Happy Moodz

 There's a drizzle and a strong wind is blowing over the Scheveningen boulevard. It's half past 11 and Billie Stormzy and I have just arrived after walking here from our home - as usual, Billie Stormzy preferred walking over other means of transport, such as his buggy or our bike. It gives him plenty of opportunity to  press the buttons of traffic lights, one of his favourite activities. He seems most interested in the row of restaurants that includes Steam, which we visited last week, but I manage to persuade him to visit De Pier instead. I want to see how many of the eateries there are already opening around this time.

Before we enter De Pier, I put on my facemask: there's signs everywhere announcing wearing one is mandatory here. The first person we meet as we've gone inside is a security guard - he isn't wearing a facemask. George Michael's "Careless Whisper" is playing over the sound system. "Can we eat here?" Billie Stormzy asks - I look ahead and see that at least a few places are open already. Deciding that we'll visit them one by one over the coming weeks, we just pick the first one that is open: Happy Moodz. 

Happy Moodz is a waffle place. On its bright yellow counter, examples of the waffles they serve are on display. It looks like a dentist's nightmare: chocolate, nutella, cookies, candy - name anything sweet and they put it on their waffles here. Somehow I can't walk by this place without craving waffles. It's weird because waffles really are not my thing, and I am not into sweet tasting stuff at all. Billie Storm wants me to pick him up so he can look over the counter while I order. I pick a strawberry-Toblerone waffle (€8,-) and to add more sweet on top of sweet, I also take a strawberry milkshake (€4,-). The friendly guy behind the counter - young, relaxed and handsome - takes my order and gets busy preparing our food and drink. We sit down at one of the tables next to the window, overlooking the beach and the see. A few surfers are braving the cold, as always. 

Billie Stormzy climbs on my lap and keeps talking about cookies. I realise he means the packs of Oreos on display - it's one of the toppings they offer on their waffles here: crushed Oreos. Had I known that he'd be most interested in those, I'd have picked that topping. Now I can only hope that once our waffle is served, the little one will be distracted enough to forget the cookies. The signs are not good - he keeps fantasising aloud about how nice those cookies are. How does he even know Oreos, I wonder - we never have it at home.

The waffle and milkshake are brought and are as much of a sugar bomb as I imagined them to be. The waffle is covered in generous amounts of strawberry and chunks of Toblerone, with melted Nutella and powdered sugar covering the whole. The strawberry milkshake is rich in taste - clearly made with real strawberries and milk, lacking the chemical taste milkshakes often have - but still incredibly sweet. I share both with Billie Stormzy, who loves it. When we've finished both, I feel so much sugar rush that it is like I drank three cups of coffee. 

 It's still quiet at De Pier. There is now seventies funk music playing on the stereo system, every now and then interrupted by an annoucement that visitors must wear facemasks. Around half of the people here heed that call. An elderly couple passes by with four children in tow - they're all school aged kids, so I guess they have a day off because their class is quarantining, or their teacher has covid. It's happening regularly now: when more than four kids in one class tests positive for Covid, the entire class is supposed to stay at home. And the current wave of Covid infections is so massive, that it is becoming increasingly hard to find replacement teachers when a teacher has to stay home because they have Covid - or for whatever other reason. The only reason we're not facing tough lockdowns at the moment is that the strand of Covid currently going around, Omicron, is apparently much milder and there are fewer and fewer people in hospital each day. Some people are saying this is the end of the pandemic - on the other hand, however, there are doomsayers predicting that the current wave will lead to an increase in hospitalisations soon. The only thing that seems certain, is that after two years of this pandemic, nothing is really certain at all.

After we've finished our food and drink, Billie Stormzy insists in exploring the rest of De Pier - the usual routine follows, with him having to have pushed every button of every pinball and arcade machine before he is even willing to consider leaving. It doesn't matter - we're not in a hurry.