Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Het es cowd

When the delicious young lady who later became Mrs Allsop and I first met, you know how it is, we explored each other. I am too much of a gentleman to be more specific, but I will share one piece of discovered information with you. I discovered that my good lady had spent the summer in Holland when she was 16 or so, and had learned just one phrase of Dutch: het es cowd - at least that's how she pronounced it. Ever since - and we are talking five decades or so - whenever I look out of the window of a morning and see the hoar frost on the ground, I say Het es cowd. At the moment, we have vicious arctic winds pulling down the temperature, so at the moment het es really f.........g cowd, believe me: a good excuse for adding a shluck of brandy to my bedtime cocoa.

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