The Daily Sketch: Bikes, windmills, and other Dutch clichés

As clichés go, those adhered to The Netherlands aren’t bad at all. While the English are ascribed with being larger louts, football hooligans, eating big fry-ups for breakfast and  imperialistic tendencies (notably continuing into the modern day with the British takeover and generalised destruction of infamous beach resorts all over the Med such as Magaluf, Benidorm and Corfu) the emblematic symbols of The Netherlands include environmentally friendly windmills, fragrant and colourful tulips, and even more conscientious bicycle travel. All very appropriate at this time of year, when we seek to cast off our winter blankets and look forward to the Spring (it is March 1st after all!).

Being, as ever, the traditionalist, when Norm is in Rome, he does as the Romans do. Well then, in Holland, Norm has hopped on to a bicycle, purchased a bunch of tulips, and is surveying the local flat Dutch landscape with its fields full of multicoloured tulips and canal side working windmills. The only problem is, Norms can’t ride bicycles like the rest of us do by virtue of the fact that they don’t have legs. Their solution? Why, a motorised bike of course, puffing away, giving the bicycle all the kinetic energy it needs to traverse these pancake-flat lands. All the Norm has to do is steer  (although with only one arm, steering can be a struggle too I might add). That motor does somewhat takes the environmental out of cycling though. Well it was a good try Norm.

Norm on a bike in Holland (pen on paper, 2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)

Related articles

• The Daily Sketch: The age-old problem of how a Norm should wear a Clog (normsonline.wordpress.com)
• Fields of tulips (apostcardaday.blogspot.com)