Part of the 2013 Dutch Festival held @ Rembrandt Club, St Marys
I'll admit it: apparently through miss-communication / missunderstandings, my contribution to a booklet containing the memories of ex-WTC students was NOT what I would have liked to be remembered for.
I'll admit it. Apparently through misunderstandings (My fault?) my memories in relation to my times after leaving teachers college were published in a way that disappoints me.
For many years she ran a 'cigarettes store', at that address.
Until I migrated (1956, age 12) whenever I called on her,
I would need to shout:
"Blijf maar!"
("Don't come out.")
when I opened her front door and the bell rang,
announcing a customer.
It was a modest shop with regular customer
whom she used to urge NOT to smoke because
it was bad for their health!
It was SHE who, on my first trip back, in 1969,
walked me into the centre of the city,
to stand with the crowd
at the huge Christmas tree, outside the (then) town hall,
and sing Christmas Carrolls.
Tante (Aunt) Bep (Elizabeth) has three main favourites:
The St Jan (Saint John) Church,
The Gouda Town Hall
and TEXT!
Many years ago, she sent my mother (her sister)
the "Gouda Town Hall"
("Our Town hall," which wasn't "well")
The 700+ year-old town hall has recently lost its functions as the city's administration centre.
A House/Hall of the city has been built, on the other side of the railway-line.
Many years ago, Tante Bep "sent my mother this town hall- in verse".
(We didn't really need any more representations of it. It's 'everywhere' in this house (on spoons, framed, on the wall, as a lamp by the tv etc., etc..)
But it's where my parents, and all our Gouda relatives were married; where births and deaths were registered and where my father went to arrange for us to migrate.
My daughter and son have sat on the chairs, where my parents were married, in 1943.
(We visited in 1997.)
Tante Bep and my mother and Tante Juul,
all worked in the candle factory.
(From when they were very little, my mother particularly 'mothered'
her sister Juul, who managed to spill the hot candle wax (styrene)
which landed on my mother's skirt, just before the photo).
Queenie van de Zandt sings Rise at the KING KONG Global Launch
I 'attended' "an evening with Jan van de Stool", in NIDA's Parade Theatre.
It's 12 December now, so Jan is about to move on (down to Melbourne)
but I'll just leave this here for now.
(It's GOOD to try to help promote something "Dutch" that's FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Queenie wrote:
"You may remember "I GET THE MUSIC IN YOU, an evening with Jan van de Stool" when I ran it back in 2006 at The Ensemble Theatre Scout Hall...
"...on July 24, 2006 a new star of comedy theatre was born...
recalls the early-glory days of Dame Edna…Jan van de Stool is destined to become one of our great comic creations."
Sunday Telegraph
“A triumph...on the verge of comic greatness”
Sydney Morning Herald
Or maybe you don't because, even though it was extended 3 times, it was still sold out, and so there were a lot of people who did not get to come along. (By the way, I do not know why the people from the newspaper say my course, "I GET THE MUSIC IN YOU, an evening with Jan van de Stool", was 'comic', but my producer Queenie, told me to put those quotes somewhere in my internet letter, so I've done it, even though I do not like to be told what to do).
Since 2006, I have hosted a lot of charity concerts for gays, emceed corporate events and put videos of myself on the Tube of You, most of which I did for free and out of the goodness of my heart (and also to get more 'Fan de Stools'). But now I am going to charge money for people to come along to "I GET THE MUSIC IN YOU, an evening with Jan van de Stool" - because as my father, back in Schiermonnikoog in Holland where I grew up, used to say, when I'd ask him for a few Guilders to buy some cream shots from the neighbouring cow farm: "Apples don't grow on trees you know" (but he said it in Dutch and he meant money, not apples, which actually do grow on trees...idiot)."
37 years of teaching, I'd do all over again (except that 1st inspection for List 1).
Two years at the then brand-new Wollongong Teachers College, ''prepared' me for teaching.
I have just received my copy of a little booklet which was prepared for the 50 year reunion which I did not attend.
I'd hoped that I'd submitted a recount of the experience of being transferred to "the country" (far west) ("Sydney too far away and I awoke in fright".) 'after leaving teachers college' but I must have also submitted the one about what WTC, for me, was like.
I DO have fond memories of a little group of friends with whom I played cards ~so much! And the trips on the steam-train back to Sydney on Fridays were also memorable.
But I wish I had not insisted on getting a copy of the booklet.
It reminds me of Dean Martin's line:
"I've had a very special request...but I'm gonna sing anyhow. ... from that wonderful picture Let's get out of the wheat fields Mabel we're goin' against the grain."
