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Archives for May 2008

More champagne and canapes, please or not quite the spirit of ’68

1 May, 2008
Posted in: Reading etc.

From Charlotte who had it from all kinds of other places*: a chance to show just how spectacularly privileged I am. With all these opportunities, you’d think I might be the lynch pin of the nation by now, but no. Maybe my father was right, maybe we were brought up too soft.

Bold the true statements. You can explain further if you wish.

1. Father went to college.

2.Father finished college.

3.Mother went to college.

4.Mother finished college.

She gave up her PhD when the safety lab exploded taking all her notes with it..

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.

6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.

Well, define class, but I suppose we were more or less all the same.

7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.

8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home

My father’s great line: “books will be the ruination of this house”. So true. He kept trying to give them away to Oxfam and I kept stealing them from his giving away piles.

9. Were read children’s books by a parent.

The plagues in the Old Testament were popular favourites. When my brother was seven my mother read him all the Narnia books chapter by chapter, always stopping at an exciting point in the hope that he might pick one up himself, but no. My father hates reading aloud and never read us anything as far as I know.

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.

11.Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.

Swimming (following an unfortunate incident at my cousin Jane’s birthday party: we were taken to her friend’s house with a swimming pool – in Cork, in the 1970s, really, the mind boggles – and all the others could swim but I had to stay paddling in the shallow end with my arm bands, I was not happy), ballet (white tights, white jumpers and black shoes for years), elocution (you think Cork people sound like this naturally?), recorder (not a success) and I think that’s it.  Oh no, I forgot Irish dancing.

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.

I’m not sure that anyone in the media has my unfortunate dress sense but I know what they mean. And yes.

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.

Though my parents paid the bill and it was only for emergencies once I started college.

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs

15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs

Because my parents worked in the university, my fees were free. Even, if this had not been the case, they would have stumped up for them anyway. I think that, if you can afford it, this is a wonderful thing to give your children. I had a fantastic time at college and it is only now I realise how lucky I was not to have to get a job to make ends meet or to finish with a mountain of debt. I don’t think it made me less mature or less responsible than my contemporaries and it certainly made me happy. Mind you, fees are a lot cheaper in Ireland than in the US – in fact for the past 10 or 15 years it’s been free.

16. Went to a private high school

I remember saying to an English friend ‘there are no private schools in Ireland’. What, she said, your husband, your brother, your father didn’t go to private school? Which left me back pedalling slightly but it really was very unusual when I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s. There were a couple of fee paying boarding schools in odd rural locations around the country and some private schools in Dublin but, in Cork, I think there were only two fee paying schools, both schools for boys (one for the old money families and one for the clever nouveau boys).

17. Went to summer camp

I went to the Gaeltacht – does that count?

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18

Had grinds in Irish (from my hilarious cousin) and physics from one of my mother’s old college classmates who taught in my brother’s school (Cork is like that). He was quite, quite brilliant. At Easter I got a D in my mock Leaving Cert Physics and 2 months later I, very briefly, understood the entire Physics syllabus and got an A. My friend M who is very interested in science (and went on to do a PhD in Chemistry and now does hard things in research laboratories making her a joyful, positive statistic for the kind of people who measure R&D performance in Ireland) was extremely bitter about this undeserved glory. She actually had to work for her A. Our physics teacher was absolutely useless and we all got grinds, except M who, as discussed, actually had to work for her A. I am sure it stood her in better stead in the long run.

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels

Until I was 9 we spent four weeks every summer at the West Cork Hotel in Skibbereen a heady hour’s drive from our home. It often rained but we didn’t care. Every evening, the children ate early and I had melon to start, chicken and chips and melon for dessert. The kitchen used to do us packed lunches and we would go off to the beach for the day with our wind-break (always an exciting engineering project for my father) and our picnic basket. When I was 9, my mother decided that four weeks of hotel food every year would kill my father and we started going on camping holidays in France.

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.

I got loads of hand-me-downs from cousins but most of my clothes came from my friend who was a year older than me and an only child (clothes therefore in much better nick than those from my cousins which were often threadbare). My mother also made us a lot of clothes. I don’t remember being bought many clothes (I feel that children’s clothes were much more expensive then than they are now). My father once brought me a beautiful dress from the Corte Ingles (they seem to have something similar still in stock) when I was quite little and I loved it very much, I can still remember what it was like. I really hated my mother’s favourite, the black velvet dress with the lace collar (stop sniggering at the back) and I used to chew the lace collar in the hope that it would come off but it never did.

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them

Hah, you jest. It was a labour of love to persuade my father to let me learn to drive in his car. He only wanted to let me loose on it when I could fully explain the workings of the combustion engine. That brief period when I could have met his criteria (see question 18 above) was taken up with studying for my leaving cert but eventually my mother wore him down and he did let me learn. We bought our own cars though. My first car was second hand from my aunt and then sold to my sister.

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.

Yes, most noticeably a very Victorian offering which my father loathes. It is a picture called “The Return of the Victor”. It shows a bullfighter kissing the hand of a coy senorita while her friends look on enviously. I am inexplicably fond of it.

23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home

My father bought my parents’ house before I was born. He had saved up for a yacht and spent the money on our house. He went out and bought it without consulting my mother. I think she was…surprised.

25. You had your own room as a child

26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18

Alas, no. I used to spend all my time on the telephone in the hall.

27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course

28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.

No. We didn’t get a colour television until I was 13 and we had a measly portable until I left home. We never paid for cable so we only had RTE 1 and 2 (if you have to ask..). My sister once got my father all the way to the multi-channel shop and he said to the man behind the counter ‘is it any good?’ and the man said ‘Nah, there’s never anything on’. We gave up after that. Now, of course, they have millions of channels.

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.

30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.

My father served on an international committee for years and they all became good friends and he and the German delegate had daughters the same age (14) and they decided we could do a language exchange. S was diabetic so her father was a bit concerned about letting her off and entrusted her to my father’s particular charge which, I think, he found unnerving. Just as well, then, that when I came down with jaundice, which she also got, she was safely back in Berlin. After she came to us, I went to her family in Berlin. I don’t remember much about the flight though I was really looking forward to it (when I asked my father what a plane was like, he said, like a bus but with less leg room – accurate though considerably undermining the glamour), there was even a free meal (this was the early 1980s). I was, of course, very excited about going to Berlin – the wall (who would have thought that it was to go so soon), the big city glamour etc. etc. I arrived and two days after my arrival we were all packed in to the family car and driven across East Germany (actually very boring) all the way to a tiny hamlet in Bavaria (Benedictbeuern). I just looked it up and it’s so small that it doesn’t even have a home page. We went walking in the woods. Her handsome older brother did not come. I did not have the opportunity to experience gracious European apartment living in a big, romantic, glamourous city or, at least, not for very long. Still, I did get to fly to Berlin and back.

31. Went on a cruise with your family.

Really, people do that?

32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.

Apparently, they do.

33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.

We spent half our time in the Cork city museum. Surely that counts. If you pushed buttons the sites of the war of independence lit up and early Christian settlements (different maps).

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

Well, not in actual figures, no but my father used to go around the house turning off lights and radiators when we weren’t using and asking us balefully whether we knew electricity cost money. He was also keen on shutting doors to keep the heat in. He was green before his time.

*The original authors of this exercise are Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, and Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

Weekend

5 May, 2008
Posted in: Family, Ireland, Princess

On Saturday we went to Planckendael again – it’s like a safari park but less glamourous.  I have had it with Planckendael.  The Princess said that she would rather go to the supermarket and conducted herself accordingly throughout the trip.  We paid 50 euros to get in (and the boys were free) and they spent their time looking at frogs in the river and playing in the elaborate playgrounds. “Will we go and see the giraffes?”  “No!”  The Princess mortified me by going into meltdown at the entrance to the cafeteria where she wanted to stay watching television.  She lay on the ground, blocking the door and screeching.  This loud screaming in public is a very recent development and I am desperate to stop it.  We then climbed up a rope yoke which the Princess loved but the boys were scared and had to be carried.  It is hard to walk up a rope surrounded by netting carrying a small boy.  We got down eventually, the Princess did not get down.  There were words.  We lost her at one point and I was terrified.  There were further words.  We instructed her that, in future, if she ever got lost and could not find someone who worked in the establishment, she was to ask a Mummy to help her.  Yes, yes, picture the scene, there you are having a nice time with your family in Flemish and a weeping lost little girl attaches herself to your group – fabulous eh?

On Sunday, we had our upstairs neighbours and some friends around for coffee.  Our upstairs neighbours are lovely Italians.  There are only two of them and every time I go into their flat which is the same dimensions as ours but oh so different, I am convulsed with envy.  They have white furniture (no children, obviously).  She is finishing a PhD in art history and has acquired all kinds of lovely furniture at auctions and flea markets over the years.  It looks lovely in our 19th century building, unlike, say, my self constructed coffee table from Habitat.  Anyhow, over coffee yesterday the talk was all of our return to Dublin (with the occasional digression into how the recent NATO war training exercise went, from my friend C – she who combines defence work and orchestra management in her portfolio of activity – good news, we won).  They were all curious about what our house in Dublin is like and I, with my fondness for histrionics, put my head in my hands and said “hideous, absolutely hideous”.  I had, alas, completely forgotten that the Princess was there and she looked up at me, shocked and tearful and said “But Mummy, you said that our house was lovely.”  Much furious and, I fear, ineffective backpedalling followed.  I could kick myself.

The house isn’t really hideous, it’s just small and in need of some work.  I was talking to the heart surgeon about it last night and she put her finger on the problem: just as all our friends are settling in the houses they are going to be living in for the rest of their lives, we are moving backwards.  That is exactly the problem.  All our friends are moving in to nice big houses and we are going back to a starter home.  It’s not hideous, it’s relatively hideous.  I hope that in 3 or 4 years we’ll be able to move somewhere nicer but, for the moment, we will have to make the best of it.

Meanwhile, the heart surgeon is back at work after a mere three months (she does live in America so this is extraordinary luxury by their standards) and working weekends and nights and so on (as is her doctor husband) with a 3 year old, a two year old and a three month old.  She is expressing four times a day.  She’s also decided to renovate her kitchen.  I can’t quite imagine how tired she must be.  She told me, in tones of great glee, that, as she had a couple of tough procedures today, her husband was going to mind the baby last night and she was decamping to the third floor for a full night’s sleep.

How fiction can change your life

6 May, 2008
Posted in: Reading etc.

In that Zoe Heller book “Notes on a Scandal” she has her middle class family wandering round the supermarket with the husband shouting to the wife “Darling, do we need more balsamic vinegar?’”. At the weekend, this alone stopped me from shouting to my husband across a couple of aisles : “Did you get the champagne?”

More reasons to regret leaving my job

7 May, 2008
Posted in: Work

Today we had a team bonding session in a beautiful outdoor adventure place.  It was sunny.  I know these things are supposed to be ghastly but I really enjoyed it.  I spent the afternoon on a lake in a small dinghy with my boss.  He had never sailed before.   I haven’t sailed in years and years and thought I had forgotten everything I knew.  It turned out I remembered a bit and I got increasingly rude to my lovely boss.  Conversations tended to go a bit like this:

Me: OK, are you going to turn?

Him: I don’t know what I’m doing.

Me: Neither do I really but we’re catching some wind now.  Stay straight.

Him (leaning back and pulling the tiller to him): OK.

Me: JESUS, I said keep the tiller straight, you are going to **** capsize us.

Him (apologetically): Sorry, I keep forgetting I’m holding it.

Me: Further choice words followed by, um, sorry, I was very rude there, I’m an eldest child.

Despite (or quite possibly because of) my shouting, we managed to capsize five times.  This is hardly a tribute to our vessel’s captain (that, I think, would be me, the bossy one).  As he hauled himself cheerfully out of the water for the fifth time and yanked me in by the life jacket he said happily “we were going really fast there!”

Oh how I will miss this job.

Surely not cupboard love

8 May, 2008
Posted in: Ireland, Princess, Travel, Work

The Princess was in Ireland with her father last week. When she left on Monday morning, she was sad to leave me. By the time she arrived in her grandparents’ house at lunch time, she was so excited to be there that she couldn’t spare the time to speak to me on the phone. This continued for the duration of her stay. I was amazed on Thursday, when she came back, how delighted we were to see each other. Really thrilled, big hugs, much affection.

This week, I am away for work and she has consented to speak to me on the telephone which is a great relief. This morning she said “Mummy, I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight” and I was was very touched (our girl can be a tough cookie). The first thing she asked, though, when she got on the phone, was “have you got my crunchie?”

Update – She is consistent too.  The first thing she said when I arrived in the door last night was “have you got my crunchie?”  “That’s no way to greet your mother or indeed anyone,” I replied.  She paused smiled broadly, gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear “have you got my crunchie, please, Mummy”.

The advantages of knowing your neighbours or yet more reasons not to leave

9 May, 2008
Posted in: Belgium

The remote control for the garage has been broken for ages.  It’s a pain to get it fixed and we just haven’t had the time, so, for months now, when we approach the garage, we have the following dialogue.

Me: The garage door is…
Them (in unison): broken.
Me: So Mama is going to get out of the car and go and open it from the inside.  What do I not want while I’m gone?
Them (in unison): Waah, waah.

When our Italian neighbours came round at the weekend we were talking about this and S said that he had a colleague who fixed all the remotes and things in his office and he would ask, if the colleague could fix it.  We gratefully accepted his offer and, last night, back he came with the remote control fixed.  Fantastic.  We asked whether the colleague would like anything – bottle of wine… and S said not to worry as he had already given him a bottle of Italian wine.  Tell me blog readers what would be a nice thing to get for lovely, lovely neighbours who are rich and have everything?  Also, remember that she is an art historian and their apartment is beautifully decorated.  Am struggling here.  Do you think that they would like a picture from the Princess of us happily using the repaired remote control?

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