belgianwaffle

Archives for July 2009

IKEA


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

IKEA has opened in Dublin. The first branch in the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Times ran several articles, there was a play (“Waiting for IKEA” – I am not joking) and the city is filled with those IKEA poster ads. You know the ones I mean. The nation is beside itself with excitement. It was discussed extensively at a dinner party in our house last Saturday night. I flaunted my superior knowledge of IKEA and its products (the Billy bookcase, the Expedit shelves, the Malm drawers, the inedible meatballs) until my husband glared at me and said “Yes, Anne knows all about Swedish flat packed furniture” and I was suitably quashed. I was also slightly amazed that none of our other guests had been to the establishment which supplied a depressing quantity of our furniture. They were excited and enthusiastic about IKEA and its works. Not quite as excited as the Irish Times on Saturday which observed:

Those who have not before ventured into an Ikea outlet are likely to be gobsmacked by their visit. It’s not just the scale of the store, but the sweep of its ambition. Ikea stores have more in common with attractions such as zoos or large garden centres than shops; they are destinations for a day out, where cheap and cheerful eating and putting the kids in the creche are as important as the shopping.

Still, I understand the enthusiasm from my superior perch. When I moved to Belgium for the second time in 1998, I had to buy furniture. I fell in love with IKEA. So cheap, so handy, so beautiful. As the years went by, I fell out of love, so cheaply made, so challenging to assemble and so exactly like what everyone else has. As my ultimate ambition becomes to get rid of all my IKEA furniture and replace it with slightly more unusual things I can find elsewhere, my contemporaries are desperate to hand over their hard earned cash to the Swedish giant. I am enjoying the feeling of smugness that accompanies me everywhere. I said proudly to my husband the other day, “I will never cross the threshold of IKEA in Dublin.” “Mmm,” he said, “did you say that we needed a big plastic box on wheels to store the boys’ train sets in? I wonder where we would find something like that?” “Trapped like a trap in a trap,” as Dorothy Parker would say.

Summer Timetable


Posted in: Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Twins

Fresh from our experience of Belgian summer “stages”, in the spring we started looking for ways to entertain our daughter in the month of July when she would be on holidays but we would not.

In March I signed her up for a week at the National Concert Hall. It cost €150. The week before the course started in July, they were advertising places for €75. The early worm gets the bird. The course started at 10 and none of the other aspiring musicians appeared to be the offspring of two parents who worked as there parents were able to drop them off and collect them. A task which we delegated to C, a nice French girl on our books. Nevertheless, it did run for more or less the duration of the school day and herself learnt to conduct and to sing:

Haydn’s Great Surprise
SURPRISE SYMPHONY – JOSEPH HAYDN
Listen very carefully/To this noted symphony/Maybe you will recognize/Haydn’s Great Surprise
Though it’s slow make no mistake/This piece will keep you awake/With a trick that typifies/Haydn’s Great Surprise
Did that outburst startle you?/Well that’s what it was meant to do/Don’t forget its name implies/Haydn’s Symphony’s the Great Surprise
Oh there’s that burst again/You will hear it now and then/Every time that we reprise/Haydn’s Great Surprise
And if you think you’re smart/Try to learn this piece by heart/See if you can memorize/Haydn’s Great Surprise
Just be careful goodness knows/While list-e-ning stay on your toes/Heed this warning to the wise/Haydn’s Symphony’s the Great Surprise

Then the next week, it was off to the Municipal Gallery which, for €60, undertook to entertain her from 10.30 to 12.00 for four days (closed Monday). On day one she spent the whole time “staring at just one painting, can you imagine how boring that is?” On inquiry, it transpired that the painting was Waterloo Bridge by Monet:
Waterloo Bridge.

I don’t think that she’s going to like the Impressionists. In any event they’ve got off to a rocky start. Day 2 was better; they made a drum and didn’t look at any art. Day 4 was rendered hideous, for me, by having to tackle the much loved babysitter C, in relation to the (unknown to us) boyfriend whom my husband met on returning to the house unexpectedly at lunch time on Day 3. She was contrite.

Weeks three and four were due to be spent in the Alliance Francaise for an eye watering €450. I hope that she will thank me one day when she can properly roll her French rs. In the first week she really seemed to like the course and it made French seem much more real to her to be speaking in French to children her own age again. In the past month, she had stopped speaking to her father in French though he has nobly kept us his role and suddenly she was back speaking to him in French again. I have to record, in proud parent fashion, that as her English reading has improved her French reading has come along in leaps and bounds and she is now at a stage where she can (more or less) read age appropriate comic book material which means that she is doing a lot more of French reading than when she could only read baby books. Anyhow, I felt very warm towards the Alliance until late Friday evening when we discovered an email telling us that the course for the following week had been cancelled. I fail to see how a two week course could have enough children in week one but not in week two. On finally, after many irritated hours on hold, getting through to reception on the following Tuesday afternoon, I was greeted by an outstanding member of staff. My irritations were many but she soothed them wonderfully by making noises of competent contrition. She made no excuses. She apologised with gratifying thoroughness. She asked me to send in my complaint in writing (something I have been itching to do) and she promised that she herself would see my refund cheque was issued that evening. I felt distinctly less chilly towards the Alliance than I had done over the weekend. Emergency arrangements were made as follows: the Princess went to her loving Dublin grandparents for a couple of days and I took part of yesterday and today off to whisk her down to Cork for the end of the week. My loving husband is off from today until the end of the summer; remaining holiday cover falls to him to deal with. And there’s plenty of it since the boys finished Montessori today (something you might think would merit a post on its own – I’m getting to it) and herself is now officially finished all her courses. Thank heavens we are all off on August 8 for a fortnight. Mr. Waffle might otherwise collapse from the strain.