Beachclub Leef

Beachclub Leef is relatively small. A single, white wooden building with marine blue window frames, and wooden furniture, it's also not particularly remarkable. It's walls carry an inspirational: "Remember yesterday, dream of tomorrow but live today" ('Leef' means to live). Soft, accoustic rock plays on the soundsystem (this really is the soundtrack of the summer of 2017) and there's only a few people when we arrive. Leef is at the southern beaches, so there's plenty of view and space. The weather is amazing: there's veil clouds, and the sky is of a hazy blue, with the sun shining throughout the day.

We spend the morning with a friend of Rihanna Gaga's: a girl that lives in our streets who came to visit us. Rihanna Gaga loves having visitors over, so that was great fun. They played with her doll house, toy kitchen and in the house she has on our balcony. When the girl left to take an afternoon nap - she's only three years old - Rihanna Gaga was a bit disappointed and she was in a grumpy mood when we left for the southern beach. But that soon improved, and by the time we were cycling through the southern dunes, she was already chatty again, telling me about things she did at school last week. Then I took a wrong entrance to the beach so that we had to walk for quite a bit, but she was cheerfully running along until we reached Leef.

We settle at a corner from where Rihanna Gaga can easily get to the playground next to the terrace. At first, however, she is not really interested in the playground. I order a club sandwich with salmon and shrimps for myself and a portion of six 'bitterballen' for Rihanna Gaga: a very Dutch snack made of meat ragout that is rolled into balls, given a crust of bread crumbs and egg and deep fried. She really likes them and although they are not the healthiest of snacks, we sometimes share them when we go out in the afternoon. When the food arrives, the club sandwich turns out to be huge and it is served with some home made crisps that taste very nice - but Rihanna Gaga claims most of them before I can lay my hands on them. Then, she turns to the bitterballen while I eat the sandwich which isn't particularly fresh, but tastes good nonetheless.

At the table next to us, the owner is chatting to some guests, who turn out to be old classmates of his when he studied at the hospitality business school - which they both dropped out of. He says the season wasn't too good this year. The summer wasn't very good qua weather, and that was a bit of a letdown because during the summer, the weather is decisive. In the spring, the main source of income is weddings and other parties (and indeed, on its website Leef very actively promotes itself as a wedding location) and then in autumn it's a question of luck. Anyway, he is ready now to put his whole beach club back into the 'Ikea boxes' as he phrases it, after polishing and painting the wood.

Rihanna Gaga has gotten on my lap and is lounging lazily. "It's quiet," she says. I ask her what she means, because by now quite a few people have arrived. "Quiet as in there's not a lot of talking," she replies. She's slowly munching her way through the bitterballen, counting them down as she eats them. Then, she gets up and starts playing in the playground. I turn around to watch her and see a group of boys on the trampoline getting into a fight. Especially two of them viciously attack each other, with alarmingly effective kickboxing kicks for which they are way too young (I guess they are around five years old). I get up and tell them that if they want to fight, they can do so away from the trampoline, which they are keeping occupied while a group of girls wants to go and jump.

They get off and continue their vicious kicking. One of them shouts 'cockroach' to the others (a rather odd namecalling since there are no cockroaches in the Netherlands) and then runs to his parents. None of the boys make a particularly pleasant impression. Their behaviour is cocky and aggressive and the effective way in which they kick each other betrays that they are used to watch kickboxing fights - maybe in the form of video games?

Rihanna Gaga has found some girls to play with and they are sitting around with dolls. I could say I am happy to have a daughter, rather than a son, but that would not be fair. She has quite a few boys that she plays with at daycare and school and they are all lovely boys who show none of the aggression I am seeing here. However - and I know I am opening a can of worms here - I firmly believe that a lot of this behaviour is down to how boys and girls are raised, rather than some inborn boy and girl thing. If a girl would behave the way these boys are behaving right now, she would probably be told to play nice, to be sweet, to apologise immediately. The boys can get away with this kind of behaviour because the idea is, apparently, that 'boys will be boys'. That said, it's probably much easier to raise a girl because so much product geared towards boys is so bloody aggressive that no matter what you do as a parent, the boy is bound to be influenced by it - just as it's impossible to shield your daughter from the kind of product geared towards turning your little girl into a passive, eye batting princess.

The afternoon continues to be lovely. Rihanna Gaga has found a girl to play with, and after a while they are joined by a third and I hardly see her for several hours. I interfere only once, when I notice that four year old Rihanna Gaga and another four year girl are starting to actively shut out the three year old girl that Rihanna Gaga was originally playing with. I  gently hint that they should really play together and when Rihanna Gaga and the other four year old girl get an icecream each from the girl's parents, I make sure the three year old also gets one. And when they really turn nasty, telling the younger girl that there is no place for her in the playhouse, I firmly correct Rihanna Gaga. She tells me it was the other girl who told the younger girl to go, but I reply that even if that were truethen, she should stand up for her friend, . I don't know how much of it sticks, but she is considerably sweeter towards the younger girl after that. And now I have to be critical of myself as well: if I had a son, would I expect the same kind of cooperative, sweet behaviour? I guess I would (I know it was expected of me when I was a child) and I certainly would not tolerate any form of aggression, boy or girl.

The afternoon goes by and Rihanna Gaga continues to play with the girls, while I read. By the time we leave, we've been here for more than four hours.