Week 10 and now for something completely different
The above audio file took a bit of working out...
I told Claude that "it works for me" and this was the reply...(so please let me know if it doesn't work)
The "for me, at least" caveat is worth noting — Google Drive previews can sometimes behave differently depending on whether the listener is logged into a Google account or not. Worth asking one of the grandkids or family members in Australia to test it from their end, just to confirm it plays for everyone before you commit to using this approach across all your posts.
The audio is an artificial voice reading part of what is offered below - my next step wil be to record my own voice and let AI do the same thing using my samples as the model. I suspect I won't like this... Paul suggested that the grandkids are more likely to listen to audio than to do any reading - but Claude pushed back to say that as they get older, reading may become a more valuable experience for them - let's hope so. (Claude also suggested that I do it now before my voice gets even more diminished).
Just another aside: Brother Leigh has done some wonderful family research and came up with this (posted in another Blog).
So, we could well be identified as the "Couldabeens"...
(A gold rush digger who amassed quite a fortune)
https://twiw2026.blogspot.com/2026/03/copelands-in-ballarat.html
(This was done using Google Gemini - I'll try it again with Claude and see what happens)
Needless to say, todays effort has taken me several days - not my usual 2 hours on a Sunday morning.
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Disclaimer: I was an early adopter of Facebook and Twitter and Google but I came to realise that the first two were not for me. For probably the same reasons, my dabbling in AI will also fall by the wayside, but for the time being learning something new is it's own reward. And I get to read all my "stuff" again :-)
For example, it would simply be wrong to re-write The Lizzie Letters - as that is her own style from 1895. Anything else would also be someone else, entirely.
This week's quote from John P. Weiss
And the tyranny of technology, with its infernal apps and notifications and sign-ins. Also the coarsening of society, where people forego conversation to exist inside blinking screens of digital distraction, algorithms, and noise.
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Oh dear...
- In the style of an English gentleman
- In the style of P.G. Wodehouse
- In the style of Samuel Pepys
Examples of Claude's suggested styles
Wodehouse:
"The Makita hammer drill was pressed into service, armed with a masonry
bit of frankly heroic length, equal to the challenge of walls that appeared to
have been built with the express intention of resisting all future electrical
improvements."
Australian:
"We needed a masonry bit that looked more like a javelin than a drill
bit to get through them. Tjeerd didn't flinch. Good bloke."
Bryson:
"I held things and offered moral support, which I like to think was
helpful."
So, this week is offered in the style of Bill Bryson - although I think I really prefer P.G. Wodehouse.
A global surge of misinformation – amplified by social media, AI fakery and organised disinformation campaigns – is corroding the foundations of democratic decision-making and public trust.
Arguably, the most dangerous pandemic ever to strike humanity is the plague of deliberate misinformation, mass delusion and unfounded belief which is engulfing 21st Century society.
The initial proliferation of falsehoods led the World Health Organization to dub it “an infodemic” which “causes confusion and risk-taking that can harm health. It also leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response”.
Disinformation – the deliberate spreading of wrong information – is a new form of murder: world statistics show that Covid death rates were far higher among the unvaccinated, many of whom were influenced by lies spread by others. A CDC study found that for 16,500 deaths among unvaccinated people, there were 5,400 among people who had had one vaccine shot, and only 285 deaths among people who had had booster shots. Thus, lies about vaccines helped kill three times as many unvaccinated people, compared to those who had been immunised once, and 55 times as many as those who had two or more shots.
This Week in Wijnjewoude
Notes from a village whose name I
still can't pronounce correctly
Week of 9 – 14 March 2026
Monday — In Which Light is Shed
I should explain something about Dutch walls. They are
not like other walls. Other walls, when you wish to put a hole in them, accept
this with a degree of resignation and allow you to get on with your day. Dutch
walls — at least the ones I have encountered in Wijnjewoude — appear to have
been constructed by people who considered the possibility of future electrical
work and decided, firmly, that they were against it. But I am getting ahead of
myself.
Monday began with a load to the tip and then, more gently, with Tjeerd — our volunteer, a
man of remarkable patience and practical ability who arrives each week and
immediately starts fixing things — replacing the fluorescent strip light in the
workshop with a new LED fitting. I watched him work with the quiet admiration I
always feel around people who actually know what they're doing. The new light,
when switched on, revealed that the workshop was considerably larger than I had
previously supposed, and also that I had been leaving things in entirely the
wrong places.
Tjeerd fitting the new LED light. The
workshop has never looked so bright, or so revealing of where things have been
left.
Emboldened by this success, we moved outside to install a
light on the walkway — something that should, by any reasonable assessment,
have been done some time ago, but which had been waiting for a moment that
never quite arrived. The moment had now arrived, in the form of Tjeerd and a
Makita hammer drill fitted with a masonry bit of such impressive length that it
seemed less like a tool and more like a statement of intent.
Here is what I have learned about Dutch brickwork: it
does not negotiate. Tjeerd drilled with the focused determination of a man who
has drilled through Dutch walls before and knows that patience, not force, is
what the situation requires. I held things and offered moral support, which I
like to think was helpful.
|
The Makita and its heroic masonry bit,
taking on the brickwork. The wall put up a good fight. |
 The finished lamp. Smart, solid, and
approximately two years overdue. |
Tuesday — Results and Roots
There are mornings, even in a Frisian March, when you
step outside just after six o'clock and something stops you in your tracks.
Tuesday was one of those mornings. The new lamp was casting a warm amber light
along the brick walkway, the sky was that particular shade of pre-dawn blue
that doesn't really exist at any other time of day, and the bare trees at the
edge of the property were silhouetted against it in a way that felt almost
deliberate. I stood there for longer than was strictly necessary. It was worth
every moment of Monday's drilling.
6:03am, Tuesday. The new lamp doing
exactly what we hoped it would. Worth the wait.
Later that morning, Tjeerd and I turned our attention to
a project of an entirely different character: transplanting a row of Beech
trees that had been serving as a small hedge but which we had decided would be
better employed elsewhere. I say 'we had decided' — this is the kind of thing
that gets discussed for weeks and then, one Tuesday, simply happens. The Yanmar
compact tractor, a cheerful red machine that looks slightly too small for the
jobs it gets asked to do and yet never fails to do them, was brought into
service.
(The hedge dates from 2006 when we used a subsidy offer from the Local Govt. to dig our pool and plant 100's of trees - including the hedge. The section on one side became redundant when we removed the fence adjacent to it). So the trees are 20 years old but have been constantly trimmed - so we must wait a few years for them to recover - the beech trees in the forest opposite are more than 100 years old - I'll have to wait a while).
The Yanmar YM1720D, lifting a Beech tree
that has been in the same spot for years and has opinions about it.
|
Tjeerd preparing the new planting
holes. The orange safety figure watches from a respectful distance. |
One Beech tree, newly relocated and
wrapped up properly. It will come round to the idea. |
By early afternoon, five Beech trees stood in a handsome
row along the driveway, their copper-brown winter leaves still attached — Beech
trees hold onto their dead leaves through winter, a habit I find admirable and
slightly melancholy in equal measure. In a few years, when they've settled in
and grown together, it will make a fine entrance. For now, they look mildly
startled, which under the circumstances seems fair enough.
|
The five Beeches in their new
positions. They are adjusting. |
A proper avenue in the making. Give it
five years. |
The Rhythm of the Days
I have been here long enough now that the morning routine
has become as automatic as breathing. Up early. Light the Janus stove — a
serious piece of ironmongery that sits in the corner of the Day Activity workshop and
radiates heat with the quiet confidence of something that has been doing this
for a long time. Split the kindling, which is one of those tasks that is oddly
satisfying in a way that is difficult to explain to people who haven't tried
it. Make the coffee. By this point the building is warm and the day can begin
in earnest.
 The Janus stove, well fed and content.
The kindling pile is a point of quiet pride. |
 Morning coffee around the table. The
whiteboard lists our ambitions. The newspaper lists everyone else's. |
The Day Activity room adjacent to where we have our morning coffee
contains one of the most striking things in the building — a large painting
executed directly onto masonry bricks by a man named Sunust, who stayed here in 2001
when the organisation was providing emergency accommodation for refugees. It
depicts a tropical river at sunset: fishing boats, palm trees, sky the colour
of burning copper. Sunust ("my grandmother lives just behind those houses") painted it twenty-five years ago and it has hung on
that wall ever since. I think about him sometimes when I look at it, and wonder
where he ended up, and whether he knows his painting is still here, still
stopping people mid-conversation.
Sunust's tile painting, 2001. A refugee
painted this twenty-five years ago and left it behind. Below it: a papier-mâché
giraffe who appears to have strong views about something.
The jigsaw puzzle being assembled by Lucas lives on the table by the big picture
window, where the view looks out across the fields toward the treeline. It is a
good spot for a puzzle. The view is sufficiently interesting to rest your eyes
on when you get stuck, but not so interesting that it distracts you entirely.
This week the fog sat in the fields most mornings, which added atmosphere. The
puzzle is coming along. I am not allowed to say how many pieces are left.
The puzzle, in progress. Outside: fog and
fields. Inside: warmth and mild puzzlement.
On the Subject of Animals
There is a cat. I mention this because the cat likes to
be mentioned, or at any rate, likes to be present in whatever room things are
happening in, positioned in such a way that it is impossible to ignore him. His
expression this week — chin resting on the table beside a houseplant, eyes at
half-mast — communicated a verdict of mild disappointment in the week's
proceedings that I found, I must admit, slightly unsettling.
Then there is Boeke. Boeke is a Shih Tzu/Pomeranian mix, and he
approaches his responsibilities with a seriousness that puts the rest of us to
shame. He accompanies the morning walks. He visits the clients, who are
always pleased to see him and never pleased to see him leave. He is, in the
truest sense, a professional. By early evening he is on the sofa, chin on Janny's slipper-clad feet, eyes closed, utterly spent. The life of a working
dog in Wijnjewoude is not for the faint-hearted.
 The cat, rendering judgement on the
week. The verdict was not entirely favourable. |
 Boeke, off duty at last. He has earned
every moment of this. |
Thursday — An Army of Angels
Every year we make Christmas gifts for several local
church groups to distribute to their parishioners. It is one of those projects
that I wasn't entirely sure about when it first arrived, and which I now look
forward to unreservedly. This year's gift is a small wooden angel — a turned
peg body, fabric wings, a twisted wire halo, and a little wire arms held across
the front. They are, if I say so myself, rather lovely.
On Thursday I went to check on progress and found the
workshop shelf occupied by what I can only describe as a considerable celestial
presence — close to a hundred of the little figures, standing in rows, each one
looking out at the room with two small dot eyes and an expression of serene
patience. It is only March. Christmas is nine months away. I found this
profoundly reassuring, though I couldn't tell you exactly why.
 One angel, examined closely. Two dot
eyes, wire halo, fabric wings. Simple and quietly lovely. |
|
Friday — A Seminar on Batteries (Bear With Me)
On Friday, Janny and I drove to Harlingen for a knowledge
session on home battery storage systems. I realise this does not sound like the
most gripping way to spend a Friday afternoon, and I won't pretend otherwise.
But here is the thing: when you are responsible for powering six apartments and
five households, and when the energy bills arrive with the cheerful regularity
of an unwanted relative, you reach a point where you have to do something about
it.
The session was run by a company called Mensonides and
they were good — clear, knowledgeable, not trying to sell us something we
didn't need. The technology is more complex than I had hoped and considerably
more expensive than I had budgeted for in my imagination. We came away with a
great deal to think about and a small stack of brochures that I will definitely
read thoroughly at some point. Progress, of a sort.
The Mensonides battery storage seminar,
Harlingen. Informative, thought-provoking, and free coffee.
A Note on the Light
Friesland in March is foggy. This is not a complaint —
the fog has a quality here that I have come to appreciate, the way it softens
the flat landscape and turns the treeline into something impressionistic. But
on Thursday morning, just after seven, I looked out through the big oaks across
the road and the sun was there, low and orange, threading between the trunks
like something from a painting. It won't clear the treeline for another couple
of months — the sun is still on its return journey, working its way back up the
sky a little more each day. But it is coming. You can feel it in the light.
Thursday, 7:10am. The sun making its way
back. It has a bit further to go, but it's getting there.
Until next week,
Wijnjewoude
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