Thank you for the music: Water like a stone

This report has taken more effort than usual to type up. It wasn't a particularly troublesome excursion, but I had to think very carefully about wording, and how to describe the activities which I engaged in, knowing that it would be read by Madam Director.

My intention was to skip backwards (yes, I know, a skip that involves harnessing a measurable percentage of solar energy and beating seven bells out of Newtonian physics) to Amsterdam in 1581 in the hope of meeting a young (15-year-old) and very promising Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. However, I gave almost no thought to the season in which I would be arriving: an icy February. So of course, not only are the city streets icy, and rooves limned with icicles glittering in the sunlight, but a frost fair is in progress!

My first priority, since for this trip I am not in drag, is to obtain a warm cloak and some woollen stockings, and I should really be conscientious and make my way to the Oude Kerke to begin my investigation, but there are more interesting things happening closer at hand.

On the Amstel there are people skating,there are booths set up selling mulled wine (my personal favorite is a variation called Bischopswijn), hot pies, roast meats, freshly baked buns, a couple of shoemenders offering to repair damaged skates, and various rides and games. I had to chuckle when I saw that some enterprising boatman had attached wheels to the hull of his boat and had a team of boys (relations I assume) towing the vehicle around on the ice.

And all of this had the effect of diverting me from my goal of finding Jan Sweelinck. However, the excursion wasn't completely fruitless, as I spent several hours in the evening getting some of the chill out of my bones beside the fireplace in one of the city's many taverns, and got to know for the first time, an instrument which is really very common, which makes it surprising that I hadn't met it before: the rommelpot.

The best way I can think of to describe the sound it makes is a grunting pig, and while it can be used as a percussion substitute, if interjected at the right moment in the right song, the effect reduces me to helpless giggling. With a couple of enthusiastic viollists, a rommelpot, and lute making up the band it doesn't take much to get feet tapping and I'm happy that I'm not the only one who feels like jigging for a bit.