I get my hair cut once every six months. It grows slowly. Today, I got it cut by this man. I would post a picture but you would die from the coolness of it. Also, all the pictures the Princess took before I went out are impossibly blurry and it just doesn’t look the same after playing tennis in a hat for an hour and a half (lost 6-0, 6-2, thanks for asking).

In a fit of rashness, I made the appointment for Friday at 5. This meant I had to cycle to work so that I would be able to scoot out of the office at 4.45 and be at the hairdresser’s for 5. I signalled to my loving family that I would need to cycle. Everyone wanted to know, why was I cycling to work and not going with them in the car. And then promptly forgot and wanted to know again. At work, Friday afternoon got busier and busier. I was going to be travelling for work on Sunday evening but would I be able to do then all the things that needed to be done for Monday? It was touch and go. Why, my boss wanted to know [from her car as she made good her escape to check out where the G8 will be staying - let the record show that she worked to midnight last night] was I scooting off so early? Because I want to get my hair cut. How many more people do I have to explain my movements to? All people entitled to ask and with only my best interests at heart but I wish there was a little bit of time when I wasn’t accountable to anyone and I could go and get my hair cut then.

The hairdresser put his heart and soul into it and I didn’t get out until 7 at which point poor Mr. Waffle who has a cold had already nobly fed the children and prepared dinner for the grown-ups. I ate it and then I went out to play my tennis match and left him to put them to bed. The guilt. When I got home, he was already tucked up in bed with a lemsip.

Daniel: Tomorrow is a day.
Me: Well, yes, of course it is.
Daniel: No, it’s a day.
Me: No, today is a day, it’s Ash Wednesday and yesterday was a day, it was Pancake Tuesday but tomorrow is just Thursday.
Daniel (insistently): No, it’s a day!
Me: It’s the day you start your mid-term break?
Him: NO.
Me: It’s the day I’m going to drive you to Cork?
Him: NO!
Me: Well, I don’t know then sweetheart.

This morning before we drove to Cork Mr. Waffle gave me a Valentine’s card. Turns out today is a day. Did I have a lovely card for him? A tasteful gift? Alas, no. I hope he still loves me.

Me: You see, we weren’t late this morning and Daddy wasn’t cross.
Her: But he would have been, had we tarried.

“Had we tarried” really? What is she reading?

Michael yelled in alarm from downstairs, “A mouse! A mouse!” Mr. Waffle rushed downstairs. The Princess and I cravenly hid in a bedroom with the door firmly closed. Mr. Waffle finding the cat with a live mouse clamped in her jaws at the bottom of the stairs tossed both out the front door. It was a wet day so the cat did the sensible thing and ran straight to the cat flap at the back door and let herself in with the expiring mouse still clamped firmly in her jaws. Mr. Waffle threw them out the front again and rushed to the back door where he put his foot against the cat flap. The cat, with the, now dead, mouse in her mouth succeeded in getting in despite his efforts. He managed to separate her from the mouse and throw it out. She was very peeved. Rather disturbingly, she spent the remainder of the day with her head buried in the back of the bookshelf. What rather unwelcome conclusions may we reach from this?

Every year my father reads the Holly Bough from cover to cover on Christmas Day. It’s a Cork publication and the content is, perhaps, not at the cutting edge of journalism. On the cover it describes itself as “A Cork Institution since 1897″. Its articles are full of quirkiness (the girl who was called Tanora – apparently only Cork people know what Tanora is, imagine) and nostalgia. It has several pages of pictures of Cork people in foreign parts holding aloft copies of last year’s Holly Bough. Are you getting a picture here? Nevertheless, I was really very pleased to come home and see that my loving husband had picked me up a copy. My ambition is now to get a picture in it for next year.

Horrid Henry has a game that he plays with his friends that is modelled on Monopoly. It’s called Gotcha and features dragons’ lairs instead of streets and rubies instead of money but the principles are similar. In an ill-fated moment of inspiration, Mr. Waffle suggested to the boys that he and they might make Gotcha themselves and, with the aid of pictures printed out from the internet, an old packet of Rice Krispies and a Pritt stick, they did.

They, therefore, successfully created a game even duller than Monopoly which one or other of the boys always wants to play but never both together. Mr. Waffle and I have put in many unhappy hours on the Gotcha board. Yesterday afternoon we stayed at home, the weather was inclement. Daniel tired of the rugby on the television and begged to play Gotcha instead so he and I did so. If I never play Gotcha again, it won’t be too soon.

On the Free Range Kids blog they have a category described as “worst first thinking”. Essentially, it’s the idea that when looking at a whole range of possible outcomes, the first that is considered is the worst even if it is the most unlikely.

I was put in mind of this when Mr. Waffle went to photograph traffic chaos at the local school at 9 in the morning. The residents’ association is appealing to the council for a better traffic management plan [don't mock, someday you too will be in your 40s and a stalwart of the local residents' association]. He was approached by a man wearing a fluorescent jacket of power wanting to know why he was taking photographs of the children. When Mr. Waffle was able to re-assure him that he was taking photos of the traffic [and, obviously enough, had photographic evidence to prove it], the man was very pleasant and obliging, explaining the measures which the school had taken to address the issues. But it did strike me that there was a certain amount of paranoia in evidence. The principal in my children’s own school though in many ways terrific also has a slight streak of paranoia about this. The school yard is visible from the windows of a nearby hotel and the children are told not to go too near the hotel side of the yard lest they be photographed by the hotel guests. This seems an extremely unlikely contingency to me.

In a sort of related issue, a colleague of mine lives in one of Dublin’s more affluent suburbs and there have been a number of burglaries in her estate. Most recently a widow who lives across the road met the burglar who was doing the house next door and he threatened her with a gun. I appreciate that this is terrifying but I am not sure that the solution, as suggested by my colleague is a good one. She is encouraging the widow not to answer the door without checking who it is first, ideally by intercom. The neighbours are also going to look at putting gates on the estate. The guards have advised that gated estates get burgled less. I suppose this may be true but I am not sure that it is so good for social cohesion to bar admittance in this way.

That’s enough about the end of society for one evening.