I mentioned just now that amazing little church in the entrance of that Swiss cave. I've never forgotten that. I once made a ceramic and bronze relief sculpture showing what it looked like, and to show the absurdity of the lives of many people, I placed that church with its steep roof actually right inside the cave.
So many things I still want to show in my work. Some time ago I did a ceramic and bronze relief sculpture blended together with an oil painting. That is something I'd like to explore further: combining sculpture and painting techniques. And I want to develop our music further too: I want to build another bowed psaltery specifically for Jewish music, so when Karen and I play together, she can use that instrument, while I play my pan flutes or tabor pipes and percussion.
But I was telling you about those years straight after the war.
Back to Bakkum then. Bakkum was a very old village; like its neighbouring village Castricum the name even dates back to the Roman Empire, but it never grew any bigger than half a dozen streets. Until now of course with high-rise apartment buildings and new sub-divisions between the little old houses. At the time when I lived there it was still old, and very traditional.
It took about three-quarters of an hour to walk to the beach. That was men's territory, although a few of the older women had actually been to the beach too, once, out of youthful rebellion, and when nobody would see them. Men went to the beach with their horse-drawn carts to fish for shrimps, or to collect loads of shells for the lime kiln just around the corner from where we lived. A big structure of firebricks at the end of the 'Schulpvaart', the 'Shell Canal'.
Every day, early in the morning, the milkman, the greengrocer, and the baker would go along the houses, and the housewives would come out with their empty milk cans and their vegetable baskets. Occasionally you could hear the ragman, singing his call: 'Vodde, vodde' or the scissors-grinder with his handcart with the enormous pedal-driven grindstone: 'Scharesliep, messen en scharen slijpen, scharesliep.'
A few times a year a haberdasher called with a kind of cabinet on his back, to sell buttons and ribbons and other things like that. One was particularly cheeky, or maybe he was just desperate. Anyway, when Mum didn't buy anything of him at the front door, he came around the back to try once more. Mum still didn't buy anything.
'I suppose you haven't got any money,' he said.
'No,' Mum said, 'but I've got two dogs.' One was a big Belgian sheepdog, the other a lively little dog like a terrier. They heard Mum call, saw the haberdasher, and side-by-side jumped through the closed French doors. Two dogs, two closed glass doors, and they jumped through them both, one door each. The man ran, and a minute later his head appeared above the six-foot wooden fence: 'Could he please have his cabinet with merchandise back?'