Travel

Den Haag HS, 22 June 2006, 7am

I bet you're wondering why anyone would go to a station at the crack of dawn in order to take pictures in a machine (especially with such fantastic equipment available at home) of their daughter and themselves (clearly two of the most photographed people in this corner of the universe...). I concede that it sounds quite mad, but of course life often does when one takes it at face value (ouch! that's the kind of philosophizing you get from people who wake up at 6 in the morning) (which brings me to the reason why we woke up so early: 'someone' fell out of bed this morning, slipping between the entangled layers of the mosquito net, straight onto her face on the floor, interrupting a perfectly good dream of boats and pirates (as a result of rude awakening to screams of child in distress I no longer remember whether I was the boat or the pirate) (presumably her dream was lost forever too), and that same 'someone' would not go back to sleep, but insisted on getting ready to go to Oma, so that despite our general grogginess and lack of coordination, we managed to make it to the station just before 7, a mere hour before the departure of our train (Opa, not having fallen out of bed, was not expecting us until 8:15). For those of you who are familiar with Den Haag HS, I need hardly emphasize that it's not the kind of place directly associated with safe entertainment for two-year olds. I was at a loss, until I remembered a habit Marc and I used to have, when we were young (well, younger), which consisted in taking corny machine shots of ourselves before getting on a plane. These pictures are still lying around somewhere (in the shoebox, remind me to show you), duly dated. I think the romantic idea at the time was that we would be able to see ourselves growing old together, but since the scheme was begun in 1999 and sort of discontinued in 2003, all you can see is Marc growing slightly chubbier (he'll box my ears for this...). Anyway, as you can imagine, this morning's revival of the tradition was a great success, so much so that we almost missed our train...).