Weekend Write-In Story Collection

Sint Nicolaas

In 500 words, imagine what happens when somebody forgets the magic word. Written for the Weekend Write-In prompt "Nitko", 23-27 December 2015.

I'm assuming that reflections back to six weeks ago also qualify as memoirs.

A Real Santa Claus Parade

The fourteenth of November I was sitting aboard my restored antique Dutch barge, a 1908 skûtsje, which is moored along the Turfsingel in Gouda, Zuid-Holland. I was pleased that I had secured winter moorage in the Historic Ships Harbour, and that for €102 per month, I had a very comfortable home with water and electricity. Around me, seven, eight and nine minutes walk were three supermarkets and the historic centre of the city was only eight minutes on foot and less than four minutes by bicycle.

In the previous two weeks of dyslexic hunt-and-peck typing, I had written 44,000 words of my NaNoWriMo novel, which I had titled Unknown Diners. I felt it was more than half done at that point, but had no clear idea where it was going. I decided to go back to the beginning to do context and plot editing and read it through to sense how the story would end. Before I buried myself again in my computer, I took a break to continue exploring the city.

The Gothic Stadhuis was built in 1448 to replace the previous city hall destroyed by fire. It stands in the centre of a vast open square to prevent it being destroyed again. The square is now the focal point of the city... I love the Dutch thinking. Nearby is Sint Janskerk, the longest church in the Netherlands. It is glazed with the country's largest collection of sixteenth-century and earlier stained glass windows and they are among the most significant in the world.

Of course, one can't mention Gouda without thinking of that horrid stuff the people in Wisconsin, Minnesota and nearly everywhere else call their cheese. One of the oldest cheese names in the world, Gouda was usurped by pretenders and the real stuff is now called Boerenkaas, which means farmer's cheese. Laden with my purchases of Boerenkaas, young, medium, old and very old, I headed back to the barge to hermit and continue working on my new novel.

Late morning I heard growing excitement outside and it finally became too much to ignore. I stuck my head out through the doors and saw throngs of people all along the kanaal dijk. I grabbed my jacket and hat and stepped out into the cockpit to see what was happening. People were straining to see down the canal as a klipperaak and half a dozen antique tugs and tenders moved toward us. I invited people aboard to give them better views, realising it was the annual arrival of Saint Nicholas from Spain with his companion, Zwarte Piet. Here was the origin of Santa Claus and the elves, taken to Manhattan by the Dutch in the 1620s.

Among those I welcomed aboard was a girl who couldn't have been more than three, sitting on her father's shoulders and calling across to the white-bearded man in the ship's bow as it passed: "Sin nikto, sin nikto."

Her father replied: "Het is Sint Nicolaas, lieveling... It's Saint Nicholas, Darling."