I believe I may have met Pim Fortuyn.*

In 1997, I went to Amsterdam for my birthday. Not realising that my birthday is also Queen's Day [no sniggering at the back, thank you] I hadn't bothered to book a hotel. Big mistake. There was no room at the inn - any inn. I wandered from gay hotel to gay hotel, from cheap hotel to cheap hotel, from backpackers' hostel to the ridiculous. Nothing doing. I eventually gave up and just put my bag in a time-release locker at Centraal Station.

I had 24 hours until the locker would spring open, 24 hours in which to find somewhere to stay. I hit the bars. Hard.

The Casa Maria didn't really look the most likely place to pick anyone up, filled as it was with pot-bellied, walrus-moustached, middle-aged men but what's that saying about beggars and choosers?

I chose a 30-something man with an English accent. I didn't exactly tell him I was on the make, but I did make sure he had his own house in Amsterdam. His name was John, a really nice guy, and a respected artist with an interest in Egyptian archaeology [I have just found a few web sites about him]. Come the end of the evening, he invited me home. I pretended to be surprised, and accepted.

"There is just one potential problem," he said. "My boyfriend Pim might be in town. He doesn't live in Amsterdam, but he does sometimes spend weekends here, and it's his house really. But even if he is home, I'm sure he won't have a problem with your staying over."

Pim was home, and Pim did have a problem with my staying over.

Pim was a shiny-headed, red-faced man, and he was angry. After a great deal of furious whispering in the kitchen, John announced we were leaving. Together. For his studio. On the other end of town. On his bicycle. Balancing a foam single mattress.

We veered across town on his bike, giggling wildly, the orange mattress making us look like some kind of rickety bi-plane.

John's studio was a vast concrete warehouse, spattered with grey paint and smelling of turpentine. I stayed there three nights, nipping back to my locker in the station every day to pick up clean clothes. I eventually grew to love this peripatetic lifestyle, and set myself a challenge:

Could I spend the rest of my week in Amsterdam without booking a hotel? The answer, I am ashamed yet proud to say, is a resounding "yes".


*I realise that it is unlikely this Pim was that Pim. I know it's a common Dutch name, and I know Pim Fortuyn lived in Rotterdam, not Amsterdam, and I haven't read anything about him having an English artist boyfriend. But why let logic get in the way of a good story?