There are many things worse than having the stomach flu and one of them is having the stomach flu while being an outdoorsman. Tim Hogenbosch (39), former forester and now presenter of the children’s program Animal Brigade from KRO-NCRV, is not so comfortable. At least not if he has to lie in it during the day. Look, getting through that first day was doable. He binged a ‘super cool series’ about World War II, Voices of Liberation, and even calmed down a bit, but on the second day, Hogenbosch was done with the stomach flu. Wasn’t mutual.
Such a virus, you know it, sometimes also grabs around within a family with total arbitrariness. One falls ill, the other is spared and the third is completely knocked out, hoppa. His eldest had it reasonably well, the middle one only had half a day of trouble, and the rest – wife and baby – went whistling through the week. “Maybe it’s a man flu,” he says.
At the end of the week Hogenbosch got more color in his cheeks again. Just in time for the photo. And there was also a little work to be done. Shooting days make him the happiest, he has already had about ninety of them. Then he can go to the most beautiful places in the Netherlands with the children and his regular camera team: ‘South Limburg is my favourite. Those hills, caves, forests… Really cool.’ But hey, the office is part of it every now and then. ‘Although it’s funny, or well, it’s not funny at all, but I’m less indoors now than in the last three years of my forest rangership: that was so much arranging and administration.’
If possible, he also goes into nature in his spare time, in Beek, near his hometown Nijmegen. Conquering the hills there, while running. He then takes part of the N70 nature walking route, with 375 altimeters, ‘so you will die there, but that is also nice.’ Because walking cowardly, Hogenbosch really hates that. Anyway. There are worse things in the world. Like, right, stomach flu.