Ah, waking up on a sofa! Turns out it’s not just a young man’s game!
Got a pretty solid night’s sleep on Arne’s sofa. I’ve always been able to sleep pretty soundly anywhere I can find myself a space - seriously, just ask my friends how many times they’ve found me asleep at house parties - no matter what’s going on around me, I can always find somewhere to go and go to sleep!. I once had to sleep on a packed train in Vietnam travelling from Quang Ngai to Hanoi. This was an 18 hour trip and I spent 13 of those hours in the corridor as I only had a bunk available for the first 5 hours. I fell asleep laying down in a doorway with my feet up against the wall as there wasn’t enough room to lay down.
THAT’S the level we’re talking about here - I’m a MASTER of falling asleep in uncomfortable places! I have thoughts as to why, but that’s a story for another time…
Anyway, when you can fall asleep utterly anywhere and you have a lifestyle that means you don’t have a regular place to lay down your head, you are VERY grateful for a sofa/air-bed/actual bed to sleep in and get in something resembling quality sleep (especially when you’re hurtling towards 40), so I’m super grateful to Arne for granting me the sofa whilst Ian was safely tucked away from my barbaric snoring in the one and only guest room.
As today was marked as a day off, we had sod all on the agenda except to rest up. Having done this a few times now, I’ve learned a thing or two about how best to look after yourself on the road. My mental health has taken some serious stumbles in the past, so I was pretty determined to make sure that I took good care of it this time.
One of the ways I decided I’d do this was to try and make sure that I get out for a walk every day, preferably on my own, preferably with some nature or greenery. I’ve heard a great deal about being in nature being incredibly restorative for those of us living with ADHD and I’ve always enjoyed walking around the green spots in my adopted home of Potton, so I figured this was going to be really good for me. I wanted to do these walks alone as, when you spend a lot of time together on the road, even best friends can start to get under each other’s skin, so having solitary time is super important to recharge.
Fortunately, Amsterdam has some great green spaces almost everywhere you go!
I moved my car over to the park and ride about 20 minutes walk away so that we didn’t get a ticket or have to pay extortionate parking costs (this city REALLY hates cars and I really dig it, despite how inconvient it is when travelling with a car full of gear) and was stunned by the natural beauty utterly everywhere in what is, to my mind, a major European city.
I wandered around for over an hour and came back feeling fully restored - thank you Amsterdam!
After we’d finally pulled ourselves together again and Ian had gone shopping round the corner, we started cooking a meal for the three of us. As a veteran couch surfer, Ian likes to cook a meal for his hosts whenever he can as a way of saying thank you. It’s a pretty nice gesture as things go and he’s a pretty good cook (although he can make an unholy mess whilst doing it!). I was given the seemingly easy task of chopping onions and peeling potatoes - easy peasy, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
As you might have guessed by now, I managed to cut my finger.
No, not with a knife whilst chopping onions. That would be far too obvious…
I managed to cut my finger with a bloody potato peeler…and this is not the first time that I’ve managed this!
This was made even better by the fact that it was on the middle finger of my left hand…you know, the hand responsible for making shapes on the fret-board of my guitar with my fingertips in order to make sounds! Fortunately, I managed to cut the finger just off to the side of my fingertip, so after a short internal panic, I stuck a plaster over it and made myself busy elsewhere, confident that my services were no longer required.
The meal actually turned out really well. Ian had pulled together an amazing pork stew with roast potatoes which we we all ate happily and enjoyed great conversation.
After dinner, Arne introduced us to the board game, Pandemic. The game had caught Ian’s eye earlier in the day and, after asking Arne about it, he resolved to teach us how to play. I’m not sure how familiar you are with the game (I certainly wasn’t), but the basic premise is that it is a cooperative game where all players are attempting to stop the spread of 4 different diseases (red, yellow, blue and black), each originating from a different continent. It involves a lot of group planning and strategising and having to think on your feet as you adapt strategies to combat the spread of the diseases as you work towards the ultimate goal of curing all 4 of them. It might sound a little too close to home for some (having just lived through a very real global pandemic), but I have to say…
It…was…AWESOME!
Honestly, if you haven’t played this game before, I really think you should give it a go. In recent years, I’ve become a real lover of cooperative board games - I much prefer games that foster collaboration and draw upon our more altruistic instincts over ones that pit people against each other (I’ve played enough angry games of Monopoly to last a lifetime, thank you very much!) - and this one really fits the bill for me. Cooperation, strategy and consideration are key and it’s a great experience for a team of players. We played two rounds of the game, losing the first to the diseases and winning the second and both games were great - we lost as a team in the first (although we came BLOODY close to winning) and won as a team in the second, so both games left us feeling satisfied either way.
After the second round, we decided to call it a night to get some sleep - we have a show to do tomorrow and this bloody cold is still threatening to torpedo my performance! I’ve now found my way back to Arne’s comfy sofa and am pretty ready to drop.
See you tomorrow!
D