The stately canal house with the sculptured decoration on the gable accommodates three families. The van Tilborgh family lives on the ground floor, behind the grocer’s shop: Hendricus and Froukje and their sons Jacob and Geurt. The children love the fact that their parents have a grocer’s shop. This means they get unexpected treats. When Froukje’s gout is not playing up too badly and she’s in a good mood they are allowed to choose something out of the baskets displayed in the shop: liquorice laces, “ulevellen”, “jodenkoeken”, “zwart-wit”, currents and raisins. And the shop always smells so good; of the tea and the coffee that Froukje grinds everyday with the grinder between her knees. She weighs this for her customers to the exact number of grams using the scales on the counter; she then sells it in paper bags. The children also look forward to those days when a barge arrives on the canal especially for them. The skipper moors the barge and unloads the bags and canisters onto the quayside.

On Saturdays Hendricus loads the orders onto his delivery bike and delivers them to his regular customers: baker Aad Brakenhoff who needs a wide range of products for his baking, such as spices and sugar, Greet van Steenbergen from the ladies quest house who buys large quantities of cleaning articles and soap and the inspectors of weights and measures from the weighhouse who smoke through large amounts of tobacco each weeks in their long pipes. And towards the end of the year, when the snow dances in the light of the oil street lanterns and skate blades cross the dark ice, things really get going in the shop. Hendricus and Froukje sell December sweets such as chocolate animals, marzipan fruit, ginger nuts, Christmas biscuits and meringues, alongside their usual products.  They even deliver these to the town council for their end-of-year meeting. Mayor Wolkers van Avezaath treats the council to cheese, gin and sweets, which are delivered by Jacob and Geurt in the beautifully decorated town hall. They look forward to doing that every year!