‘I’m fine with myself’

Frits: „I have lived in Langeraar all my life. I never felt the need to leave. I like it here. My mother lives nearby. My father is no more, he has left for his ancestors. My mother has a large garden. I have a big garden. There is always something to do.

“I’ve had about eight jobs in my life. My first job was in a warehouse, then I went to different hardware stores. I was fired from the latter, for business reasons. My father passed away and he had a flower stall. I thought: if I do my best I can crank it up. That was difficult in the beginning, everything that could go wrong went wrong. And I was greatly opposed.

“I ended up doing it happily for six years. Next door I took a job at the flower auction for twenty hours a week, to guarantee a little income. And the newsagent was forty hours. At one point, the kiosk had to go because construction was underway on that spot.

“At first I thought: I still have some books to read, some chores to do. But after two weeks of reading books and doing chores, that was also done. I came across an advertisement of a meal delivery man who delivered chilled meals. They were surprised when I called. Usually it is people of retired age who do it on the side. I said, well, I’m just a little bored. So I’ve been doing that for two years now, a few hours a week.

The three of us on holiday

Frits: “I don’t have a busy life. I have to be at work at the auction at 6:30 am. It is important to get out of bed right away. If I turn myself one more time, it usually goes wrong. By the way, I’ll be home at 12:00 noon. I see my mother every other day, when I come back from the auction I stop by. I had a reasonable relationship with my father. It got better in the last years of his life. Then Mom, I and Dad went on vacation together, the three of us in the tent to Italy.

“My mother has a large yard. I mow the grass once, I prune the trees, I paint the window frames. In the winter it is all a bit less. Then every now and then I invite some friends over for dinner. I don’t have many friends: a handful. They are good. I’d rather have that than a house full every birthday and every party, and that no one has time when it has to be moved.

“I also read a book. I’m messing around with the computer. I like to cook, sometimes elaborately. And then I go for a walk with the dog once or twice. In my spare time it’s a bit the same. I still go to a market every now and then. Or I go for a walk, take a bake-off sandwich and stop halfway through to look out over the puddles. loungers. That is a lost art.”

“My dog ​​Dyonna is almost as important to me as the rest of my family, if not more so. She is originally from Romania. She was a stray dog.

“It was summer when I lost my job at the hardware store. At that time I still had plenty to do in the garden, and I went on holiday. It was winter and I still had no work. Then you wake up at 7am and think, why am I getting out of bed? A week later, it will be 8 a.m. If you’re not careful, you’ll be sitting behind the computer until dawn.

“At that time I came across an organization that gets dogs from abroad. Then they first look for people to receive them before they move on to someone in the Netherlands. I wanted to be that middleman until I found a job, I said. I felt bad leaving Dyonna at home alone. But the neighbors didn’t hear a whine when I found work again. The organization said: she’s been around for so long and you two are so nice together. I didn’t have money for a sterilization, but I got it from them.

“I had a reason to go out because of the dog. You are walking down the street and someone says: Gosh, that’s a beautiful dog. Then you have a chat. Some people would look for something else in that situation. But I had found a dog. And she me.”

‘I love me’

Frits: „One of my favorite songs is by Harrie Jekkers: ‘I love me’. I’m fine with myself. I am not consciously alone, it has grown a bit like that. I saw people get depressed throughout the corona story, because they couldn’t go to the cafe anymore or got ‘skin hunger’… I just found it annoying that I couldn’t go to the hardware store, for example, if I wanted to hang a painting and I had no screws.

“With the exception of my mother, it sometimes happens that I don’t see anyone for two weeks apart from walking and at work. That’s good too. A lot of people say: that’s not fun, is it? No one waiting for you at home, talking to you? What do you think I’m not looking forward to at all? I would call myself 95 percent happy, having been for a few years now. That’s for a while, when I lost my job, it didn’t work out.”

In Rush Hour, couples and singles tell how they combine work and private life. Participate? Mail to [email protected]