Last night the Princess asked her parents why there were pictures of the judge everywhere (she meant the Taoiseach – separation of powers is a mystery to the Princess, she regards the executive and judiciary as interchangeable). She spends a lot more time pounding the mean streets of the city and she likes to read everything and election posters are unavoidable. We explained that there were a number of elections looming. The local elections where we would vote for people to run Dublin and the European elections where we would vote for people to.. um…go to Brussels and Strasbourg. “And,” added Mr. Waffle, “don’t forget the by-election.” I consider myself very literate in these matters but I am having trouble working out whom they want me to vote for and for which position. It’s all very exciting though. The other night a young fella came knocking at our door urging us to vote Green in general and more specifically for him. Following a brief chat we established that he had been lectured by a former classmate of mine and our friend, the Dutch Mama when he was at college. Is it any wonder that there is a statistic that something like 90% of Irish people know their local T.D. personally?