“Do you know what I won at bingo yesterday?” Ella (60) is standing on the steps of her mobile home. I have no idea, but I would have loved to participate. I never bingo, there is never bingo in my area.
Too bad, because bingo is perfect. You have to pay attention, but otherwise it requires little effort. Competence doesn’t count, only luck. And there are many breaks with bitterballen. I had seen the main prize in the camping restaurant (a barbecue the size of a kitchen). And yet I missed that bingo.
A Dolce Gusto cup coffee machine, Ella says. She shows it to me, still in the box. “And a crockery. Henk, where did you store that?”
“Under the bed”, Henk (67) shouts from the bench in front of the caravan.
A week earlier, they had won a karaoke set and a huge fan. All loose objects in the caravan blew away when Henk turned it on.
A camping bingo can bring a lot. A few years ago, they won a letter board at bingo and that was the beginning of their careers as a spellcasting couple. In the evening they decide together which spell will be on the board in front of the caravan window the next morning. They come up with them themselves, helped by suggestions from their five children, friends or camping guests. Sometimes it’s poetic, sometimes funny, sometimes flat. Henk takes the letters with tweezers. Ella pins them on the plate.
In the morning half the campsite comes along. On the way to reception to pick up fresh bread rolls. Or when they walk the dog. Others cycle for it. Sometimes a group stands in front of the caravan discussing the motto of the day. Or the prizes at bingo. Or the weather.
Where does all this lightness in life come from? We’re talking about spells, bingo and the weather here in flip flops. Don’t we have a Hoekstra, a nitrogen, an asylum, a drought, an environmental, an energy and a region versus Randstad crisis? Why isn’t the discussion about that? And also: where are the inverted flags? Isn’t that easy on a guy line?
Geez, says Ella. “When I check in the morning if there is anything nice on Instagram, a video of a monkey doing something crazy or something, Henk looks at that misery.”
Well, well, says Henk. “That comes naturally when you open the news sites. I often click through to football.”
Ella: “Putin has done it badly, but I can’t help it.”
There is a lot of whining and bickering. On the news sites. On Twitter. On the edge of the abyss. Everywhere. In real life too, but here it is not that bad.
Ella: “We are not rich, but we feel rich.”
And hey, that’s another spell that can be put on the board in no time.
Sheila Kamerman replaces Gemma Venhuizen today
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 23, 2022