From: Mrs. Waffle
To: Her loving husband
Subject: Mary McAleese comes in at 55
Merkel beats Rice as world’s most powerful woman
German chancellor Angela Merkel has come top in a Forbes magazine list of the world’s most powerful women, beating US secretary Condoleezza Rice despite Berlin‘s first lady not even featuring in the 2005 ratings.
http://euobserver.com/9/22313/?rk=1
From: Mr. Waffle
To: His loving wife
Subject: RE: McAleese comes in at 55
And Dooce?
The boys are asleep and Mr. Waffle has taken the Princess to the supermarket. He is a hero. Sometimes going to the supermarket with the Princess is fine. But sometimes it is as described below. Please note that this piece was written before the sad loss of Travel Doggy.
In the car park:
Her: Waah, waah, I want to bring travel doggy into the supermarket.
Me: No, honey he might get lost.
Her (pink in the face): Loud, snotty, tears.
In the supermarket:
Her (sob): We should have brought a doudou for me for the supermarket.Â
Me: We certainly should but, instead, ahem (searches in handbag) would you like to play with my diary?
Her (sob): No.
Me: I know, how about a biscuit.
Her (miraculous and instantaneous end to sobbing): Yes please Mummy.
Me: OK, here are these fabulous Winnie the Pooh biscuits (noting they are bagged 2×2 and resigning myself to the inevitable) and you can have two!
Her: Mummy, I’m thirsty.
Me: Would you like a bottle of water.
Her: No, I want milk.
Me: OK, here’s a carton of milk with a straw.
Her (opens delightedly and takes one sip): No, I don’t like.
Her (eyeing dairy product aisle): I want a yoghurt.
Me: But you don’t like those yoghurts.
Her: But I’ll like them this time, I promise.
Me: But you won’t.
Her: But you said that, if I don’t like cheese one time, I, I, I might like it another time.
Me: Oh alright.
Her: Can I open it?
Me: No, it’ll make a terrible mess.
Her:Â I only opened one Mummy.
Me: But see you can’t eat it, you need a spoon.
Her: We should have brought a spoon, Mummy.
Me: To the supermarket? Don’t be daft.
Her (with inexorable logic): But how am I going to eat my yoghurt?
Me: Have another biscuit.
Her: I want to do a wee.
Me: Of course you do. Come on, we’ll leave the trolley here and go across to the Quick and use their toilets. [Insert run across the car park followed by sneak into burger joint toilets]
Return to trolley. Join queue.
Her: Can I have a go on Mr. Turtle?
Me: OK, but just one go while I’m paying for the shopping, ok [hand over a euro]?
Child skips off happily. Loading shopping takes ages. Preemptively hand over another euro.
Her: But you said just one go.
Me: I lied. Go again.
Her: But why?
Me: I like my parenting to be consistent. Go again.
Pack everything in car, return home one and a half hours after departure, a shadow of my former self.
And the winner is…
The panel* was very impressed with the level of all the entries, and congratulates all who took part. Candidates might have scored higher marks for mentioning the Iraq war or the works of Jacques Derrida, but this did not detract from the generally high standard. Sadly, there can only be one winner, so here are the comments in reverse order.
In third place, Daddy’s Little Demon. A good piece which captured much of the LRB’s style – but failed somehow to convey the smugness of the original. For future reference, name-checking Derrida or Lacan would have carried more marks than Maslow, who is now seen as very pre-post-modern.
In second place, Disgruntled. The piece showed great self-confidence but was too short for the panel to judge whether the tone could be sustained over a longer composition. Also, although the use of the word “bildungsroman†greatly impressed the panel, a true LRB author could never begin a German noun with a lower-case letter: the pedantic urge would be too strong.
In first place, Heather. A fluid piece, effortlessly using many LRB favourites (like “signifier and signified†and “cultural paradigmâ€) and most accurately capturing the spirit of the original. It may be asked whether Heather, like Disgruntled, should lose marks for spelling “zeitgeist†without a capital. However, the New Oxford Dictionary of English still treats “Bildungsroman†as a German word (with capital) while “zeitgeist†has now been naturalised long enough to be spelled without a capital. Therefore, the use of the word in an actual LRB article would spark a fruitful exchange of correspondence between lexicographers, Germanists and assorted pedants, which could spread over several subsequent issues of the Review. It can therefore be seen as the icing on the cake of this audacious effort.
The winner is Heather.
*Mr Waffle – who took a break from cleaning up vomit to write this – more of which anon.
The boys had some bug over the weekend which they transmitted to their sister. Daniel was sick regularly, Michael occasionally and the Princess once. Daniel took us by surprise, vomiting for the first time on Saturday at lunch time. We rushed to comfort him and change him and remove our own vomit covered clothes. We returned to find Michael happily splashing about in the pool of vomit on the floor while the Princess looked on in profound disapproval. The washing needed to keep pace with three vomiting children is phenomenal. This was why when I heard a choking sound while holding Daniel in our bed, I spun him round to spare the sheets and managed to get vomit on the mirror, the wardrobe the walls and the door. All wipe clean surfaces you will note. As of Monday morning, the waterfall of vomit seemed to have ended. Although poor Michael, got sick in his sleep on Sunday night and when we got him from his cot on Monday morning, he was cold and clammy which, obviously, will help him recover from his hacking cough. No vomiting all day Monday but on Monday evening Daniel got sick (once) as did Michael (twice) and Mr. Waffle (once). Today only Daniel got sick (twice). Could it be that matters are improving?
The Princess has two teachers this year; good cop and bad cop.  This morning as I left, bad cop was in charge and she pulled the crying Princess’s hand from mine and pushed me resolutely out the door saying “the sooner you leave, the better it will beâ€. True, doubtless, but brutal. Mind you, my travails are as nothing compared to my friend who has just started her two children at a new school.  The two and a half year old is, to quote her mother “a tough little nut†but the five year old is a very sensitive soul.  When she comes to collect the younger child at midday, she finds her two children glued together in the playground.  She has to prise them apart and then her son cries and clutches the fence and says “I’ll wait here until you come backâ€. When she comes to collect him at 3.00 she can see his little hand clutching the fence from afar.  Dear God, it’s all very depressing. Meanwhile, she tells me that another Irish friend of hers has unexpectedly decamped to Dublin over the Summer because her two little girls have been offered places in a good primary school and, if they don’t take them up this September, the places will be gone forever.  Their papa continues to be based in Brussels. So, if given a choice between a good school and a father, which would you pick? I know that’s not fair, but really, it’s madness.Â
Replacement plush toy retail price: $8.45
Postage (good Lord): $30.00
Actual value of goods as assessed by sending company: $5 (Canadian dollars that is) Look on daughter’s face when opening envelope with new travel Doggy: Priceless