Sitting in the back of the car with her menagerie, the Princess picks up a soft toy and holds it up to the window “Look, Sheepsie, a blue van”.  Anxious to ensure fairness in all things, she then picks up a bear and presses its little nose to the window “Oh, Isabelle, a tram, look, look”. Finally, she waves doggy in the direction of the window “Doggy, see, lots of cars”

This email from a friend:
Thought of you the other day when reading about Noel Coward – he met a friend at a party – “we don’t have time to talk about each of us so we’ll just talk about me”

My parents’ heating has died.  They have been cold for a week. It is snowing in Cork. Four men have already shaken their heads at
the parental boiler. They’re getting a blow heater and a draft proof front door tomorrow.

More complex anecdotes from my brother’s skiing holiday. He managed to annoy his instructor by getting into some mild difficulty on the chairlift. I am not quite sure how this happened but he placed himself so that the instructor ended up sitting on his lap and had to jump off the lift from a height.  Apparently this had never happened to the ski instructor before in 20 years instructing. How empty his life must have been.

It appears that the ski instructor was a bit of a rough character and he started telling his class racist jokes.  My brother said to me “I didn’t know where to look”. I was a bit surprised by this, because my brother is a bit of a lad and I would have thought that hearing racist jokes would have formed part of his past experience. But this is not all. My brother decided that something would have to be done and that night while buying drinks at the bar, he said to the ski instructor “You know man [favourite word of my brother's - it works very well in a Cork accent], you can’t tell those racist jokes”. Gobsmacked, I asked “what did he say?” “Well” said my brother ” I thought he might be a bit annoyed but in fact he said – yeah, I suppose you’re right”. And that, apparently, was that. No more racist jokes for the week.  I am quite proud of my laddish brother. Whereas I, bleeding heart liberal that I am, would have been appalled but never had the nerve to say anything.

This from Thierry about Dr. Rice’s visit
You will recall that Mr. Bush is coming to us next week. The Economist summarises matters nicely with this week’s cover :

Meanwhile, they’re sealing all the rubbish bins in the European quarter.

I realised today though, that other people may not be as aware of the issues in contemporary Ireland as I am.  I was chatting to this
very nice and very young Welsh woman and she asked where I was from and I explained that I was from Cork and that Cork was Ireland’s second city.  I talked a bit about our fierce independence and our chip on the shoulder about Dublin and all its works.  I told her how,
when I first met my husband, I was living in Brussels and I told my mother I had met a nice man.  And my mother said “not a foreigner,
I hope” (she was terrified that if I married some foreigner, I would stay away from Ireland forever, which is a little ironic in the circumstances, but I digress).  And I said “no, no”.  And she said “ah, he’s from Cork”.  I smiled winningly at Ms. Wales and said “you see, Cork people regard themselves as an independent nation really”

My Welsh companion pondered this for a moment and asked “so she was upset because you’re a catholic and he’s a protestant?”

What kind of girl would be pleased to have dedicated to her a song with the following lines:

I don’t want clever conversation,
I never want to work that hard.
I just want someone that I can talk to, I want you just the way you are.”

With one thing and another, we decided to video the second half and take her out for some cultural excitement. Of course, the fact
that the BBC in its ultimate wisdom decided to cover the first half of the match on BBC 1 and the second half on BBC 2 meant that didn’t work very well. Mr. Waffle was much chagrined especially since, inevitably, we were much better in the second half.

Comments

Mr. Waffle says he will write to him and ask him to stop torturing me. Otherwise Mr. Waffle will horsewhip him.  My hero.

Princess: Bye bye Mummy (waves and walks to door).
Me: Bye, bye sweetheart.
Princess: See you soon Mummy (shuts door – glass – and waves from far side).
Me: See you soon, honey.
Princess: Nice day Mummy.
Me: Thank you, sweetheart.
Princess: Bye bye
Me: Um, where are you going darling?
Princess : Work.

Me: Hello, I’m wondering about how to register my little girl for school.
Snooty lady: Was she born in 2005?
Me: What, in the last month?!
Snooty lady (coldly): Yes, in 2005 as we have a couple of spaces left
for the younger siblings of older children in our school. Does
your daughter have an older sibling in the school?
Me: No.
Snooty lady (in tones of deep satisfaction): Well, I’m sorry, you’ll have to try elsewhere.

I’m beginning to get nervous. Still, it’s not like England where a (catholic) friend of Mr. Waffle’s got involved with her local protestant church with a view to getting her children into the good school attached to it. She is chair of the flower arranging committee. But they didn’t accept her child for the school. And she’s still stuck on the flower arranging committee.  And I bet she’s no good at either because, let’s face it, flower arranging is a protestant virtue.

Dooce

Have a look at her masthead, why don’t you?

Also, have a look at Woolamaloo

I like my job and I would like to hang on to it.

However, today, as I sat in a meeting where we considered the best conduct of meetings (what Mr. Waffle calls a meta meeting), I lost a
tiny bit of my enthusiasm. On the plus side we don’t have to do meta-training which is a regular part of Mr. Waffle’s job. That’s training on how to apply for training.

” Thank you for the messages! I just wanted to let you know that I will probably have to skip this book. Unfortunately my English is not so good to cope with a “fake 18th century slang”. There are too many words that are not even in a dictionary and the whole exercise, given the size of the book, becomes extremely difficult for me.”

Email from existing founder member (TM)  to new member “Here’s the info. It’s a v.long book, by the way.”

On the plus side, the publishing exec has sent me an exclusive article on how the author gets his ideas, so not all bad. I just wish he
had fewer of them.

A small prize will be available, if you correctly guess the book we have chosen to read.

7.00  Got up
7.10  Gave the Princess her breakfast
7.30  Read “That’s not my Tractor” and “We’re going on a Bear Hunt” with the Princess
7.45  Looked at photographs with the Princess
8.00  Breakfasted with spouse while keeping a wary eye on the Princess
8.20  Put on washing machine (again)
8.30  Back to bed for nap
9.00  Awake exhausted and crawl to shower
9.30  Dressed and ready to face the day, depart for park
9.45  Arrive park and assist the Princess in extracting maximum enjoyment from swings and slides while getting mud on off white coat.  Split Princess’s lip while assisting her on to see-saw.  Deal with understandable profound upset. Get blood on (freshly dry cleaned) very off white coat. Deeply regret wearing off white coat.
10.15  Meet a number of friends and acquaintances and assorted offspring in park
11.00  Go home.
11.15  Entertain friend and offspring with tea and croissants
12.00  Attend mass
13.00  Return home.

What I used to do on Sunday mornings before my daughter was born

7.00 – 13.00  Sleep.
13.00   Get up.

Spent her nap time recovering from the ardours of the morning and discovering from the Observer what ailments she is likely to
have.  This afternoon was magic though.  We went to the toy museum. It’s a fabulous place.  Loads of toys (obviously) which children can actually play with including a little kitchen, scooters, train sets, cars, buses, trams, rocking horses and a small theatre.  It reminded me of the toy theatres that my father bought us when we were little and I have grown all nostalgic and intend to torture my mother to check whether they are still in the attic.

In we went. The doctor tells me that toddlers are prone to constipation.  Attentive readers will be aware that this is a problem for the Princess at the moment.  It’s a classic thing for her age.  Superb.  He drew diagrams, he chatted, he asked me to prepare an Excel table for our next appointment (he’s obsessed with Excel and its potential).  Throughout this the Princess sobbed convulsively and clung to me pathetically.  When she discovered that he planned to examine her, she nearly choked with rage and distress.  It was all a bit grim.   Anyhow, you’ll be delighted to hear that she thinks the medicine prescribed is delicious and all is improving, so we may not have to go for a scan after all.  Mr. Waffle and I have been debating whose fault this situation might be.
Me: “Well, I’m not anally retentive.”
Him: “Well, whose sister was toilet trained at 9 months?”

1-1 at the moment.

“I gaze upon thy paled face
Soon to be entombed in somnolence divine,
O that the knobbed fingers of Death did ever embrace thy soule
And caress thy beauteous form to nature!
I cannot strew thy grave with fragrant petals,
O my love.
For thou encoffin’d and embalmed
In satin shrouds are not to me beloved”

If you’re good, I’ll give you another verse next week. Or would you prefer a couple of lines from “I breathe Byron”?

What do we want?

Reasonable change within an acceptable legal framework as negotiated and agreed by all parties.

When do we want it?

In a reasonable timeframe as appropriate going forward.

Le Soir had a sex supplement on Saturday. I ask you. In colour.

I was perusing an article and asked my loving spouse “What does “partouze” mean?

An orgy. I actually had to look it up.

You mean you didn’t know?

No.

And you are talking to our daughter in French, how will she ever learn proper French, if you don’t know the word for orgy?

(Pause) I’ll leave that for you to decide.

And then there was an interview with Claire, parisienne, who throws orgies. She is described as being, and I quote “adepte du ‘night fucking at home’”.

Me: Isn’t it odd given the variety of French vocabulary in relation to sex that they use an English expression?

Mr. Waffle: I am sure that even as we speak the Académie française is working on an appropriate translation.