what a lovely unexpected touch – the lovely fruity aperitive cocktail with a heart shaped pineapple piece over the rim, and the red rose that all guests received at the Phang-Nga Bay Thai Restaurant. Mind you – why is it unexpected – well in New Zealand that has never happened. Generally someone comes in with a basket of roses and then tries to cajole your partner to purchase one – such pressure.

Alex and Nui do all of this so so well.

The meal was great as well as it always is.

If you have never visited – Krocht 10A, Haarlem – the Phang-Nga Bay Restaurant. They even do home deliveries, takeaways as well as dine in.

It is cold and miserable if you are a bird here in Haarlem right now, except if you are a smallish bird within 500 metres of this house.

The bird restaurant is very busy every day – yesterday saw visits from the blue & great tits, a tree creeper, a robin, 1 jay, black birds, rooks, and jackdaws.

The rooks and jackdaws – fly away if they sense our movement in the house or if we roar out the window or rush through the door. The little birds seem to know that it is not them we are shouting at – and they stay and big birds rush away. I have just seen off 5 jackdaws. I don’t know how they manage to all be in our flimsy scrubby little trees at one time, because they are so big. What generally attracts my attention is the movement outside the window – the little birds do not make the branches wave about.

We think the rooks and jackdaws are okay because they scavenge everywhere and we feed them at the park and at the canals as well, when we are feeding the ducks, geese, swans, sea gulls etc.

We have tried feeding the wood pigeons in the park – but they are very shy and don’t come down to eat the grain until we leave. That’s okay. On Sunday we came back around the corner to a huge number of wood pigeons on the ground – so they are eating the seeds.

We think they love us – or they would if they knew we were the food source. We are delighted that our neighbours here have said they will take over the restaurant once we wend our way back to New Zealand.

We buy bird food at a stall at the Saturday market – and there are always people buying. On Saturday there were more people crowding around the Bird Food stall holder than ever before. It is even on the news that we should feed the birds and the people are feeding the birds on the bridges over the canals, in the parks, everywhere.

Bird food however is not tuppence a bag.

I know we are besotted by the birds here in the Netherlands and my all time favourite is the Swan, but then it could be the Jay or even the Tits or the Robin or ???. Yes we are besotted.

Today I am having a Jay experience I could never have imagined. We had considered that there was one Jay overwintering here now that the acorns have finished. But then we realised there were two – and they come together to take, store maybe, and eat our peanuts.

JJ spent some time in the weekend throwing and wrapping a slinger which included peanuts and fat balls over a high branch out from our bedroom window – in the attic. He didn’t say what he was up to – he just didn’t want me to say something gentle like – Don’t fall out of the window – after all it is only 3 floors up – you idiot or &^%$#$^ something like that. So he just did it.

Now when I see the lower branches bouncing about from my lounge window I get up and check – because if it is the rooks or jackdaws I see them off the premises. They can find their own food – and eat well when we feed the birds on the canals as well.

I saw the branches dancing about and went to the window prepared to open it and shout at the rooks and found that I have 5 Jays. They are moving down the tree in a circle – like a dance, while they are checking the safety of the situation. The stripey sections on the top of their heads is a raised tuft – possibly because they are nervous, being very shy woodland birds and here they are in a huge tree with a very special restaurant just for them in a little alley surrounded by tall houses.

And they are nervous and it is very hard not having a video to record a dance like this one – but it goes something like this.

You first, dance in a circle and land on that branch there – now you, raise the tuft, turn about and head for the branch over there, 2nd on the right – no not that one, it will not hold you well, and they will see you coming. The secret is to dance there gracefully, without alerting anyone, so we can feast tonight and tomorrow and the next day. Now everyone together down one branch. Wow we made it.

This is great nosh.

JJ is studying Dutch, and came home with a new word for us last week. It appears that your local cafe/bar/pub whatever you call it, is your “Stamcafe”.

In the short time we have been here we have visited more than 3 times each “a local” and we have enjoyed them all. BUT our local is really and quite regularly “The Coach House Inn” in Gedempte Oude Gracht.

Before we had even moved to our current house – we had experience of the Coach House. It is run by a quite mad Dutchman who serves with gusto, delivers to the table meals for elephants and is shocked that you cannot eat it all, and thinks it is very funny that JJ has the leftovers for his breakfast.

The first time we had dinner there we had a lovely time but I can’t remember a thing about what we ate, other than there was an enormous amount of food on the plate, and JJ had a doggy bag to take home. What I do remember absolutely vividly is that when we went to pay, we did not have enough money to cover the bill, and our credit card was useless because like many many places in the Netherlands the Coach House does not take credit cards.

Oh shit.

We did not have enough cash – We had been there maybe twice before, for gluhwein, and I think for lunch. It is amazing what happens to your gut when you do not have the funds for the food you have just eaten. We offered to do the dishes – his response, come and pay me tomorrow, which is just as well because we didn’t even know where the cash machine was in Haarlem and our bank with cash machine was about 3 k’s away. He didn’t even want the money we had between us.

That should have been enough to make this our Stamcafe, but it continued to get better. This Hans is fine with my English, and he is fine and has joke sessions with JJ and his not so very good Dutch. He continues to deliver meals for giant weight lifters, and he continues to provide a great service.

So when you are here in Haarlem you must visit our “Stamcafe”, and yes it is called “The Coach House Inn” in English, that is not a translation of a Dutch name.

We do know where the cash machine is now – and it is not 5 mins walk from the Coach House Inn and JJ has rushed there a couple times prior to paying a bill at the Coach Inn.