Ireland

Bah Humbug

1 December, 2025
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Twins

The Trinity Christmas tree was lit this evening. I left work a bit early to be at the front gate where I had arranged to meet husband and one child at 5.30. Chaos ensued: child turned out to be at a lecture; husband was carried away by the crowd; rain lashed with real enthusiasm; the Trinity choir tried some challenging numbers instead of going for crowd pleasers; of the anticipated mulled wine and mince pies there was no sign (to be fair, my expectations were low on that front anyhow, were they planning to feed the 5,000?).

“Feeling Christmassy?” asked Mr. Waffle when we eventually found each other. We went to find our own cup of tea. The Westin had an event in the atrium and directed us to a noisy pub downstairs; the Palace Bar was heaving (full of men in suits drinking pints); the Joy of Cha, despite indications otherwise on the internet, was closed. We cycled home in the rain and I lost my hat of which I am very fond (herself models the hat below in a shot from this time last year, idle to deny that it looks a lot better on her than me). When we got home I went back to the shed to cycle in to try to find the lost hat but then I got a work call which I dealt with in the shed (glamour) and then somehow, I’d lost the will to retrace my steps.

However, when I finally got home, as part of my gradual Christmas prep, I got out my Spode ware and found my Christmas tablecloths and tea towels (“Oh my favourite Christmas tea towel,” I exclaimed as it emerged from where it had been nestling since last January. I am now the kind of person who has a favourite Christmas tea towel, apparently.) Mr. Waffle turned on Christmas FM, lit a fire and made me a cup of tea. Perhaps I am feeling a little bit Christmassy after all. You?

Updated to add:

Look what I found this morning!

Old News from England

29 November, 2025
Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Travel

Did I tell you about when Mr. Waffle and I went to Cambridge to visit herself earlier in the year? I did not. Well now, here’s something for you to look forward to. It was in March but look, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here content wise (I can hear my father spinning in his grave at this terrible construction but here we are).

Friday, 14 March 2025

There was rugby in Rome the weekend we were travelling. At the airport Mr. Waffle and I ran into not one, not two, but three people we knew: one off to the rugby; one going to a party in Cornwall; and one, like us, going to London. This last was the son of my mother’s friend from college and he was always a bit charming and feckless. This may have been why he and his wife were on stand by for the flight they were taking with their two teenagers. It all worked out in the end. It always does for the charming but feckless in my experience.

Mr. Waffle and I traveled with laptops and had to do a bit of work when we arrived. Were we pleased? We were not.

There was a formal dinner arranged in the Princess’s college for Patrick’s day and I was filled with pride when she got up at the drinks at start of the evening and read – in Irish – the poem that begins “Anois Teacht an Earraigh”; it’s a poem I love and her grandmother loved it too. She explained to the audience about wandering bards and how this poem would have been recited all over Ireland and now, she said, it’s come to Cambridge. My mother would have been delighted.

Herself had become great buddies with a guy from Cork and on chatting to him I discovered that he had gone to the primary school where my cousin had been headmaster for many years. Rather charmingly when we established this link, he said in awe struck tones “You know Mr. K?”. He obviously felt unable, even at that distance, to bandy around Mr. K’s first name as I had been doing so recklessly.

Look at me filled with delight dining with my firstborn (I am wearing my sail – our hotel offered bikes for guests and they were handy but I did worry slightly that I might take flight on my way to dinner).

Saturday 15, March 2025

We went on a punt. It was shockingly expensive and the young woman powering the punt, though very strong given her willowy frame, was distressingly ignorant about the sights. We were able to get the gist from other guides on nearby punts but not as good somehow.

We went to Fitzbillies, a popular Cambridge tea room. Fine but nothing to write home about in my view. There is a really lovely cafe where I always went for breakfast with herself on my visits and we definitely graced that with our presence at some point but, sadly, if you were thinking of visiting yourself, I cannot now summon its name to mind.*

Herself knowing my love of a good cemetery took us to a lovely one.

One of the Edgeworths is buried there (a sister of the better known Maria). A long way from home.

We checked out the Princess’s room. She did a great job of decorating it notwithstanding some challenges, the most serious of which was the quantity of furniture (particularly tables) which the university authorities provided with the room and which could not be removed for complex and doubtless administratively understandable reasons.

Sunday 16 March, 2025

Herself took us to Mass. It was very long and enthusiastic. There was an excellent sermon on a papal encyclical sent to America in which, to quote from Wikipedia “the pope addressed a heresy that he called Americanism and expressed his concern that the Catholic Church in the United States should guard against American values of liberalism and pluralism undermining the doctrine of the Church”. I mean, some of us felt that the topic choice was a bit tactless given that next up was some innocent young American woman telling us about the church’s charity work but ok.

After lunch we walked to Grantchester. My mother-in-law used to enjoy quoting the last couplet from Rupert Brooke’s The Old Vicarage, Grantchester “Stands the Church clock at ten to three?/And is there honey still for tea?” When we got there the clock did indeed stand at ten to three which was very gratifying.

I only took a picture after our cup of tea and the clock stands at five past four and I seem to have included some large bins in shot. Somehow, life never is as romantic as poetry. I mean, look, apparently Jeffrey Archer lives in the old vicarage now. Incidentally, whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry on Jeffrey Archer really hates him.

We all had dinner together on Sunday night and then Mr. Waffle and I headed home on Monday morning. A good time had by all etc.

Tomorrow is November 30. Are we all heaving a sigh of relief?

*Updated to add: Mr Waffle made it his mission to find out the cafe’s name. He did. It was Cafe Foy apparently.

Old News from Wexford

28 November, 2025
Posted in: Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Travel

At the start of the summer Mr. Waffle and I went to stay in a lovely hotel in Wexford. I regularly get Blue Book vouchers for Christmas and birthday presents and can I say right now how much I love these? If you are visiting Ireland, stay in a Blue Book place (not sponsored, sadly). One of the things I like about them is that they are generally older houses without a spa (I am not a fan of spas and it always irks me to be paying for the thrill of having one when I am never going to use it, judge away) and the money they save on spas is ploughed into the kitchen. The food is always excellent.

Mr. Waffle is always keen on change (me, not so much), so instead of going to the place in Northern Ireland where we have gone a number of times (recommended) we headed to the South East which is a part of the country I know nothing about. Cork is like France, if you’re from there, there’s no real incentive to holiday outside its boarders. So even though I grew up only a couple of hours away, I never holidayed in Wexford or Waterford.

We arrived on Friday and our Blue Book venue did not let us down on the dinner front or on breakfast the following morning.

Although the hotel is in Wexford, it is very close to Waterford city which we accessed via a short ferry ride. I love a ferry ride.

We explored Waterford. It’s lovely. I was slightly startled to discover that although the rest of the country has what might be called a pretty negative attitude to the Normans (800 years of oppression anyone?), they love them in the South East. It was all Norman content and all “weren’t they great”. Surprising. Not as surprising as the revelation that Waterford is apparently Ireland’s first city. They’ve kept that quiet. I am outraged. We dutifully visited Reginald’s Tower (Ireland’s oldest civic building!) where this and various other Waterford historical information was conveyed to us. Mildly interesting, you know yourself. Waterford has a great cathedral; well worth a visit.

I’ve now reached the age where I like looking at gardens. If you too are in that position, may I recommend Mount Congreve?

I don’t want to sound shallow here – I am going to sound shallow – it has a great cafe and shop as well. So entranced was I by the shop that I decided to buy a jumper. When I got to the till (longish queue), I said to the assistant “Can you tell me how much this is?”. She did and I said, “Well, I’d like to buy it then please.” And she said “Well, you can’t we’re closed.” I was astounded, I have never had this happen to me before. She was utterly unapologetic and we all went back and dutifully put our things back on the shelves and, in my case, bought the jumper online later. As my brother-in-law says, “Why not write your own P45?”

We were, alas, too late to visit the Bishop’s Palace which we had intended to do but we will go another time.

The next day we went for a lovely walk on the hotel estate.

Your daring correspondent went for her first swim of the season. Mr. Waffle brazenly stayed onshore. I cannot lie, it was chilly.

After braving the sea, we went to look at Hook lighthouse; a big attraction locally. It’s the “oldest intact operational” lighthouse in the world. A lot of qualifying adjectives there and when I saw it from outside, I was a bit underwhelmed.

But it did look a bit older from inside.

There was yet another picture of a Norman knight outside. God, they love William Marshal down there. He married Isabel de Clare daughter of Strongbow and Aoife (big couple in Irish history, have a look at this historical painting by Daniel Maclise for a sense of how this union was viewed generally).

On the way to the lighthouse, we passed the most haunted house in Ireland, Loftus Hall. It’s had a go as a hotel and I think people are trying again. I like a big house as much as, or more than, the next person but the situation is a bit…desolate, is it not?

After our lighthouse expedition, we went to Tintern abbey on the way home. It’s a daughter house of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey. It is a complete internet blackspot and Mr. Waffle was delighted that his habit of always carrying cash was vindicated as we certainly couldn’t have paid by card. It’s lovely but I found myself weirdly sympathetic with Michael McDowell (annoying IT columnist inter alia) when he wrote in the paper recently hat it was a mistake to strip it back to the old abbey and remove almost all traces of the family who had lived there since the reformation.

Check out their merch. On brand for the South East.

On the way home, we stopped to buy some Wexford strawberries at the side of the road and they were the best strawberries I have had all year.

And, we subsequently discovered, when paying for the hotel instead of deploying two vouchers, Mr. Waffle only gave them one and paid the balance so we still have a voucher left. An unintended error discovered too late but overall good news because I could really do with a nice Blue Book weekend away in January.

November

27 November, 2025
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

I am indebted to Townmouse for drawing my attention to the poem below. Hard to argue with; especially in a gloomy Dublin November. To be fair the last week has been chilly but clear so there’s that. Still the sunset view from the office at 4.05 is not exactly making my heart soar.

November by Thomas Hood

No sun — no moon!
No morn — no noon —
No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day.

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member —
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds!

November!

A Straw in the Wind

24 November, 2025
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

I am still doing baptism preparation in the church. I will be doing this until I die at the rate things are going. My mother used to always say that it’s very difficult to get off a committee and she never said a truer word.

Anyway, we had this young couple in and they asked me to help them fill in the form, so we went through it together. There’s a bit where it asks whether the announcement of the baptism can be put up on the church’s facebook page (somehow given the demographics of the congregation, it’s bound to be facebook). “Does that mean that the baby’s name will be on Google?” asked the father. “Well, yes,” I said. “Then no, no Google.” Interesting.

Cultural Exchange

23 November, 2025
Posted in: Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Reading etc., Twins

We had a Swedish friend of one of the children to stay for a couple of weeks. She was waiting for her accommodation to be released from the grasping hands of Airbnb (hypocrite that I am, how many times have I stayed in Airbnb accommodation? Many). She was a lovely guest and had lots of interesting stories.

Her grandparents came from the far north of Sweden and some great uncle in the family tired of the north of Sweden and went to Russia to join the Communists in the 1920s. It didn’t work out as he had hoped and he was sent to the gulag where he met a woman and had a child with her (conditions in the gulag were not quite what I imagined); she died (but then again) and he took the baby and walked out of the gulag back to Sweden. Impressive. On the other side her grandfather sailed around the world and was married five times which is a lot of times. Twice to Korean women called Kim (he went to Korea with the first Kim which is where he met the second). Honestly that alone was worth the price of admission but she gave me Moomin tea and an adorable gold plated Stinky. What a win.

Our Swedish visitor’s account made our own ancestors seem a bit dull so instead of talking about family history Mr. Waffle and I decided to giver her a quick tutorial on great Irish advertisements. Let me share with you, yes, lucky you.

How about this one for ESB (then electricity monopoly – why ads?)? As a country of emigrants where people came home for Christmas it’s really evocative.

This one for another state monopoly (Bord na Móna – the turf board) is charming .

There were a whole series of water safety ads. Part one of this compilation seems to firmly point the finger of blame at mothers who speak on the phone. Then there is one with a farm safety focus (often a feature of Irish ads in the 70s and 80s – regular readers will recall that at a considerably earlier point my great-great grand aunt drowned in a barrel of cream aged 2, there’s an ancestral tale for you, no gulags though). Irish people of a certain age will often say “It’s possible to drown in only a few inches of water” or “Where’s grandad?” though perhaps not with the exact same intonation as here.

There was a whole series of Kerrygold ads based on Franco-Irish sexual tension Popular line from this one “There is something I can ‘elp?” Reply “You could put a bit of butter on the spuds André”

And its companion “Who’s taking the horse to France.

Guinness also had good ads always.

One of the most famous ads was for Harp lager. It’s a terrible ad but inexplicably popular. It’s about an emigrant again. He says “You could fry an egg on the stones, if you had an egg” but the crowning line was how he missed the local barmaid “Sally O’Brien and the way she might look at you”. The actress who played Sally O’Brien was actually English. A lot to unpack there.

Not a particularly old ad but the Irish Road Safety Association is known for its hard hitting ads and Mr. Waffle and I once saw one in the cinema when there were a bunch of Italians there and when it reached the brutal climax we heard a chorus of shocked “Mamma mias!”

I have so much more to give on this topic but I am concerned that like our Swedish visitor you may have already had enough.