Humphrey's Restaurant

It's a dreary, rainy morning. Billie Stormzy and I have just dropped his big sister off at her school, something that the little one really enjoys. As her sister gets ready to start the day, he likes to look around in her classroom while sitting on my lap. Since a few days, he's going to daycare, something he also really seems to like. Maybe it's because children move a lot, or maybe their voices, higher pitched than those of adults, appeal to him. Or maybe he was just getting bored at home. But he really relishes being around kids. He's going to the same daycare as his sister and apparently, he's always really happy when she gets there after school. We're quite happy about their daycare: it's cosy, sheltered, located in a beautiful old mansion and close to some lush green parks, and the people working there dote on the children - unlike at the more massive daycare that is attached to the school that Billie Stormzy's sister goes to. So even though it's a bit more hassle to first get her to school and then him to daycare, it's well worth it.

Now, we walk through the streets of Scheveningen, past the tramway, the Circustheater, the Casino and the Kurhaus, on our way to the Boulevard. Our destination is Humphrey's Restaurant, a relatively new addition to the seaside places to eat. It's early and quiet as we pass Sealife, where we were last weekend. Sealife is a family friendly indoors park with large aquariums, including a pond with penguins. There's a great part with an underwater tunnel of glass, where you can sit and watch large fishes - including sharks and mantas - and turtles glide over you. Billie Stormzy loved that as well, gazing up at the underwater creatures with a mesmerised look on his face.

That was during the winter break, which is over now. I'm back to dividing my time between Groningen, where I work, and Scheveningen. It's always a bit tough to get into that rythm again, with the long train rides and all. Work is busy these days, and Billie Stormzy already woke up at 6:00 this morning, so I'm very tired and have been for days now. The dark January days don't help either. Anyway, I am not the only one. When we arrive at Humphrey's Restaurant, Billie Stormzy is fast asleep and he won't wake up throughout our stay.

Humphrey's Restaurant is a nationwide chain of restaurants with a recognisable look that hints at the 1920s and 1930s without trying to merely copy what a restaurant back then would have looked like. So, there is Mucha prints on the tables, beautiful patterned wallpaper with a metallic finish, copper archs and all that - and yet it is very much of the present day nonetheless. Not so much reconstruction as evocation. It's a clever design that is certainly build on nostalgia, but still manages to feel fresh and contemporary. It's a pity the music doesn't fit, though: a nondescript mix of 1990s R 'n B that does nothing to add to the character of the place. Jazz from the 1920s and 1930s would have been a better choice, or modern lounge music inspired on that type of jazz.

The breakfast menu is different from what else is available around here. Beside yoghurt and granola and croissants, there's a good choice of omelettes and other tasty alternatives. There's no set breakfast, so I pick Avocado with poached egg, chili flakes and land cress. This comes on a thick slice of dark brown bread for €8,50: taste over quantity, but this is good. It has a fresh feel, the poached egg is done expertly and the avocado has the right balance between firm and squashy (something not all restaurants around here manage).

Billie Stormzy continues to sleep, so there's little left to do for me beside enjoying the view - which is particularly good here because Humphrey's Restaurant is located on the first floor of the new building on the boulevard, which will also house Legoland in a few months. The sky is becoming a little less monotonously grey and instead now resembles a painting by an old Dutch master (which is a cliché when speaking about the North Sea coast, but still an apt description). After a while, I pick up my phone to read the paper.

We've got a new rule in the house, that we are only allowed to check our phones in the small library behind our living room. It's good, because it forces you to be a bit more aware about your own screen gazing -  I find that nowadays I hardly can sit still for more than a few moments without getting out my phone and looking at the screen. Most of the times, it's the same few things I do: check the papers, check my mail, check the weather forecast. But do you really need to do that so often? So far, I like our experiment with strongly restricting the phones in our house.

It's an idea I picked up from an acquaintance, an anthropologist who did field research with Amish people in America. As she told me, other than people normally think, the Amish do not reject technology per se. Most Amish business men, for instance, own mobile phones. However, they allow for an incubation period whenever new technology arrives in their life, where they take a step back to assess how new technology influences their life. If they feel the effect is detrimental to what they consider to be a 'good life', they will reject or curb the new technology. So, an Amish business card may say, next to a mobile telephone number: available between 14:00 and 16:00. During those hours, the phone will be on, outside of them it will be off, since Amish place a high value on family life and contemplation and feel a mobile phone has a disruptive effect on those. And often, the use of the phone will be restricted to a single room, or small house outside of the main house.

Now, I'm no Amish, nor will I ever be. First of all because I certainly don't share their religious outlook on life, but also because of my urge to embrace modern life in all its facets - and often enthusiastically so. But I also think this attitude to technology is a healthy one, maybe healthier than contemporary obsession with every new gadget that comes along. Recently, we dug up an old tablet that my partner had still lying around. The idea was to put it on the wall above our dinner table, so that I could join the others for dinner whenever I am in Groningen. We already do this, using an old laptop, but that one is a bit in the way. However, the tablet turned out to be useless, because hardly any program (or 'app' as it is now called) would run on it - not even from Microsoft, even though it was a Microsoft tablet. Thus, you're forced to buy new gear far sooner than the material life cycle of machines, which really is a huge waste if you think of it.

Talking about waste - only too late do I remember that I had decided to cut down on eating avocados, after reading reports on how the demand for avocados is wreaking havoc in Mexican ecosystems. It's a new year's resolution for 2020 anyway: to live a bit more consciously when it comes to things like this. Of course, I am far from being an eco-saint, with already two work-related plane trips ahead of me. I guess it's something that Humphrey's Restaurant serves fairtrade tea, but let's just say: there is a lot of room for improvement in my personal life in this respect.

Billie Stormzy is still fast asleep when I pay and leave, and will remain so for a long time. I wish he'd done some of that sleeping this morning, so that I'd be a bit more awake myself.