The Dutch language knows the words kilt and dirndl and stetson, but not the word clogs, which they call klompen down their way. In the Netherlands, the sight of a man in a stetson is less common than in Texas, and the sight of a woman sporting a dirndl less common than in Bavaria and, while klompen are still worn daily by many Dutch folk, the kilt is as irregular as a Texan hat or Bavarian dress. Except, that is, in the North Brabant township of Sprang-Capelle.
There, for some time now, a familiar sight in and around town has been a gentleman of languid, flexible form, sporting a bushy, russet beard, an eclectic collection of piercings, a jet-black mane of shoulder-length hair and, for his daily, routine attire, as also for his garb of celebration or solemnity, funereal or nuptial, a kilt.
Where, one might wonder, did he happen upon the idea of donning such striking sartorial elegance? Because he finds it comfortable, he would say, practical and beautiful. “Does he hail from Caledonia?” one would eagerly ask. “No,” he would reply, “from no closer to Alba than the town of Deventer, in the province of Overijssel.” Surely he must have a family that traces its line back to William Wallace? “No,” he would reply, “nor William of Orange. Just a simple family of simple folk, loved and beloved and held in dear embrace—whatever they might wear.”
Gerrit Doedijns is known to family, friends and foes as Gé. Of foes he has none that ever mattered. Of family he has an ever-diminishing number: he laid three of them to rest in the past year or so. Of friends he has enough, of the human kind, of the animal kind, with Mieps, his cat, and of the plant kind, for he is kind to his wonderland of botanic beauty, cared for, nurtured and nursed in his astonishing steam-punk-decorated home and lean-to herbarium. Here an industrial fan-ventilator whirrs to refresh his exquisite orchids, his astounding onion shoots and, in among the green leaves of summer, a plant to make Elton John cry: love-lies-bleeding.
Declining health in years gone by spelled the end to his career as a florist, but his devotion to, and learning in, things horticultural still exudes from every seam. “It’s daft,” he tells me, “people will come and visit a friend who is a florist and baulk at bringing them flowers. They don’t seem to realise: we’re florists because we adore flowers!” Gé’s knowledge of plant life is seldom flummoxed: he can with ease tell you the common name, Latin name and vernacular name of pretty much any plant you want to present him with (especially if it bears flowers).
Nor does Gé’s love of the kilt come from any great affinity to Scotland, even if Scotsmen’s love of their kilts does. The kilt was fundamentally nothing more in history than a drab, dyed, woollen blanket, slung around the waist, thrown over the shoulder, fastened with a cord and pinned to stop it flapping, lest the wild easterlies blow around yer hurdies. It was none other than Sir Walter Scott who re-popularised the kilt as national dress, so that the kilt as we know it today dates from no more ancient a time than around the 1840s and was supposedly even invented, not by any Lanarkshire man but by a Lancashire man. In fact, the tartans that emblazon modern kilts stem from the imagination of nothing more Scots than a couple of Italian tailors. Like some other things Scottish, they became associated closely with the Gael for having been forbidden to them by the Angle. Thus it was with the kilt after the ’45 rebellion, and thus it was with Hogmanay, with which Scots to this day compensate for the Christmas they were forbidden to celebrate. In fact my own mother still needed to work half-Christmas Day, indignantly stamping invoices with their date of issue: “25 DECEMBER 1949”.
One might further be tempted to enquire of Gé, then, where it was that he acquired his kilt. “Kilt?” he would reply. “In the singular?”
“You have two?”
“I have twenty-seven.” Twenty-eight actually, if you include the one that had been bought for a partner of mine back in the 1990s and which I donated to his very good home just recently; but, let’s say, Gé has more kilts than I bet the average Scotsman will possess. Let me correct that: he has more kilts than I bet any Scotsman possesses.
“They aren’t all tartan,” he explains.
“So, what are they: ladies’ skirts?”
Ask him that and you can reckon on a look of disdain. “A lady’s skirt is quite one thing, and it has its name in Dutch: it is called a rok. I know my language, and I know my kilts. These are no rokken, they are decidedly kilts. But they’re not all registered tartans.”
“And where do you acquire them, then?” one might tentatively enquire. To which there is a calm, serene, matter-of-fact answer, given with that classic Dutch upward cadence at the end of the phrase, as if to imply isn’t it obvious?: “I make them.”
Gé’s workshop is his entire upper storey front room. His existence is modest. His house a rented terrace dwelling built in the 1980s. Like many Dutch homes, it extends far back the way, into a diminutive garden, and then upwards at ladder-style inclines, up a rainbow-painted staircase, and up again until the rafters are met, where revealed is a magical Aladdin’s cave of velour wallcovering, a gilded mirror and a tiny skylight by which to lie in bed and dream at the moon.
In that upper front room are at least three sewing machines, row upon row of bobbins, clothes rails and clothes racks, and finished garments of fantasy design, hung on the walls as a life’s tapestry of embellishment and decoration. Curios abound in this home of a man with a mind bubbling with creativity and ideas. He even crafted a gay S&M labyrinth made of miniature, 1:125-scale mannequins in a variety of poses and …manipulations, which hangs nonchalantly in the bathroom to entertain—if not inspire—visitor and resident alike as they dry themselves off after a shower (and which, on one occasion, caught the intrigued eye of Gé’s father).
Gé may have long since hung up his leather chaps, with which I once paraded with him through the streets of Amsterdam, his bum free to the wester wind round by the Westerkerk. But he still has his hand-crafted leather kilt, bedecked with chains for which Madonna and many another Lady would go Gaga and could offer no match. He would meander around flea markets or ironmongers and notice strangely shaped items that he could then fashion into something of fashion or an object of beauty to simply behold. And, if he searched for something in particular, he’d not compromise till he found it, the hunt inciting for him as much curiosity as the catch.
Gé can confect eight metres of woollen fabric into a deep-pleat kilt, with tabard front, with the turns on the line, or on the square, or even on the diagonal. The precision of his work is painstaking and pleasing. Gé pays no heed to the mantra if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. He has a natural gift that simply does things right, right from the very outset: whether it’s designing his own right costume for early-December Sinterklaas parades, the right recipe for a rijsttafel dinner that would impress Indonesians, giving the right care to the right plant in the right circumstances, and having a kind word for a dear friend, likewise.
His talents extend to painting, whether with a wallpaper-pasting brush or a fine hair. I have a canvas two metres by three, with a magnificent scene of a Caledonian Railway train hurtling down from Galloway’s Clints of Drummore. He even owns a full suit of armour, made by his own fair hand. Before his dwelling stands a pergola, festooned with cultivation, which acts as a guard of honour to welcome the visitor, right to his front door.
If Gé is in any way embittered by how life has treated him, he quickly shakes it off: “All I ever wanted was to respect the world and be respected by it. To meet people on equal terms, to enjoy them for what and who they are, and for them to enjoy me for the same. And for neither to want to dominate or be dominated by the other.”
I hear this and say to him, “Hard, isn’t it?”
“Bijna onmogelijk.” Virtually impossible. Of course, he exaggerates. What on Earth can he mean with virtually?
Gé believes greatly in the power of Nature, but spurns the liturgy of organised religion. Gé is gay, and has known all too closely the vitriol of prejudice, even in the liberal Netherlands. Another Dutchman of my acquaintance recently answered my enquiry, “So, the Netherlands will be getting a new prime minister?” with, as a direct retort:
“Forty per cent of the population of Amsterdam is Muslim. Forty per cent!”
“Is it?” I replied. “My.” And bit my tongue.
“What percentage of Renswoude is Muslim?” I wanted to ask. I’m sure Muslims will also be in Utrecht, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Deventer, Bathmen, Sprang-Capelle even. “What are the percentages in those towns? And, where the percentages are too high, by how much are they too high, do tell me? Are these percentages impinging upon the flourishment potential, the blooming bounty, the ambitious advancement of these places?” Or do they in fact preserve these places from becoming enclaves of hostility, and malice, of us and them, and of inbred dissatisfaction that is always the fault of the other lot?
Well, maybe Gé believes in the power of Nature to heal. He knows enough plants that heal, and he knows that Nature will always seek equilibrium, with or without a divine hand of intervention. I cannot myself imagine a better world as being one in which Gé is no more, for he is a dear friend, who has been maligned and abused by those who would that they be his friends, myself included. For now, his kilts hang in his upper storey back room, which functions as his clothes store-cum-dressing room. He cannot for now look out of his skylight at the waxing moon in the night sky, for he lies in the care of the medical staff at Tilburg’s principal hospital. His extraordinary strengths now serve solely to energise his weakened body to counter the attack by the cancer that beleaguers him. And he is losing that struggle.
If, against all fears, he is cured, for such is my prayer in those who minister to his ailments, then he will don his fluorescent pink, home-knitted kilt socks, his most outrageous kilt and furriest sporran, and he will trip a light so fantastic around Sprang-Capelle that, I warrant you, in bars and cafés and coffee mornings the district ’round, they will declare with pride: ONE per cent of this town is extraordinary, and I am so proud of him.