Oceans Beach House

With Billie Stormzy in his seat in front of my, I arrive at the boulevard cycling, having just passed the Kurhaus and rounding the corner towards the south. I pass several beach clubs, but they're already closed, unlike the permanent restaurants. Normally, this is the time of the year when these take over as the main places to have something to eat or drink, with the beach clubs closing one after the other and cranes arrive to take them away. 

However, there are no cranes - even though closed, the beach clubs are allowed to stay on the beach this year to compensate for their losses because of the Corona lockdown earlier this year - and neither can the restaurants look ahead to an increase of income. After tomorrow, the Netherlands is again in semi-lockdown and all cafes, pubs and restaurants have to close again. This also means this is going to be our last breakfast on the beach for the foreseeable future. Yesterday evening, the government announced that the new regulations are for the coming four weeks to start with, but I suspect they will last longer. It's not sure yet what this means for my work - in principle, universities are allowed to stay open, but this morning the news was that originally some specialist advisors to the government suggested closing higher education campuses too and the board of our university could still decide that's the wisest option. 

There are two things I dread the most. The first is having to work from home again, which is tough because we don't have a separate working space and the kids don't go to daycare every day. And I'm not fond of working from home anyway. The second is another closure of schools and daycares. The latter, however, is highly unlikely because even the first time this was done, the reason was more that there was pressure on the government from schools and parents to do so, than that the experts really thought this would bring the number of infections down, since children are supposedly not able to spread the virus to adults. 

Last time the government announced a lockdown, restaurants had to send away their patrons within a few hours the same evening. Now, they get another day: from 22:00 this evening onwards, they have to close their doors. I feel sorry for people working in this industry - these new measures must be terribly frustrating for them and might possibly prove fatal for their businesses. In general, there's not really much to look forward to: autumn's coming and with measures that are basically meant to prevent us to have anything resembling a social life - well, there's online possibilities, of course, but I find the idea that having a coffee together with someone via videolink is anything near resembling having an actual coffee together in town preposterous. 

In fact, anyone suggesting that 'things aren't so bad' or that we should 'look for a silver lining' can count on my ire. I hate this cruel optimism, this idea that as individuals, we can chose to be happy or not. Yesterday, I nearly choked on an article in an online newspapers in which all kinds of experts were telling the reader how they should create their own happiness in lockdown. Their advice? I quote: "Keep things tidy, don't just work on your laptop in your pyjamas. Don't reach for alcohol when you're having a bad day. And set yourself clear goals to kill time: get a new hobby, take an online course, learn a language, keep a diary. Read an author's complete oeuvre". The advice to keep a diary in lockdown is probably one of the worst advices I've ever read (if anything, keeping a diary in lockdown will most likely drive home the point to you that your life is now practically on standstill), but the rest is also very much like trying to spray gold on a turd and asking people to admire how shiny it is now. 

Don't get me wrong - I'm not against any measures taken to stop the spread of the virus. If the experts say these measures are necessary, who am I to argue with them? But I would also say it's unhealthy to deny that all of this is incredibly depressing and stressful. And that for many people, the mental energy needed to do anything more than merely getting by at the moment is lacking - and that's okay, too; don't make us feel any worse because we cannot summon the will to take up creating scrapbooks, follow a course in Swedish cooking, learn Swahili, or write down that we woke up, sat behind a laptop, then went to bed again in our diaries every day.

Anyway, today is still today and coming from the direction of the Kurhaus, the first beach club that is still open right now is Oceans Beach House, so this is where Billie Stormzy and I will have our breakfast today. Oceans is a posh affair: luxurious round green couches, against a tasteful background of teak and white, bottles of Moët & Chandon as decoration, and things like lobster and oysters on the menu. The fires are on when we enter and there are a few other patrons enjoying their breakfasts already. 

At such a place, what else could one order but the champagne breakfast? It comes with coffee, but this morning my partner and I already had a coffee at our local coffee place - where people were cheerfully shouting that this was their 'last cup!' - so I ask whether I can have a tea instead. The waitress tells me that's not a problem. As I wait for the breakfast, I play a little with Billie Stormzy. He's standing on the couch, having a wonderful time looking around him and pointing at the fires and all the shiny things on display here. Next to us, a family from the south with two young daughters is seated. The schools are having their autumn break over there, meaning they're lucky; when we'll have our break next week, everything will be closed. 

The daughters walk outside through the open door to the terrace in front of us. Billie Stormzy follows them with his eyes - as always he's more interested in other children than in grown-ups. After having played outside for a while, the girls come back holding a tiny bird, which they show to their parents. When the waitress arrives, they show it to her, asking her if she knows the bird. The waitress picks up the bird and holds it in her hands, saying she doesn't know it. Next to me, Billie Stormzy slips and hits the table with his face - as I was looking at the tiny bird, I lost sight of him for a second, so that I am just to late to prevent his fall. He starts crying: his lip is bleeding a little. The waitress, still holding the bird in one hand, asks me if he'll be alright and I say I think so. I give him his ducky and pretty soon, he is no longer crying. The ducky is his comfort toy: a stuffed cotton duck with a music box inside that is activating by pulling on a cord. His sister had a sheep from the same brand (which she's given to him now) and just like with her, we play the music for him when he goes to sleep. When we were leaving the house this morning, Billie Stormzy insisted on taking it with him - which is always tricky, because it's a disaster when such a toy gets lost. But now I'm happy we took it with us.

A while later, the waitress returns with a napkin for Billie Stormzy, which I use to wipe the drool from his face.  She's still holding the bird and I see her walking around the terraces with it in her hand for a while, taking orders, talking to people.

Billie Stormzy is very cheerful again. We're sitting right next to the cashier and beneath it, he's found a toy car - probably left by another child. He's playing with it on the floor, then walks a few steps. I take him by the hand and walk around for a bit, first inside, then we move outside. The waitress has put the bird down at a table and the two girls are now playing with it.

The bird is quite interesting. It's tiny - being very young, still - and has grey and brown feathers, except for a striking couple of bright yellow and red above its beak. It's probably some exotic species that escaped from somebody's home. I doubt it'll survive long among the seaguls and jackdaws here: it's capable of hopping and flying a few inches, but nothing beyond that. It also seems quite at ease with the two girls, which make me suspect it's used to being around humans. When their parents call them in because their breakfast has arrived, one of them tries to convince her dad that the bird should come in because it's cold outside, but he tells her the bird's feathers will take care of that.

My tea and champagne are also brought, so I go in again. The champagne - Moët & Chandon - is served in a large glass with lots of ice cubes and birs of strawberry. It looks delightfully decadent, and as I sit sipping it, the waitress comes and tells me I can order something else because they no longer have orange juice. I sit and wonder for a bit - she does a few suggestions, such as apple juice or milk for Billie Stormzy, but he drinks neither of those. Maybe another tea, she suggests. I tell her I don't mind, really. Maybe I will take another tea, but experience tells me Billie Stormzy can sit through me having a breakfast, but after that his patience will wear thin, so I don't think I will take a tea afterwards. The waitress apologises and tells me they tried getting it from some other beach club around here, but nobody has it and nobody wants to go and buy fress stuff, now that they will have to close. I fully understand, I tell her. It's okay. 

She also asks me to scan the QR code on the menu, which should lead me to a website where I can fill in my name and phone number for Covid-19 track & tracing. That's fine, I say, but I'll need wifi since I dont't have a sim-card in my phone. Tired of always being online, I've put my sim-card in an old Samsung phone I once bought for a few euros in Tunisia, so that I can only use my smartphone for taking pictures and playing music. The waitress answers that, unfortunately, their wifi is not working, but she'll bring me a piece of paper. 

First, however, the food is brought. It's the champagne that really gives this breakfast its shine, because beyond that it isn't very noteworthy. There's the ubiquitous croissant, some slices of toast and tiny buns. These come with one slice of cheese and one slice of ham, a few slabs of salmon, a small bowl of thick cream, some butter and jam in plastic cups and a boiled egg. I must say, however, that this is a more balanced selection than what you'll get elsewhere. The cream is a very nice addition that goes quite well with the salmon, and the tiny buns are very tasty. Billie Stormzy eats a few bits of toast, but his interest is really piqued when I give him a bit of egg. He devours the rest of the egg, leaving nothing for me. Whenever I don't give him his bits of eggs quick enough - sometimes adding some cream, which he likes even more - he gets impatient and starts clutching at things.

The waitress brings a piece of paper for me to put my name and phone number on. "And also please write something about your health," she adds. "What should I write?" I ask. Instead of answering, she looks somewhat lost.
"I'll just write I'm healthy, then," I say.
She nods, and I proceed to do just that, writing down: "I am healthy!" with my name and phone number underneath. I pass her the note and she takes it with a "thank you". I wonder what will happen to it.

I return to the rest of my breakfast. For a while, Billie Stormzy remains seated on my lap, still munching on the egg. Then, he slides on the floor to resume playing with the toy car. I sit back, finish my tea and the croissant on which I've put some jam and then sip the champagne for a while. Next to me, Billie Stormzy stands upright, holding on to my knee and gazing silently at the sea. He looks like he's concentrating on something very hard - and then I realise he's pooing. Not wanting to change him here, I quickly finish the champagne and pay. 

Then we leave, for our bike ride home from a breakfast at the beach - the last one for who knows how long. We pass the newly opened Legoland, with its large giraffe built from Duplo bricks in front of its entrance. The giraff is wearing a facemask, I notice. The anthropomorphic hotdog in front of the snackbar on the boulevard is wearing one too.

Also on Breakfast at the Beach: Jump back in time to when I visited this place with Rihanna Gaga in 2014 (interestingly enough, back then Oceans was also the last of our first series of breakfasts at the Scheveningen beach clubs)