THEY say that the easy way to find your way around Amsterdam is to remember that the canals go in order of ascending importance, first the Princes' Canal, then the Emperors' and then at the pinnacle the Herrengracht, the Gentlemen's or the Merchants' canal. The Dutch way was always to rate the businessmen. If you remember that you won't get lost.
On the Herrengracht there is a beautiful, tranquil hotel called the Ambassade - it's so discreet that you would pass it and not know it was a hotel at all. Eight old Dutch houses, all with their own front doors - just one of them with a tiny foyer. From the bedroom window you can see the canal flowing by, with closed in boatloads of sightseers who point up at the lovely buildings, like the one you are sitting in.
There were people coming over to go to the Vermeer exhibition in The Hague - impossible to get a ticket for it now unless you booked with a group that includes entrance as part of the package.
There's a magnificent catalogue which is selling in huge numbers. People were poring over it in the little space that acts as a lobby in the Hotel Ambassade and you could look out the windows and imagine that every single building opposite you housed a Vermeer scene inside.
One couple, disappointed not to get entrance tickets to the exhibition, were making the best of it. "We'll buy the catalogue dear and tour around imagining The Lacemaker, The Geographer in any of these places," he said.
"And we can go to Delft where he was from," the woman said eagerly, and they belted their raincoats and went off happily along the cobbled street.
AT lunchtime a French author was being asked to sign two books for someone, will I write?" she asked, with a deeply puzzled expression. Would she write "Kind Wishes", or "Best Regards", or "Cordially"? Then, of course, it was for Dutch people - perhaps she should write something in Dutch, she asked? It was explained that they all spoke English, and would understand a word such as "Greetings". Greetings? No she didn't think so. Not greetings. She opened her Dutch phrase book. It didn't yield her much. Very alarmist all these things . . . Where is the ambulance? Where is the nearest hospital?
They watched glumly, the people who had been sent to get the signature. The author went through Left, Right, Double Bed, Twin Beds. "Oh look," she said. "Aardappels ... Imagine that's the Dutch for potatoes! Then she found the word for Thursday - Donderdag. She said it over and over, and wondered would it be a nice thing to write?
"Perhaps just `Greetings' and your name?" they suggested desperately. They had forgotten how she hated "Greetings", a cold word, an almost hostile word.
They returned to the agonising debate between "wishes" and "regards" when I had to leave. I was straining to see the title of her book, but couldn't. We have to hope it wasn't a tome on decision making. We have to weep for the people who went to her book signing and may still be there.
RODDY Doyle was heading off from the hotel for his book signing later that even the bookstore said he had attracted a great crowd, all of them anxious to talk to him about everything from teaching to holidays in Ireland, to the movies of his books. The shops are full of his books and he has a very big following.
Like everyone else, he doesn't know why the Dutch even consider translating anything written in English into their own language. Everyone you meet speaks such perfect English, they barely need the translation. But this would be rude and ungracious thing to say to a Dutch publisher and so nobody says it.
One of Roddy Doyle's admirers told me that his books were terrific, they really caught the way people spoke at school. Everyone in his, school spoke exactly like that. Not the same words, obviously, because they spoke Dutch, but the same mood. It's the same all over the world, but nobody wrote, it before.
ONE of my own outings was to a shopping, mall in the far distant suburbs where I had, interesting encounters. Among the courteous, multi lingual Dutch people who came to chat were two very bad tempered women indeed. The advertisement for the book signing had included the Dutch words for "A Born Storyteller". Apparently on the basis of this, they thought I had a new book out called A Born Storyteller and were very peeved that this was not so. They had read everything else, they had only come in, taking two buses, because they had been led to believe by a misleading newspaper ad that there was a new book.
I had no idea what all the shouting at the desk was about and kept looking up in alarm. When it was explained I offered them the bus fare but they said it was the principle of the thing. They would go off and have a nice drinkey lunch instead. The bookseller thought that they might have already had a nice drinkey bus journey.
Then a man said he would like a book signed for his fiance. "What's her name?" I asked and he said something so extraordinarily unexpected to me that I nearly fell off my chair.
But it's amazing how you can recover, so I didn't even show my upset. I started to write my own name, and then he said it again. Now this is very unreasonable I thought to myself, I didn't ask him to come in here and buy the book, he came of his own free will.
He looked at me despairingly. "Look I'll write it out for you, her name, it's F-a-c-k-y-e."
"Of course it is," I said briskly and sent her greetings, best wishes and warm regards.
I FLEW from Schiphol Airport, an unmercifully huge place nicely serviced by little buggies, on all plane to Bristol. Beside me there was a man reading the Daily Telegraph. As always, everyone else's paper seems more interesting than the one you are reading and when he had fallen asleep I took his paper from his nerveless hands and read it from cover to cover.
KLM had served a snack and told us proudly on a little note on each tray that they were introducing an experimental lobster snack, a small portion in a little dish, and it was only gorgeous. I was thinking to myself that it should be a fairly permanent experiment when I noticed that the sleeping man had eaten everything else on his tray but had not touched the lobster. I contemplated it, but decided reluctantly against it.
When he woke I gave him back his newspaper. "I was thinking of eating your lobster as well," I said, hoping he would say: "But please do, I've always been allergic to it." Instead he went pale.
My God, you can't shut your eyes for two minutes on a plane these days, he said. "I've been saving it, saving it as a treat." I don't think he was. I don't think he had intended to eat it at all to be honest, it's just that he didn't like being unconscious while those around were making free with his newspaper and studying his snack tray.
I watched him at Bristol. He took out his mobile phone and told someone that he would check in at the hotel, unpack his dinner jacket and freshen up before dinner. He was going to a big dressed up dinner and he said he had been saving his lobster as a treat. A likely story.