What's on your mind?

Sunday evening. Just finished Ian McEwan's new book Saturday. Absolutely brilliant and addictive. It is about a neurosurgeon called Henry Perowne and how his day of leisure (Saturday) is twisted off its track by unsettling incidents. Although the day ought to be a wonderful one because of a family dinner in the evening, Perowne is unable to find peace with his mind because of the anti-war demonstrations on the streets of his hometown London and especially because of a car accident with a young troublemaker Baxter.

There's not much similar in my life and in the life of a British neurosurgeon in his late forties. Still I found it easy to relate to thye constant nervousness described beautifully by McEwan. My weekend has been an absolutely brilliant one starting with a day off and the opening of the Radiodays on Friday, continuing with a heavily extended brunch on the sunny terrace of Vertigo and a party of a Rietveld academy students on Saturday and ending with a sunny and relaxed Sunday of cycling and reading. Near to perfection if you ask me. Still when I rewind back to the topics covered in discussions or trounling my mind, they are not the typical chit-chat ones: British identity, protestant values, Dutch society and islam, need for a European dialogue, rhetorics, feminism, artificial intelligence, comparisons between different fields of science etc.

By brunch companion said - he clarified that it was a compliment - that I am not very good in traditional small talk. "Your small talk is about issues", he commented. I guess so. I realised afterwards that I do not make that big differences between the issues that are traditionally seen as serious or as fun. I started wondering whether it is the same as with Henry Perowne on Saturday. He constantly analyses the people he meets through his medical expertise. Shock and horror, I do the same but only through social science. It seems that the eight years at university left some marks in me.

When living in Amsterdam, I have noticed that I have loads more time for reading. I have also noticed that I am a social reader. With this I mean that I like reading in cafés on sitting on a park bench. I need the noise in order to be able to concentrate. I read Saturday among other places on the terrace of Het Blauwe Theehuis in Vondelpark, at the Coffee Company in De Pijp and on the roof of the science museum Nemo. I finished the book this evening at eight. The sun was going down and during the last 10 pages I struggled with myself whether I should put my coat on or just keep on reading the final pages. Amsterdam looked so amazingly beautiful from the roof of Nemo.

As the book ended with Henry Perowne finally reaching the end of his dramatic Saturday, I felt really peaceful and relaxed. I walked down from the roof and cycled home which is just around the corner. I realised that I felt so good because of the weekend that I was smiling all the way. I was sort of cycling in my own happy bubble through the crowded centre. Even the usually disturbingly loud English tourists on my home street didn't irritate me. This is how all weekends should end.