Middle Child

Up, Up and Away

6 March, 2023
Posted in: Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

Mr. Waffle and I were in Northern Ireland for the weekend and we had an excellent time. I had already drafted an exciting post on this which wordpress in its wisdom made disappear completely. If my tone is less effusive than you might expect then attribute it to this very annoying technical glitch. On the other hand there was someone (Evelyn Waugh? Henry James?) who used to improve his writing by tearing up his first draft and throwing it in the bin and then re-writing from scratch. I suppose I can only be grateful to wordpress for giving me the opportunity to test this myself. However, if the post turns up again (as they sometimes do – technology, a mystery), I will be incandescent.

Friday, March 3

We left after lunch leaving the guys home alone for the first time ever. You might say that they are 17 but we felt quite daring. As we were leaving, Dan was going into town to meet a friend and Michael was disporting himself home alone. The journey up was quite short and uneventful. We stopped for a cup of tea in Hillsborough which was about 15 minutes from our destination. There continues to be a significant dearth of nice places to get a cup of tea at 4 in the afternoon, North and South. Sadly, Hillsborough is no exception to this general rule though a pretty little spot. I always find it slightly strange to see school children in Northern Ireland. Whereas school uniforms in the South are now mostly slightly vile nylon tracksuity things, the school blazer is very much alive and well in the North and in Hillsborough I saw boys in short pants which, honestly, I thought had disappeared in the 60s.

The place we were staying – which I would truly recommend – was delightful. It’s a bit in the middle of nowhere but everywhere is pretty close in Northern Ireland, so I wouldn’t let that put you off. It’s a country house and the owner does the cooking himself. The food was really superb and the place was lovely. We had booked in for two dinners which I had had some reservations about but I needn’t have worried. Breakfast was amazing also. The place was full of Dubliners cackling with glee at the great value they had unearthed. It compares extremely favourably with the South and, honestly, the food was as good as I’ve had anywhere.

Dinner was not, however, the unmitigated delight we had expected. Michael was home alone at 9, no sign of Dan and Michael was waiting for him to order pizza. I immediately began to picture him dead on the roads (default mode) but honestly he had met his friend at 2, why wasn’t he home by 9? In fact, he had been home and gone out again. I had completely forgotten that he had GAA training later and that was where he was. Everyone was a bit grumpy on the home front.

Saturday, March 4

We were up with the lark. After a very hefty and delicious breakfast, we took ourselves to Carrickfergus where we inspected the impressive Norman castle. It’s, I think, the best preserved Norman castle in Ireland and has a dramatic setting right on the sea.

We went for the guided tour. It was not great, I honestly didn’t know a lot more about the history of the castle after than before. There was a bit of generic stuff about how people lived in a castle in the middle ages but nothing more really. I am not one to praise the OPW (which inter alia manages national monuments in the South) unneccesarily, however, their guides are truly excellent. There seems to be a culture of local experts taking on the roles as seasonal jobs and they know the history of the monuments inside out and you always get the sense when you ask them a question that in giving the tour you are only skimming the surface of their detailed knowledge. This is not the case for Carrickfergus. It would probably have been grand for a school group or if there were kids on the tour, in fairness. But as the only people on the tour were four grown-up southerners standing freezing in the keep, I thought it wasn’t optimal.

Mr. Waffle has a colleague who is married to someone from Carrickfergus and he asked him for lunch tips but the bleak reply came back, “There is nowhere.” Slightly disheartening.

We pushed on to the Gobbins cliff walk which I booked ages ago. I don’t want to diss the Gobbins but it is a bit “health and safety gone mad”. It is a walk along the cliffs which you might easily do unaccompanied in about an hour. We were fitted with helmets, told not to bring rucksacks, only allowed to go out in walking boots and ushered very slowly along the walk. In fairness the guide was good and there was one exciting tunnel but it felt like complete overkill. It was designed by a railway engineer in 1902 as a tourist attraction and the shop is full of pictures of Edwardian ladies in long skirts trotting happily along the path (not wearing hiking shoes or helmets – although I think the helmets are to deal with frequent rock falls so, maybe a good idea). I had thought it was bolted on to the cliffs and there are bits where that is the case but mostly it’s just along the side of the cliffs. I mean absolutely fine but did it need 3 hours? That’s a firm no. In fairness, the slightly dawdling pace might have been better if it had been a bit less chilly.

I suggested that we stop in Carrickfergus on the way back so that I could buy socks (packing catastrophe). We drove into the centre of town but everything seemed to be closed at 4.40 on a Saturday which seemed extraordinary. We parked back in the harbour and began explorations on foot. There was an absolutely enormous Tesco but I have rarely met an approach quite so pedestrian hostile. I was genuinely unnerved by the murals on the way. I have spent quite a bit of time in Northern Ireland but I have never before felt nervous or unwelcome but I could not in all conscience recommend Carrickfergus which is a real shame. The castle is superb and the town itself could be lovely – some great buildings, a pedestrianised centre and only 10 miles from Belfast but the atmosphere is very unnerving. I must say the planning genius who put the main road between the town and the sea front didn’t help matters either. We pushed on back to lovely Moira which is definitely where we should have gone to buy socks. When we told our hosts about our trip, they all said variants of “Carrickfergus, Carrickfergus, you idiot Southerners, thank God you made it out alive.” It was more coded than that, “Oh Carrickfergus, that is a very…strange place.”

Anyway, dinner was again, a triumph but also yet again, slightly plagued by difficulties on the domestic front.

You will be pleased to hear that the house did not go up in flames though the soft fwump from inside the Aga gave everyone pause.

Sunday, March 5

Another superb breakfast and we waddled to the car and headed home. We stopped off in Strandfield outside Carlingford for lunch on the way home (recommended). I bought yet more flowers to supplement my very inadequate home grown spring flower showing. I said to Mr. Waffle, “I think I know what I would do differently next time we go up North”. “Well, we’d better get a move on to sort it out before it’s too late, we’re already so old that we are spending our Sunday afternoons in the garden centre,” he said gloomily. My garden centre attendance was definitely taken out of context but yet.

For your information, here is our “before” pots picture:

And now look!

I trust your own weekend was satisfactory.

Updated to add: filled with rage as former draft of this post has reappeared in my drafts looking like butter wouldnâ€™t melt in its mouth. If youâ€™re curious, yes, this version is better.

Each to Their Own

28 February, 2023
Posted in: Middle Child, Twins

I bought a new scented candle from this crowd. It was 15% off in the Gallery shop, I was inexorably drawn to it, like a moth to the flame.

I lit it the other evening. I got “strand” which is a nice smell reminiscent of, well, beaches.

“Have we had this before?” asked Dan. “Yes, I think so,” I said. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Smell really reminds you of places, doesn’t it?” “And times,” he said. “It really takes me back to playing FIFA career mode.”

Updated to add: candles are kept beside the Xbox.

Exhausted

9 February, 2023
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Twins, Youngest Child

Leaving the children to study, Mr. Waffle and I spent the long weekend enjoying ourselves on a series of walks which they were, obviously, devastated, to miss.

On Sunday we explored the joys of Howth and Sutton. It’s really close to the city but I felt like I was on holidays, exploring the unknown on my bike by the beach. Recommended.

Beautiful sunset as well. The picture really doesn’t do it justice.

We stopped off for a cup of tea in the Marine Hotel in Sutton which is an odd spot. They have very firm rules about when they will serve you. Mr. Waffle who doesn’t really list patience among his many virtues was not delighted to be told to wait outside when there were free tables in the restaurant. We got our tea eventually although it was a long drawn out process. We need an alternative tea venue.

Then on the Monday we went to Wicklow and walked to Lough Dan. It was very beautiful though a long downhill followed, inevitably by a long trek back up. Vigorous.

Then Mr. Waffle went away for work. He reminded me anxiously of all the things that needed to be done in his absence including bringing in the green bin. When I went out to get it, I discovered that he had in fact brought it in himself before he left. An absence of trust there.

I dropped him to the airport (a – I shouldn’t be surprised but I was – lengthy process) and spent an afternoon running around doing various dull though almost continuous tasks (I cannot wait to step down from the parents council; we are currently at – v polite – war in relation to a proposed new cycle lane outside the school). The next day was the same. In the absence of a maths teacher in school – please do not ask me – the neighbour’s child who is doing a PhD in maths arrived in to give the children a grind. It went alright I think but they are absolutely flattened.

I had lunch with a friend in her house out in the suburbs – a longish cycle it transpires – and as well as lunch she gave me a plant (still alive today) and a clutch of magazines that her Dutch mother-in-law keeps for me on the Dutch royal family (they’re in Dutch, it’s educational). Very thrilling.

I collected Mr. Waffle from the airport at 11 last night and, as I said to him, I have never been gladder to welcome him home. “Imagine,” said he, “if you were working as well.” I am imagining. I suppose I would manage but I would not enjoy it.

It’s mid-term next week, thank God, we all really need a break from school.

Mocks

2 February, 2023
Posted in: Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Twins, Youngest Child

Things are a bit tense here at Waffle Towers. The boys are doing their mocks and finding it trying. Yesterday evening I made them do an online session on how to do the Leaving Cert maths paper. Given that their maths teacher is on mat leave and the newly found replacement is a masters in engineering student (i.e. not a qualified teacher but any port in a storm) who is from abroad (i.e. has never done the Irish Leaving Cert), I thought it might be useful.

I reminded them of the session over an early dinner, the news was met with the levels of enthusiasm you might expect. Mr. Waffle made comforting noises as I insisted. “Why are you always bad cop?” asked Daniel. Good question. Mr. Waffle as the child of hippies is above competition, it’s all brother bear and sister moon and let’s go with the flow. Is this attitude going to get them through the exams? I doubt it.

After the online session, Daniel arrived down to give us the review. He conceded that it was actually quite useful but that he had logged off once the questions started as they were all a bit stupid.

Mr. Waffle joked, “There are no stupid questions just stupid people.” We looked at him. “Where’s brother bear now?” asked Daniel.

Anois Teacht an Earraigh

1 February, 2023
Posted in: Family, Ireland, Middle Child, Twins, Youngest Child

Today is the first day of Spring and my mother’s birthday. I still really miss her, I suppose I always will. She was so full of enthusiasm and joie de vivre and she loved birthdays.

It’s also the feast day of Saint Brigid – Ireland’s female patron saint – and to celebrate the end of Covid, we are having a new permanent holiday on the books on the first Monday of February. My mother would have been delighted. Her grandsons currently sitting their mock Leaving Certificate examinations are also grateful to St Brigid for this relief.

And this is the poem I always think of today. Not a great translation but it gives you the idea.

Working Our Way Through the Schliemann Layers

31 January, 2023
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Siblings, Twins

My sister and I cleaned out upstairs in our 93 year old aunt’s house. It was a bit weird because, as my sister pointed out, normally you do this kind of thing after someone dies but she was just downstairs. She’s moved her bedroom downstairs and doesn’t really come upstairs any more. Physically, she’s pretty well but she had a TIA a couple of years ago which means that mentally she is only alright. I mean she is alright, she’s living at home with support and she recognises us all and can chat and read the papers but her short term memory is pretty poor.

My aunt moved into the house – next door to my parents – about 40 years ago and, to be fair to her, she did a pretty thorough job of getting rid of stuff from the old house which was where she had lived with her mother and aunts and uncles. There were hardly any things left. My granny’s engagement ring, the (silver?) Douglas golf club trophy which my uncle Tommy won in 1930 and a couple of old photos and letters.

I remember my mother telling me that this was a picture of my father at school in South Pasadena, California in the late 1920s or early 1930s. I can’t find him in it but the clothes look right, I suppose, and that is certainly not Irish sunshine that the children are squinting into.

There is a description my mother began writing of our last family holiday together. She seems to have run out of steam about the time we got on the ferry which is…disappointing. However, not before pointing out that she wanted to follow a particular signpost for the ferry in the port but my father said to ignore it as these things are made for idiots and the obvious way to go was straight ahead. Sadly, history does not reveal who was right but I feel, somehow, that it was unlikely to have been my father.

My great uncle Dan’s pretty well-photographed trip to the continent in 1924 has survived as has his graduation picture. Here he is feeding the pigeons in Venice. Stay tuned for his time in Zermatt.

My great aunt Cecilia – some of whose things I have in my own house – is looking pretty jaunty in this picture from July 1921, an otherwise quiet time in Irish affairs etc. I was extremely keen to name the Princess Cecilia, even as a middle name, but was balked by husband’s point blank refusal to countenance such a thing. Alas.

My grandmother and grandfather look very young and happy in this picture. Especially my granny who by common consent was hilarious, if you were a grown up. I only knew her as a child though – she died when I was 12 or so – and I found her a bit formal and remote. I am assured that she adored me but I think she was not particularly interested in children and found grown ups more entertaining. And who could blame her?

I will not be taking questions on this at this time but for various reasons some of my parents’ stuff ended up in my aunt’s house. This, I assume, is why my mother’s piano exam results from 1946 has been preserved there. God, she hated learning the piano. She spoke about it with great bitterness; apparently the nun who taught her would rest her hands on my mother’s and every time my mother played a wrong note, the nun would dig into her with her nails. But look it got short term results – first class honours. Not sure that the long term legacy was exactly what her parents were hoping for.

There’s a picture of me aged 15 with the exact same hairstyle as I have now but, you know, a bit more slender and fresh faced. I’ve cut my brother out as, I understand, the internet never forgets and I’m not sure he wants to be remembered in his bowl haircut and Ghostbusters jumper. When I showed this picture to Daniel, he was shocked, “I sort of expected you to be wearing the same clothes you wear now, not real 80s clothes.” There you go. I wasn’t making up living through the 80s.

It’s so funny the things that survive and get passed down and the enormous bulk of things that disappear. I guess that’s the way it goes but it is strangely dismal how much is just gone forever.