I was talking to a past student of mine called Geert about the parties we would have liked to have voted for..

He came up with the brilliant PVV+ (PAYVAYVAYPLUS) whose political aim is to expel everybody from Holland, including its own members.

I came up with the less impractical Party for the Machines, in Dutch the PVDM. (PAYDAYVAYEMM). I feel that machines have had a hard time shaking their image of blundering, thoughtless and unfeeling creatures, peculiarly prone to maltreatment and contempt through vandalism and thoughtless use. We are the blundering, throughtless and unfeeling creatures when confronted with the elegance and potential of machines! Anyone who has ever treated any kind of machine badly knows that it is a tender and sensitive thing and quickly stops doing what it was designed for. I recently left my phone in a wet pocket after a downpour; I know what I am talking about. Let’s treat our machines with the respect and tenderness they deserve! Man Ray set the machine free by making the iron unusable; That is not my party's way. Instead of setting machines free I want to enslave and domesticate them through greater care and devotion! Making them work effortlessly and without faltering.

As I'm in the swing of things maybe I could interest you, my dear stray reader in my two one-man organisations, neither of which exist except in a purely virtual sense and which I am committed to dissolve at the first hint of outside interest. The first is the ATA, or the Association des Terroristes Architecturales. (I chose a French name, feeling confident I shall thereby avoid the sensitive radars of the CIA, MI5 and the AIVD; after all walls have ears, eyes and even snesitive skin nowadays) The express purpose of the Association is to scare buildings that are ugly in a gentle sort of way, using a variety of means. These are of course secret. The ATA has however encountered a fatal flaw in its procedure in that all buildings which are selected expressly for their ugliness become less so as I attempt to define what it is that makes them ugly. Invariably this boils down to having to acknowledge an incapacity in myself to find beauty in them. This organisation is impatient for its first success.

The other society of which I am the founding and sole member is the society for the promotion of Dutch as the next world language, the SFTPODATNWL or, after a quick transformation of these rather abstract letters into an elegant acronym, the SOFTPODATNOWELL, which I think reflects the cool ambitions and sense of mission of the society. The aim is to have Dutch installed as the sole world language by 01.12.35813 by which time I think English, Chinese and Spanish will have had their run and be happy to pass the baton.

An emaciated and cross-eyed man opposite me, dressed in a dark blue anorak, is hiccupping loudly. After each hiccup he emits a short shriek of surprise. This feels like on the spot, under cover, live reporting.