belgianwaffle

Twins

Summer – At Last


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

Today was a beautiful day and instead of doing lots of domestic admin (which I’m not doing now either, you will note), I seized the day, hopped on my bike and took the commuter train out to the seaside.

I stopped in town to have a look at the Liffey swim. At least they had nice weather but, mmm, is that water clean?

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I must say, the seaside was looking lovely.

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As we frequently (rather inaccurately) say on a fine day here, “You could be in the South of France”.

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I had a lovely swim. Poor Michael was in a college clubs and socs meeting all day (he is on the committee of a society) where they told them how not to embezzle money. Herself had gone back to London for a party where it was raining. Daniel opted to stay at home and play on the x-box. I can tell you, I was winning here. Though Mr. Waffle, who was in the hammock in the back garden, may have been giving me a run for my money.

It would be too much to hope that I could also take a flattering picture; doubtless some kind of karma as I took it to post smugly in the family group chat and now I am posting it smugly here. As I took the picture, I did reflect that all my life I have been leaving bags full of valuable possessions on beaches and they have never been stolen. A happy thought. The cover the bag with a towel trick really works, I guess.

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Mmm, is that water clean? Probably not very, I fear. Never mind, I am testing my immune system.

I then joined the very long queue for an ice cream.

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Worth it.

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In fact, all was well until I got back to the station nearest home. Alas. Three flights.

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And, after a day filled with excitement, I’m going to the cinema tonight. Thrills. It’s the new “Beetlejuice”. I re-watched the 1988 one last night in preparation. I will report back. I know you’re on the edges of your seats out there.

I feel I have got excellent value for this year’s summer.

Re-entry


Posted in: Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Siblings, Twins, Work, Youngest Child

We came back last weekend and then I put in a full week in work Monday to Friday. The longest week I have ever put in. It is scarcely believable that I have to go back tomorrow. A former colleague once advised me to never start work after holidays on a Monday. Advice which I frankly would have done very well to follow.

At mass last weekend I met the granny of one of Michael’s school mates who informed me that Michael was a charming child and that she had a lovely chat with him at the bus stop. She is originally from Bere Island so we have our Cork identity in common and my sister’s partner’s parents have a house on Bere island only up the road from her family home so, you know, small world and all that. I came home and told Michael I had met his former school mate’s granny and that she had said how much she had enjoyed chatting to him at the bus stop. “Ah,” said he, “was that who she was? I thought she was just a random old lady.”

Since our return home, many of our spare moments have been spent wrestling with the garden which was almost entirely out of control and still teeters on the brink. It is apple jelly season with a vengeance, however, Falling Fruit who have come and stripped my apple trees in the past have promised that they will come in late September. That could be too late, I could be buried in apple jelly by then.

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Myself and Daniel went to see the film “Kneecap“. It’s about a rap band from Belfast. I thought it was funny but probably not ideal for parent child viewing. I read some reviews afterwards and I quite enjoyed the Guardian one where it referred to one of the characters – known as mo chara – as “Chara” throughout as though it’s some kind of surname. Mo chara is the Irish for my friend and cara is the root word which only takes a “h” because of the mo/my. Look, we Irish speakers have to get our kicks where we can.

No sooner had she arrived home than herself went to Wales for a 21st. Sooner her than me. Coincidentally, my sister and her partner are in Wales also for a family wedding on his side. If there are any disasters in Wales, we are extremely exposed this weekend.

Mr. Waffle and I went on a tour of the former military school in the Phoenix Park this morning (now a geriatric hospital). Good chapel work (one of each obviously, though the Protestant one converted to Catholic at some point which seems slight overkill and now both are closed to the public and one surrounded by slightly menacing deer) but overall a bit dull.

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They had an old phone booth which the guide told us they had had to lock as tourists kept going in to take selfies. I am surprised by this as it is a bit off the beaten track and seems a relatively harmless use of outdated infrastructure in any event, but there you are. As I peered in, I was reminded of how when someone picked up the phone you had to press button B so that the money would go in or else you would be cut off. I remember a girl in school said that she enjoyed ringing Australian numbers and hearing confused Australians pick up (in the middle of the night, I assume) before they were cut off as, obviously, she never pressed button B. What a time to be alive. As I say to the children, when I was young we had to make our own fun.

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Full details on our Baltic holiday odyssey to follow. Something for you to look forward to.

Pre-holiday Round Up


Posted in: Family, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Reading etc., Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

Last weekend Mr. Waffle, Michael and I went out to Dun Laoghaire for lunch. We met Mr. Waffle’s sister and her little girl. The latter very bitter to be fooled into walking the pier after lunch. Her mother asked her “Do you want to walk to the end of the pier or just as far as where it bends around?” My niece knew, at some level, that like generations of children before her she was being had. Michael sympathised. My sister-in-law maintains that she loved walking the pier when she was a child. I’m going to call it: unlikely. Much like her abiding belief that it never rained on family holidays in Kerry when she was a child (a belief which is not shared by her older siblings).

Michael drove us out to Dun Laoghaire. It was pretty painless to be fair to him and I think the time is coming when he will need to take his driving test. There is a 12 week waiting list so he’ll need to do it when he gets back from holidays. He is unenthused. But think of the saving on our insurance bill.

Mr. Waffle and I went to see Twister. Maybe it is doing great box office but it was pretty terrible. After the lights had gone down an elderly person came in alone and sat near me. Mr. Waffle whispered to me – did I know who the person was? I did not. Mr. Waffle identified him as a very senior person in a very serious and important job. I found it quite touching that he was making time in his life for Twister. I hope he enjoyed it more than we did.

Michael has kept the existence of his siblings, if not secret, then certainly not front and centre, in his relationship with his new college friends. Unfortunately evidence of his siblings is available in the house. He was chagrined when he invited over one of his friends who looked at the picture of his older sister on the landing and said, “Is that your sister? I was on a course with her.” Again, the size of Ireland makes it hard to keep a sense of mystery alive.

Herself is in London doing an internship having spent a couple of weeks in Estonia brushing up on her Russian (the obvious location for this activity being currently unavailable). She got back to London late in the evening and I followed her progress with some anxiety, worried that she would miss the last train from Stansted. Funniest message of the evening was her description of running to get her luggage from the carousel: “I sent a group of West Ruislip Scouts scattering like bowling pins.” You will be pleased to hear that she made the train and is now in her aunt, uncle and cousin’s lovely house in the lap of luxury. They are over here and will be staying a couple of days in our house and also, taking our car. I am inordinately pleased that we are all getting value from our available assets.

If all goes according to plan, by the time you read this, I will be on a plane to the Baltics where we will be disporting ourselves for three weeks. When we went to Argentina last year, I spent the day before we went tidying the bookshelves. Herself felt that this was not the most useful way to spend my time at that moment. She said that I am a victim of “stress tidying”; whenever I am worried about something, I start tidying up. Over the last 12 months I have noticed that this is correct. This may be why I have the tidiest office in my building. Never mind, there are certainly worse vices. And the good news is that this trip to the Baltics has not entailed an entire bookshelf re-organisation. Perhaps I am not as stressed as I was before our epic trip to South America. On the other hand, I do remember that the last time we went to the Baltics en famille we missed the plane so perhaps I need to be more stressed?

Speaking of Argentina, some considerable time ago we sent some presents to people we had met in the North of the country which never arrived. We were resigned to the fact that they were lost forever (contents plus not inconsiderable cost of postage – €43 since you’re asking). But would you look what arrived back just before the holidays? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this parcel has been to South America and back. Sigh.

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Things


Posted in: Family, Middle Child, Princess, Siblings, Twins, Youngest Child

My sister has been cleaning out the attic of my parents’ house. A vast undertaking. My experience in the house where I grew up has made me very wary of acquiring too many things in my own. My mother always said that she was not part of the throwaway generation (note the old implied insult there, I loved my mother but she was still my mother, if you know what I mean). She meant it. They kept everything, the useful mixed in with the emphatically useless: carpet cut offs; boxes of paperbacks; silverware; children’s toys; old photos; my grandmothers’ hats and kid gloves; pots and pans; broken furniture; old correspondence; copybooks from the 30s, and 40s; you name it, it was there. To be fair to my parents, they did grow up at a time when Ireland was poor and people did keep things which we would not today. But even allowing for this, I think they were big keepers. I suppose they weren’t helped either by moving from a very large house to an Edwardian semi-D.

I feel my sister is so much more cheerful now that she has sorted through this mountain of things and – epic achievement – emptied the attic. I, unlike my parents, am always giving things away and encouraging my children to do likewise. I have discovered through Olio, that there appears to be someone who wants everything, although the effort required to get it to them can be considerable. Daniel and Michael spent a weekend in Cork helping their aunt with the attic clearance and I was gratified to hear Daniel say that I was quite right to be constantly disposing of stuff. He was horrified by the volume of things.

The most impressive thing that I ever encountered was an English woman I met in Brussels who was moving home to London. Her flat in Brussels had been large and her flat in London was much smaller. Instead of trying to repurpose her Belgian furniture and possessions, she sold or gave them all away (I still have two of her prints framed on my landing) and just kept a couple of souvenir items. “It’s a different place, it needs different things,” she explained. While I don’t know that I could ever do that, I think it is an admirable attitude. I gave my daughter some of my mother’s rings. Seeing the Princess wear them and remembering my mother wearing them makes me very happy and brings me more joy than all of the contents of the attic. I suppose I must caveat this by saying I have no idea what all the contents of the attic are.

The older I get the more I think people can be weighed down by things. My sister says that she heard an older woman say to a young woman in a shop once that there is a time for acquiring and a time for disposing and perhaps this is also true. I like to think that I was always restrained in my acquiring and by nature a disposer but how then to explain my posters of Venice from the 90s which my sister found in the attic?

P.S. Happy Belgian National Day

Family Holiday or Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth 2


Posted in: Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

As the children get older, the whole family holiday thing is getting a bit more complex. We’re going to the Baltics in August and people will be coming and going and the planning and organising has nearly killed us all.

I thought Argentina last summer would be our last full family holiday but I’m not entirely sure that this will be the case. Argentina was great when we were there (though a little tiring and perhaps not all members of the group were equally enthusiastic all the time) and since we came home we have often spoken of it. I pointed out to my loving family that it has had the bonding effect I had been hoping for. Michael said, “Have you heard of trauma bonding Mum?”

Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth etc.


Posted in: Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Twins

Mr. Waffle is a great fact checker on the internet. He’s probably one of the only people who uses it properly.

One night Daniel and I were at home alone together and we watched a film. “Who’s that?” I said pointing to a vaguely familiar actor. Daniel didn’t know. “What else has he been in, can you look it up?” I asked him, missing Mr. Waffle’s instant response time.

From his perch lying on the sofa, Daniel said “I’m not your Wikipedia lapdog.”

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An earlier photo of the same group on the sofa