We’re through January and February now, but the weather is grey, cold and miserable and I’m getting impatient. The garden still looks wintry, with just a few yellow flowers and a lot of green mould on the patio. It’s dreary and depressing. The winter sometimes seems to be over; then it’s back again. The longed-for burst of spring isn’t really here to stay yet: typical spring, I suppose.

What would we talk about if we didn’t have changeable weather? Imagine living near the equator, where the weather is the same every day and the rain always rains at the same time of day. Here each new day is begun with a ready-made topic for discussion! I consult the weather forecast and I ponder over what to wear, which coat to take, whether I need an umbrella and whether my new hair style will be ruined immediately by the gale force wind. Arriving at work, we talk about it all over again.

Do the Dutch worry about such things? Nothing, it seems, not wind, rain or even snow, puts them off cycling. They’re out in all weathers. They also seem to have a knack for knowing if it will rain and what is the sensible rainwear and equipment for the day. How do they know? The weather forecast isn’t always right but it seems the Dutch are. They have a sixth sense and even though they are probably more cautious and careful than us happy-go-lucky Brits, they rarely get caught out without an umbrella when they need one, or with an umbrella when they don’t! On their bikes, they can look hideous, swathed in ugly waterproofs that I, as an Englishwoman, wouldn’t be seen dead in – but they don’t get wet! They’re just practical, I guess.

My mind drifts on. I find myself wondering why it is that in winter here the whole world seems to turn grey. Why, oh why, when the skies are grey, the weather’s damp and cheerless and the summer is so far away, does the entire population decide to wear dark colours? I look around me in the trams and in the streets and feel depressed. Grey and black … black and grey … why not purple or red? How does that poem go? “When I am old I will wear purple and a red hat”!* That’s what we need, old or not – a bit of healthy dissension from this never-ending conformity to greyness…

I will protest! As a child of the 60’s and 70’s, I am well used to the concept of protest. Back then, if we didn’t like things as they were, we protested! We left our jobs in protest and searched for ones we liked better, we left home, we gave up church-going, we voted ‘with our feet’ about our parents’ stuffy ideas (as we perceived them) and about a multitude of other things that cramped our style, bored us, annoyed us or outraged us. Protest marches, protest rallies, protest songs! If we didn’t participate in the action, then at least we agreed with the mentality. The right to protest – Yes!

Sometimes I wonder… do we live now in a grey world? Blue Mink’s song**, which seemed so innovative at the end of the 60’s, about a coffee-coloured people living in a coffee-coloured world – a kind of melting pot of black and white, rich and poor, good and bad – has taken on a new, rather sinister, ‘politically correct’ feeling these days. ‘Coffee-coloured’ is something that brings us all together, but only by making us all the same. Many nations are again becoming increasingly nationalistic. As our world becomes increasingly global we react in fear and introduce our foreign residents to programmes of integration and assimilation, courses on citizenship and so on, to protect our own cultures and traditions. This concept goes one step further than Blue Mink. Nowadays we are not content with pouring all the multi-coloured ingredients of race, culture and language into one big neutral coffee pot, but in some circles we are fine-tuning a process for turning everything that exists in a nation into just one colour – the colour of that nation. Are we aiming, then, not for unity in diversity, but for unity through uniformity?

I can’t subscribe to that. I can’t stand by and see the diverse traditions, aspirations and personalities of a hundred-and-one nations, cultures, languages and ethnic diversities pummelled and brain-washed into one homogenous, convenient, monochrome ‘unity’. Obviously, a certain amount of give and take is necessary for the world to live together in proximity to each other. Of course we have to have respect for our host nations. But must we be reduced to this? For it is a reduction and an impoverishment to assent to this process.

I am amazed and enriched by the cultural diversity which I see all around me. My friends and acquaintances here include Dutch, English, Scots, Irish, Swedish, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Italian, Swiss, South American, African, Israeli, Philippino, Australian, New Zealanders, North Americans and some I have not yet identified! It is this which makes my stay in the Netherlands such a rich experience. We live in a glorious, multi-coloured world. Let’s embrace it. Little by little, with peaceful but determined steps forward, we can outlaw ‘greyness’ and uniformity and bring back colour and diversity into our world – even if we can do little about the weather.

* ‘When I am old I shall wear purple’: poem by Jenny Joseph
** ‘Melting Pot’ by Blue Mink (1969)

Julie Duke

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