Picked Babette up at De Zwaan, saw Michiel and met his Malian contact. Went for tapas at a Spanish place B went with Alec, and later with Aard after their Spanish lessons. The woman behind the counter has a Spanish flamenco dancer look about here (long dark hair, high cheek bones, flashing eyes) but is from Cyprus, and before that hails from Syria. Her husband is Spanish. They tried working together in the restaurant, but that didn’t work at all. He is home now with their 15 month old. The restaurant is long and narrow, with the tapas bar and bar stools taking up most of the width leaving a narrow aisle to walk to the back. There a group at the single table was singing with gusto when we walked in. But they were wrapping up so we sat down that end of the bar, away from the door and the mother with the two ill-tempered kids. The tapas selection is displayed under glass. We had egg salad, garbanzo beans with spinach (my favorite), meatballs, seafood salad, and garlic shrimp sizzling from the kitchen. And a bottle of white wine. Topped off with a sambuca for me and something else with a hint of arancia for Babette. And another on the house. And a third because we were still chatting so animatedly before Roberto was sent home to his wife by his father in law in the kitchen.
Babette. Still gorgeous, just a little heavier in the hips as the years go by. She’s 38 now, and says it started when she was 35. Is eating the same as always, just stopped burning it off in the same way. That and a diminished sex (and party) drive have been the hallmarks of her latter 30’s. Aard is just as horny as ever, wants to have sex morning noon and night seven days a week, has sex on the brain as he bikes around town. At first they got into spats when he wanted to and she didn’t, but she stopped beating herself up after Alec told her, ‘You can never have enough sex with your man’ and it sounds like they’ve reached harmony around it.
She and Aard each have a horse. Bought them a year or two ago for about Euro 3500 each. A couple attempting to start a horse business keep them in the field behind their house, and B&A stay in an old camper van in the back yard when they go up for the weekend, which is just about every weekend. It costs Euro 200 a month to keep each horse, and another 200 for the camper. They are learning to ride in a horse-friendly way developed by a guy called Parelli. B just got her ‘level 1’ certificate. Her goal (her goal!) is to ride to San Diago de Campestella (from Holland) in 2012, after their traditional 12-12-12 party.
I’m just going to miss their 10-10-10 party on the boat this weekend. Last year on 9-9-9 they had a pancake party, and the year before they barbequed a couple of goats on 19th century grills.
Riding is not without its dangers. Babette has a not insignificant scar on her chin from a fall she took five years ago (have I never noticed it before? Or do I just forget each time between seeing her?). And more recently Aard lost a finger when the horse went wild and he thought it prudent to jump off, forgetting he had the reins wrapped in his hand. He recovered the digit and had it was sewn back on at the hospital.
Then there was the major mishap at De Zwaan in December 2008. The cases with all the porcelain and glassware collapsed the morning of what was to be the most profitable auction ever for De Zwaan, and several 100s of 1000s of value were destroyed. She called the insurance immediately but they refused even to send someone to assess the damage, saying she wasn’t insured even though this company has insured everything for the van de Brinks for the last fifty years. Eventually they paid out a meager sum. She still doesn’t know exactly what the financial balance of that year is.
Things were very bad in 2002, the year the Euro was introduced in Holland. Her father died in 2004. Things picked up in 2005-2007. Then this disaster in 2008. And now it’s back to scraping by. She’s not putting anything away for retirement, but she has a houseboat and a horse.
There’s still the baby question. We both shrug our shoulders and comment our biological clocks never started ticking. But she’s conscious that at 38 she’s running out of time. Aard would like to have a kid, and for a while he brought it up. ‘C’mon, it’s the biological thing to do, we’re meant to reproduce, let’s get on with it; don’t think about it, it’ll be fine.’ He hasn’t brought it up for a while, but it’s in on her mind. She thinks the only way she could do it would be to sell De Zwaan and take to the road gypsy-style (with baby, then). Part (most?) of the baby-apprehension stems from visions of a life shuttling from the kraam to pre-school and on, and questions about where the money would come from to maintain her life-style and provide for the kid. Sure, poor people do it (eg Fidel and Daan who are about to have their 3rd) – but who knows what sacrifices they’re making and whether B would/could make those too.
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