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What goes around comes around which is where we’re at with the Haarlem Vinyl Countdown.

The Haarlem Vinyl Festival in the Netherlands from September 26-28 celebrates old-fashioned 33 and 45rpms.

And is billed as the first global festival to dedicate multiple days simply to the vinyl culture.

Time was, before Spotify, when you would go into town especially just to browse through the records.

And when you found yourself in a new city you’d head straight for the record store.

Record stores across the world

From Oxford Street and Camden Market in London.

To Grafton Street in Dublin to Greenwich Village and Harlem in New York.

Which brings us around to the original Haarlem which gave its name to the borough when New York was New Amsterdam.

Pressing on

The Haarlem Vinyl Festival will give you the chance to immerse yourself across music genres.

Join talks, singing sessions and concerts including the best Dutch acts and a Pussy Riots performance.

And guided tours at Record Industry where you can find out just what goes into the pressing of LPs, or long players.

The factory building houses a recording studio and cutting and mastering rooms.

Galvanics, DMM production, sleeve folding and gluing machines, vinyl pressing, packaging and a print shop.

We’re told that customers will be able to supply RI with an audio master and artwork and they take care of the rest.

From cutting the master to printing sleeves and assembling your product.

Cutting edge

And in their recording and direct-to-disc facility, Artone Studio, you can record your music straight to lacquer or multi track.

All of which reminds us that we’re still waiting on our recording of our John Lee Hooker cover from the Grammy Museum Mississippi.

Spoken into a box or boom, boom, boom, boom box, which I’d put my email on.

But hey, it might not have passed a quality test.

So we’re ticking down the days in the Haarlem Vinyl Countdown to a celebration of the long-playing record.

Now Haarlem is just 20km from Schiphol Airport so plenty of time to explore Amsterdam.

For Brits it’s poppies, but for today it’s the Netherlands’ turn to display their flower, the tulips on 80 years since Arnhem.

The peace poppy is immortalised because of a Canadian officer reflecting on how only it survived the Flemish mud as soldiers fell.

But the story of the tulip, just one of many, is less travelled.

And now with apologies to Robert Burns and his ‘red, red rose’ and William Wordsworth and his ‘golden daffodils’ but it is the tulip which is the king of all flowers.

It is, of course, ubiquitous in the Netherlands and even out of his spring season you’ll see these hooded wonders wherever you go.

Whether you’re arriving in by plane into Schiphol Airport and your eyes are diverted towards House of Tulips.

In the fields obviously and markets, and also in the fascinating Tulip Museum in Amsterdam.

Where, in truth, most of my knowledge about this peripatetic plant originates.

Crowning glory

Making monkeys of us: Breughel captures it all in art

The tulip, for those who haven’t heard me extol its virtues before hails from the foothills of the Himalayas.

And came to the Netherlands from the Ottoman Empire where it was known as the tülbend, or turban.

Revered for its beauty it was passed around the royal courts of Europe and became a huge status symbol.

It helped, of course, that it was perfect for the damp, flatlands of the Netherlands.

Put the two together and remembering that the Dutch had become the mercantile masters of Europe.

And soon the most exclusive tulips were passing hands for the price of a canal townhouse in the Netherlands’ commercial powerhouse.

Until, of course, the market imploded and the Dutch economy was ruined in what was the first trade market bubble.

Manna in the Hongerwinter

Weight of history: The moneymen and the tulips

Not to blame the tulip though but rather the greedy money grabbers because when it came to the Dutch darkest hour the tulip became manna from heaven.

When the poor people of the by-now occupied German territory facing up to the Hongerwinter, or Hunger winter, of 1944-45.

When the Germans burnt the fields, turned again to the flower.

And boiled the bulb for sustenance.

All of which resonates with the Dutch to this day and is why their liberation from the Germans that winter is being marked with tulips.

The first Airborne Tulip Memorials were presented at Montessori College Arnhem last October 31.

In advance of this year’s commemorations of Operation Market Garden.

And maroon tulips were planted at seven local World War II sites as part of the Airborne Tulip Memorials trail.

Maroon to mirror the hue of British paratroopers’ berets, and chosen by one Darren Key, whose grandpa fought at Arnhem.

The next generation

Arnhem’s commemorations for the nine-day battle have been sombre and dignified.

But the Dutch town is also aware of the legacy of the battle and is front and centre in educating visitors today to what happened here 80 years ago.

Visit Villa Hartenstein, the former headquarters of the Allied forces in Oosterbeek which has been transformed into the Airborne Museum.

And witness The Airborne Experience in the basement where you can see the planes and jeeps in the darkness of the battlefield.

And walk among the troops and hear the sound of gunfire.

The soldiers’ story

Follow too in the footsteps of those heroes of old in the centre of Arnhem at Airborne at the Bridge.

Take in for yourself the spectacular view of the world-famous John Frost bridge.

And discover the personal stories of three individuals who fought and died at the bridge during the Battle of Arnhem.

Arnhem is an hour and half drive from Amsterdam.

And don’t forget to buy, plant, or maybe even eat them… the tulips on 80 years since Arnhem.

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Haarlem Vinyl Countdown