In one of my earliest childhood memories, I am riding my tricycle through our living room. In the background, my dad is concentratedly watching the Tour de France on TV; or he would have been if it hadn’t been for me constantly shouting “Tour de France! Tourtourtour!” at the top of my lungs.

The Tour de France, in case you don’t know, is the world’s biggest cycling race, where about 200 riders spend three weeks in July riding 200km a day through France and occasionally its surrounding countries. I was a massive Tour de France fan as a child and spent many hours in my room, reading books about the history of the race and, especially, studying long lists of results.

Of course, like any Dutch boy, I also fantasised about riding the Tour myself, ignoring the fact that even then I knew how I lacked any kind of talent for any kind of sport. In those dreams the Tour, which had visited the Netherlands just a handful of times, always passed through the area where I lived. They were dreams after all.

Yesterday, the 97th Tour de France started. In Rotterdam, a few yards from the hospital I was born in. That is a nice little fact. Today, however, the first proper stage passed through the town I grew up in; the route included many roads that I’ve rode on thousands of times, including most of my daily route from home to school. That is still a bit surreal.

When Dimitra mentioned on Friday night that we hadn’t voted I had almost forgotten. Of course I knew that I never went to the polling station and ticked the box next to one of the local candidates. But we had become so absorbed by the elections and everything that followed that it felt like we had voted.

I was slightly disappointed with the election result. I had hoped for the Liberal Democrates to win a dozen seats or more; not to see them actually lose a handful. Especially since they see their popular vote increased by gain one per cent. And that’s not even the most ridiculous part of the electoral system: the party won 23% of the votes, but will occupy less than 9% of the seats in the House of Commons.

Still, I am mostly happy. These elections have ‘change’ written all over them. For a start, none of the parties won an absolute majority, not even in parliamentary seats, and thus two or more parties will have to form a coalition, a rare occurance in British parliamentary history. With the Lib Dems a likely participant in a government of a yet undefined colour, electoral reform may be possible; 62% of people have said they favour ‘a more proportional system of voting’.

It is interesting then to see many people calling Nick Clegg a betrayer for even daring to speak with conservative leader David Cameron. One of the consequences of a system of proportional representation is that parties are unlikely to win an absolute majority and thus two or more parties will have to agree on a coalition government. If Clegg had not started negotitions with the conservatives, it would have been selling out his party’s principles.

The idea of a government made up of two (or more!) parties seems to be a rather scary idea to many Brits. Before we know the country will end up like Greece. Actually, in the Greek electoral system the biggest party gets 40 bonus seats, to make sure they will have an absolute majority in parliament. On the other hand, in the Nordic countries, Germany and the Netherlands, governments have been coalitions for decades. Lack of stability is not an often heard criticism of these countries.

A political system that is likely to result in coalition governments would also make campaigns more about why your own ideas are supposedly good rather than why the others’ are bad. There will be fewer personal attacks and fewer scaremongering; fewer if you vote them thens because if you vote us, you may end up getting them too. And that them may be the party you hirtherto saw as your main rival, as is the case in the current talks between conservatives and Lib Dems. (A lot of dislike for conservatives, to put it mildly, can be traced back to Margaret Thatcher; whatever you think of her, she would never have been able to act so ruthlessly in a coalition government.)

Democracy isn’t ideal, as many have pointed out, but it works quite well and certainly better than any known alternative. One of its strongest principles is the idea that people together make a better decision than one person on their own. This too works for parties in a government; it can work even in the UK.

There will be elections in the UK tomorrow. I am not allowed to vote as I don’t hold a British passport. That may be slightly unfair; after all I am part of this society. But there are many things that are a lot more unfair — for example, the fact that people from many other countries aren’t allowed to enter this country like I did — so I’m not going to complain about that.

I have been following the campaign quite well — the Guardian’s daily podcast has been an excellent and only mildly biased source — and it’s interesting to see how things are different compared to the Netherlands. The thing that shocked me the most is how much effort is made to scare voters about the possibility of an opponent becoming a prime minister (‘Gordon will steal your pension’ ‘David will jeopardise the economy’ ‘Nick will make you feel less secure’). I enjoy following politics to a certain extent and I really like elections, but I’ve always thought of them as something positive: a chance to change things around, to make things better than they are.

There are many things that I think would change this country for the better; fairer taxes, more cooperation within Europe and less bureaucracy in education to name a few. For these reasons, the Liberal Democrats would get my vote if I had one to give; their campaign has also been the most positive of the three major parties. But most of all, I want there to be a hung parliament so that politicians are forced to work with rather than against each other and, ultimately, will change the electoral system. Until then, we ought to hope for positive changes, but shouldn’t forget that we ourselves can make these changes happen as much as the politicians can.

Did you hear that April Fools’ joke about the reunion of Black Tambourine? You probably didn’t; no one made that joke. It was just my mind playing a trick on me and combining two facts — Slumberland anniversary shows and a new compilation by the band — to a story that I didn’t even start doubting until Dimitra challenged me about it.

I am out of the music-loop and have been for quite a long time. And I don’t mind it very much to be honest. But as I have not suddenly started to dislike indiepop, I do mind a bit not knowing what these few really special bands are, the ones that aren’t just really good but actually improve the quality of life. The Pocketbooks, Professor Pez or Ultrasport of 2010.

If you’re still reading this — and since God gave us RSS readers I would expect some of you to do so — feel free to drop any suggestions in the comments box below. It will be greatly appreciated. In return, I will try to revive this blog again. I’m unlikely to write about music, at least not very much, but having this little place on the Internet to write things on is too good a thing not to make use of.

Chris Knox has suffered a stroke. In fact, he did so two months ago, but I didn’t read about it until recently. Chris, it seems, lost all of his body functions but his sense of humour and the recovery process will therefore be a long one; friends and family are regularly posting updates on a blog dedicated to Chris’s health, while befriended artists like Martin Phillipps, Yo La Tengo and The Mountain Goats are covering some of his songs for a tribute album, appropriately called Stroke.

I should send him a postcard. After all, Chris is one half of Tall Dwarfs, whose song gave this blog its name more than seven years ago (almost ten if you include the time when it existed solely in my head). And while, contrary to what that might suggest, I am not a fan of everything they recorded, some of their more poppy songs are really good. And so are some of Chris’s solo recordings, such as Not Given Lightly, written two decades ago for the woman who is still his wife and one of the most honest love songs I know.

I should revive this blog, too.

A few nights ago, in one of those moments where the mind refuses to do anything that is even remotely useful, I was searching the internet for people I’ve been working with. People whom I have been in contact with recently —mostly through email, sometimes on the phone— while dealing with the technical side of a seller-customer relationship. I was surprised to find that several of them at least five years my junior, five years younger than 18-year-old me. Of course, it has been a dozen years since I actually was 18, but it does not always feel that was and the reality of being 30 sometimes takes me a few seconds to grasp.

At the same time, I am probably more 30 than I’ve ever been 29 or 28. Like I have been (and still am) very busy with work. Not the kind of busyness as an easy excuse for ignoring a full inbox, but really busy: making long days with little to no breaks and then spending at least an hour in the evening working too.

I am not complaining though: the busyness has mostly been self-imposed and work is interesting, challenging and rewarding. In fact, it is quite fun. Yet I do regret it does not always give me enough time to digest things; to realise where I am now and to reflect on how unlikely this had looked a few years ago, when life had turned into a self-imposed misery. And if that has not become implicitly clear, I should be eternally grateful to Dimitra, for keeping me sane while staying sane herself, especially at times when that seemed impossible and unhealthy respectively.

If one could write a story about a war in a clear, straightforward way, then that war would not have been there in the first place.

More than any war, ever, the one in former Yugoslavia felt close to me. Because it happened when I was just old enough to understand what the war was about; or perhaps old enough to understand that some things about it weren’t to be understood. Because it happened closer to me than any war that took place during my life. Because I have met Dutch soldiers who had served there as UN peace keepers; or peace-could-not-keepers, rather. Because in secondary school I had befriended two girls from Bosnia, who had fled their country during the war. Yet, when reading SaÅ¡a StaniÅ¡ić’s How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, I realise how it seems to have taken place in a universe parallel to the safe and friendly one in which I grew up.

I was a bit hesitant about starting this book, worried that it would paint a grim and dark picture. Indeed, many parts of the book are grim and dark, yet that is not the point the book is making. This is a book about telling stories: stories about happy and sad things; stories about small details; stories to remember; stories to survive. It took me well over a hundred pages to get into the book —which isn’t entirely chronologically, while some bits, even in the context of the book, are fictional— but then I could hardly put it down. I wanted to help Alexander, the book’s main character and presumably StaniÅ¡ić’s alter ego, make sense of past and present, understand what had happened during that night in 1992 and tell stories like his late granddad had told him to do.

Stanišić, who like Alexander fled to Germany in 1992 and writes in the language of his adopted country, is here to tell us many more stories.

On midsummer night in 2003, I attended the small Wellerlo-fi festival; the name being a pun on the village of Wellerlooi, home to Club Diana singer Marcel, in whose back garden the festival took place. I may have bemoaned the Dutch scene, or the lack thereof, many times but there have always been exceptions and this was an important one among these. About a dozen bands played a short set each, often borrowing each other’s members, but as important was the barbecue and the mere feeling of being together in enjoying the importance of smallness.

Club Diana, of course, played too. I had followed the band from around the time of their first demo, when I helped some American put together a compilation-cassette with Dutch and Belgian bands. They were from near Nijmegen and I first saw them live shortly after I had moved there, supporting the then-big Posies; then as now I thought it was cool to go to a gig and to care more about the support act. I saw them several other times over the following years and they were one of my favourite Dutch live bands. Their records weren’t bad either, but I always liked them better live than on cd. Somewhat clumsily, I wrote this in a review once; hence when Marcel recognised me at Wellerlo-fi he said “ah, so it was you of that shit review!” He was, of course, joking and was as good a host to me as to any other guest, yet showed to care even more about his wife and two young children.

Marcel Brand died last Sunday, aged 43. Circumstances such as the birth of Marcel’s third child and my own wedding got in the way of me attending another Wellerlo-fi, but I’ve been thinking a lot this week about that night in 2003 and how good it was. If everyone organised a pop festival in their back garden once a year, the world would certainly be a better place. Thankyou, Marcel.

At the beginning of 2008, I set myself the goal to read at least one book a week. When the year ended, I was reading three books that would have counted as my 40th book. Not too bad a score, if only because the number of 52 books was as arbitrary as it was ridiculous. The resolution wasn’t even made because of a love for prose; merely, it stemmed from a strong feeling of having to make up. Make up for all those years I spent getting older without growing up, walking fast without getting further and experiencing without becoming more experienced; reading novels, which I never did enough, had become something of a metaphor for those lost years.

My goals for 2009 include to read as many good books as possible, without the number becoming a goal in itself. Other, and slightly more important, goals include growing up, getting further and becoming more experienced. In just about any aspect of life. If continuing to read books will help with that in any kind of way, then that’s only a good thing.

But I do love prose in itself and I might have loved it —and poetry, too— in 2008 more than ever. I was attempting to compile a top 10 of the books I read, but gave up after 15 titles that absolutely had to be included, which shows how many good books I read. Here, however, is an incomplete overview of some books that really mattered.

My ten favourite artists in 2008, according to statistically biased yet interesting last.fm:
  1. The Lucksmiths
  2. Would-Be-Goods
  3. The Softies
  4. Professor Pez
  5. France Gall
  6. The Cannanes
  7. Stereolab
    . Les Calamités
  9. Blossom Dearie
10. Saint Etienne

The Lucksmiths had a new album out in 2008, which we possess and which I’ve heard many times (it is really good), but I don’t think I’ve played it once through last.fm. Would-Be-Goods had new album too, but I haven’t heard more off that than the two songs Indie MP3 posted. (Back when that was still the place to download tracks of a band two months before you realised you had discovered them.) The Softies broke up half a decade ago. Professor Pez had a new album out —I think—, but. Etcetera. If I did listen to some new music this year —which, honestly, I did— than mostly to loose songs, downloaded from the various MP3 blogs that populate my RSS reader.

The best thing that happened to me music-wise in the past year were countless of moments of falling in love with songs, old or new, that for ten minutes turned out to be the best thing ever recorded. Shared second best were visiting Indietracks and arrival of the boxes of my CDs two months ago. Regarding the latter, one of my blog-related new year’s resolutions is to post some of these songs here, with a little story to reveal a bit of my past and, of course, to show off my indiepop-knowledge. (The other, since you ask, is to write more in general, to write more honestly and open about myself. Which —thanks, Dennis— can be a bit terrifying.)

Happy new year, by the way.

I might play some Christmas tunes — Where It’s At Is Where You Are has some fine tunes for download — and I will definitely play some Maison Neuve. The French band have been on my playlist for some months now, ever since Stéphane sent me their Victor Victor EP. A combination of being busy and lazy had got in my way of writing about them, which is somewhat unfair because I really like the band. The play a grim kind of pop; the kind of one you hear in underground venues and that, at least for me, is associated with the continent. My favourite song is the pumping New Rap Conversation (unfortunately, it’s not on Theirspace), which appears to make a proper effort at making me go through these dark and cold final days of the year.

So, Exeter Goes Pop! Tonight, that is, at the usual time (8pm to 11pm) and the usual place (Tigga’s Bar. It will be free as usual.