Last night there was a loud thunderstorm which began just before 22 pm, the dogs were quite worried by the thunder.

Marleen gets especially worried so got Richie to let her go on to his bed; this seems to do the trick for her.

Richie had to wait until after 1 am before the storm had calmed down sufficiently for him to go out with the dogs for their last pee.

At 1.30 am they got round to the dog toilet without any mishaps, they did get blown about abit but luckily the storm had moved away over the water behind Central Station.

At 2 am the storm came back and was going mad overhead and the rain came down like stair rods interspersed by huge hailstones.

At 2 am the dogs charged in after a huge clap of thunder seemed to tear the sky apart, Spike jumped under the duvet with Richie and Marleen went to sleep under my bed until dawn when the storm waas gone.

Read in papers today that the wind speed was 100 to 150 kilometres per hour wind and hailstones of 5 cm.

Got very worried for the flowers on the windowsills but they look ok today.

Pleased about that as I remember Richie planting up the balconies in an old flat and after two hours a storm happened and the hail decapitated every flower it was a massacre.

The plants never recovered neither did the weather that summer.

Ever since we have been cautious sometimes too cautious and missed the spring flowers.

We did not do that this year and have pretty flowers on all the available windowsills.

Because of the storm we were up very late today usually Richie massages my legs and gets the baclofen at 10 am but today it was 11.30 before we were awake and suddenly it was 14 pm and Marianne was here for her Tuesday visit.

Marianne came here originally as a volunteer in October 2007 and quickly felt like a friend and now she is becoming a very good friend which is brilliant.

She is a very lovely woman very kind and pleasant to have visit.

Glad she still wants to be friends, sadly another woman who also came as a volunteer in October 2007 has stopped coming.

She told me one day she would see me on the following Friday and emailed me the following day saying’ won’t be coming anymore don’t feel I can contribute anything to your life’

Was not a nice surprise but somehow not totally shocked as had felt that all was not ok since I have been in bed.

Sadly she never wanted to talk about it but I did feel she became very uncomfortable around me shame as I am still me.

Shame too as I really liked Karin, thought she was quite a girl.

Guess thats life.

Queen's Day at Museumplein, Amsterdam.









Today is Queen's Day the Queen's official birthday which has been promoted to a big celebration so as to overshadow tomorrow which is May Day.

In England I used to get May Day off here everyone gets the 30 April off work so it has become very popular.

Last night got a taste of Queen's Day courtesy of groups of drunks who seemed to be having great fun shouting and bawling at each other outside our building at about 3 am.

Their fun even went as far as throwing a bottle not at anyone but just it seemed for the happy sound of broken glass.

It is quite a liability to have the books on the side of the house lit up at night as drunken 'art critics' were keen to let the entire neighbourhood know what they thought of them.

Luckily the neighbourhood kids have gone somewhere else today so could get some sleep from about 6am until 10 am and then the boats started to go by.

Each playing music mostly really dreadfully boring music but loud so everyone can enjoy it.

Here there seems to be the idea that if the music is amplified it is good which sadly is very often not true as I can hear only too clearly today.

Some of the boats are playing Amsterdam music but sadly only a couple the rest seem to be playing a two cord loop without any bass which gets louder without building to anything.

Hopefully people will stop riding up and down the canals and go indoors and spare us them getting drunker on the water and playing their favourite tunes even louder.

Every now and then like now I can hear the dull amplified music dimly in the background and a few kids are playing in the sunshine.

It is a really lovely day today which makes a pleasant change hope it does not result in riots outside Central Station like a couple of years ago when it had been an exceptionally hot day.

People had drunk alot of cool beers and when they could not get on trains at Central Station and the police response was instant violence the masses responded in kind.

Think the train company will have learned their lesson and put on enough trains since then.

I shall now get on with enjoying my day and will start by playing some music I like such as The Four Tops, lovely music for a lovely day.

Hope it is a good day for you too.