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I am very much enjoying the shop window display for the new perfume from Cloon Keen. It’s called Báinín which is a kind of knitted jumper. Mr. Waffle buys me their Castaña for Christmas and I am a big fan. Cannot really speak for Báinín but worth a try, I would say. Look at her little hooves!

Herself having played Trivial Pursuit while on holidays in France asked whether we had it. Well, this was the moment I had been waiting for, I had rescued it from my parents’ house in Cork. The questions were perhaps a bit dated but it worked all the same. We also found (unopened), what the young people would call an expansion pack. A set of questions (in French – obviously bought by my parents with pedagogical intent) from 1993 still pristine in their cellophane. “Perhaps they are worth money! ” I said. Available for €6 on the internet, in case you are interested.

We also played a game called poetry for Neanderthals. It relies heavily on you knowing whether a word has more than one syllable. I am quite terrible at it (nobody wanted to be on my team) but I found it enjoyable all the same as you get to hit fellow players on the head with an inflated rubber club.

Every year, July is a disastrous month for Mr. Waffle. It is consistently his busiest month. I did not know that this would happen when I elected to get married on July 28. Every year our anniversary celebrations are a little fraught.

Mostly poor Mr. Waffle has been working all weekend but he did take last Sunday off to cycle out to Howth which was pleasant and where, miraculously, we missed the rain.

Now, stay with me here. A colleague of mine went to a funeral last week. This being Ireland, one of the sons of the deceased actually lives across the road from me. My colleague realised this and said to the son, “Actually, my colleague lives across the road from you” and mentioned me by name. He (the colleague) knows my road because his aunt lives there – are you still with me? Anyway, the colleague said, no sooner had he uttered my name than – much to his surprise – the elderly woman who had been introduced to him as the deceased’s next door neighbour, grabbed his arm and said, “Her mother was my best friend from college”. He thought she was crazy, but, she most definitely was not.

So anyhow, having had her rather surprisingly brought to mind, I felt I should go and visit my mother’s best friend which I did yesterday. She’s broadly fine, thanks for asking. She told me she had met a colleague of mine at her next door neighbour’s funeral. Colour me unsurprised. She grows rhubarb and, at her urging, I took her remaining supply which she felt she would be unable to use (jam season is upon us, I have just made my first batch of plum jam, rhubarb to follow).

She lives near the seaside so I went for a quick swim before heading home. My first of the year. Chilly. A very robust elderly gentlemen jumped in while I stood on the steps contemplating my options making me feel very inadequate but I got in eventually and, of course, it was lovely once you were down etc.

Today Mr. Waffle and I had a low key adventure cycling to Chapelizod along the river. Pleasant in a mild way. God, I am really looking forward to my summer holidays though. I am contemplating my return to the salt mines tomorrow with low levels of enthusiasm. I trust you had an enjoyable weekend yourself.