Het is een mooie dag voor feesten!

The Worcester Park Blog already has a post about the new Acacia hair and beauty salon that opened last night on Central Road but didn't have a picture so if you're really that interested here's mine, and for the record the phone number's 020 8330 4164.


For our part the Brinkster Clan will be making the most of the fact that the trains are actually working today to go to Holland House 2009 this afternoon in Trafalgar Square to celebrate everything Dutch and the upcoming Koninginnedag (Queen's birthday) so while Brinkster Minor will be indulging his love for chips with fritesaus, the rest of us will be scoffing poffertjes and there may be beer... possibly... well, definitely.

There will be plenty of other things to do than eat and drink and whether it's taking a tour of the Dutch paintings in the adjoining National Gallery, meeting Bert and Ernie from SesamStraat (Sesame Street), listening to the live bands or watching the Dutch football skills there should be enough things to keep us out in the rather promising-looking weather. If you're at a loose end today and looking for something to do outside that's a bit different you could do a lot worse! Plus it's free.

Tot ziens!

Holland House 2009
http://www.holland.com/uk/hollandhouse2009/

SesamStraat
http://www.sesamstraat.nl/

Honoured

After Holland's scorching victory last night I wake up (blearily) this morning to find that one of Worcester Park's residents has been named in the Queen's birthday honours! How much better can life get!??! (that's rhetorical, purely rhetorical)

Anyway, congratulations are due to Martin Rudduck, formerly head of the UK Chemical Weapons Convention National Authority and more importantly Worcester Park resident, who I think has snagged an OBE.

For those aspiring to an OBE and are wanting to get their foot on the bottom rung of the ladder I notice that KFC are advertising for the team-leaders in Worcester Park to deliver "Customer Mania" service for the princely sum of £6.00-£6.50 p/h + bonus.

Lastly you may have noticed that Pizza Express has updated its frontage

The photo above show the work in progress and the smart new design seems to feature the title words running together to make it look like "PizzaExpress", which unfortunately reminded me of sign put up by the proprietors of the nursery called "Kids Exchange". You be the judge:

Het was een heel goed avond!

OK, so my earlier attempt at predicting the scoreline was thankfully inept and the Leeuwen of Holland put three perfectly taken and entirely uncontroversial goals past the Italians, which is going to make the conversation that much more entertaining tomorrow morning when I get my bacon sandwich from Luigi's as he had wagered me on the subject.

Thanks to the North End Tavern who accomodated us and we'll have to see how Friday's game goes, thought I'll most likely be at home for that one looking after small Brinksters.

To keep this post vaguely Worcester Park related I saw, as I walked down the hill from the North End Tavern into the gorgeous sunset whilst being greeted by pedestrians and hooted at by cars (due to my somewhat ostentatious Dutch outfit), that Knightwood Estates has now reopened but in its former guise as a furniture shop rather than estates agents. Anybody know what's happening over the disappearing monies from the estate agent bit?

Wij zijn terug!

The Brinkster Clan has returned from a week in Holland!!

Inevitably at some point my mind wanders to making comparisons with Worcester Park and it was strange being in a country where you can go shopping without a charity shop in sight and where people still have enthusiasm for the upcoming European Championships. The place was outrageously clean (contrast to London) tho' even the local picturesque village was blessed with a burnt out speed camera, that hallmark of modern resistance. We had a cottage by a lake with ducks, geese and red squirrels on the patio and rabbits out the back door...... which was heaven for the little Brinksters as you might imagine.

Anyway, the main meat of the holiday was spent at a place called Efteling which is an enormous theme park that puts any theme park in the UK I've been to to shame and even the biggest thrill ride (Python, with a double loop-the-loop and twin corkscrew) only had a waiting time of five minutes (Dutch organisation!) and Miss Brinkster managed five or six trips on it, but the best 'theme' ride is De Vliegende Hollander (Flying Dutchman) but you'll have to check out their web site to see that. Efteling's been declared the most popular attraction in Holland, beating the Amsterdam canal boats into second by something 750,000 and I'd thoroughly recommend it.

I gather from next door neighbour that the weather here hasn't been great this week but apart from a glitch on Thursday morning it was really hot in Holland all week......... sorry 'bout that.

Anyway it is only a week away from the start of the Euros so I've got a choose a suitable Worcester Park hostelry to go and watch it in...... and could any local Nederlanders (or sympathetic parties) get in touch and we could make it a group outing!!

Let me know if I've missed anything while I've been away as Google Blogsearch seems silent on the matter.

Ethnocentric football

After my prediction of a lacklustre English performance last night I though I'd give you a different perspective on last night's event's.

Holland's RTL news this morning jubilantly led with the story "Hiddink toch naar EK met Rusland" explaining that Guus Hiddink, well-known Dutch coach, will be taking Russia to the European Championship and gushingly continues:
"Hij profiteerde tijdens de laatste speelronde in groep E van een sensationele nederlaag op Wembley van concurrent Engeland tegen Kroatië, dat al was geplaatst (2-3)."
For those without a grasp of the language of the low countries that means, as we all know, that the reason for Hiddink's success is because of England's total failure last night and that by inference because Russia went through then it's indirectly good news for Holland.

Glad to see that ethnocentrism is alive and well in Europe but it will give myself and friends of the Brinkster clan free reign in plying our trade on Central Road to watch the Holland games uninterrupted. Dedicated readers will remember the Oranje's last foray to the Cazbar during the World Cup!! If any local bars would like to apply for the position of "Official Hostelry of Brinkster's European Cup Campaign 2008" to stave off the financial ruin of there being no England games then please do let me know.

Long time gone

Clan Brinkster has returned from its tour of the Low Countries and have nothing but good things to say about western Holland and northern Belgium.... bit embarrassing really considering some of the things I've said about southern Belgium.

I haven't caught up with what's been going on in WP so don't have any real news as such, but thought I'd point you in the direction of this fine piece of journalism from the Telegraph about the Gran-tastic "Zimmers" band.

"Irene Simain, 83, agreed. "It's absolutely fabulous. I'm always very tailored, I've never worn anything like this in my life," she said, gazing down at her flower-power Dr Martens, next to the tiger-stripe DMs of Peggy Bohan, 65, from Worcester Park, and the Union Jack ones sported by 69-year-old Dolcetta Burden, from Lewisham."