You see, dear gecko: there are still beautiful things on TV

Never fall asleep in a mountain of fresh cherries. Yes, it sounds tempting, but believe me: the risks far outweigh the benefits. Just ask the Moorish wall gecko that has been living in Tilburg since yesterday. Until recently, he was probably somewhere in Southern Europe in the sun, but now that schmuck is in quarantine at Dierenpark de Oliemeulen. He was found among a load of fruit, in a Jumbo distribution center in Veghel. There, the staff caught the little stowaway in an empty cherry container.

The zoo employee who told the story on Tuesday in Brabant Vandaag (Omroep Brabant) showed the improvised vehicle to the camera. In that transparent thing, the gecko had been contemplating his mistake, or perhaps his entire life, with a view of the walls of the animal ambulance. If he had been able to read, he would have seen the following text on the sign at his new home after leaving the vehicle: "Dierenpark de Oliemeulen. The strangest zoo in the Netherlands." If only he had stayed away from that fruit...

But it's too late for regrets, and now that the gecko is here anyway, I'd like to welcome him. Welcome to the Netherlands, poor boy. The least (or most?) I can do for you is to update you on what's on TV here. Maybe that will help you get through your quarantine period, which will last between sixty and ninety days. I imagine you could use some nice distraction.

That's why I'll just skip over the fact that you can't watch a talk show without an entire table, including the presenter, unanimously bashing GroenLinks-PvdA. And that this has been going on for a few days. People with different opinions are done for, I'm afraid. What is touching again - I'm trying to keep the mood a bit optimistic for you, dear gecko, at the beginning of your quarantine period - is how concerned the talk show guests, who mostly come from De Telegraaf , suddenly appear to be with the fate of the left-wing party.

It is striking in any case that almost exclusively with them and with resigned members is spoken. But that also makes it clear: if you have seen one episode of an SBS6 or WNL talk show about this subject (or just read De Telegraaf ), you do not really need to watch the rest of the material. If you do that every day, you will eventually reach the point where you start talking to geckos. But that may be a bigger problem for me than for you.

Learning to cope with fear

What can you do with the time you have left if you skip these shows? Rewatch therapy (HUMAN), for example; if you need a program in which people reflect on what they are doing from the inside, instead of what they think of everything outside. The last episode of the second season was broadcast on Monday evening, but you can watch the entire series on NPO Start.

The series follows the sessions of five therapists with different areas of expertise – a child psychologist, a psychiatrist specializing in psychoses, etc. – with their clients. These clients are anonymized: they remain off-screen and their part in the conversation is reenacted by voice actors. However, each episode features a celebrity who openly talks about their own experiences with therapy. In the last episode, that was presenter Max Terpstra, who was so bothered by his phobia of vomiting that he avoided public places for a while. In therapy, he learned to deal with his fear in a healthy way and to understand where it came from. Now he could even talk about it on TV.

You see, dear gecko: there are still beautiful things on TV. There are just phases where you have to look a little harder for them. And, to be honest: in that respect, you have chosen a challenging moment for your fateful cherry nap.