Comfort-seeking

Just when did it get to be a faux-pas to make people "uncomfortable"? I keep reading about unfortunate people who've been made "uncomfortable" by some seemingly routine occurrence and I wonder why this fleeting squeamishness is taken so seriously.

Why is it suddenly so necessary to feel "comfortable", to be spared any sense of embarrassment, of awkwardness, of bewilderment? Why are such quite natural reactions seen as unthinkable?

Feeling uncomfortable is a normal everyday experience, a way of adjusting to new situations. If you never feel uncomfortable, you're never going to learn anything about yourself or about the world. You'll be stuck forever in an over-protected bubble.

A Michigan mother has complained that passages in Anne Frank's diary made her daughter feel "uncomfortable" because they were "pornographic" and "inappropriate". The passages in question were simply descriptions of a young girl's body.

If her daughter didn't know much about her body, then yes, what Anne Frank wrote probably did make her uncomfortable. But the result was that she learnt things and was better informed.

There's nothing wrong with feeling uncomfortable. If on the other hand you're feeling offended, or belittled, or mocked, that's different. That's a genuine attack on your self-esteem and your dignity that needs challenging.

But let's not elevate a bit of functional awkwardness into a major psychic trauma that calls for kid gloves in all directions. In fact we should encourage a daily diet of occasional discomfort just as we encourage the regular consumption of high-fibre foods.

It's good for you, dammit, just stop making such a fuss!

Amsterdam

Well, the mystery departure was actually to Amsterdam which Jenny and I had never been to before. So many people recommended it we thought we'd give it a try.

But although we both enjoyed ourselves, we didn't think it was that special. It just didn't live up to its hype as a super-cool, super-stylish city.

Some parts were very beautiful (mainly along the canals) but other parts were grotesque, especially the roads round Centraal Station - just long tourist strips of shabby hotels, tacky restaurants and souvenir shops.

Smoking was still rife in cafes and bars, something of a shock now it is so restricted in the UK and Ireland. There was little sign of any green consciousness, with few of the recycling bins common in other cities. The only exception was the huge bike usage, with hundreds parked in every street - we were practically knocked over every five minutes.

But the atmosphere was very relaxed and stress-free. Everywhere people were sitting outside cafes having leisurely meals and drinks and long rambling discussions. The quality of the food was high and we had some delicious vegetarian dishes. There were lots of astonishingly thin women, who would have been labelled anorexic in the UK - do they eat anything at all?

Amsterdam also has some excellent museums. The temporary Stedelijk Museum site had some amazing modern art and the Van Gogh Museum has loads of his masterpieces.

But what really moved me was the Anne Frank House and the secret annexe where she hid from the Nazis for two years before being betrayed and sent to her death in Belsen. Lots of visitors were in tears as they inspected the mementos of this horrific story and saw how courageously Anne had always kept her spirits up and looked forward to a brighter future.

What also impressed me was the Verzets (Resistance) Museum which explained how hundreds of thousands of ordinary Dutch people had resisted the Nazi occupation in any way they could. Some 300,000 went into hiding while others risked their lives and jobs and families to defend their way of life and defend those the Nazis were hunting down.

So while Amsterdam had some spectacular highlights, that magic quality that other people rave about eluded us. We had a lot of fun but not enough to be going back.