Amsterdam Notebook

When my husband and I arrived in our adored Amsterdam on a sun-drenched schoolday afternoon — less than an hour in the air, first row on the plane, merry but not messy — we seemed all set for a brilliant time. We’re both Brexiteers and ever since Freedom Day we’ve been especially keen on European city breaks, such visits now having the pleasing feeling of a romance whose days are numbered, and from which one would be wise to squeeze the sweetness while one may. After checking in to the hallucinogenically gorgeous W Hotel, I was struck by one of the most enchanting of emotions the non-needy can experience; of strolling out on a summer evening in a place where no one knows you. Including, as it turned out, myself.

Something which adds to the dreamlike feeling of Amsterdam is how similar in some ways it is to England — the language with its ‘Hallo’ and ‘Dank U’ — which gives it the oddness of Philip Pullman’s alternative Oxford. Unlike my own beloved Brighton, where stag parties can be viewed all over town drinking their breakfast, Amsterdam appears to have lost a lot of marauding male tourist gangs to the cheaper, harsher stamping grounds of the ex-Soviet eastlands, and now seems to host more hens, inquiring politely where the red light district is. Talk even in a raised voice outside the approved perving playpen — let alone smoke anything — and you’re liable to get a very old-fashioned look indeed from a local. In short, the Dutch seem to be just like the English — if we’d ever grown up.