belgianwaffle

Belgium

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


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?

I’ve been keeping a secret


Posted in: Belgium, Family, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Princess

No, for the umpteenth time, I am not pregnant.

The Christmas before last I said to my husband that we had to decide whether we were going to move back to Ireland or stay in Belgium because, if we were going to stay in Belgium, we had to buy a house. A three bedroomed, second floor flat is not ideal for bringing up three small children. We decided that we would move to Dublin in September 2008. Now, obviously, it didn’t make much sense to tell anyone about this decision in December 2006, so I have been not telling employers, employees and children for a long time. It’s exhausting.

Last week, Mr. Waffle told his employers. On Friday we told the Princess that we are moving back (some of you may consider that this is a radical solution to our difficulties with L). On Monday we told our childminder and our babysitter. And today I formally told my employer and colleagues and now I am telling you.

Mr. Waffle and the Princess are in Dublin this week. In an excess of efficiency they have visited her new school (an Irish language school – please don’t ask). After hearing her father and the headmaster converse in Irish for ten minutes, she ran from the room telling her grandmother that this was “pointless and useless”. I can tell it’s going to go well. What do you think? She’s also got her school uniform, this is more pleasing. It has a tie. There will be photos.
I am very sad to be leaving this great job and my lovely colleagues. I am very sad to be leaving Belgium and my friends here. On balance though, I think we are doing the right thing. We are very fortunate in both having lovely families with whom we get on very well. We want to see more of them and so do our children. I want my children to be Irish not Belgian (though I see that the Princess is testing this enthusiasm by already adopting the nastiest of Dublin accents, she said to me on the phone this afternoon “Oi don’t want to talk to you, Oi don’t loike the phone”). One of the best things about going back was how our friends in Dubin reacted; they all seem to be genuinely delighted. Despite all its shortcomings (and oh they are many), I do like Dublin and I know I will enjoy living there.

For obvious reasons, the move has been very much in my mind since Christmas but I didn’t want to blog about it ar eagla na heagla (see how I’m taking to this Irish thing?) but I have been taking notes and now I’m putting them here. Because I can.

8 January

Ask my mother what she did with all our furniture when we moved from a large detatched Georgian House to a much smaller semi-detatched Edwardian one. Answer: Moved it all and got rid of none. My mother points out that result has been 20 odd years tripping over pieces of furniture and an attic which strikes terror into her heart. On the plus side, she says I can now have the Nelson sideboard, if I want it. Point out that I have more than enough furniture of my own for my tiny house.

9 January

Prepare first spreadsheet.

January 10

Asked the garage whether they would sell us a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side. They were reluctant. They said that it would be expensive and we would have to wait a year. In inimitable Belgian fashion, 6 (yes 6) people behind the reception desk ignored me for some considerable time but finally, to their evident regret, had to relent and pay me some attention.

January 11

Consider for the umpteenth time the amount of our stuff. My mother often says to my sister (to the latter’s intense irritation): Helen, you have too much of this world’s goods. She’s not the only one. Wonder what size is the attic in our house in Dublin. Curse myself for never even having looked in the attic when we bought the house. My sister says to me, “Mummy is delighted that you are coming home”. I am touched until she adds, “she says that maybe finally you will take all of your stuff out of her house”. My father-in-law is also anxious that we should remove all our stuff from his garage (barbecue and large outdoor heater – a wedding gift from the time when they were a sign that you were trendy rather than a sign that you are an eco-terrorist). My mother-in-law has, however, volunteered to mind our antique sewing machine until we have a house large enough to accommodate it. I suspect that my father-in-law is unaware of her kind offer.

14 January

After much humming and hawing decide to travel to Ireland for interview I am most unlikely to get on the basis that, if I did get it and the job came up in September my family would be able to eat every day rather than just every second day. This problem would mostly affect me and Mr. Waffle as the children prefer not to eat anyway.

18 January

Mr. Waffle hands in notice to the creche. The boys will be finishing there at the end of July. I will be a little sad to end our relations with our excellent creche.

21 January

Flight is delayed and arrive, Cinderella like, at friends’ house in Dublin at midnight. My friends are up awaiting my arrival with tea sympathy and advice. I love their house. It is a home from home as I used to live there. In fact, due to the many parties my husband and I held there, many people still think it is ours. Alas, it is not. I have stayed in the spare room many times and always enjoyed an excellent night’s sleep. On this occasion, I do not. Some vagary of their security system means that the overhead light flashes on every two hours and wakes me in considerable alarm. It is distressingly like being with small children.

Interview is, as expected entirely brutal. At the end, I ask about how many people they expect to appoint and they tell me that they give comprehensive feedback. I say I will look forward to that to general laughter from the board. I’d like to think that they were laughing with me but, I doubt it. [Didn’t get the job].

23 January

Princess and I go round to Glam Potter’s house and I reveal to her sum total of our likely income in Ireland for first two years. She is appalled. How will you survive? I am not comforted.

17 March

Having refused to think about or organise anything for the move in two months in the hope that, oh I don’t know, it would organise itself, I am jolted into action by a series of questions from my mother and brother who are visiting over the weekend. The heart surgeon rings from America and asks a series of hard questions as well. I am now worrying actively.

The Dutch Mama asked whom I had told about my plans to return. I explained that we was waiting until the end of April to tell our children, our employers and our employees about our plans and that I was slightly dreading this event. I was comforted her reply:

Dreading?

Sure it will be brilliant.

Employer: I’M LEAVING! (implicit, for something better, didn’t I always say you don’t pay me enough)

Employees: I’M LEAVING! (implicit, for something better, look at what an exciting international life I have)

Children: Guess what? Brilliant news. Mammy has got a great new job in Ireland, and we’re going to live in a house with a garden, and you can have a swing of your very own, and we’ll be able to see granny every single weekend. Won’t it be just great! And we’ll come back on lots of visits too. And we can invite your friends to come and play on your swing. And we’ve found you a lovely school.(I’d leave out the gaelscoil detail for now if I were you).

Life will be way easier for you in Ireland, and lots of fun.

25 April

Mr. Waffle has told work he’s leaving. I’ve told my boss informally and will hand in my notice next week. Tonight we decided to tell herself. At first, she was very excited but then as the implications sank in, she became distinctly apprehensive. “Why can’t we move to a house with a garden in Brussels; Brussels is my home”. This is true, she has never lived anywhere else and we have never given her any reason to believe that we would move somewhere else. That was, perhaps, foolish in retrospect. “Where will I go to school?” “In Dublin.” “What language will they speak in school?” If I had realised that I was going to be asked this quite so early in proceedings, I would have prepared a different answer from “Irish”*. She started to cry. She was scared, she wouldn’t understand and all her friends were here. This was the first time I really, really realised that we are definitely going and I felt like crying myself. I love Brussels. However, we perked her up as best we could and stressed the advantages which are many – well, otherwise, why wouldn’t we stay here? I am afraid for her. Mr. Waffle says, I can’t have it both ways, saying that she’ll be uprooted from all her friends one minute and agonising that she has no friends the next. Actually, he’s wrong, I can.

* There is a reason why we are sending her to an Irish language school and it’s largely and embarrassingly to do with the fact that Ireland isn’t quite the classless society it once was.

Weekend


Posted in: Belgium, Family, Mr. Waffle

On Sunday morning we went to Mr. Waffle’s god-daughter’s first communion.  She is half-Italian, half-Scottish but her first communion was all Italian.  It is very odd to be in Italy in Belgium.  We were all dressed up in our best clothes (suits ties, dresses, high heels, new shoes) but you always feel under-dressed beside well-dressed Italians.  The service was lovely and I did think it would be nice to go to mass in a church like this where there was a real sense of community.  I was also quite impressed by the robes the communicants wore (sort of like junior monks in white or as her mother put it, klu klux klan).  In Ireland, little girls dress up like miniature brides (as I did with great delight in my day) in expensive white dresses and I feel that it undermines the spirituality of the occasion and also leads to quite extraordinary expense (see how middle aged I am?).   We went back to the first communicant’s house for brunch after mass and I was most impressed to see that not only had her Italian grandparents come from Rome along with her aunt and uncle and three cousins aged 3,2 and 9 months but also her Scottish grandparents from Lewis which is a long way from Brussels and also pretty darn Protestant.  And it was the middle of the lambing season too (the communicant’s grandfather having spent a satisfactory career in Glasgow as a dentist retired with his wife to the island where he was brought up and bought a sheep farm – impressed?).  In our ex-pat Brussels world, we don’t often go to family celebrations as families are so scattered and there was something really lovely about this occasion.  Also, the sun shone.

In the afternoon we went to my friend A’s house.  He is a consultant by day and training to be a chef by night and was having a “mad hatter’s tea party”.  We arrived to a house filled with canapés and afternoon tea delights.  We had obeyed my friend’s instructions and turned up in costume: the king and queen of hearts, Alice and no prizes for guessing who got to be stereotyped as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  It was all very pleasant having scones with jam and clotted cream in the sun while the children negotiated the dizzyingly dangerous excitements of a bachelor pad (spiral stairs with open banisters! kitchen appliances at just the right height for little fingers! building materials in a side passage! balcony with parapet at knee height!).

I feel our social life has reached new heights.

Will our new Government last beyond the Summer?


Posted in: Belgium

Me: Which Minister is that older man there in the middle of the picture? He’s the only one who looks happy about the new government.

Mr. Waffle: That’s the king.

Me: Oh right and is this the woman who is Yves Leterme’s protegee?

Him: God no, that’s Joelle Milquet, she’s known as Madame Non because of her position during the negotiations.

Easter Weekend


Posted in: Belgium, Family

The positively American shortness of the Easter break (two holiday days only) was something of a relief as we had nothing planned and our inner resources are very limited.

On Saturday, we went to the town hall where there was a children’s festival. What a wonderful way to spend our taxes, arguably, less wonderful if you have no children but the beauty of it is that, if you have no children, you won’t even have noticed it was on. There were local functionaries dressed up as wizards and witches trying to explain in an amusing way to young children what the commune does. There were real magicians. There were three bouncy castles (not quite clear what services these represented), there was a storyteller (library services), a place to draw and paint where you were asked very easy questions (creche services), witches testing your five senses using phials and boxes (unnervingly, services for foreigners), a quiz on the rules in relation to hygiene – apparently there is a rule that dogs can’t poo on the street, personally, I’m amazed (environmental services), a free photograph of your kiddy sitting in front of the gates of a castle dungeon (some wit had set this up outside the mayor’s office), face painting (social services, I think, I’m a little confused), free candy floss, sweets and the like (in the salle des marriages) and a magic show to round it all off (in the salle du conseil). Aside from being a very pleasant way to spend a cold, wet Saturday with the children, it did strike me as a very good introduction to local government and its management for little citizens.

On Easter Monday, I decided we would go an outing. Given that it was absolutely freezing, we felt an indoor attraction would be best. We took ourselves to the Sea Life Aquarium in Blankenberg, most famous, in my mind for providing a sandy beach for English people to duel after it became illegal in England (thank you Georgette Heyer). We thought that it would be deserted like its sister aquarium outside Dublin. As we queued in the snow and the children bleated we had cause to rethink that assumption. When we got in, it was fine, if a little crowded. When we emerged, the driving snow had not abated and we scurried to the car where we ate our cold roast lamb sandwiches. (I cooked lamb for Easter Sunday  – aren’t you impressed ? The children refused to touch it on Easter Sunday on the grounds that this might be the tool they needed to drive their mother over the edge). The Princess said that the beef sandwiches were very nice. I was forced to point out to her that they were lamb. A real lamb? Yes, but it’s dead now. “Oh” she said and continued eating.

Since we were at the coast, we decided we would have a look at the beach. We went to a café first and, if you and your offspring are ever stuck in Blankenberg and looking for somewhere for a cup of tea near the seafront, you could do worse than take yourself to the Kiwi café. Despite the name, it’s done in traditional Flemish style with heavy beams and big dark furniture. Ideal for a cold, cold day. I wouldn’t recommend it for lunch as the apple tart I ordered, though inordinately large, was quite, quite vile, but definitely a good tea and pancake location. Fortified by our experience in the Kiwi we went to the beach which was absolutely perishing. The children were unaffected by the weather but we were frozen and miserable. The children wanted to stay and stay but we eventually managed to tug them back to the car with Daniel squirming and yelling (and that boy can yell) that he wanted to go SWIMMING.

Yesterday, we woke up to 5cms of snow, so Mr. Waffle took the children out to play on the road before we all went to our various places of detention. They were all wearing their moon boots and Mr. Waffle was wearing his hiking boots. The zip broke on my faithful black boots and as the ideal pumps to wear in the snow, I chose a pair that I had bought last Summer in America. I had never worn them before because I just never found anything to match them properly (don’t look at me like that, I’m not that kind of person at all) but I decided that they were the most likely to be waterproof. I was wrong. The soles are made of tweed. No, really, tweed. Why? By the time I found out, it was too late but I was not a happy bunny yesterday, I can tell you. The snow has melted today but my boots are still broken and my tweed soled shoes are still damp.