Wednesday 28 June 2017

De Mooiste Stad


The tabloids are in a tizz over the impending return of The Great British Bake-Off

We are on a bit of a countdown to London's Gay Pride March (two weekends away!) - with last-minute shopping and adding a few trims to our outfits - and we have also booked our annual pilgrimage to Amsterdam for my birthday in August!

How appropriate (among a slew of famous birthdays including actress Kathy Bates, journalism guru Harold Evans, the faboo and sadly missed John Inman, composer Richard Rodgers, the lovely Gilda Radner and the living legend that is Mel Brooks) that we have a rather appropriate centenarian to celebrate today - one of Holland's most-lauded popular singers (and gay man), Wim Sonneveld!

Here he is with one of our favourite songs about one of our most beloved cities - Aan de Amsterdamse Grachten:


Aan de Amsterdamse grachten
heb ik heel mijn hart voor altijd verpand.
Amsterdam vult mijn gedachten,
als de mooiste stad in ons land.
Al die Amsterdamse mensen,
al die lichtjes 's avonds laat op het plein.
Niemand kan zich beter wensen
dan een Amsterdammer te zijn.


Couldn't agree more.

Willem "Wim" Sonneveld (28th June 1917 – 8th March 1974)

5 comments:

  1. Thank you darling for the bake-off update! They are just now airing that final season here on public television, but we already watched it. (Someone figured out how to do that here in my house, he shall remain nameless.) Did you know that they couldn't call it "Bake-off" here in the states because Pillsbury owns the rights to those words? I'm very sad that the whole thing fell apart, but if we get TWO bake-off shows out of it, that could be a good thing!

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    1. Pilsbury is yet another producer of mass-market rubbish (like Aunt Bessie, Ben & Jerry's, Kraft, Del Monte and the like). Their "branding" of an innocuous phrase leaves me cold. As for the programme itself, we never watch such things (anything "against the clock" or "reality TV" is definitely a no-no chez Delargo), but I do know that there is only one "Bake-Off" left out of this debacle. The saintly Mary Berry remains a BBC gal, and it is merely the name (and Paul Hollywood) that remains intact... Jx

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    2. PS we much prefer Wim Sonneveld!

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  2. Did those Bake-Off boys in your first photo graduate from The Very Mistress's School for Unruly, Insolent Bitches, by any chance?

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    1. I think they did The Bigger the Better tutorial! Jx

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