The colours of the Amsterdam evening are jewel-like. Everything has a fluidity, a swirly-whirliness, like daubs on an Impressionist’s canvas. I seem to have found my way into a Van Gogh painting. My mind skitters from thought to half-baked thought till it returns to the unsettling world around me. There are women behind panes of glass, bathed in a red light that’s bleeding into the sidewalks. The pavements shift beneath my feet, threatening to come up and meet me…