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2010-11-26 21:38

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Teethning

Baby Egberdina (7 1/2 months) finally has a tooth. She also has a cream for eczma and a viral infection in her ears: as we have come to appreciate the immune system is not a fan of the design process whereby teeth gouge their way through the gums either.

�2. Prinsesses

Svensk Damtidning has an RSS feed.

Way back when, we used to covet Svensk Damtidning like nobody's business, and we would once have been thrilled that prinsess Madeleine was relocating her search for Mr Right to New York after her very public split from Jonas Ratfink, occasioned by some fairly public kiss and tell storytelling by a member of Zweden's ladies' volleyball team.

Even now we're very glad to have it, since we do not otherwise still read a lot of Zwedish.

�3. Books

It's a good day if we manage to slog through the NRC Handelsblad before slumping in front of the TV, and quite a lot of days are not good in that metric.

We did recently enjoy Am�lie Nothomb's P�plum, though. Almost exclusively on her model of dialogue as combat; full of crazy-mad stuff no one else would think of or at least write.

And Guy Delisle's Pyongyang, in which he recounts in comic form his experiences supervising animation production in North Korea, and which is exactly as weird and unsettling as it ought to be.

�4. Sport

The skihoppning starts tomorrow; we recommend Bertutschi.com for enthusiasts who read Cherman or who are willing (we're not) to read Cherman "translated" into a thing that is apparently intended to be mistaken for Engleesh.

For cricket, we firmly endorse Beeld's gloriously Afrikaans coverage. Not least for Afrikaans-reading supporters of EnglandandWales who find the Ashes coverage a little too stressful, as we often do.

�5. Wel sneeuw, maar tot nu toe geen chaos.

The sneeuw that hit the frontpages on Monday hit us today, as predicted. After last year's many debacles there were extra gritters and a grim resolution not to succumb this time, and bathetically enough it has worked so far.

If it lasts long enough for Boris van 't Blad to enjoy his new sledge (which is to say, for this weekend), that will be enough sneeuw for us this winter.

Sn�kaos - of which Twitter reports have reached us from Stockholm and Vancouver - is only funny when it happens somewhere else, where they should have been expecting it but bewilderingly weren't.

Actually driving in sneeuw is frankly a miserable experience, and last year when we braved it down to Hoek van Holland to catch a boat and disembarked to find more sn�kaos on the wrong side of the road in Blighty, was not at all noted for its hilarities.

�6. A little bit of politics

We're thinking about finding out how to register to vote back in Blighty in the forthcoming glorious "Tell the LibDems just what you think of them", because we - for one - have lately acquired a strong opinion about the LibDems which we are keen to express.

Plans for Dutch naturalisation are on hold, meanwhile, in counter-productive protest at the prevailing regimes miserable tribaliste interpretation of citizenship.

�7. The giving of thanks

Thanksgiving doesn't exist here in the Netherlands, and we have no occasion to miss it. But the relentless logic of globalization being what it is, we chose to celebrate with a bucket of KFC's finest fried chickens and a bottle of Beaujolais's most cynical primeurs or nouveaux. This would have been a more festive occasion had the baby been less the worse for wear, probably, but it was magnificent enough that we would cheerfully do it again.

�8. Booze

Everyone is all always about the single malts, and good luck to them, but we are the grateful recipient of a bockle of Seriously Ag�d armagnac, and we would cheerfully decline any and all invitations to imagine something better.

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