The life of Frans Timmermans is a book full of surprises. Every time you think ‘well we are there’ follows on the next page a plot turn. At the first congress of the new large left party in Nieuwegein, he unveiled, it was only in a subordinate but still: “I grew up in part on the street.”
Another bead on the already beautiful chain life stories: grandson of a cow, Roda JC supporter, AS Roma supporter, seven languages, abuse, stomach reduction, new sneakers.
I already knew a lot of the extreme poverty and the miserable circumstances that his youth drew in the poorest part of Limburg, where your mother only turned your underpants inside out in the event of bulky waste, which would only be washed weeks later in the Tobbe, at least if soap was available. Where more often or just potatoes were on the menu, and where the whole family was drained underground in the State Mines. And now this story was added.
It also provides a band: I was born in a flat on Ccloekplein in Presikhaaf, Arnhem. Just look that up! If my mother, she had only had a handful of teeth at a young age, had managed to put her hand on a few slaves, it drooled the neighbors from the mouth. You not only heard everything from each other, you also smoke everything.
My parents came from Brabant, there it was also very poor, but if my mother were still lived, she would say: “It wasn’t as bad with us as with the carpenters.” Fortunately I have had enough of understanding Frans Timmermans to the last thread. Turning the facts, the reality slightly nicer colors, I also have a hand of that, but boss above Baas: Frans Timmermans is better at that too. His story about the mouth caps in the crashing MH17: Hats off! Furthermore, he has something from Diego Maradona and André Hazes: he is going to scream and repeat if he really wants to say, such as Saturday “hold each other!”, That’s how it used to be at Volksfeestjes on the street too. His origin also explained the way in which ‘the old PvdA-Hap’-Rob Oudkerk, Job Cohen, Gerdi Verbeet, Lodewijk Asscher and others-became Saturday kaltgestellt. ‘Those who are not for me are against me’ and ‘The friend of today is the enemy of tomorrow’ is deeply ingrained and that sentiment can turn at any time: those are simply the tough laws of the street.
Marcel van Roosmalen Writes a column on Monday and Thursday.