Strandtent EscuBelle

EscuBelle is the right beach club in the right place. It's the only one we haven't visited yet of this stretch of four beach clubs (that also contains Veronica, Buena Vista Beach Club, and the Fat Mermaid) which lies a little away from the main boulevard and therefore has a quieter feel to it. Like its three neighbours, it is quite middle of the road in terms of interior design and feel: tasteful shades of brown and grey for the furniture alongside wood colours for the walls and decorations. The most remarkable detail is a Frisian flag that is always waving in the wind on its terrace. It's easter Monday and soul music is playing on EscuBelle's sound system - I notice this immediately, because all the other beach clubs we've been to so far this year played acoustic rock and this is quite nice for a change.

The friendly waitress, who looks like she's slightly confused about what both herself and we are doing here this Monday morning in an otherwise empty beach club, welcomes us and tells us to let her know if we want her to close the door. There is indeed a chilly wind blowing from the open door. It's a cold wet Dutch spring morning, with sudden blasts of sunlight as the clouds speed along the coastline. It doesn't matter, I tell her, because we decided to sit in the chesterfields next to the fireplace and it's warm enough for us. It's indeed very early: we left a little over an hour after we both woke up, basically as soon as the beach clubs opened at nine a clock, me walking and Rihanna Gaga on her trusted kick scooter.

EscuBelle has two set breakfasts, a continental breakfast and an English breakfast. The first looks very much like what most beach clubs have on offer, so I pick the second one, a choice I won't regret. Rihanna Gaga has a chocolate milk and I take a latte macchiato, both of which are brought almost immediately. Rihanna Gaga is drawing next to me on the sofa, while I read. Every once in a while we chat a little, mostly about the weather and how pleasant  it is to be inside. Rihanna Gaga takes of her shoes and socks and warms her feet by the fire.  Marvin Gaye sings "What's going on?" and it's a poignant question, with Turkey having given its autocratic president almost unlimited power in a referendum yesterday and equally autocratic US president Donald Trump seemingly headed for direct confrontation with nuclear armed North Korea. Something feels decidedly wrong, the headlines read like messages from a dystopian future - not real, somehow, with democracy seemingly crumbling while we can do nothing but stand by. I try not to worry too much about it, because it won't change a thing whether I worry about it or not. You turn on the radio and there's men - always men, who seem to be born with a gene for being convinced that they are experts about everything they happen to think about - giving their thoughts about what's going on in the world and I always feel like calling the studio and telling them: "you know what, nobody gives a fuck about what you think."

Breakfast is brought and it is quite delicious - in the greasy, not-too-healthy way you can expect of a full English breakfast. It has what it has to have: white beans in tomato sauce, a sausage, bacon and eggs, toast and some salad drowning in dressing. The oven heated tomato covered in melted cheese is a nice touch and Scally's certainly has a challenger for the best English breakfast in Scheveningen that it prides itself on. Rihanna Gaga already had a big croissant at home - a leftover from Strandpaviljoen Zuid that we took home with us two days ago - and only has a few bits of fried eggs. The rest is for me and I take my time eating it.

Rihanna Gaga's mood slightly shifts, from cheerful to somewhat devious. While first she was lying cozily snuggled up next to me, with her bare feet on my lap, she now starts to kick me with those feet. I tell her to cut it out, but she only beginst to kick harder. She does this a lot, recently, seemingly testing out her limits, checking how far she can go without us getting angry at her. It's very tiring, and there are moments when she seems set on creating conflict just for the heck of it. Of course she isn't really. This isn't about conflict, it's not even about me. It's just her trying to figure out what it means to be an independently thinking human being. But that's the rational side of it. In the middle of it, it sure feels like conflict and it also definitely can be trying - and tiring. I manage, however, to get both of us out of the deadlock without me ending up angry or her crying. I just get up and sit down at the other couch when she continuous to kick me. When she starts whimpering when she sees me get up and sit down somewhere else, I make a joke about how she now has the couch to herself and she says she doesn't want that, really. So I sit down next to her again, but this time on the side of her head so she can't kick me anymore.

What else shall we do today, I ask her. She wants to go to the beach to build a sandcastle and then to the playground and the petting farm. Good plan, I tell her. And then we'll do some shopping at the supermarket after that. She nods. And that's exactly what the rest of our day will look like.