REFLECTION OVER BEANS Dutch Supermarkt Dirk Van Den Broek claims to have the lowest prices of all Dutch supermarkets. If you, however, buy your vegetables at the aforementioned supermarket and half of them can immediately be thrown into the trashcan, your good bargain turns into the proverbial pickpurse. When some time ago I was sifting bad beans from edible ones, the image of my mother came into my mind. My father used to allot her too little money. I remember as a child that my father left no more than a ten-guilder bill when he left for work. And with that she had to manage for the whole day. Sometimes she went to the market because that's where your money is advertized to be worth more. These visits were nerve-racking events, for if she did not manage to return on the same tram ticket, the profits generated by her visit to the market were practically undone. I had four brothers and sisters. Washing machines and other appliances that do a lot of work for today's housewives did not exist, or were way beyond my mother's very limited budget.    When my mother was cooking again, or washing the clothes of seven people, she sometimes did not have the time to do any shopping and we were sent instead. But there is nothing new under the sun: then there were also butchers and greengrocers who tried to sell inferior stuff to unexpert buyers. And of course, being children, we were the least expert buyers you can imagine. So if we came home again with third-rate vegetables or inferior meat, my mother threw herself on the telephone in a blind rage. In those times, supermarkets were completely unknown. Our shoppings were done at branch store called VANA. Whether it had anything to do with her rage I don't know, but my mother addressed the shopkeeper as Mr Vana. Trembling with rage she gave the shopkeeper the full blast of her anger. She employed her own special idioms like één zeen, al zeen, an expression that can hardly be rendered in English. When meat that had been bought at butcher's shop La Viande did not smell completely fresh, she was heard to say: "Mister La Viande, my money is not rotten either, is it?" This weblog appeared in Dutch on 20 November 2004 on Internet site Overtom.nl.
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