Hoping that three's a charm, we go to Colorado Charlie anyway, where it's not busy at all - only a few people fill its terraces, which is somewhat surprising given the very good weather and the fact that the terraces of the other beach clubs are packed. We sit down and I ask Billie Stormzy what he wants to eat. Apple pie, he says. I tell him I'm not sure they have it here: the menu says there is a daily assortiment of fres pies available, but not which ones. We wait to be served, but after a while, and with my recent experiences here in mind, I decide to ask at the bar. "I want to ask whether they have apple pies," Billie Stormzy says as he follows me inside. I pick him up and he immediately shoots his question at the barman. "Unfortunately, no," he says, so I ask him what today's pies are. After checking with a colleague, he says there are no pies at all, adding: "But they'll probably have pie at Barbarossa", referring to their nextboor neighbour, one of the poshest beach clubs at this stretch. But I shake my head. We visited Barbarossa long ago, and Colorado Charlie is the only beach club around here I haven't covered for this blog yet.
Billie Stormzy is a typical toddler, with a low frustration threshold. The news that there will be no apple pie does not go down well, and he's clearly getting ready to start a scene. I quickly tell him there are fries, and this averts the oncoming explosion. He cheers up and says he'd very much like those indeed. So I order fries, and for myself I add a "Charlie Burger" which looks promising from its description. For drinks, I take a Sol beer and an apple juice for Billie Stormzy. We walk outside again.
U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" is playing, followed by "Every Breath You take" by the Police and other hits from the seventies and eighties, with especially lots of ABBA. It sounds as if somebody here has a favourite period of music. Colorado Charlie looks like great fun: there's the beach club itself, which is a steel hall, the kind of industrial structure that is normally used to store large machinery. Next to it is a horseshoe-shaped fake village from the American West, straight out of a spaghetti Western, but more cheerful. In front of all that, there's the usual terraces. There's a funny disconnect to Colorado Charlie's look and the ABBA songs on the stereo, which only gets bigger when suddenly the music moves into the early nineties and Ace of Bass's "All That She Wants" comes on.
Our drinks are brought and while I sip my Sol beer, which is always a nice drink with this weather, I suddenly realise my bottom is getting wet. Although the pillows I'm sitting on looked completely dry, apparently they're wet from last night's rain below, and that wetness has now reached my shorts and underpants.Things don't get better when one of the waitresses stops by to tell me that they don't have the Charlie Burger today. I scan the menu and settle for the Club Sandwich. I'm somewhat bemused by all this. It's still in the middle of the summer season and it's a sunny day - they are also sporting a significantly scaled-back menu already, which offers far fewer choices than the one they show on their website. So why is already 50% of what I picked from it not available?
Soon, another waitress brings me my club sandwich, and leaves again with a friendly "enjoy your lunch!" This sounds so definite that, just to be sure, I ask her whether the fries will follow. She looks surprised, clearly unaware that fries were also ordered. She check with her equally friendly colleague, who frowns, apologises and says she threw away the note containing the order. Both apologise and assure me the fries will be with me soon.
My club sandwich is large and has lots of fresh ingredients: vegetables, avocado, and bacon. It tastes good, albeit slightly bland, and I am not fully convinced that toasting the upper slice of brown bread was a good choice: when I first sink my teeth in the sandwich, I am not entirely sure it's toasted or merely old. In fact, I'm afraid the one does not exclude the other. Billie Stormzy does not really mind that the fries are late. He's absorbed by my telephone. I almost never give my smartphone to him, but today, as I was taking notes for this blog, he seized his opportunity and grabbed it from my hands. Deciding that one has to pick one's battles, I let it go.
It was a struggle anyway to get him out of the house. We already went to the city, to buy stuff at the Oriental supermarket there. He always enjoys to ride the tram, and he had a great time travelling to and from The Hague city centre. But after we returned, he decided that he preferred staying home and playing songs for the rest of the day over going to the beach with me. He loves playing songs, putting on old-fashioned CDs and pushing the play and forward buttons, although today he regularly got furious because he could not skip to the numbers he wanted to. When I finally convinced it would be nice to go to the beach, he insisted on going on his kick scooter. Caculating that he'd tire of driving his kick scooter long before we'd reach Colorady Charlie (which would be around 25 minutes walking from where we live), I agreed, and followed him by foot with our bike in my hands. He had a great time, driving his kick scooter - which he's become really good at - and reading out loud the numbers of the houses we passed.
We also passed a balcony with an upside down Dutch flag, a strange occurrence in Scheveningen. The upside down Dutch flag, originally in use among anti-governmental conspiracy buffs protesting the Covid measures last year, has been turned into the symbol of the so-called farmers' protests that have been sweeping over the Netherlands for the past few months. The farmers are protesting new goverment regulations over emissions that mean that many of them have to cut their emissions with more than 50% in the coming years. The factory farming that many of them engage in, is simply too much of a strain on nature and if the Netherlands wants to reach the goal of cutting down the country's emissions over the coming years, curtailing the out-of-control meat industry is going to be essential to that. Personally, I'm an almost-vegetarian, leaning towards veganism these days, since it is clear that the consumption of meat and animal products is no longer sustainable in the light of the climate emergency we are facing. In fact, the arrogant style of protesting by the farmers, attacking police officers with their large tractors, dumping trash containing asbestos on highways and intimidating politicians by turning up unannounced at their doorsteps, as well as the fact that these protests are sponsored by multi-million companies with interests in factory farming (such as producers of powerfood for cattle), has only made me resolve to buy even less products for which cattle is necessary.
In any case, it is strange to see this symbol for the farmers' protests hanging from a balcony in Scheveningen, given that our village isn't particularly farming heartland. There has been a strange merging, however, of the groups that protested the measures to prevent the spread of Covid19 over the past few years, with the protesting farmers: a weird cocktail of far-right populism, extreme right activist groups, conspiracy theorists and people into alternative lifestyles and medicine (in short, a teaming up of demagogues, neo-nazis and yoga die-hards). Basically, if before you thought Covid was a scam and the vaccins developed to fight this virus were dangerous poison, you now vehemently support factory farming because it is all anti-government - or something; it really doesn't make sense and trying to understand it can only end up in a headache. A few weeks ago, as I was cycling through the Groningen countryside, I noticed a banner stuck to the bridge over the highway I was crossing that said something about a killer vaccin. A remnant from last year, I though to myself, attached to the bridge in a ramshackle way, so not only spreading lies, but also dangerous because if it came loose and fell on the highway, it could cause a nasty accident. I stopped to remove the banner and cycled on, only to discover later that the message about Corona (which read: "Mild Virus/Killer Vaccin - It Doesn't Make Sense"), was not why it was attached to the bridge. On the other side, the one facing the highway, it said: "Countryside: Revolt!" It was, indeed, proof that there is a clear link between last year's Corona protests and this year's farmers' protests. Next to the upside down flag, another flag hung from the balcony saying "Tired of lies", which is rich coming from a corner of society that revels in lies and half-truths. Behind it, angry slogans were put on the window with tape, saying something about the country being full (probably referring to the increased influx of asylum seekers) and other shit firmly putting the person to whom this balcony belonged in the far-right fringe.
Things are falling apart. Everywhere, heat records keep getting broken, a clear signal that the climate crisis is real and turning into an irreversible emergency. After years of budget cuts, asylum seeker centers in the Netherlands cannot deal with the increased numbers of people coming to our country and the newspapers tell us that people are sleeping outside with no food or water. There's the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and there is an unnerving feeling that this could ricochet into a nuclear conflict. Inflation is high, and the cost of living is steeply increasing too, as energy costs and shopping is getting more expensive on an almost monthly basis. Meanwhile, the country is run by a government that seems incapable of actually running the country, as proven by several recent scandals - one in which the tax authorities tunred out to be severely attacking poor families to take away as much money as possible from them, even if this was wholly unjustified; another in which three businessmen with ties to the governing party manage to scam the government for tens of millions of euros, selling them faulty facemasks during the Covid-crisis. Throughout it all, it seemed the politicians involved cared about little more than what this would do to their image, to the point where ministries seemed more willing to pay fines of tens of thousands of euros for not making certain documents public, rather than follow legally binding orders to release this information. An insane squandering of public money that almost seems to justify the feeling that there is some kind of evil conspiracy going on. Instead, I'm afraid, what this points at is a combination of sheer incapacity and an obsession with keeping anything that may damage somebody's reputation out of the press. So, actually, a revolt from the countryside (or anybody) against the current uninspired and visionless government, as it continues to misgovern and pursue disappointingly neoliberal policies, seems like a good idea. But if that revolt is meant to protect factory farming, I don't think much can be expected of it.
Turmoil is stirring in my personal life, too. I just returned from a trip to France with my daughter, where I visited my dad. He's been living in France for a few years now, enjoying his pension in the warm climate of the Cévennes, a region in southern France. Originally, the idea was that one of my brothers and I would work on his guest house, a building he bought six years ago for his visitors to stay in, which was pretty derelict when he first acquired it, but which has been improved over the years. When I visited it last May, I concluded that with a few minor adjustments, it could really become a pleasant, cozy place and I agreed with my brother that we could go here together in August to make this happen. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, my dad was hospitalised, and was diagnosed with cancer. When we arrived in France last Tuesday, he had just returned from the hospital after spending two weeks there, and is now awaiting for his treatment to start - and much is still uncertain. We actually had a good time there. It was nice to see my daughter get along so well with my brother, and it was also nice to work on something together with him. We placed a laminate floor, cleaned out the house, moved furniture around and built windowsills. It was also nice to travel with my daughter, who is a great person to travel with. Easygoing, cheerful and energetic, life with her is never dull. And despite the sad news of his cancer diagnosis, I also enjoyed spending some time with my dad, who I don't see too often since he moved to France. But it was with a heavy heart I returned home last Wednesday.
Now, however, I'm enjoying Billie Stormzy's company. His sister is staying with my mum for a night, and my partner is visiting her parents, so it's just us at home. And although Billie Stormzy is a bit of a house mouse, he's as much fun to be with as his sister. He's got a great sense of humour, making funny puns. He loves to share stories, either of our own lives, or from books. And he's so cuddly: he'll always sit on my lap whenever he has the chance, either chatting, playing counting games, or enjoying his music, singing along, sometimes putting his hand on my cheek in a gesture of affection. He's big for his age, but still small enough to completely enfold him in a hug, which I love doing, keeping him close, while he is checking his calculator or leaving through a kids' magazine.
The fries are brought, but Billie Stormzy is still absorbed by my phone. He's playing film clips of himself and his sister. When I try to feed him fries, he demands to be given only small ones. This is something that developed out of the fact that small fries cool off the quickest, so I used to give those to him first. Now, he only wants small ones because he is convinced those are the only ones he likes. This is easily solved by breaking the larger ones into smaller bits. There's a fresh breeze blowing over the beach, which cools off the fries quite quickly, and he eats the better part of the large bowl of fries that we've been served, with me eating only a few fries, feeling quite filled from the club sandwich, which also came with a generous amount of crisps. Alphaville's "Big in Japan" is playing, which is a funny coincidence because right at that moment I am reading about the band Big in Japan after which Alphaville named their song. Having been called a "supergroup in reverse", members of this short-lived punk band from Liverpool that was active in the late 1970s later became famous in other bands, such as The Lightning Seeds, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Frankie Goes to Hollywood (an all-time favourite of mine) and The KLF. This last band is the reason why I'm reading about Big in Japan, because I am planning a research project in which The KLF plays an important role - an attempt to combine my research with something enjoy.
By now, Billie Stormzy has finished his fries, but he remains focused on my phone. I make a mental note to bring pen and paper next time (I made the last few notes for this blog in the back of my book) so that I won't have to type on my phone, drawing his attention to it. Indeed, he's so immersed in the film clips he's watching, that he doesn't even want to pay when the waitress brings the bill. We walk back to the bicycle - on our way here, Billie Stormzy drove his kick scooters for two block, before giving up and accepting that I put him on the bike to cycle the rest of our way to the beach - and I finally manage to take the phone from him. He gives it up on one condition: he sternly tells me that I have to tell him what's on the road signs that we will encounter on our way back to the bicycle.
Also on Breakfast on the Beach: Jump back in time to when I visited this place with Rihanna Gaga in 2018
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