This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders
Just two more days. Homemade meatloaf sandwiches, the scalding hot backseat. Don Williams on the stereo, the big holiday book on my lap.
The Great Journey is about to begin.
My father was a Ford man. After an initial small Daf in the late sixties, it was Ford, Ford, Ford, and more Ford. Until he absolutely had to buy a Renault Bus, which ended up being an endless source of misery.
I always imagined my parents disappearing forever together on a never-ending holiday, a poetic end. But reality, sadly, wasn’t that romantic.
I came across an old newspaper article from the ED in which my mother took on the local hunters with great bravado, telling a story about jogging three times a day in the forest with a group of friends. I know for a fact she never set foot on that jogging trail.
But it was all part of the fight. And did she win? I think so. Of course she was completely right: that forest is no place for hunting.
I managed to sell my bed. I still have lines whispered into my ear, but for now I am putting those into music.
Somehow—how is it even possible—there’s not a single country song titled Call me the rascal of Alaska.
That Kroes record is going to be superswell.
Yesterday I sold my second t-shirt. And I spent the afternoon creating this particularly special embroidered fisherman’s bucket hat: a mohawk-rainbow-Calimero version of the Cuck the Fanon merchandise.
Yes, actually embroidered—not printed.
Available here:
https://www.martijnbenders.nl/shop/winkel/geen-categorie/cuck-the-fanon-calimero-bucket-hat-edition/
Over the coming year, I’ll be expanding the shop with genuinely great merch. Now that I’m no longer knocking on the Letterenfonds’ door, it’s necessary to be a bit more commercial—but in a way that I also enjoy. So all those years of experience as a designer were not for nothing.
I’ll continue writing while on the road, so you likely won’t notice much of a difference, except that things might take on more of a diary-like format.
Have a lovely weekend!
Yours,
Martinus Benders