Ja als ie maar groot is, twee vingers hoog is! *

"And so we're back. From outer space..." well, Amsterdam actually.

What a fantabulosa time we had, too!

We (Madam Arcati, Baby Steve, Houseboy Alex and I) always "do it large" when we spend a long weekend in fair "Mokum" - but this time, as an ongoing part of my 60th birthday celebrations, we literally "pushed the boat out"...

...for the Madam had only gone and got us a trip around the grachten in our own private vessel!!

Mooi!

To top it all, we disembarked at the private jetty of Amsterdam's premier grand Hotel Americain afterwards, where we were entertained by a lovely band playing Jazz/Swing standards and had a slap-up steak dinner. I felt even more like a Queen than usual...

Other than that special Sunday, the weekend was a whirlwind of meandering this beautiful city, taking in the wonders of the wonky canalside buildings, the historic Red Light District (where our hotel The Anco is located), the magnificent architecture of my beloved Tuschinski Theatre, the shopping streets, the Dam, the brown cafés on De Spui square, and (of course) visiting our favourite gay bars - Café 't Mandje, Spijker Bar, the Queen's Head, Amstel 54 and the best of 'em all, Montmartre - as well as doing as the locals do by eating mainly at FEBO and Van Dobbens [not a shred of roughage to be had!].

Ending with a bang, on Monday - our last day while waiting to get our flight home - we actually managed to catch the camp-as-tits Hartjesdag parade of men-dressed-as-women and vice-versa:

Hartjesdag Zeedijk Amsterdam 2023 deel 2: De Parade met Hartjes en Queens

I could not have asked for more for my milestone birthday!

Did we miss anything while were away?

The journalistic and broadcasting world mourned the loss of a national treasure, the greatest chat-show host this country ever had, Sir Michael Parkinson, whose eponymous BBC show was a peak primetime hit that spanned all the way from 1971 to 1982 and again from 1998 until its final iteration (by then on ITV) in 2007. In that long, long run he interviewed myriad top stars including Bette Davis, Dame Edith Evans, Kenneth Williams, David Bowie, Peter Ustinov, Muhammad Ali, Liberace, Fred Astaire, Orson Welles, James Stewart, John Wayne, Mickey Rooney, David Niven, Gene Kelly, James Cagney, Robert Mitchum, Billy Connolly, John Lennon, Tina Turner, Madonna, Dame Edna Everage, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Redford, Joan Rivers, Oliver Reed, Helen Mirren, Ingrid Bergman, Dustin Hoffman, Bette Midler, Luciano Pavarotti, Peter Cook, Miss Piggy, and many, many more besides. And was sometimes upstaged by some of them:

Lily Savage on Parkinson

Needless to say, the big news for football-loving Brits (and British media) was the fact that the women's team lost their World Cup attempt to Spain in the final; there was acres of coverage (as there has been for months) of the horrific trial of child serial killer nurse Lucy Letby, which ended in her imprisonment for life; the furore over the (probably) criminal fire and subsequent demoltion of The Crooked House pub in the Midlands continued to enthral the meejah; and there was a rather dramatic turn of events in the ongoing war in Ukraine, with the destruction of a high-tech Russion bomber way inside its own territory. Good.

However, as always when we come back from holiday I hear you cry, dear reader, "But what did you bring us back, Jon?!"

How about this?!

Lawineboys ft. Rocky Vosse - Pretty Belinda

You do, of course, need to be fairly tanked-up on lager and Flugel shots to really "get" it I suppose. Try this one:

Ferry de Lits - Viva Cerveza

If that one doesn't get you going, you are just going to have to come along with us next time and experience the sheer buzz of a crowd sing-a-long to songs like this in Café Montmartre on the Amstel to see exactly why we adore it so...

Is it good to be back?

No!!!

[* "Ja als ie maar groot is, twee vingers hoog is" = "Yes if it is big, two fingers high!" - an extract from the lyrics of Viva Cerveza]