“What are you doing next weekend Mr President? “ Asked Colin of Bushey & Oxhey Round Table to their newly appointed Honorary President.

Which is why I found myself setting off a few days later with Colin & Michael to represent Bushey & Oxhey at a Round Table weekend in the middle of Holland.

I am no stranger to Round Table joining in St Andrews and transferring to Rickmansworth when we moved south, so I wasn’t surprised when the only information on the agenda, accommodation, catering arrangements, dress code etc for the weekend was “ Don’t worry it’s all sorted, just turn up, Oh ! And Saturday night is a black tie dinner. “

So I turned up and after an uneventful journey via Euro Tunnel we were in time to join a barbecue at Art, our host’s home.

Art lived in a converted farmhouse alongside a canal and had thoughtfully converted the cowshed into a dormitory where I bunked down with 3 fellow Tablers from Newbury. Colin & Michael slept in Art’s office under his desk.

One of the features of Art’s house was a magic fridge which no matter what time of day you looked was always packed full of a delicacy the locals pronounced “ High-Knee-Kun”. We were encouraged to adopt the local custom of partaking it at all hours of the day though I drew the line at following Colin who had it on his cornflakes.

The Dutch approach to food & drink is fairly straightforward, if it grows in the ground it is either pickled or cooked and served with mayonnaise or pickled and served in mayonnaise, if it lives in a field it is barbecued or grilled and served with peanut sauce and if it grows on a tree it is turned into alcohol. Everything else is salad or cheese.

After the barbecue Art took us into Amsterdam where we wandered around the canals before trying a local drink made with bananas (remember the rule if it grows on a tree it’s made into alcohol).

The following day we met up with Tablers who had travelled from Germany, Belgium, Sweden & Finland, two boats pulled up right outside our bedroom window and we spent the day drifting through canals & lakes before an evening barbecue with lashings of High-Knee-Kun & peanut sauce.

Anyhow onto Saturday and the real reason for me telling you all this.

After a canal tour of Leiden (home of Holland’s oldest University and a very nice town) we pitched anchor for a lunchtime barbecue followed by “Jeux sans frontiers”

Those of you old enough may remember this as “It`s a Knock-Out” which was basically a combination of Gladiators, Wipe-out & Crystal Maze

Only problem was we hadn’t done any training whereas the Europeans looked as if they had spent the previous month training at altitude before moving down to sea level for the main event.

The Blue Ribbon event was staged on a 20 metre stretch of plastic sheet liberally doused with water and Fairy liquid – the notorious downhill Belly Slide

Colin & I looked at each other and simultaneously nominated young Michael to represent his country and, before he could think about it he was stripped down to his underpants and standing on the start line

Amazingly he took to it like a Finn to vodka and hurtled through the preliminary rounds before coming up against guess who in the semi final?

Germany…….

As I write this midnight and England’s big day approaches and if you are looking for an omen then consider this.

Not only did young Michael outslide the representative from the nation of Germany he went onto destroy him in the blowing up and dressing the rubber doll competition.