Book Extract
The Dutch
Book Extract
The Dutch
| “As you may know, the Dutch are great
organisers. They became so partly out of necessity. The way they mastered
environmental planning, for instance, sprang from sheer lack of space. It
always strikes me when I’m abroad (well, not in Japan) that normally when,
say, a factory gets closed down it becomes an abandoned factory, with a
stretch of wasteland where once the parking lot was. Not in Holland. We
need the space and we need it now. Sorry, but we didn’t become such
experts at hydraulic engineering for nothing. Why do you think they always
call in the Dutch when things go wrong again in Bangladesh? Because we
know about drainage. We know all about canals, polders and dykes. We have
to - half the country is below sea level. ‘Polder’ and ‘dyke’ are, in
fact, Dutch words. I think it was some American who invented the
skyscraper, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had Dutch ancestors. For
ages, for centuries, we’ve been making land out of sea to make the people
fit in; surely the next step is to make land out of sky. If you can’t fit
in any more people, hey, why not pile them up? Even our wilderness is planned. Wasteland doesn’t exist in Holland. We simply can’t afford to waste land. If we get rid of the factory building and strip away the tarmac, we may as well convert that plot into nature. That’s right, we actually make nature here. In a country were every patch of land is appointed a function, where every bit of space is occupied, where there just wasn’t enough room to let nature run its own free course, there isn’t much nature left. So we make it. In other countries nature management is called conservation, but here it is landscaping. We create nature out of pasture (we do most of our farming abroad these days), we reshape the peat polders we’ve used up. As a result, there isn’t any real nature in Holland. It’s all cultivated. And even if you do come across a strip of wood that’s been wood for centuries, that was planted some ten generations ago, you still have to use your hands as blinkers to shut out all the pylons, buildings and motorways. Add a few ear plugs and keep concentrating on that little bit straight ahead… gosh, isn’t it peaceful here. A shame, though, that you can’t hear the birds with those earplugs. And a shame there are so many people, and so few birds. They never should have laid that cycle path. They shouldn’t have erected those signposts. They shouldn’t have put down the picnic benches. There are people all over the place. Let’s get away from here. Let’s cycle the three more metres that separate us from the edge of the wood and seek some real quiet spot. We can’t find one. In countries as close by as Germany, cycling routes are open circles. A Dutch cycling map, however, shows a fine maze. Route A crosses route B at least three times, and on every crossing you can thumb your nose at the idiots who’ve chosen route C or D in the belief that it would be quieter. They were wrong: it’s never quiet. There are always people. Some go as far as to say that Holland is a city of 15 million inhabitants, with some carefully cultivated parks between the carefully planned housing estates. Others say there’s still room, in the North, for instance, where apart from me and a few regional stick-in-the-muds, nobody wants to live, mainly because or with the result that economic activity never quite got off the ground. I’m not so sure there’s still room, though. For one, the North is popular for its fine network of cycle paths. If you go on a cycling holiday, you go to the North. As do all the other cycling fans, armed with the same maps as you - for a Dutchman doesn’t go anywhere without a map. And who can blame him? You do need some means to find the way through those narrow strips of greenery and make it seem the nice day in the country that we no longer have in our urban landscape. Or maybe we’re just practical, with our maps and things. Let me tell you one thing about the Dutch: they’re really practical. They’re great organisers. We don’t waste space, but we don’t like to waste time either. One hand holds the map, the other holds the diary. Don’t drop by, make an appointment. Don’t wait and see, do it now. In fact, we’re so practical that if a problem keeps nagging us, we seek a solution. To give the customary examples: abortion, prostitution, euthanasia, drugs, we are all dealing with. Instead of saying, ‘These things shouldn’t happen’, we soon concluded that they do and that they won’t stop happening either, and devised a means of bringing them under control. Take our drugs policy, which the French are so furious about (and why, you could ask, for it’s mostly Frenchmen who come here for drugs. God, do the frogs bother us with their hunger for hash and heroin.). Of course junkies are a nuisance. Of course being a junkie isn’t a healthy way to live (it rather seems an unhealthy way to die). We could spend ages condemning them or wishing they weren’t there, but why not try something else? Give those junkies who just can’t kick the habit – yes, we screen them first - that shot of methadon so that they won’t go on stealing innocent people’s car radios. Regulate the number of coffee shops and the kind of drugs they sell (I’d better make this clear, just in case. If you’re in Holland and feel like a drink, don’t go to a coffee shop. Coffee shops are places where you buy drugs. You get drinks in a cafe.). Another example: abortion. Permitted and paid for. You have to think about it a week first, to make sure you’re really positive, but if you don’t change your mind, okay, then let’s get rid of it. We don’t want you to go to some obscure knitting needle practice. We don’t want a child to be unwanted. Just think, the kid will need years of expensive therapy later. However, to prevent the whole procedure being necessary in the first place, maybe we’d better pay some more attention to sex education. We could do it in the schools; after all, most unwanted pregnancies occur among teenagers. Tell you what, we’ll do condom commercials at prime time, to make sure they get the message. We’ll do it in the cinema. We’ll do it on billboards. Every teenager must get to see a condom at least once a day. The teacher at school will demonstrate how they should be used. Come on, don’t snigger, don’t be shy, look at that banana and see how you it becomes an admissible fruit. My, do we have great teachers: our abortion rate is the lowest in the world. And weren’t we lucky when that AIDS trouble began; the whole safe banana skin system was ready for the prevention campaign. What is forbidden ducks under. What’s permitted stays at the surface. And we really don’t like drowning. We like to know where we stand. If we do.”  
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