My 'Dam Life - A word from Sean

My 'Dam Life is a story by Sean Condon about his move to Amsterdam. It is a great little book published by Lonley Planet(2003). On the back, it says he "casts a witty, watchful and wonderfully self-deprecating eye over his expat experience of laziness and leisure, dreams and destiny in the Venice of the North. With his uncanny ability to seek out the absurd in everyday life, Sean finds plenty of targets in a city of hemp and high culture, canals and bicycles, idiosyncratic plumbing and internationally unrenowned cuisine." Basically, his wife gets a job in Amsterdam, and he follows her all the while chronicling his adventures in this novel. We in the guesthouse can relate. Hopefully he doesn't mind if I borrow a few lines...
First up: The Inspection shelf.
"The inspection shelf is a porcelain platform which sits above where the waterline in a normal (by which I mean scatologically sane) toilet would be. I don't want to go into too much detail here, but what this means is that, because, umm...'it' just sort of...sits there, it's available for...errr...detailed...inspection before being dispatched off to where it belongs".
consider yourselves warned before using the bathrooms in holland. But hey, at least there is a seat!! (i'm talking to you France!...and Italy too!)