belgianwaffle

Archives for January 2007

Poor me


Posted in: Princess

I haven’t had a sick day since the boys were born. It’s not that I haven’t been sick, it’s just that it’s always been more peaceful in the office than at home. All weekend I have had a miserable sore throat and this morning I just couldn’t face going in. I couldn’t face staying in either. Mr. Waffle offered to ask the upstairs neighbours for the use of their spare room but in the end I just barricaded myself in our bedroom. The cleaner said she would not clean it and the childminder, very kindly, said that she would take the boys to her house. The problem with the latter is that I now have to collect the Princess from school and have just dragged myself from my sick bed to do so. Not too sick to blog though, just thought you’d like to know that.

The trip to Ireland was relatively uneventful but I think Shannon to Cork to Dublin to Brussels is a lot of travelling to ask a little girl (and her sick Mummy) to do in three days and I don’t think I would try it again. The Princess was a little bewildered by it all and yesterday morning when I explained that we would be leaving that evening she said dolefully “but we’ve just arrived”.

Travelling with one child is delightfully easy. I could have wished that, as we queued to get on the plane at Shannon she hadn’t announced loudly “Jesus” (getting everyone’s attention) “Mummy when we went to the toilet, we forgot to wipe my bottom”. I was able to reassure our amused fellow travellers that, in fact, we hadn’t. Dublin airport was a drag as we landed at pier D which meant a trek through miles of prefab to get to baggage reclaim but otherwise uneventful. The Princess has her own bag for travelling and she likes to fill it with random items. This meant that on the way back to Brussels her bag contained a couple of books, a sandwich, a wicker cat, two finger puppets and an array of shells and stones which she had picked up on the beach with her loving grandparents that morning. I represented to her strongly that these would be better off in Dublin but to no avail. The bag weighed a ton. I relied on security to come to my rescue. After all we couldn’t take through a half bottle of water, surely they would insist that we remove our rocks, sufficient in number to bury the pilot but, alas, no. We could have stoned the pilot to death with our supply but they didn’t care.

So coming in to Brussels airport I was carrying her coat, my coat, doggy, her enormously heavy bag and my handbag. I suppose I was better off than Charlie McCreevy who was sitting in row 1 on the plane. The air hostess had solicitously packed his bag into an overhead bin in row 5 and he was impatiently watching the plane empty while hoping that he would eventually be able to get it. Oh how the mighty are humbled by the disappearance of business class.

That is all. I am off to collect herself, place her tenderly in front of “Barbie of Swan Lake” and return to my sick bed.

Why my poor mother has a lot to put up with


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

My mother: So, Alf is coming tomorrow to give me an estimate for painting the kitchen.

My father and I in unison: “Where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.”

Alf did come in due course and it turns out that his son runs for Ireland and had just had to turn down a scholarship to a US university because he failed maths. The irony is that Alf’s nephews and nieces are extremely good at maths having competed in the maths olympics (there’s a whole world out there, people). His sister married a mathematical genius who, incidentally, is my friend the heart surgeon’s mother’s brother. Are you still with me? Did I mention that I come from a city that’s really a small town?

On Friday the Princess and I travelled to Cork with friends from Brussels. These friends have somewhat complex domestic arrangements. They are a gay couple. They come to Cork every second weekend to visit a daughter who lives with her older brother, her lesbian mother and her mother’s partner. The lesbian couple and their children used to live in London where, I’m sure, this kind of thing is not unusual at all but I have to say I felt twinges of foreboding when they moved back to Cork. Unnecessary. Not only does no one care but there is another lesbian couple with children living on the same estate as them. In many ways, the world is getting better and better. However, it turns out that the child’s paternal grandmother is from my mother’s home town in Co. Limerick and we know all about them, oh yes, including my friend’s aunt the nun. My mother is curious to know what she makes of it all but religious are very right on these days.

Do you ever wonder why I crave the anonymity of the big city?

New world order


Posted in: Work

The Princess and I are going to Ireland for the weekend leaving the men to fend for themselves. Due to the Princess’s chronic inability to get out the door on time and my belated discovery that I would have to leave work at 11.00 to get a 3.00pm Ryanair flight, I have taken the day off work. I told my lovely, right on boss and, of course, it was fine. We had a more general conversation, as follows:

My lovely, right on, boss: So, J [his wife] has put her back out and there’s a problem with the car so I’m taking E to and from the creche every day on the bus.

Me: Sympathetic murmur.

Conversation moves to more work related topics.

My lovely etc. boss: So, I sent the papers out at about 6.30 last night.

Me: 6.30? 6.30?? What time does E’s creche close?

My lovely etc. boss: Oh I’d collected her by then. I sent the mail from the bus while holding E on the other knee.

Me: Goodness, men are the new women.

The final insult


Posted in: Belgium

I drove into work this morning because it was so cold. On the way in, trying to change lanes (on the little ring, if you know Brussels), I had my wing mirror clipped by a speeding large car. I glared at him balefully and adjusted my mirror which was undamaged. At the next junction an elderly and oddly dressed gentleman came up to my window and tapped on it crossly. “You damaged my car” he said. We pulled in and had a look. Alas, his wing mirror had a small dent. It is so typical of me that as we sat in my car, I decided that, really, it was all my fault. This, despite the fact that he was wreathed in alcohol fumes. He wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t entirely sober either. He was retired. And despite his large car, which he confided was a hire car, he looked very poor and was wearing a strange assortment of tracksuit bottoms and tops. We filled in the accident form. This being Belgium, we ended up filling in the form in Dutch which neither of us understood very well because he had no copy in French and I only had an English copy. I dutifully marked that I had been trying to pull into his lane but refrained from remarking that he smelt of drink and had been driving very fast. Partly, it was my wishy-washiness but partly it was because I felt we could probably bear the cost of repair considerably better than he could. Anyway, we parted relatively amicably. However, after he had left the car, I noticed that there was a big damp patch on the passenger seat where he had been sitting. I suppose that we’ll all be old, drunk and incontinent some day.

Guest spot


Posted in: Siblings

The feckless brother has written this for your delectation:

Got over to Brussels this morning on an early morning flight, had to get to the airport very early to deny one of Micheal O’Leary’s minions the pleasure of saying the check in desk is closed and which part of no refund don’t you understand. As you can imagine I was in peak form for a community service visit staying in a house with three exhausting but adorable kids. First stop was to pick up the eldest girl the Princess, she was in top form terrorising the lunch time customers of an elegant Brussels eaterie. Not being used to the business of looking after kids I found her behaviour exhibited a certqin degree of stuborness which I was inclined to put down to genetics but my elder sibling assured me it is was the way all 3 year old kids were. Next up was the playground, with lethal looking monkey bars climbing walls and slides. The place reminded me of an unfortunaye incident a few years previously I managed to sprain my ankle trying to impress a girl on the monkey bars after pub closing time……….suffice it to say the outcome wasn’t exactly what I had hoped for [i.e. three weeks on crutches]. Fortunately today’s visit did not leave me mentally and physically broken as the Princess took to the playground with a vengence; she made a sand cake for me and as I looked like I was about to eat it I could see the princess thinking “he’s thick enough to do this” and she duly warned me that it was a pretend cake. I’ve been called away now to play a boardgame by my niece, I fear I’m going to test her patience as she explains the rules to me.

Nervous


Posted in: Siblings, Work

A while back a colleague said to me “you don’t have a blog or something daft like that?” and instead of replying in a suitably Jesuitical manner “why would you ask me something like that, do I look like I’m 16?”, I was caught on the hop and I said “yes”. He is the first person I’ve ever worked with who has known about the blog. It’s a little unnerving. We are friends as well as colleagues and I trust him to keep my secret safe (are you listening J?) but yet, the whole Chinese wall thing is mildly unsatisfactory. My colleague rubbed his hands in glee when he found out and said “it’s like being gay and wanting not to be outed”. Who would have thought this blog would bring me such a range of new experiences?

And then there’s another friend and former colleague who has heard that the blog exists and is, I am paranoidly convinced, slowly but surely scanning the blogosphere until he finds me. Not that there’s anything here I haven’t already told people; as one friend memorably remarked to me, “you would tell your life story to the person beside you at the bus stop”. Do other people’s colleagues know that they blog? Do they still have paid employment? Answers on a postcard, please.

In other news, my feckless brother is coming to visit tomorrow and as my mother says “you must be absolutely delighted”. Yes, yes, I am, of course I am. I just had to remind her that he has faults but she remains annonyingly unconvinced.