Princess

Weekends Rounded-Up

29 November, 2020 5 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.

“A small sound like the coo of a dove”

28 November, 2020 2 Comments
Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Princess

So, in continuing pigeon adventures, while herself was absent this morning, Mr. Waffle went in to her bedroom and unscrewed the back of the fireplace. This is what he found.

He poked gently with a stick and the pigeon ambled into the room and then flew on to the windowsill where he paused to survey his kingdom.

Mr. Waffle whooshed him away and screwed back up the fireplace. Shortly he heard again the soft scratching noise of a pigeon who has happily re-established himself in a toasty spot down the chimney. Next project, definitely chimney caps. Herself is in the horrors.

Surprising

27 November, 2020 2 Comments
Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Princess

You will remember our rat concerns over the summer. Notwithstanding Rentokil’s confirmation that our house is definitively rodent free, herself continued to allege that there were…scratching sounds coming from the blocked up chimney in her room.

Today she summoned her father to listen to the noise. She messaged me subsequently:

Update on the rat living in my chimney: it is a pigeon. Dad is thrilled. Apparently, it’s not a problem anymore because pigeons are peaceful animals. I am significantly less positive. He offered to let it loose in my room (!) in the hope it would fly out the window. When I rejected this solution, he left in a sulk.

Apparently, Mr. Waffle opened the hatch at the back of the fireplace. He was going to put up a piece of cheese to verify absence of any cheese eating rodents and when he opened the hatch there was a totally unafraid pigeon blinking calmly back at him. This, apparently is where it lives and scratches. Chimney caps are coming into our lives.

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
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.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

18 November, 2020
Posted in: Family, Princess, Siblings

My sister called me the other day to tell me that she had been tidying up; she had organised some of my mother’s jewellery: and did I want a necklace which I had given my mother? I said I did and she said, “Well, I’m warning you that I’m posting it up to you.” “Warning?” I asked. “Well, you might be upset,” she said. Ludicrous excess of sensibility thought I but it arrived tonight and I was a bit sad actually so there you go.

In other news, herself had a zoom session with the children’s laureate which she enjoyed. She’s working away on a short story in Irish.

And today’s final and, frankly, most exciting piece of news. Herself tells me that a classmate who was with her in primary school has told her that I was the best-looking mother in primary school and, said she, there were murmurs of agreement from the other classmates. God, I’m delighted with myself although I know that to do so is to buy into the values of the patriarchy about women’s worth and value being measured in their looks; also, that was 6 years ago; a bunch of 12 year olds are not the best judges; and, finally, it is not, I fear, remotely true. Still very pleased. Judge away.