Strandtent Soomers

Strandtent Soomers is a no-nonsense Scheveningen beach club. It has everything you'd expect from a beach club that, although it is located at the northern beach, is still quite close to the Pier. It's relaxed, has some playhouses for children, a trampoline, and lots of places to relax at its sprawling terraces. The decoration is firmly middle of the road: wood painted white, colourful pillows and some fun touches like tables made out of large wooden reels. In the background, chill out music is playing and mixing nicely with the sound of the waves.

The weather is still beautiful, this first weekend of September. The sky over Scheveningen is completely blue, but the view is made more dramatic by large clouds hanging over the sea. This morning, Rihanna Gaga wasn't really in the mood to go lounging on the beach - in fact, she isn't really in the mood for anything these days. Her mind busy processing all the new impressions from school, she resists any plan that comes from us. Instead, she prefers to dictate her wishes to either me or my girlfriend, depending who is taking care of her at that moment. If we don't cater to her wishes immediately, she'll go into a sulk and if we continue to refuse, there might be an outburst of crying, or even meltdown. So my strategy is to get her out of the house as quickly as possible and spend the majority of the day somewhere where there's enough to keep her busy. Difficult though it may be to get her going, once she's on the beach, a playground or Madurodam (where we went yesterday), she'll be fine. At first, she'll still be demanding, refusing to play without me, but she'll often find another child to play with and then she's okay for hours. And anyway, I don't mind playing with her on the beach or playgrounds - in fact, I very much enjoy spending a lot of time with her now that she clearly needs us a bit closer than normally.

We sit down at the edge of Soomers's terrace, where we can put our feet in the sand. Rihanna Gaga is off to one of the two small plastic playhouses, occasionally telling me I need to ring her doorbell, after which she will serve me sandcakes or other delights. We're the first customers and two cheerful waitresses are getting the terrace ready for the day. I order the set breakfast (a croissant, two slices of bread and a breadroll, cheese, ham, eggs, some fruit, a little bit of salad and jam for €9,50), a tea and a chocolate milk. When the drinks are brought, Rihanna Gaga returns for her chocolate milk and when the food is brought, she joins me to eat most of the croissant and the eggs. The breakfast is adequate - noting spectacular, but okay for the price.

Then, Rihanna Gaga insists I come with her to the trampoline. Despite the fact that a few weeks ago, she would eagerly jump up and down on any trampoline she'd encounter, she now wants me to hold her hand and will panic anytime another child jumps on the trampoline. I've noticed there's other things she is now a bit more careful about as well. I suppose that right now, her energy needs to be spend on other things, rather than being too much of a daredevil - although she will still climb literally anything (fences, chairs, couches, her parents) as her bruised knees can testify.

Two young parents and their small daughter have arrived, and Rihanna Gaga would like to play with her - but she's too young and Rihanna Gaga is not in the mood to actively approach her, so nothing comes of that. Another, slightly older girl, sits down next to us and she and Rihanna Gaga do enjoy a few games together. I can't really put my finger on it, but something about that girl's parents gets completely on my nerves. Then, suddenly it strikes me when the girl comes towars them sulking. The mum tells her, in a rather passive aggressive voice, that if she wants to go home, she can just say so, instead of sulking, adding: "So do you want to go home?" The girl shakes her head. "In that case," her mum tells her, "put a smile on your face and go play". I realise both the mum and the dad are constantly wearing a fake smile - probably the same kind of fake smile that they expect of their daughter as well.

Maybe Rihanna Gaga isn't the only one having to adjust to her new life as a schoolkid. I'm quite grumpy too. Having to deal with people isn't my favourite pastime. I resent it at my job and I resent it in general - fourteen years working as an academic, where you never have to deal too much with colleagues, and collaboration and teamwork aren't the skills you need to practice the most, where you often have your own office to focus on research, hasn't really turned me into the most sociable of people. I'm an extrovert by nature, so I get by, but I do resent situations in which I have to find my place among a group of people, whether it's my colleagues at work or the parents (mostly mothers, really, despite it being 2017) at the schoolyard.

The fellow patrons at Soomers aren't helping my misanthropic mood. The young couple and their daughter are lovely, all smiles and love for each other, but there's the fake smiles and behind me there's a loud family that's constantly arguing. At first there's only a couple, engaged in a tense, irritated conversation - at a certain moment I hear the woman saying: "I used to think you're right, but you're not. I realise now that you are not right" to which the man replies at first with blank stares, but after that he soon starts making loud noises of disagreement and barely repressed hostility. They are joined by family members later on. Loud, squabbling children, a father who keeps scolding them in a loud tone whenever they do something wrong in his eyes - such as tripping over their own feet, which he claims they do deliberately - embarassing his wife and parents in law. And there's a dog, who runs around on the beach unleashed and, despite being very small, scares the children playing there.

I've had enough, really. I promised Rihanna Gaga we'd have icecream before we came here, and I feel like having a coffee, but I don't really feel like staying here at all. The trick will be to convince Rihanna Gaga to come with me - as difficult as it is to get her to come with me anywhere, it is often as difficult to then get her to leave the places she was originally hesitant to go to. So I  tell her we could go to Sol Beach, which has become a strong favourite of hers this summer because of it's large playground, and she agrees. I pay and we leave.

However, we don't get to Sol after all. She discovers some girls she knows from her former daycare at the playground of the beach club next door - Beach Club 57 - and convinces me to stay there. So that's where we have our icecream and latte macchiato - and for the next few hours, she's as happy as can be, playing with her friends.