Weds July 23rd to Sun 27th – to The Hague in Holland. I’m delivering a suit of mine to go on display at the Gemeentemuseum, as part of an exhibition called ‘The Ideal Man’. I’m also invited to the opening of the show. The invitation says ‘In the Presence of Dickon Edwards – Modern Dandy and British Fashion Icon.’ I’m still not tired of mentioning that.
My only other Dutch experience to date is Amsterdam, when Spearmint played the Paradiso Club – with me on guitar – eight years ago. The difference between Amsterdam and The Hague? More Serbian warlords on trial, fewer prostitutes in windows.
This week, the media seem fascinated with the unkind Mr Karadzikc’s ability to grow a big beard, then shave it off. As if there’s some kind of link between facial cleansing and ethnic cleansing. ‘Pictures – Man Has Shave!’
I’ve had a shave in The Hague too. Didn’t make the news. Must be doing it wrong.
Other general impressions about the Hague – stately, serious, expensive. A bit Bath, a bit Oxford. I’m told a Dutch satirical joke: ‘Rotterdam is where the money is made. The Hague is where the money is spent. Amsterdam is where the party is.’
The Hague’s streets have the same wide Amsterdam mesh of tram lanes and bike lanes alongside the normal traffic. One has to be so careful when walking about – I nearly always look the wrong way when crossing.
A sightseeing highlight: the beautiful Peace Palace, with its Peace Flame burning eternally and movingly in a little monument outside the gates.
Peace doesn’t quite extend to the Hague’s young people on public transport, though. Many of the tram rides I take have the requisite sulky teens on the back seat, playing MP3s of techno and hip-hop loudly through their mobile phones. The ghetto blasters of the 21st century. Whether it’s Ipswich, Camden, or The Hague, Back Seat Teens are the same everywhere. Desperate to rebel (against everyone else) yet desperate to conform (with each other). ‘Boys will be boys’. Must they?
I say this, of course, because I was never that sort of teen boy. Or at least, I like to think I wasn’t.
(I wonder what the Dutch is for ‘Oh-my-god, you’re, like, so unfair… man.’)
The Mauritshuis gallery packs the tourists in, with its famous Girl With A Pearl Earring painting by Vermeer, as in that film with Scarlett J. The gallery shop has the image on every conceivable item of merchandise: ‘Girl’ jigsaws, ‘Girl’ mousemats, ‘Girl’ wristwatches, ‘Girl’ matchboxes (dutch for matchbox = ‘luciferdoos’). Typically, my favourite paintings aren’t available as postcards: Rembrandt’s heartbreaking ‘Susanna’ and ‘Andromeda’ and Rottenhammer’s ‘Christ Descending Into Limbo’, a tiny work crammed with 16th century demons and sprites of all shapes and sizes, in the spirit of Bosch.
I also do the Escher museum – pretty much everything he did is inside, plus a floor of games based on his optical illusion works. Leaves me feeling a bit giddy afterwards.
