As you might guess from this photo, the Dutch quite like punning names for businesses, just as much as some people do in English.

And such is the facility with languages here that they'll have a go in English as well. I've noticed a chain of places selling fried potatoes called Chipsy King.

Sometimes it doesn't quite work, though. Decades ago, I couldn't work out why anyone thought this a good name for a business (apart from the curiosity factor),  and I still can't.

And I can't help thinking that even the most down-to-earth and unpretentious Dutch customer would expect a bit more from a beauty parlour on a fairly posh street than just the soap treatment:

Search me

No, I haven't the faintest idea why anyone would moor a fully-lit floating four-poster bed in a side canal.

Art, presumably.

Somehow.

In one of the streets near where I'm staying, there's a series of these mosaics replacing regular paving stones.

Some in the series are ordinary paving stones themselves, just of a different colour, but there's a definite regular sequence.

So, some guerilla paving artistry, or what?

Well, round the corner there are one or two more prosaic inserts in the paving: so perhaps these are, after all, no more than markers for the connection point between the house drains and the main sewers.

In London we have urban foxes....

in Amsterdam, they have urban herons.

I must be watching too much TV

After the seasonal advertising barrage, I can't help wondering - has any of the kitchen firms ever sold any of its cabinets at whatever price they knock such massive discounts off?