few Americans/Canadians. All come to see the tulips. And eat the food. Great food here. Amazing in fact. And flowers? Did I mention the flowers?

Leicester dropped points today. (This phrase will never be repeated again:) God bless West Ham. Though a curse on the ref for the last minute penalty allowing Leicester to equalise. And just as important, Jamie Vardy got hisself sent off. So will miss at least one game. Brilliant. All we have to do its beat Stoke tomorrow. That’s all…

Happy Sunday (I would normally at this point write something in the host language, but Dutch? Simply impossible). Forgive me Johann.

A xxxx