Fonk Beach

It's early Sunday morning and Billie Stormzy and me are on our bike again - I am also navigating two girls through the traffic, which luckily isn't so busy at this time of the day. Billy Stormzy's big sister and her friend are joining us this morning as we go for breakfast at Fonk Beach, located at the southern end of the Scheveningen Boulevard.

We're among the first guests - only a group of Russian tourists were here before us. It's clouded, with a grey sky over the beach and sea, but not too cold, so we decide to sit outside. There are nice bed-like couches on which we lounge, waiting to be served. The girls discover a trampoline in front of Fonk's terrace and want to go there, but I tell them to wait until our order's are taken. Billie Stormzy is crawling around the couch like crazy, laughing and panting like a puppy. The girls take turns putting him on their lap and holding on to him so that he doesn't keel over the edge of the couch. The relationship between Billie Stormzy and his big sister remains extremely good. The first thing she does every morning is cuddling him and whenever she's around, she's the only one he seems to care much for. As if all her attention weren't enough, there's also her best friend, the girl living next door, who adores him as well. And there are other friends too, that are all over him whenever they come to play with his big sister. Although they're sometimes a bit clumsy when they carry him or try to help him walk - he's already pretty good with standing up, holding onto somebody's hand and stepping around - he never seems to care much, enjoying the attention and company.

After a while, a waitress arrives and we settle on a breakfast platter (€12,50) and American pancakes (€9,50). I also have some black tea, while the girls order some orange juice, then run off to the trampoline. Billie Stormzy keeps crawling around like crazy, then turns around every once and a while to cuddle me. He's become extremely cuddly since he learned how to crawl, and will demand to be picked up about every ten minutes to get his cuddle - unless he becomes engaged in playing with Rihanna Gaga's toys; then, he can be at it for a long time, sometimes even hours, which is remarkable at his age. I seem to remember his big sister was far less able to play on her own, something she has  never really mastered - she hates it if there's no one around to play with.

The girls return to drink their orange juice, then leave with Billie Stormzy to play at the small playground next to Fonk Beach. This would have been a good moment to get out my book and do some reading, but I discover I forgot to pack it so I fiddle a bit with my smartphone, reading my favourite newspaper - The Guardian, a Britisch newspaper with a progressive perspective - and Wikipedia articles about Marcel Proust and John Ruskin (because I am currently reading an essay by Proust on Ruskin).

On the soundsystem, the Beatles - Michelle - and other old, accoustic sounding songs are playing. Perfect for an early Sunday morning. It is getting more and more crowded, groups and families are arriving, while over at the beach, surfing classes are taking place: large groups of kids and youngsters in wetsuits gather around teachers from Aloha and The Shore, next to which Fonk Beach is located, to be instructed in the art of surfing. I'd always thought it would be a good idea to have Billie Stormzy's big sister get her swimming diploma as soon as possible so that she can start surfing classes somewhere around here, but she had other plans: over one and a half year she's progressed but slowly and the lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19, during which swimming classes were suspended, did not help much either. I don't really know where she stands now, however: classes resumed two weeks ago, but parents are only allowed to drop off their children at the entrance of the swimming pool. Many measures are still in place - I am still not allowed to work in my office at my job, even though working at home is going less and less well as I find it hard to concentrate and feel somewhat caged by having to do everything from home. Last Thursday I sat in a nine hour videocall marathon doing job interviews for some vacancies in our department, leaving me with a splitting headache the next day.

Fonk Beach is a very standard-looking beach club: inside, there are chesterfields around fireplaces, outside there are lounging couches like ours and wooden tables and chairs. There's plants everywhere, which is something that seems to have happened at most beach clubs over the past few years - all that green is very nice indeed. Between tables, plastic screens have been placed, in keeping with the current regulations for restaurants and cafés to stem the pandemic. The one thing that distinguishes this place is the yellow buoy in front of it, a very large iron construction that looms over the boulevard side of the terrace.

It lasts remarkably long before the food arrives. The girls have a great time playing with Billie Stormzy, driving him around on a toy car and playing with him in the sand, but then return him to do some more jumping on the trampoline. He's getting a bit rowdy, and then the girls return and ask loudly (and somewhat embarrasingly) when the breakfast will arrive - after which it is finally put on the table.

It all is dished out in a lovely way. A nice looking black plate with four small pancakes sprinkled with powdered sugar and maplke syrup, with added strawberries and blackberries. The breakfast is also served appealingly on a wooden plank: a small frying pan containing a fried egg and fried bacon; slices of bread; a tiny bowl with yoghurt with granola; jam in a tiny glas jar; a croissant; and green edible leaves put in between the different foodstuffs. Helpfully, the waitress gets a second plate, so that I can divide the pancakes between the girls. They love it! Billie Stormzy's sister, who doesn't like regular syrup, says she loves this one and they both eat with relish. I also like the breakfast. The bacon with eggs is well done, the green leaves add a nice spicy taste, the yoghurt with grenola is certainly not some cheap tasteless version - nor is the jam that I eat on one of the slices of bread. I suppose the croissant is also nice, but that one is claimed by the girls. I offer some bread to Billie Stormzy, but he's not interested.

The girls are done and run off again - right at the moment that my partner arrives on her skeelers. She sits down next to me and after I've finished my breakfast, we order a coffee - latte macchiato for her and a flat white for me. A coffee used to be just a coffee for me, but over the past few years I've developed a bit of an interest in sampling different beans and going to specialist coffeeshops - and unfortunately, I am starting to taste when a coffee is not great. The one at Fonk is totally acceptable - but slightly too sour for my taste. Suddenly, a jackdaw dives down and steals a bit of croissant that the girls left. I'm used to cheeky seaguls around here, but the other birds seem to be following suit.

I overhear the waitress talking to a friend about how happy she is that the beach clubs are back in business after having had to be closed for so long. Her friend is mentioning the enormous increase of unemployed because of the economy slumping and they're discussing how even pilots are now applying for waiting jobs at beach clubs - the air travel industry having been one of the most hardest hit by the pandemic. As if on cue, people in black t-shirts with the text "Stop the Lockdown!" walk past. I'm somewhat bemused by this: first of all, one can hardly speak of a lockdown walking on a crowded terrace of a beach club, facing an equally crowded beach - with none of the surf classes, I notice, observing the 1,5 meter rule. Second of all: inasfar as there still are regulations to keep Covid-19 to spread, inconvenient as they may be (and I myself am pretty much done with them as they seriously depress me), keeping a deadly disease from spreading seems a strange thing to be against. But I'm also aware of the fact that there are all kinds of conspiracy theories swirling around, varying from Covid-19 being made up to cover up for people dying of radiation from telephone poles, to downplaying how serious the disease is and saying that governments are using Covid-19, which is claimed to be no worse than a regular flu, as an excuse to crub the liberties of their populations - none of which, of course, make sense, but we live in an age of stupidity.


I take Billie Stormzy and the girls to the sea and we dip our feet in the water. While his big sister and her friend are whooping and jumping up and down int he surf, Billie Stormzy walks with his feet in the water too, while I hold his hands. He has a serious look on his face, but still seems to enjoy himself because everytime I start carrying him, he indicates he want his feet back in the sea. The grey sky has given way for a blue, but clouded sky, with the sun regularly breaking through.

We walk back to Fonk to pay. I really enjoyed the breakfast and atmosphere here - it's very family friendly with the playground and the food was tasty. My partner will stay a little longer and I compliment the girls on how well they cycled coming here. When I ask them if they'll behave just as good in the traffic on the way back, they enthusiastically confirm - and indeed, they cycle safely and carefully back to our house. Later that day, we will hear that a demonstration in centre of The Hague against the Covid-19 regulations lead to rioting and 400 arrests were made.

Also on Breakfast at the Beach: Jump back in time to when Rihanna Gaga and I visited this place in 2017