@ The Beach

@TheBeach has a simple, straight look. Lots of brown and white. What sets it apart - and this is a nice touch - is the series of antique-looking shelves with glass doors in the back of the beach club. In them, there's all kind of things for sale: shells, necklaces and bracelets, bags. There's a decidedly hippy atmosphere, with posters announcing a full moon party at the beach club next week and adverts for weekly meditation workshops at this place.

@TheBeach is located at the Southern beach, where there's often long stretches of sand between the beach clubs and you need to cycle quite a distance to get there. The roses are in bloom at the Westduinpark, the nature reserve along which the Southern Beach runs and the air is filled with their sweet scent. It's clouded and there is a chilly wind, although it's warm enough to be in short sleeves. Before we cycled here, Rihanna Gaga and I paid a short visit to her daycare. Today is Friday (normally not a day I spend with Rihanna Gaga, but her mom and I swapped days this week), not a day she goes to daycare, but yesterday she forgot her favourite toy animal there. She had difficulties falling asleep without it, so the first thing we did this morning was to go and pick it up. It's always nice to see how comfortable Rihanna Gaga walks around at her daycare. She's been there for nine months now and the positive atmosphere there has been a boost for her self-confidence. It's going to be interesting to see how she will do when she leaves the daycare. She's almost four now - next week is her birthday - and after the summer holiday, she'll go to school.

It's empty at @TheBeach. We're the only customers, apart from a naked man sitting at the corner of where there is maximum sun. This beach club is located at one of several nude beaches around Scheveningen and apart from the man at the terrace, there's several sun worshippers at the beach itself as well, mostly elderly nudists. We sit down inside, because of the chilly wind, but after we've ordered - a set breakfast for 9,50 and an apple juice for Rihanna Gaga - we decide to move outside, because Rihanna Gaga wants to play on the beach. It's not comfortably warm, but bearable and as the time passes, the temperature quickly becomes more agreeable. More and more patrons are joining us as well, most of them pensioners. There's a nice relaxed atmosphere at the beach club, with people sitting and reading, or even writing. In the distance, close to the sea, a group is doing yoga exercises.

The breakfast is simple: a bowl of yoghurt with muesli and berries, a croissant and a slice of bread, with regular ham and cheese to go on top of them. But since tea is included, as well as a small glass of fresh orange juice, the price seems reasonable. Rihanna Gaga claims the croissant, but is too busy playing in the sand with toys that she took from inside the beach club: buckets, a ball and a plastic shovel and rake. She's making a sand castle, she tells me, but she's mostly just putting sand in her bucket and taking it out somewhere else.

The yoga group, meanwhile, has stripped naked and is going for a swim. I finish my breakfast and tell Rihanna Gaga this is her last chance to eat the croissant, because I will eat it otherwise. She quickly comes to the table and takes half of the croissant. I take the other half, and put some jam on it. Rihanna Gaga plays some more, and then I tell her it's time to go. We need to go and buy some paint. That is for a wooden toy house that we bought for her birthday. To our dismay, it arrived all covered in mold and when we complained about it, it turned out that the seller had some small print on his website saying the customer should expect some mold on the wood, so there was little we could do except paint the wood. I thought it would actually be nice, especially since we decided to paint the walls white and the window panes and door blue, just like the houses in Tunisia where we used to live. However, the painting job is turning out to be quite gruesome and seemingly without end. We've been working on it since last weekend and it's still not finished. We're in a hurry now, because coming Sunday we have a small birthday celebration with some of Rihanna Gaga's friends from daycare and family and we want the house ready for the children to play in by then.

Rihanna Gaga, however, is in no hurry and wants to jump on the big trampoline in front of the beach club first. Then she wants to jump on the other big trampoline and finally, on the third, smaller trampoline. Only then, she is willing to come with me.