When two cars have a minor collision, I refer to it as a “tip” or even “a little tip”. Mr Waffle has said that he has never heard anyone else say this and it must be a Cork expression. Can this be possible? Everyone in Cork I checked with was aware of the expression but no Dubliners. Anyone else use this outside the Pale or further afield? Answers appreciated; I’m at the desk-based research stage of this argument.
Archives for July 2017
New Irish
I was down in Cork a while ago and visiting my mother in the nursing home. One of the nurses said she had been in Dublin the previous day. “What for?” I asked. She’d been at the citizenship ceremony. She’s Indian and as, apparently, India doesn’t allow for dual citizenship, she agonised about whether to apply for Irish citizenship or not but in the end she did. She was delighted. The natural instinct of almost all Irish people is to be self-deprecating and I was desperate to point out all the disadvantages of her new status but it didn’t seem like the moment so I just said, “Congratulations.” The fact that she was so pleased made me feel proud to be Irish which is not really something you get a lot as an Irish person, we’re often a bit moany about Ireland and I, personally, am on the subs bench for the Irish Olympic whinging team. Maybe time to reconsider.
Maybe Print Is Not Dead After All
Mr. Waffle has a subscription to the Economist [that’s even worse than it sounds, I got it for him for Christmas, it was that or more socks]. It lies around the house but I am never really tempted to pick it up. Daniel, on the other hand, is rivetted. He firmly believes Macron will save Europe, just so’s you know. I was talking about this unusual choice of reading material with my friend from Belfast, “I mean,” I said, “I didn’t even watch the news growing up, let alone read the Economist. Did you?” “Well,” he said, “it was the 70s and I was growing up in North Belfast so much of the news was very local, so yeah, all the time.” Well, circumstances alter cases.
I asked Michael and Daniel whether they had seen Trump and the orb. “No,” said Michael peering over my shoulder on to twitter which is now my source of all news. “Do you want to see, Daniel?” I asked. “No thanks,” he said, “I saw it in the Economist”
Oh Cecilia, You’re Breaking My Heart
My father is 92 and my aunt has just turned 88. When I had dinner with them recently, I asked my aunt about toys of her youth. “Well,” she said, “I remember I had a beautiful rag doll called Cecilia.” “You can’t possibly remember that after all these years,” objected my father. “Yes, I do,” she countered, “because she was named after aunt Cecilia who made her for me and you took her and nailed her to a tree when you were playing cowboys and indians.” Can I reassure anxious readers that sibling relations have improved since the early 1930s? But, poor Cecilia, never forgotten.
Mildly related: I wanted to call the Princess Cecilia after the very same aunt but Mr. Waffle put his foot down. I made her take it for her confirmation name instead because that was before she was a teenager and I had some influence; recently she has been torturing me by saying, “But did I really take Cecilia or did I just tell you that?”
The Family Walk: An Endangered Species
Since the children have been very small, Mr. Waffle and I have been taking them on family walks which they tolerate and occasionally enjoy in fact but despise and loath in prospect. We haven’t had so many weekends to go on family walks recently with various other family responsibilities to attend to but one Sunday recently, we had an opportunity to go on a family walk. I told them about it a couple of days in advance, the children were all bitter and Herself turned down several invitations to hang around with her friends as she told me with great bitterness. As she had been seeing them all pretty much 24 hours a day since school finished my withers remained unwrung.
On the day itself it took us forever to get out of the house. They were all grumpy and we arrived at Carlingford at lunchtime. I’d brought some baguette to keep us going but a majority of the party felt it would be best to have lunch first. I was not among the majority. I sat through lunch in the pub brooding on my wrongs. The others were cheered though but then we started on the actual walk and there was a bit of “I don’t want to” from herself and the whole thing was a somewhat tedious. We walked uphill for about 45 minutes and we saw some cows.
Daniel and Michael recover from our epic uphill trek:
I had hoped we would walk to a deserted village but by the time we started it was too late. A tamer route was substituted but at the top of the 45 minute uphill, the party was a little unsure about directions so we walked back down the way we had come to everyone else’s delight and my fury. The days of whinging beforehand, the one hour and twenty minute drive to get there, the lunch in the pub, the moaning when we started off and all of this for 45 minutes uphill and about 20 back down (it was quite steep). I was truly fit to be tied. They were all a bit contrite at this point and sent me off to an antique shop to browse while they scuttled away for ice cream. I didn’t buy anything but I did find a replica of my duck jug; it turns out he’s available in good bric-Ã -brac shops everywhere.
When I rejoined my family they offered to drive to the deserted village; that was really not the point. God, even writing this, I am remembering how very peeved I was.
I am not sure how much longer we can keep dragging the children on walks and have me retain my sanity. In more positive walk related news, Mr. Waffle and I went for a walk together in Wicklow and it was beautiful and nobody was cross at all.
Here’s a picture.
Yet, somehow, my ire has abated and, even now, I am thinking of making them all schlep up to enjoy this view when the Princess’s French exchange comes in July. My poor, poor little family.
The Garden of Earthly Delights
We have a small urban back garden and an even smaller front garden. Notwithstanding its miniature size, until recently, it was a bit out of control. We paid a very efficient and reliable man to make it beautiful. It felt a bit profligate, to be honest, it’s not as though the garden is massive and I feel we ought to be able to manage ourselves but we weren’t. And now, joy of joys, it is delightful. Now that the weeds are under control, I feel able to buy and add plants myself. I spent €20 at the church garden party on plants (nearly flooring the delighted child on sales) and planted them all; the mild thrill. Yes indeed, the return to horticulture is complete. In other news, I was in charge of the ice cream wafer stall on the hottest day of the year with no fridge; I spent the day running in and out to the priests’ kitchen and doling out rather melty, sticky wafers. Still we sold out.