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Archives for December 2008

Reading

1 December, 2008
Posted in: Reading etc.

For most of my time in recent months, I have been recovering from the move.  I have therefore been rereading as this is all I felt strong enough for – Georgette Heyer, Father Brown, Myles na gCopaleen and Saki.  However, recently, I have begun to recover (hurrah) and have tried the selection below.  I am curious – what do you reread when life is becoming slightly overwhelming?

“When will there be Good News?” by Kate Atkinson

I think that Kate Atkinson is a wonderful writer.  I have read all her books and I have yet to be disappointed.  She has great plots, interesting characters and she writes so beautifully and insightfully that I sometimes sigh wistfully at her brilliance.  When will there be another new Kate Atkinson book?

“Ni d’Adam, ni d’Eve” by Amelie Nothomb

This is the third Amelie Nothomb book I have read and it is far less enjoyable than the other two.  It has its moments, I must concede and it can by quite funny but not funny enough to offset her vague musings on Japan.  She is, incidentally, quite clearly, nutty as a fruit cake.  This both adds to her work (funny) and detracts from it (no, no, too mad).  Still she is very Belgian and that must be worth something.

“This Year it Will be Different” by Maeve Binchy

A collection of short stories, some of them quite ancient.  All about Christmas and all about men having affairs.  Reading them all one after another does make me wonder a little about Maeve’s personal life.  Perhaps she only married late because her heart was broken by a philandering bastard.

“Heat” by Bill Buford

Mr. Waffle recommended this.  It’s about a man’s attempt to master (and I do mean master) Italian cooking while his very patient wife supports him.  It has its moments.  He comments that “seafood with butter – or any other dairy ingredient – verges on culinary blasphemy”.  I know this to be true because once, in a not at all fancy restaurant in Italy, I asked for parmesan to go on seafood pasta and there was some whispering in the back and then not one but two waiters came up to tell me that I just couldn’t have parmesan with seafood.

“Où on va papa?” by Jean-Louis Fournier

This is a book written by a man who had two handicapped children.  I found it very disturbing, very good and entirely compelling.  In public discourse, parents don’t seem to be allowed to say that having a handicapped child is very, very hard and a huge disappointment.  This man has no such hesitations.  This book is, I think, supposed to be funny and there is a certain amount of black humour but overwhelmingly, it is sad.  There is an aching sense of loss, of what might have been, of what his boys’ lives would have been like had they not been “different”.  It is a brilliant book.

“Mothering” by Rudolph Schaffer

I picked this up in my mother-in-law the psychologist’s house.  It dates from the 1970s so all the information may not be entirely up to date. I nearly gave up early on when we had two pages on the infant’s sucking reflex followed by another couple on sleep patterns.

However, I quite enjoyed this bit later on:

“With increasing occupational and social outlets for women a wife need no longer disappear into the confines of the home on marriage, with nothing to do except have and care for children…Having children should be only for those who want children and will actively enjoy children”.

I’m not sure that actively enjoying necessarily follows from wanting, however, I am touched by his vision of the brave new world that the proper use of contraception will entail.

I was lured into reading the book by seeing the author’s description of the Ik tribe in Northern Uganda but this is something of a sensationalist moment compared to the remainder of the text.  He says:
“The Ik had formerly been a nomadic tribe of hunters and gatherers….[but] confined to a limited barren area…[on the brink of starvation]…[there] came a virtual disintegration of their social organization: the family as an institution almost ceased to exist, and in the wake of the struggle to remain alive there followed an utterly selfish attitude to life that displace all positive emotions like love, affection and tenderness….Children were regarded as useless appendages who were turned out of the parents’ hut when they reached the age of three years, compelled from then on to make their own way without help or guidance from any adult and certainly without any parental love or affection.  Consequently one rarely saw a parent with a child except accidentally or incidentally; when a child hurt himself by falling into the fire the only reaction was amusement; if a predator came and carried off a baby the mother was merely gald at no longer having to care for it.  One never saw a parent feed a child over the age of three – on the contrary, such children were regarded as competitors from whom food had to be hidden; if consequently one died of starvation that merely meant one mouth the fewer.”
Not only is it sensationalist but it may not even be true.  Wikipedia has some serious reservation about Mr. Turnbull’s research on the Ik, on which the paragraph above is based.

Oh well, I see Mr. Schaffer had a new edition out in 1984 so doubtless he fixed it up then.

Random update on my children

5 December, 2008
Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Michael, Princess

Michael is not a great believer in metaphor and he does not like inaccuracy.

When he hurts himself, I will often say “my poor baby” and through his sobs, Michael will say furiously “I’m not a baby, I’m a big boy”.  Somebody at Montessori school has sold him the line that, “juice makes me small and water makes me big” and he will now only drink water in the hopes of growing up big and strong.  In fact, he doesn’t really like sweet things and when his brother and sister get a biscuit, he always has a cracker instead as he doesn’t like biscuits.  Isn’t this odd?

Michael is morbidly anxious that the family may be split up and always insists that when we go out we stick together like glue.

This morning, Daniel, as always, woke up first.  As I lifted him out of the cot (maybe for their 18th birthdays, they’ll get beds) I said “Up, up, up with a fish”.  And Michael said from some distance under the duvet, “My brother is not a fish.”Michael also likes to say “actually” all the time.  I fear he may have picked that up from me, actually.

Michael’s hair is finally starting to grow back after having been shaved off in September.  I remember shortly after his scalping I got the train to Cork with the children and the lady opposite asked, “Are they twins?” To which I said yes.  “And the little boy is a cousin?”  I explained that the boys were the twins and the little girl their big sister.  “Oh,” she said “it’s just that his hair was so different, I didn’t think that they could be in the same family”.

Daniel howled this evening from the moment his sister taunted him by singing the wrong song until almost an hour later when we finally wrestled him into bed, having wrestled him out of his clothes, into the bath, into a towel and into his pyjamas.  We are exhausted.  He is very strong and has an enormous capacity for misery, poor mite.

He is also an outstanding mimic with a great memory.  To hear him doing Peter and the Wolf from start to finish is enough to bring a warm glow to any middle class parent’s heart.

The Princess was awarded “Gaeilgeoir na seachtaine” (Irish speaker of the week) at school today.  We are unclear whether this is in recognition of her Irish prowess or because her name was drawn out of a hat.  We are, nevertheless, proud and she has some crayons and paints for her pains.She has just departed for bed in a state of high excitement as Saint Nicolas (who comes to Belgian children on the night of the 5th) may come to us as honorary Belgians.  We have carefully left out shoes for him to fill with sweets, beer and biscuits (there was some concern that we have no speculoos, but he will just have to manage) and a carrot for his donkey, just in case.  I have told her that he only comes when children are asleep.  She pointed out to me that the boys were already asleep and it would be most unfair of him not to come under these circumstances.  I beat a hasty retreat uttering dire but unsustainable warnings of what would happen, if she failed to drop off.

The Princess has started ballet on Saturday mornings.  I did ballet for 7 years.  For 6 of those 7 years I wore white tights, a white polo neck, black ballet shoes and my hair in a net.  In my seventh year, I graduated to peach shoes and a leotard.  For her first lesson last week the Princess wore the required gear, namely: white tights (some things never change), a blue leotard, peach shoes, a blue cross-over cardigan thingy and a blue filmy skirt (not a tutu, that would just be too much).  Did I mention that I walked to school barefoot as well?

Petty

9 December, 2008
Posted in: Work

I like my job and I like my colleagues but due to a series of administrative glitches, I do not yet have an office.   I try to be above caring but I do not like it oh no I do not. I am huddled in a large room with other people.  I want to be alone so that I can talk to my childminder in private or even concentrate on some work.  Nor do I particularly want to hear other people’s phone conversations.  Due to a series of canny career choices, I have not had to share office space very often in my professional life and I am not enjoying it on this occasion.

I am being driven demented by the two lovely, lovely men who work in the corner and have some rather annoying verbal tics.

Lovely man 1:  Well, they won’t be attending the meeting as such.

Lovely man 2: I can only say they ought to be there.

Lovely man 1: They would know that as such.

LM2: I can only say the chair will be disappointed.

LM1: They will be sending their apologies as such.

LM2: Will they?  I can only say that it is a mistake not to come.

I was cruelly telling a friend this and asked whether I had any verbal tics and was quite disconcerted to find that he said, with some relief, “yes, you say fabulous all the time”.

I imagine that when I am not there, scene in the corner goes something like this.

LM1: It’s not that I object to the word ‘fabulous’ as such.

LM2: I can only say that it’s a good word in its place.

LM1: It’s just that she says it all the time as such.

Slightly disturbing

12 December, 2008
Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Michael, Princess

Princess: You may kiss the bride.

Me: Eh?

Her: Who says that?

Me: The priest when people get married.

Her: I want to kiss a boy.

Me: You can kiss your brothers whenever you want.

Her: Another boy.

Me: Is this what you talk about at school.

Her: Yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, the child is five.

In other news, I have captured Daniel (with some interference) doing bits from Peter and the Wolf.  Only the really enthusiastic will want to follow all of these links.

Seasonal Setpiece

15 December, 2008
Posted in: Family

On Saturday we got the Christmas tree.

When I was a child we had an artificial Christmas tree which my parents had bought for their first Christmas together.  Forty one years later they still have that tree though it has had to be repaired with tin foil a number of times.   Nobody can say that they haven’t had value for it.  I hated that tree and I vowed that, once I had a house of my own, I would always have a real tree.

The trip up to the shop to choose the tree was marred by herself insisting that she wanted to cycle up.  The boys piled into the car and I walked up beside her muttering moodily that if she got tired of cycling uphill, I wasn’t going to carry the bike.

There was one Christmas tree left when we got to the shop.  We took it.  When we got it home and unwrapped it from its net, it turned out to boast particularly dense and luxuriant foliage around its midriff and none at all at its legs.  We manhandled it into the appropriate space and it stuck out its fingers into all of the surrounding area, dislodging papers and poking books and small children, even as I write, it is hanging menacingly over my left shoulder.

The children were very excited and instantly began decorating without allowing time to stand the tree up straight, remove the overhanging branches or take off their coats.  Mr. Waffle and I became a little tense and started barking at them to stand back.  They got cross back.

I put on a CD of Christmas music but Daniel insisted that we took it off and put on “Peter and the Wolf” instead.  Fine, fine, fine.

We chopped at the tree.  The Princess screamed.  Her father ordered her out to sit on the stairs and think about her sins.  Her brothers, ever her loyal defenders, hurled themselves at the door yelling “my sister, my sister, let my sister in”.  Mr. Waffle and the Princess departed to do the grocery shopping, the boys entertained themselves with a book and I finished off decorating the misshapen tree.  I asked the boys to turn off the lights which they did with great glee and the three of us spent 2.5 seconds looking at the lights before the boys whizzed back round the room and turned all the lights on again.

Sigh.

Cupboard love

17 December, 2008
Posted in: Boys, Michael, Princess

Michael:  Are we going to grandma and grandad’s house?

Me: Not today, sweetheart.

Him: Hysterical sobs.

Me: Why do you want to see grandma and grandad so badly?

Him: Because their house is warm.  I’m always freezing here.

As you can tell, the insulation crisis continues unchecked.

I was relating this hilarious tale to a colleague and she became very concerned on my behalf.  I was bemused; when I was a child it was completely normal to be frozen all the time, I used to have to get dressed under the blankets in the mornings.  This Celtic Tiger has a lot to answer for.

Meanwhile, herself is busy practising for the nativity play: “Ní raibh aon leaba le fáil do Mhuire agus Iosaef” [Go on, non-Irish speakers, guess what it means using only your knowledge of infant nativitiy plays as a guide]. You may care to consider this in plain clothes (not quite the right text) or dress rehearsal version.

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