How are the people in the Free section doing now?

A dollhouse is never finished, says Monique Bezemer (61). She has invested thousands of hours and euros in her four-storey dream house, for which she made all the miniatures herself, from the flea chairs to the Rituals bottles that she made from straws. Since ‘s visit NRC a bed was added, an extra cupboard in the kitchen and winter food for the dining table. The fiddling helped her to forget that she suffers from osteoarthritis.

The complaints are much better since she moved to Spain in April, she says. “I’ve lost 15 pounds because I can move again.” She lives with her husband in a rented house until they can buy the fixer-upper on the coast they’ve been eyeing. A dream house on a large scale. To her sadness she had to leave her dollhouse in the Netherlands because she now has nowhere to put it.

At the moment she is enjoying “the renovation” of a smaller dollhouse. “It will be very sleek and white.” Her husband has bought a 3D printer so that she can print furniture and the like. By the way, she will also use it to make dolls that resemble her, her husband and her daughter, as she announced a few years ago in the column. When the house on the coast is completely finished, she takes her large dollhouse to Spain and puts the printed family there. “It will be the showpiece of the living room.” (MvE)

Good news from Vlaardingen: partly thanks to the structure and meaning that her work for the food forest offered, Anja van Krimpen (53) will be out of debt restructuring in six weeks. When she got into that three years ago, things weren’t going well for her. A friend took her to the food forest, where she helped prune, maintain trails and give tours. She soon began incorporating fruit, mushrooms, and flowers into chutneys and stews. “I looked up recipes on the internet and looked in books about food from nature.”

The food forest is also doing well. “We have had a top harvest this autumn, with a lot of quinces. Sometimes restaurants come to pick, such as De Rotonde from Rotterdam.” Van Krimpen himself now calls himself a ‘food forest product developer’. “I really made it my job. Wild picking is a hype and I want to do tastings at markets. Who knows, for example, that you can eat the roots of the cattail from the ditch?”

On the one hand hype, on the other dire necessity: “I now have 60 euros a week for food.” The harvest from the food forest is a valuable addition to its menu. Van Krimpen is concerned about the energy crisis and inflation. “The rents are too high. You see a lot of misery.” She herself will not starve, she says. “In the spring you can easily make a salad with plants from the roadside.” (svH)

If Maurice Eilander (48) were to be photographed now, he would be wearing a different uniform. The owner of a dog walking service has now switched to The Seaforth Highlanders of Holland from Voorthuizen. They wear a green jacket based on a military costume from the Second World War, with a green blouse and high shoes with wrappers underneath. “A kind of combat outfit with a kilt.”

In his old band there were conflicts about the corona rules. Not good for the atmosphere, which is partly why Eilander and a few others resigned. The Seaforth Highlanders offers him new challenges. The band mainly plays marches, “all new tunes”, the tempo is higher. “We do a lot of running gigs, which I really enjoy. Sometimes we walk ten kilometers.” Platoons of reservists or commandos regularly walk behind the band. “Mars music is going well.”

Eilander still rehearses at home every day on his ‘practice chanter’, a practice flute without a bag and ‘drones’, wooden pipes. Once a week he blows his bagpipes loudly for an hour, in consultation with the neighbors. Miniature Schnauzer Jacob thinks it’s best, as long as he can wear his headphones. Islander laughs. “To play the bagpipes you have to be a little possessed. The sound is distinct and the instrument is technically complex.”

What he missed during corona was the performance. Now they are allowed again. For example, on November 13, The Seaforth Highlanders will play at the field of honor ‘The Canadian Cemetery’ in Holten. “It’s in honor of Remembrance Day, that day all the pipe bands in the Commonwealth play.” (svH)

He wanted to achieve a new personal record at the World Pipe Smoking Championships in Istanbul. Jan Both (78) sounds slightly disappointed the first morning he is back in his home in Overschie in Rotterdam. He once managed to keep his pipe burning for 1 hour, 57 minutes and 15 seconds. He became a grandmaster with it, and is the proud wearer of a grandmaster necklace, a kind of mayor necklace with gold placards.

It was not the preparation. He had trained hard. He and his brother Piet Hein, who also smokes a pipe, had obtained a can of the tobacco that they are obliged to smoke at the World Cup. But at the supreme moment his brother was not feeling well. He left the room looking pale. And then things went wrong, says Both. “I lost my concentration when I looked out the window, looking for my brother.” The supervisor, “a strict Japanese lady”, saw that there was no more smoke coming from his pipe. He finished in 55th place.

When NRC a few years ago at the Dutch National Championships in Oirschot, he became first. A matter of practice with rotten tobacco, he said at the time. And keep your peace, for example by making drawings and poems while smoking. He still recites a verse every now and then that he makes up on the spot. “We go hunted and hunted through life”, smoking – excuse me, enjoying tobacco – helps him to cherish life. (MvE)