I’m not keen on them, so I’m not buying now they’re 4 Euro each. Dutch growers have kept their glasshouses empty because of the cost of gas and electricity. I was lucky, though, to be accepted as a patient by a GP practice in the town I moved to. Lucky also that my journey to the implantologist involves two trams: there were strikes again on regional buses last week.

This poem, from a recent workshop, is a snapshot of life in The Netherlands.

Word jij onze nieuwe collega?

Outside every restaurant and café two blackboards:
one with a menu, the other asking for a sous-chef,
a washer-upper, or bar staff.
Freek van Os, the expensive plumbing business
is even renting lit-up space by the side
of a bus shelter. They need a planner,
and also have two technical vacancies.
Manda, my hairdresser, had found
a 42-year-old Afghan woman, single parent,
career-changer. When I came in a month later,
she’d changed her mind. Legal cases are abandoned,
judges are dead or retiring. As are many GP’s.
They’re not signing the new contracts, anyway.
Not much the government or the insurers can do.
People want to work fewer hours, it’s said, not more.