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Daniel

Wedding!

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Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Ireland, Michael, Princess, Travel

So, my oldest friend, M, got married yesterday. Our parents were friends and she is a year older than me so I have known her since I was born – 50 years ago as regular readers will be aware.

I haven’t been to a wedding in a while – I’m waiting for my friends’ children to start getting married – and I did enjoy it. I described M’s father’s funeral last year. It was sad that he wasn’t there as he would have hugely enjoyed it all and made a great speech to boot.

The wedding was in Bantry House which was lovely but absolutely freezing – consider yourself warned. I spent much of the evening crouched by various fires. When it came to dinner in the huge dining room (possibly originally a ball room) one of the other guests who was sitting near me had both a shawl and a poncho and lent me the latter: she was a Bulgarian and many years of living in Ireland appears to have given her little confidence in Irish people’s ability to heat their houses. This was fortunate for me.

The wedding brought a range of visitors from far flung places including Argentina, Canada, Vietnam and Brazil. The bride’s cousins had come from England. I hadn’t met them since we were all little girls and I confided to these grown up, sophisticated English women that I had regarded them with great bitterness when I was a child as, for weeks before they came to visit M spoke of little else and I was terrified of being usurped. They were a bit nonplussed for a moment and then started to apologise. Honestly, English people can be truly charming.

Notwithstanding its freezing nature, I loved, loved, loved the venue. I’m not sure why but I’ve never been to Bantry before. Bantry House is a delight and as wedding guests we were free to wander around and inspect a number of the rooms which I enjoyed hugely. I am very keen to go back and stay in the B&B they run and have a tour of the house (will definitely bring my hot water bottle though).

The bride and groom were visibly delighted which made everyone cheerful. They picked their own readings for the ceremony, made their own vows had a friend officiate and another friend sang. I knew I would cry and came prepared with tissues.

Speech of the night came from the groom’s 17 year old son who was funny and touching. After dinner there was a great magician. Not words I ever thought I would utter but he was really entertaining.

The music was calculated to appeal to the mature audience. You have not lived until you have seen a 78 year old lady dancing very handily to “Love Cats” by the Cure (the bride’s aunt, since you ask – looks amazing and very on top of who everyone was “Oh,” she said to me, “I remember you, you used to come and play with M.” True.)

What was really nice as well was that Mr. Waffle and I had a weekend away – just the pair of us – for the first time in ages. On Saturday morning we wandered around Bantry delighted with ourselves and bought various crafty things including a large basket for turf which we carried back to the hotel between us looking as cool as you might imagine.

Herself was 16 on Friday (hold your breath for a long post on that milestone) and I felt a bit of a heel abandoning her but she wanted to stay in Dublin and Mr. Waffle’s wonderful sister had her to stay and showed her a good time. The boys stayed in Cork. My brother and sister looked after them and they seem to have had a great time also. A win all round, I hope.

Today was a bit of a long day. We left Bantry about 11, picked up the boys from Cork, stopped in Cashel for lunch about 2 (I was still full after a large breakfast and ordered the warm salad with bacon and black pudding – a plate heaped with lardons and almost a whole black pudding dowsed in salad dressing arrived, after some digging I found a solitary lettuce leaf cringing miserably at the bottom of the bowl – when they say bacon and black pudding in Tipperary, they mean it) and got home at about 4.30. Herself had been dropped home shortly beforehand by her loving aunt which was great. The cat had been sick on our bed and the rug which was less great.

How was your own weekend?

Cork

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Posted in: Boys, Cork, Daniel, Dublin, Family, Ireland, Michael

I went down to Cork for the weekend. When I left Dublin on Friday lunch time, it was warm and sunny. Like a fool, I decided it was warm enough to go to Cork without my coat. Honestly, am I nine or forty nine? Normally, I get lifts all the time but for a variety of dull reasons, I had to get myself around without lifts this weekend. This is relevant.

When I got to Cork on Friday evening it was lashing. I cycled glumly to my parents’ house on a Cork bike. My parents’ house is so warm that I had more or less steam dried in about an hour which was just as well as I only had a solitary pair of trousers with me.

The next morning I woke up with a pain in my tooth. This was doubly annoying as I was at the dentist last week. It wasn’t super painful but more numb like when you get an injection. Over the course of the day it spread all around my top teeth in a slightly disturbing development.

On Saturday morning I cycled in to town. Obviously, I could have taken a coat out from my parents’ house but I decided that the weather would hold. I don’t know why I would have decided that and with a certain inevitability I got soaked again on the way back to my parents’ house. As my general mouth pain spread, I began to wonder whether I had given myself Bell’s palsy by recklessly cycling around in the rain without a coat. But it got better over the course of the day and was on both sides so, I decided probably not.

I visited my mother in the nursing home. She was awake and I knew that she recognised me because she looked at me and said, “Your hair is lovely.” This is literally all she said in the hour I was there. This is a long-standing fault line between us. She loves my hair long and I like it to be short; in fact, I think it really needs a cut. I’m glad she’s still in there somewhere in dementia land although the comment annoyed me as it invariably did when she was well, so some patterns seem to survive a great deal of change.

On Saturday night, my sister and I went to the cinema. We drove. Say what you like about the car, it’s good at keeping you dry.

I came back to Dublin early on Sunday morning. I cycled to the station in Cork and got soaked. I dried on the train. Then, I cycled home from the station and got soaked all over again. The rain in Dublin was considerably chillier than the rain in Cork. I arrived home freezing and damp to find that the builders had cut a power line and the heating. Unsatisfactory. Herself filled me a hot water bottle. On the plus side, my tooth pain completely disappeared. I suppose this is what this blog is going to be from now on as I move to my 50s: a litany of mysterious symptoms which come and go with no rhyme or reason.

On Sunday afternoon we went to inspect Dublin’s newest tourist attraction, the Vaults which was ok but more aimed at tourists than locals and probably for a younger crowd. We went off to a mild afternoon birthday celebration for Uncle A where Mr. Waffle dimmed the lights to blow out the candles causing unspeakable terror to my little niece, S. Is it bad that I found that mildly amusing? Herself babysat for them last night and as she went home, her aunt pressed a packet of Marietta biscuits into her hand, “Take these, please, we have to get rid of them, they’re like crack cocaine for S.”

When we got home we lit fires to try to keep us warm. It snowed outside. Overall, damp and chilly.

Michael is now taller than me as well. I suppose it’s only a question of time before Herself passes me out.

And how was your own weekend?

Choral Evening

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Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Family

Daniel was singing in a choral evening organised by the Dublin archdiocese last week. There were about 600 children from a range of different schools there the night we went all wearing their school uniforms. Mr. Waffle said that it felt like a kilt convention. Prize for most hideous uniform must go to the girls wearing lemon jumpers and matching kilts. I am indebted to herself for letting me know that they change colours every two years depending what year they are in and pointing me to the rainbow of colours up in the balcony. I bet they’re glad when they move on from lemon.

The evangelical modern uptempo songs preferred by the organisers do not appeal to me but Daniel quite enjoyed it as did his sister. She did not need to have recourse to her choice of reading for the evening (really, who, who, is this child?).

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Michael, however, continued reading his collected Sherlock Holmes almost throughout.

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He did pause in his reading to listen to his brother to read out a long passage on stage. I have to say Daniel read really, really well. There must have been a thousand people in the auditorium between performers and their loving relatives and he read fluently and clearly with emphasis in all the right places and didn’t seem even slightly nervous. He does not get that gift from me.

Afterwards the school nun said to me, “Wasn’t Daniel wonderful?” I said that he was and that I had already praised him. She said that he needed affirmation. “There is,” she added, “something self-serving about praise.” The children all love her but I tell you, people, she sees right through me. In the car on the way home, Mr. Waffle said, “I didn’t understand what Sr M meant about the difference between praise and affirmation.” Herself replied, “Mum praises, you affirm.” Of course, he is the child of hippies.

The Endless Indignities of Parenting

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Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Mr. Waffle

Daniel and his father were driving back from a GAA match discussing tactics. After a while Daniel interjected, quite animatedly, and without any apparently humorous intent “You know, Mum should let you talk more, you’re actually quite interesting.”

Minor Injuries

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Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Michael

I got a call from the school that Daniel was injured. He was shouldered in the face by a bigger boy during a game of basketball. He was a bit sore but his glasses were unbroken and he described himself as able to cycle home. Crisis averted. He was a bit miserable that evening but he recovered.

The next day, we got another call from the school, “Don’t worry but we think Michael needs stitches.” He got his injury in a very Michaelish way. He won a class debate on global warming. As he was announced as the winner, he bowed to the class and hit his head off the corner of a desk.

Normally, Mr. Waffle deals with all emergencies but he couldn’t go to the hospital on the day in question so I scooted out of work at 3.45 to deal with the catastrophe. Mr. Waffle had already collected him from school in the car (this was not an injury where we felt he could cycle home). When I got home, Michael was quite upset. “Were you glad when Daddy collected you?” I asked. “Yes, but I’m gladder to see you now,” he sobbed into my shoulder. Every time something like this happens, I wonder why I am out at work and not at home. If things had been normal, I would have stayed at work and his father would have taken him to the hospital and I feel he actually really wanted his mother. Having it all, again.

We spent a couple of hours in A&E and he didn’t need stitches in the end: they glued him back together. He’s almost recovered now and is, much to his regret, allowed back in the shower.

Small Victories


Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Michael, Princess

Herself said to me the other day, “I am so glad that you sent me to my school, I would have hated to have gone to an English language school”. I think that the effect of 10 years of education through the medium of Irish has finally had its effect.

I can only hope that her brothers eventually feel the same but thus far they remain resolutely unconvinced. Alas.