Herring update

About the herring.
I decided that writing off one of the Netherlands' only culinary delicacies on the basis of one example was probably a little hasty.
So I had another one.
This time, it was a smaller bit and had been scraped of all but one stringy bone which I easily managed to dislodge from between my front teeth.
And this one tasted good. Same texture without the mass of bones was nice and the taste was a little less, how can I put this? Rancid and a little more fishy. It had fewer onions on it too. Maybe that helped.
Anyway, it seems that Saturday's abomination was probably caused by eating a herring from the wrong fishmonger (I still get sick looking at the picture of the man's foul hands cutting the herring on his gore-smeared table) on the wrong day, at the wrong time of day (4 p.m. What was I thinking?)
The one I had on Tuesday was served on its own little piece of toast as a canape at a reception for delegates at an international conference in The Hague.