Amsterdamned

I spent Easter weekend in the Netherlands, with pretty much the exact pathetic results you'd expect from a middle-aged writer trying too hard...

"Whoa shit! - get me out of here RIGHT NOW guys, I'm going to faint..."

 But in fact we were not there for the, ahem, peculiar delights of Amsterdam...

Canals. Goddamn it, we love canals.

... No: we were there to meet this gentleman:

It's the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch's death , and a unique exhibition has been arranged by the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch. Painting scattered in galleries all over the world have been brought back to his birthplace for this one extraordinary occasion.

The Wayfarer, from the outer shutters of The Haywain triptych

Bosch is a painter famous for his surreal and inexplicable depictions of Paradise (both heavenly and earthly)

Just WTF is that in the middle of the Garden of Eden?

World's. Best. Party.

No, really?

And for his horrific pictures of Hell:

And the demons therein:

In fact some of them have escaped the gallery and run amuck in the surrounding streets and canals...

It's riding "a goose". Right...

He was also, it turns out, totally obsessed with owls.

I'll have what he's on...