Boys

Weekends Rounded-Up

29 November, 2020 4 Comments
Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Dublin, Ireland, Michael, Mr. Waffle, Princess

With the 5 km limit on travel and everything closed, weekends have been a bit similar. Last Saturday (i.e. November 21 not November 28, Mr. Waffle keeps saying that the way I say last Saturday is very confusing but I fail to see where the difficulty lies, if I meant Saturday November 28, I would have said yesterday), I went off to explore Chapelizod on my own without children saying it was very dull to be hanging around while I looked at buildings. I found a new way there through the park staying off the main road. That’s as exciting as it got. Some local history: Sheridan Le Fanu wrote a short story about the house on the right in the picture below and Lord Northcliffe was born up the road. His mother was Irish, who knew?

I came home via the Lutyens designed war memorial gardens which, in fairness, were looking pretty good.

An email arrived from the school threatening dire consequences if students didn’t have face masks. A follow up email some time afterwards apologised for giving out all the parents’ email addresses in violation of GDPR rules.

On the Sunday morning, herself and myself went to the Botanic Gardens.

Her Christmas jumper got an outing.

For added excitement we saw the actual last rose of summer left blooming alone.

Then, in the afternoon, back out on the bike to Chapelizod with Mr. Waffle and the boys. There are only so many options.

Then on to the weekend just past. I have absolutely no recollection of what happened yesterday, we went out for a mild walk, I think. We did not watch the “Late Late Toy Show“. My family are the only people in Ireland not into this. Mr. Waffle and I never watched it as children and our own children never had the faintest interest. My little niece in London watched it and loved it too. Look, I took in five minutes of the highlights: I liked the bit with the singer; the child from Cork and the hospital porter and the follow up; also the bit where the presenter was surprised by a hard to open bottle of Fanta. My cold heart was warmed but it appears we are never going to be a family in Christmas pjs watching this with a hamper of Christmas goodies. Too boring say my loving family. There you have it.

And then today, another trip to the Botanic Gardens also taking in the excitement of Glasnevin cemetery where, it transpires Gerard Manley Hopkins is buried. Fancy that. November is, of course, the month of the dead but I didn’t get to visit my mother’s grave. I might take all the children on a visit if we ever get to Cork en masse again.

Very much looking forward to moving out of lockdown level 5 and back to level 3 from next week. Maybe my weekends won’t change a great deal but the possibility of change is very exciting.

Daniel at 15

22 November, 2020 Leave a Comment
Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Michael, Mr. Waffle, Princess

Daniel was 15 on September 27. As usual, the birthday post is late.

He seems to me very tall and big now and he has a very deep voice and he’s started to shave. It’s only when I see him with groups of his school mates that I realise that he is about average dimensions. At home, he can sometimes seem very grown up.

He really enjoys listening to music and took some piano lessons in between this year’s various lock downs. His uncle had a spare keyboard and it is installed in his bedroom for practice. He has a fantastic ear for music and, indeed, for accents. He does a great Donald Trump but, happily, that’s a skill he may need to use less in the future.

He is still my sportiest child. This year, he had training in the back garden during lock down. We all made an effort but some of us more than others.

The other day he came in after having run 10km. I was suitably impressed. He is so fit. And he’ll give any game a go.

When we go out on the bikes now, I really hold him back. I don’t mind him passing me on the hills, really, but it’s the speed and effortlessness with which he does it that is faintly depressing.

He’s still playing for the A team in the GAA club and he absolutely loves it. He paid the ultimate price for his enthusiasm, killing a front tooth. Here he is, after his root canal, looking pretty cheery, in fairness.

He also likes basketball.

This summer he started to really enjoy going to the beach.

He used to hate it but this year something clicked and he started to love swimming in the sea and he became my reliable companion at the beach. We got into freezing waters nationwide.

He’s started playing more chess of late and he and his brother play online even though they live in the same house and we have a chess board. They are both very fond of a card game called “Magic: The Gathering”. It’s a licence to print money but they do play for hours and hours.

He also enjoys paling on the x-box and plays Minecraft and Overwatch with his friends which has been a godsend in these Covid times.

He has learnt that for his parents, if he wants to communicate by electronic means, email is a good way to do so. He regards this as strange but is willing to make the extra effort and also to read whatsapp messages.

He still doesn’t read much and insofar as he goes in for reading, it tends to be science/factual stuff rather than fiction although he does like manga cartoons. It can be hard to keep him stocked with these as he finishes them in no time.

He’s academic and does well at school. He didn’t get a chance to shine in the Junior Cert because it was cancelled due to Covid but he didn’t mind. He found it really hard when school went online only and he is much more settled now he’s back in real rather than virtual school.

Last Easter he was supposed to be in France but, obviously, couldn’t go. This summer he was supposed to be doing a course in Engineering for three weeks. He did it last year and loved it but it went online for a week this summer and he had enough of online and didn’t go. This year, he’s in Transition Year and his schedule is flexible. So he started doing an extra physics course one day a week. It started off with everyone on campus (all the young physics enthusiasts) but after a couple of weeks had to move online. It’s not half as much fun as really meeting with people with similar interests and a whole day online is long. I’m hoping next term might be better for him.

He’s still doing a weekly French conversation class and his comprehension and French accent are pretty good although written French is a bit of a mystery. He is nonetheless a resource for his classmates when they are up to give French presentations.

He spends a lot more time in his room these days. He is still very friendly with his brother though.

They get on really well and have loads of interests in common.

He finds his sister very annoying a lot of the time but a couple of weeks ago he got stuck on a physics question and she came and helped him out (frankly, his parents are absolutely useless) and it was lovely to see the two of them getting on so well and working together.

I love this picture of them before dinner out; we were all starving and ratty and Daniel was trying to spread joy and happiness.

He likes meeting his cousins who live across the city although, for obvious reasons, we haven’t seen much of them this year. His other cousin went back to London a year ago. So not a huge amount of interaction since then as she’s only 3.

He continues to be very fond of the cat. Fonder than he is of the rest of us sometimes as we are all quite annoying.

He has become a much less picky eater and this is wonderful. He’s really willing to try new things. I rejoice. He’s also got quite good at cooking and has made pizza for us all reasonably regularly. He makes his own pizza dough which I still couldn’t do, let alone being able to do it at 15.

He is reasonably tidy and dutifully partook in the cleaning rota earlier in the year. He learnt a lot from that, I have to say. These lessons will stand him in good stead. I was delighted when he offered to hoover the house recently because it needed it. It did.

He can be very kind and obliging. Here, he is, dutifully helping me decorate the tree last Christmas.

And here he is, helping out at the barbecue when the inevitable summer rain hit.

This has been a tough year for us all in different ways but I think Daniel really missed the structure of sport and school earlier in the year. And even though we are back in level 5 lockdown, he can now do training and he’s back at school, even if he’s all masked up and a lot of activites are restricted. He seems a lot happier with some kind of escape for all his energy.

Just in September he started volunteering in a charity shop and I was really impressed by his commitment and his ability to make friends with his co-workers. He actually learnt a lot during his short time there – including how to work a cash register and just how much stuff gets donated to charity shops, “Mum, they really don’t need any extra stuff from you,” he assured me. Crushing.

Overall, I think things are ok for him at the moment but I feel he’s missed out on a lot this year. He doesn’t seem particularly put out but I am so glad that this vaccine is coming.

He’s a really good and obliging child and, in life, things do seem to broadly go his way; he’s clever, he has friends and school is relatively easy for him. His family love him but we are, of course, a source of some frustration and mortification to him and it may be a number of years before we stop driving him crazy. Particularly his mother who as recently as this morning gave him a hug and kissed him while he was playing an online game with his friends with audio on his headphones on.

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

20 November, 2020 4 Comments
Posted in: Boys, Cork, Family, Ireland, Michael, Princess

Normally I am very against Christmas starting much before December 15 and certainly not in November, however, this year is different. I have bought my Christmas teas and I am liking them. This week I took delivery of a Christmas jumper for herself. She really likes it. “I might get one too,” I said with, possibly, excess enthusiasm. “Don’t do that,” she said, “because then I would have to burn this one.” My tentative proposal for family Christmas jumpers have been definitively nixed. Perhaps for the best.

In other news, Michael’s classmates had to give presentations on a topic of interest to them and one boy did his grandmother who died a couple of years ago and almost everyone was in tears. I love this for a bunch of 15/16 year olds.

Alas, the boys are tired of cinema night and want a break this weekend. Is next weekend, when I get to choose, too early for a Christmas film? Suggestions on family Christmas films welcome.

And finally, I was talking to my father and, inspired by a podcast I was listening to on aviation, I asked him when was his first flight. “1936, when I was 11,” said he. There was some kind of air show in the field where they subsequently built Cork airport and, in exchange for a fee, I suspect, people were taken up for a short flight over Cork. He enjoyed it very much, thanks for asking and even after 84 years he continues to sound pretty enthusiastic about the experience although he did temper his enthusiasm by saying that had he known then what he now knows about plane safety in the 30s, he might have been slightly more wary.

Weekend Round-Up

16 November, 2020 4 Comments
Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Michael, Mr. Waffle

On Saturday night we had “Rouge” from the French film festival for cinema night. Honestly, the excitement of seeing something new was thrilling. Mr. Waffle was able to book a slot and stream it from his laptop via the projector onto the screen. This, frankly, opens up a whole world of films for cinema night. The film itself was billed as the French “Erin Brocavich”. And, yes, imagine Erin Brocavich as made in France: not much humour and a fair bit more nuance. It was good but I’m still a bit traumatised.

I bought Christmas leaf teas in Lidl and spent all weekend sampling them. Delighted with myself.

Daniel spent a good while on Saturday working away at his physics problems for this outside school course he is doing during Transition Year. He got through them and was quite pleased with himself. On Sunday he cycled to and from training in the rain and was much happier than you might expect afterwards. Particularly in view of the fact that he appeared to have lost much of the epidermal layer on the left side of his body following what I can only imagine was a spectacular sliding tackle on the astro turf pitch.

Mr. Waffle and I made Michael go for a walk around the block with us in the rain so that another weekend would not pass wherein he had not seen outside. Herself spent most of the weekend studying in line with a punishing schedule she has devised for herself. She did take a brief break on Sunday afternoon to go for a walk with a friend in the rain.

I forgot to mention that our lovely childminder who we had for years sent the boys a birthday present which arrived in the post on Monday. He went back to Paris to work as a tour guide and I worry that he is on the breadline (it is not a good year for tour guides) and shelling out from his savings to send them presents. I do hope not. The boys were genuinely delighted to get his card and present though which was nice.

And still no cleaning rota. There had better be a plan to exit level 5 soon or the house may become a health hazard.

Saturday, November 14, 2020

14 November, 2020 3 Comments
Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Dublin, Ireland, Michael

Daniel and Michael went on a scavenger hunt around town with school yesterday which they both enjoyed. Michael could not find Leinster House, the seat of the Irish parliament which I have been pointing out to him for a lifetime. Who’s sorry now, eh?

We had take away from the local gastropub (parents) and Domino’s pizza (children) for dinner last night. Satisfactory though possibly not healthy.

I worked yesterday afternoon instead of taking my half day but the advantage of this is that I have hardly taken any work home this weekend which is an absolutely massive improvement over the last two weekends.

I slept until midday today. I am really a champion sleeper (we take our achievements where we can) and after a leisurely brunch faced into my day. I had bought Michael two pairs of new trousers online. Right in the leg but too wide on the waist we discovered. Daniel took one pair but the other are too small for him and too big for Michael. Alas. Perhaps he will grow into them. Herself pointed out that I have bought my teenage sons trousers that would be perfect for retired British army officers and I realise that is true. She has started calling Daniel “Major Major” which did not add to the already limited enthusiasm he was showing for brown corduroy trousers. In my defence I offer that they looked less late middle-aged online and there weren’t a huge heap of choices on the website.

Mr. Waffle and I went off to the bathroom shop as part of our very slowly progressing plan to redo the upstairs bathroom. In exciting Irish celebrity news on our way there we saw Conor Pope consumer correspondent of the Irish Times heading into Lidl and when we got there design legend Hugh Wallace (so described in every episode of “Home of the Year”) was ahead of us in the bathroom shop and spent ages talking to the shop assistant. A thrill a minute, lads.

Basically, all quiet on the Western Front and tonight is cinema night. Hurrah!

Be Prepared

12 November, 2020 2 Comments
Posted in: Boys, Daniel

Three children in Daniel’s class were put together for a geography project. One of them took the lead and developed the presentation and did the work. The other two had a brief look over it and declared it to be good. Alas, for them, when the moment came to present to the class, the student who had actually done all the work was out so the other two had to present. As Daniel said, it’s hard to spontaneously deliver someone else’s presentation on Cambodia. I imagine it is.