(This one is for the Kiwis, down there in the deep dark depths of winter. Not that it will make you feel better, mind. It’s a story of spontaneous summer cycling, funk, punk, and watermelon.)

Coincidences, they bring us into this world,

Coincidences, they tear us apart;

If she’d looked in a window she might not have seen him,

If he’d lost his carkeys he’d never have lost his heart (to her).

  —The Front Lawn, “Queen Street”

It’s turned back into summer. Saturday 28 degrees, and I took my juggling balls to the Vondelpark. I’m just getting three-in-one-hand under control (well, starting to, anyway) when I see Frans wandering by. It turns out he and SCRaM! are playing Sunday, at a festival in Assendelft, wherever that may be. He tells me you can get there by train-then-bus, but that it’s maybe not such a good idea because on Sunday there’s no bus running back the other way. I thank him kindly, wish him well for the gig, and admit that given the traffic situation I probably won’t be there.

Back to three-in-one-hand, and it’s really starting to come together (well, sort of, anyway), when I hear a familiar voice swearing loudly in Spanish. It turns out Belén and a bunch of Dutch Spanish students are also out enjoying the sun. They’ve got food and wine and a guitar and I’m hanging with them enjoying the mixup of languages (“Pero si, it’s difficult, maar…”) until midnight, and somewhere along the line I mention the gig and somebody tells me Assendelft is just a bit past Zaandam, where I lived until July last year. And where I used to cycle from daily, to get to university in the city.

So that’s how I came to spend half of Sunday on a bicycle, riding first to my old place in Zaandam (which has since been demolished, the new house has most of the brickwork completed now but it’s still just a skeleton) then on into the countryside, sheep and cows and a pet goat on the roadside, and finally to Assendelft where the festival, at first sight, appears to consist of a screaming heavy-metal band and the contents of every highschool in the Zaanstad area, all dressed in black with studded bracelets and chains and heavy eye makeup, burning up in a shadeless field.

On second sight things improved a bit — the heavy metal band finished up with a crash and a roar (how can they jump around like that in 30 degree heat?) and were followed by ROLF, a terribly young but surprisingly good local ska/punk group; most of the punks-in-training jumped in the river which seemed to loosen them up a bit, and we found the SCRaM! folks and unpacked the picnic (watermelon and tortilla and witbier) slathered on the sunscreen and settled in for the afternoon. When SCRaM! finally hit the stage, about 7:30, they turned on the best show I’ve seen from them yet (might the afternoon sun and the beer have had something to do with it?) and we got back to A’dam about 9:45, with the sunset setting the clouds on fire as we cycled home. Glorious.

And that (for any Dutch readers who might happen to stop by) is why I don’t fill my agenda. You never know when you might unexpectedly get the chance to cycle to a festival in Assendelft for a picnic and a funk band.