Horsefly

It was about this time five years ago that me and three mates found ourselves pulling into Centraal Station in Amsterdam for what was, at the time, my first holiday in years. And an enjoyable one it was, too; plenty of Dutch and Belgian beer, glasses of jenever, canalside walks, afternoons in Vondel Park, street shows and unfeasible amounts of cheese. Amsterdam's a beautiful place: a fact you can very easily forget when you glimpse the crazier aspect of the city, as we did one evening.

I don't think there's any point in mincing words. We saw a flying horse.

It's one of those breathtaking moments in which speech utterly fails you. There we were, walking down a street in the Jordaan, enjoying the June sunshine, when suddenly we realised that people all around us were standing still and pointing up into the sky. Up we looked, and there it was, cruising through the air at a low altitude, its shape unmistakably equine, moving with great purpose in the general direction of Rotterdam. Everywhere, people were glancing at one another nervously, questioningly, chuckling and shrugging their shoulders; there was no explanation for it. It was moving far too quickly to be a balloon or another inflatable; indeed, I think it must have had some sort of propulsion to achieve the speed with which it soared. But there was no visible propulsion system. It was a horse. A flying horse.

Me and my three companions stared at one another in a moment of wonder. We had seen possibly the most magical thing we would ever lay eyes on. And then, as quickly as it had arrived, the moment evaporated. And we realised the horrible truth of the situation: no one we told would ever, ever believe that this happened.

You see, if you're going to see a flying horse skimming the rooftops of any city in the world, and credibility as a witness is what you're after, you really couldn't pick a worse place than Amsterdam. Helsinki? Fine. Nairobi? Why ever not. But Amsterdam? Come off it. The first reaction you inevitably get when you tell the story back home is a concerto of rolled eyes from the listeners, and a few subtle mimes of sucking smoke from a spliff. Yes, folks, everyone stood on that street was obviously stoned, and experiencing a collective hallucination. There is just no room in the narrow, buttoned-down world of the average English person for a genuine, bona fide flying horse.

So for five years we've told the story to deaf ears. But I want it set on record for posterity that we experienced this magical moment, because that evening, I felt a sense of blind amazement at the world around me in a way I hadn't felt since I was child, and haven't felt again since.

And maybe on the day I die, that horse might come hurtling overhead once more, just to let me know that everything's alright, and that there are things in the universe that can't always be explained by Belgian beer, or glasses of jenever, or unfeasible cheese, or any of the other wonders of Amsterdam.