BLOG WRITER IN SHOCK REVELATION: "My life as a housewife in Holland!"

The ex-Mr Tanya and I lived in Holland for around 10 months while he did his work-abroad-earn-loads-of-dosh thing. After living for a month in a hotel in Assen , we found a flat to rent in the nearby town of Groningen.

The flat was located on Almastraat, above a shop that sold fake silk and plastic flower displays. The flat itself was over-decorated with these fake monstrosities that filled my nose up with their dusty-plastic smell. It was furnished with dark wood and dark leather and the beds were old and tired looking with mattresses that sagged in the middle. The kitchen was functional, but limited and the bathroom was huge. It was an odd, depressing little place. ( I later discovered that the flat was not in the most favourable of neighbourhoods in the town after a new Dutch friend refused to visit me there because of the flat's location!)

Previously, while living in Israel and in Assen, I grew accustomed to days becoming great vacuums of nothingness. Living in Holland, these spaces announced themselves more loudly, and finding something to fill them became something of an obsession. The only way I could see to do this, was to build my life around a routine. After some negotiation with Mr Tanya, it was agreed that to keep me occupied I could join a gym, take singing and piano lessons and go to an art class.


I used to get up around 8:00 in the morning, and if it was a Tuesday or Thursday, I would make my way directly to the gym for an aerobics class that started at 9:00. If it was a Monday, or Wednesday (Fridays were different), I would go into the gym and get onto the treadmill for 45 minutes and then do weights for another 45 minutes afterwards. If the fancy struck me, I would use the gym's steam room. Usually, this would snip 2 hours out of my day. After that, I showered and changed, ready to leave. This would usually take me through to 11:30 or midday.


Then it was my favourite time of day: I went down to News Cafe and got myself a cup of coffee - or two - and sat there and read the Dutch newspapers or the USA Today. I loved sitting in News Cafe. It was quiet and I had space to myself. I rarely stayed beyond 1pm and I only ordered lunch there about four times.


So, that, at least, was the hours from 9am through to 1pm taken care of. That was four hours removed from the void.

Afternoon activities varied. I would usually go from the town centre to buy groceries and cycle back home to have lunch. Or, if cabin fever had made itself felt more painfully that particular day, I would window shop. Usually, I went home.

Mondays I had a singing lesson at 2pm. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I would clean the house from top to bottom - dust, vacuum, tidy, polish, sanitise - and then, the washing. The whole thing took around an hour and a half or two, depending on how much washing there was to do. Finally, I would sit down to read, or go for a walk, or write letters or watch television until 5:30, when I put the dinner on for Mr Tanya, ready for when he walked in at 6pm. I was such a textbook housewife!

Life was dull and gray most of the time, lived in isolation. Apart from one time, while cleaning the house, I looked out across the street into the flats opposite and caught sight of two men having sex. And there was the day that a driver lost control of her car and plowed through the fake flowershop's window.

Fridays were great days. I looked forward to Fridays. I went to the art class from 9am to midday. Then home to grab some lunch and then out again to be at my piano lesson at 3pm. I loved Fridays. The cycle to the piano lesson was usually an 80 minute round trip, and usually exhilerating.

Most of the time I was alone. I taught myself to speak Dutch through adapting my existing Afrikaans. I learned through watching the Dutch news, reading newspapers and through making two Dutch friends who helped me along nicely.

After 10 months of solitude and having to depend on my ex for everything, I made my way to London alone to seek my fortune and independence. I left promising to write to a smattering of Dutch people, but that promise fizzled out after a few months. Holland had changed me in strange and subtle ways. Secret ways that I had not even begun to realise. While I quietly observed my life from the vantage point of housewife, from a place of solitude, powerful changes had begun to take place.

Holland was to be both my awakening and my undoing.

Coming Tomorrow: My 200th blog post!!!