The colourful backstreets of Fener

The colourful backstreets of Fener, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Back again in Amsterdam, just less than a week after we left for Istanbul. It was raining when we left our hotel and stepped into a taxi in Istanbul and it was raining when we landed in Amsterdam and walked home from the nearest tram stop. The only difference was that it was much darker and greyer in Amsterdam than in Istanbul The streets of Istanbul had become mini-rivers and the road along the wall had some major puddles which meant that impressive amounts of spray were created as we drove along.

It stayed dark and wet the whole afternoon, so we stayed indoors, with the central heating on for the first time this autumn. Fred made a cake and I watched racing from Aintree and saw Snoopy Loopy become even more like his predecessor Take The Stand, by racing in top class company, running really well but keep banging into his fences and making mistakes. I don’t know what their trainer, Peter Bowen does, but he seems to have some magic in getting such improvement into his horses, seemingly at some cost ot their jumping abilities.

Fred found some vegetable soup on the freezer and some mushrooms in the fridge and this became our dinner before we watched the results of the previous day’s Strictly Come Dancing, followed by a new BBC production of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, followed by bed, back in our own bed.

It is our company’s financial year end this week and there are a few things which need to happen before we close the balance sheets, so it might be a busy week this week, let alone catching up on what I missed last week.