Hello from the land of excessive consonants

Well, good news. I didn't embarass myself or our nation during yesterday's presentation at Rapp London.

In fact, I think I did rather well.

I'm pretty sure I won them over in the first few minutes when I pulled out the Maple Leaf Cookies and the bag of Hallowe'en candy. Never come between a Brit and his or her sweets. It could get ugly.

Today I'm in Amsterdam.

The Dutch appear to have an unusual fondness for putting six or seven consonants in the same word. While the English sound smarter with their accent, the Dutch just sound tired of using so many consonants. Maybe that's why they legalized pot smoking and gay marriage long before any of the rest of us. They needed something to look forward to while they were busy constructing sentences that were impossible to pronounce.

When in doubt, I usually just add "en" to the end of sentences, ie. Where is the toileten? It seems to work nicely.

I narrowly missed seeing Tom Cruise in Leicester Square last night. He was there promoting his new movie and I was there getting a last minute ticket to see Shadowlands -- the story of C.S. Lewis's great love affair. They made a movie of it, which I've never seen, but I'm sure it's Terms of Endearment for the Narnia set. The play was really good, and managed to keep me awake, despite the jet lag.

I'm like a fly strip for gay men. Took my seat in the theatre and discovered the guy next to me was a gay-as-a-lark travel writer from San Francisco. Really interesting guy. He was at the end of his month-long trip around the UK, writing stories for a couple of travel pubs. He's looking forward to Bush being out of office. Thinking Americans always are.

I wish Buddy could type. I'd love to send him an email.