belgianwaffle

Family

Revolutionary Heroes as Crisps


Posted in: Family, Reading etc.

Recently someone painted a junction box with a mash-up tribute to revolutionary hero Michael Collins and the tasty snack known as the chickatee. The artist had written Mickatee on the box over the picture of Collins done in the radioactive yellow associated with the snack. People went bananas (insert your own snack joke here).

My loving family found this very inspiring and came up with a range of crisp/revolution related puns including: “No man can Lay the boundary to a nation” and “We serve neither King nor Kettle“. Sadly I’ve forgotten the rest. Please feel free to share your own revolution/crisp related content in the comments.

Driving Lessons


Posted in: Family, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

We missed the boat with herself and, due to Covid, she went to England without ever learning to drive. I was determined to get the boys sorted. It took a lot more bureaucracy than I expected.

Firstly they needed to get public service cards. As they were under 18 at the the time, I had to go with them to the centre where you get your public service card. I was confused by the queuing system in the centre. I asked another person waiting whether we needed a ticket and she responded in Ukrainian, that she didn’t understand. Well, this was the opportunity I had been waiting for. My lessons, my duolingo and my time spent listening to Ukrainian in the cesspit that is YouTube shorts were about to pay off. I repeated my question in Ukrainian. She looked baffled. Her teenage sons sniggered unhelpfully. My teacher said that part of the difficulty might be in the way I pronounce “ticket”; apparently, it sounds like “flower”. Alas.

Anyway, eventually, we sorted Dan’s card and Michael was the beneficiary of the scoping exercise I had carried out with Dan the previous day. The next day Michael and I were in and out in 10 minutes. One of the officials was the mother of a friend of his from school and while this made no difference to the speediness of the operation, it made us feel very well connected to the corridors of bureaucratic power.

Later, I was appalled to see that the cards ran out on their 18th birthday in September. The idea of going through it all again was very distressing. I am, however, pleased to report that following their birthday, new cards arrived automatically in the post. The relief.

Once they got PS cards they were able to do the driver theory test. If you have just done your Leaving Certificate, prepping for the driver theory test presents precisely zero difficulties. They sailed through it unlike their mother who failed the mock test they made her do online. In my defence, I would say that I answered some questions with what I thought they would like you to do rather than what I would actually do and, it turns out, what I was doing was actually right. Who knew? It was ironic that I shortly afterwards received a notification that my own licence was due to expire. However renewal is, in fairness to the driving licence people, extremely easy, if you have a licence already. Crucially, no resitting of any tests is required. I mean, maybe it should be?

Once they had their theory tests and PS cards, the boys could apply for provisional licences. Daniel, as a glasses wearer, needed a piece of paper from the optician following an eye test. We did it. Then I realised that everyone who wants a driving licence has to do an eye test, not just people who wear glasses. On balance, a good thing but back to the optician with Michael, of course, on the morning of our flight to Argentina. The optician’s credit card machine was broken. Extra trip back. Sigh. Anyhow, Michael’s form in and everything in order. Hurrah.

Then we got a message about Daniel’s form. Due to his eye condition, he needed a medical form as well within ten days or the application would not be progressed, his fee would be forfeit and he would have to start again. I rang the helpdesk, they were helpful. “We’re going on holidays today, we won’t make the 10 day deadline,” I said. “You can go to any GP at all,” said the nice man at the other end of the line. “We’re going to Argentina,” I said. A pause. “Look,” he said, “I will flag it on the application and maybe they will wait but it might be rejected.”

When we returned from Argentina, Michael’s provisional licence was there waiting for him. We went to the GP with Dan as soon as we could get an appointment (she got to look at his injured shoulder as well, so a win as it is €70 for a GP visit and it is nice to get more than a quick once over and a form filled in) and put in the form and, hallelujah, it was accepted and he too got a provisional licence. Though the physio said that he couldn’t actually drive for at least a month so no urgency really then.

Michael had his first actual lesson on the road at the start of September and was genuinely horrified by the power of fourth gear. He has to have a number of lessons with an instructor before he can be put on our insurance and drive with a parent (something that will be possible at the end of the month and, quite frankly, something we’re all dreading).

It’s funny that Michael is the most advanced in his progress towards actually having a driving licence because he has zero interest in it really, it’s just something useful to have. The other two are much keener. The physio has finally cleared Dan to have lessons and I actually think he will quite enjoy it. This will make a pleasant contrast with Michael who heads out to lessons with the demeanour of a condemned man and comes back a shadow of his former self. When these lessons are costing you a fortune, it is hard to take this with equanimity.

A friend of Mr. Waffle’s points out, most unhelpfully, that it is hardly worth their while to learn on a manual gear stick as they will be phased out for all cars by the end of the decade. However, our current car, on which they will be learning to drive, is a manual car so I really don’t think we had a lot of choice. It’s much harder, of course, but it will make them mentally strong, I am sure.

They’ll both be on our car insurance in the next month or so. That’s two 18 year olds. I shudder to contemplate what the cost will be. Good job I’m planning to go back to work. I don’t at all remember learning to drive being so administratively challenging when I learnt. Although, I did nearly send my mother to an early grave with my near misses (favourite expression deployed on my rounding a bend too quickly in the city centre, “What would you have done, if there had been a cow lying in the middle of the road?”). I vividly remember her clutching the door handle and pumping an invisible brake with her foot. At the time, I thought she exaggerated but I did notice that as I became a more experienced driver those behaviours disappeared. I suppose it is all ahead of me.

Not Just Any Old Great Aunt


Posted in: Family

I was due to go to Florence last week but my beloved aunt died on Tuesday and I cancelled. Herself came home from Italy early and we all went to the funeral. I did say to herself that she could stay on in Italy if she wanted. She said, “How could I enjoy myself when I was missing Aunty Pat’s funeral? She’s not just any old great aunt.”

My aunt (my father’s sister) had just turned 94 in June. I was down to visit her in the hospital. She seemed alright. I mean I still am unsure what killed her other than being old and being in hospital. She was reading the Guardian with enthusiasm a couple of days before she died. Still, she was at home until she went into hospital about 10 days before she died and her quality of life was pretty good. She was mobile (recently she astonished me by hopping out of her chair, kneeling down to light a recalcitrant gas fire and hopping up again) and she still enjoyed reading. I remember her telling me that once when she visited the hospital with my grandmother, a nurse who knew the family said, “We’ll have to shoot you, your family all live forever.” Not quite.

She never married. When my granny died in the early 1980s she moved in next door to my parents. This was a good move for us and also, I think, for her. We knew her much better than we would have done otherwise and she was a huge part of our lives. In her later years, my brother and, particularly, my sister were heroic in helping to organise home help and everything that comes with being awfully old. Because she lived next door to my parents, my children ran in and out of her house too whenever we went to visit my parents. They knew her really well.

She died on Tuesday, July 19 at about 4 in the morning. The next few days there was the usual scramble to sort the funeral mass (missalette, singers, readers). Daniel had grown out of his suit and he and I went to town to get a new one. It lashed rain on us and I traipsed around the shops wearing my plastic waterproof trousers. I slowly baked. When we emerged back into the daylight, the rain had stopped and I took off my plastic shell. “I feel like a new woman released from my plastic casing,” I said to Dan. “That is literally the plot of the Barbie film,” he replied. Topical.

The removal was quite sparsely attended which was a little bit depressing. The thing is that people come to your parents’ funerals but not really your aunt’s. And she was 94 so a lot of her friends were dead. And we were really the only relatives.

We had the funeral at 10 on Saturday morning (so as not to clash with summer weddings). I was so charmed and surprised, the church was full of people. A couple of people who had worked with her and more who had worked for her (a bit younger), people whose parents were her friends, a good few of my sister’s friends actually (definitely above and beyond to go to an aunt’s funeral), an elderly gent who was married to a friend of Aunty Pat’s hoved up to me and told me that my Mum had lectured him in college. I didn’t get his name or any further details in the press of people, a shame. It was lovely to hear people talk about my aunt and to see that she was so well liked. She was a delightful person. I got to shake the hand of the daughter of Cork’s greatest hurler as did Dan. Her mother was a great friend of my aunt. My children said that they felt like minor celebrities as so many of the mourners knew all about them. My sister gave a speech about my aunt which I really enjoyed, reminding me of things I had half forgotten myself, like how good at cards she was and how quick at sums, how she enjoyed to travel. She and my father grew up with their mother and many bachelor uncles and spinster aunts. Her father died when she was seven. Although my father was allowed to finish school and go to college (to be fair to him, he won scholarships for everything but he still wasn’t making money, if you see what I mean), my aunt was taken out of school at 16 and brought, weeping to her first job. She worked for a newspaper distribution company and despite her, presumably, gloomy first day she enjoyed it. She went back to college as a mature student and did a degree. She got a job in UCC in admin where she stayed for the rest of her professional career, climbing the greasy pole rather further than we had realised.

We had to get her cremated as the graves where her parents were buried and where my parents and her grandparents were buried were full. We can apparently add ashes to the grave where my parents and her grandparents are so that is what we decided to do rather than get a new grave. Cremations are new to us. The crematorium is quite nice, out in one of the many islands that dot Cork harbour but it was odd not to have a grave side service.

I was officer in charge of music. For the church I mostly chose numbers I liked myself, however, I did choose two 1970s folk group type numbers “Be Not Afraid” and “Morning has Broken” that I do not like. Although one should not speak ill of the dead, my aunt was, I fear, a fan of these modern post-Vatican II guitar strumming hymns and I felt that she would like them (I know “Morning has Broken” is older but anyone who attended mass in the 70s has heard the desperate guitar version). “Be Not Afraid” did nothing for me but we had “Morning has Broken” as we took the coffin out of the Church and it was beautiful and sad. I feel a bit teary thinking of it even now so maybe Aunty Pat was right about even more than we thought.

We had to pick two songs for the crematorium. The undertaker emphasised that we could have whatever we wanted, they didn’t have to be religious, they just had to be available on Spotify. This is why herself now has a playlist called “Aunty Pat’s Cremation”. We picked a religious hymn to start anyway. For the final hymn we struggled. We thought it might be nice to have a secular song that she liked. The only thing I could think of that she had enjoyed in recent years was the spectacularly unsuitable “Oh How He Lied”. Herself said that Aunty Pat had enjoyed “The Trolley Song“. She played it and somehow the idea of disappearing into the flames to “Ding, ding, ding went the bell” seemed unappealing. I mean technically the flaming is done after the relatives disappear but you know what I mean. My sister said that Aunty Pat had sung a word perfect version of Guy Mitchell’s Christopher Columbus on her birthday the previous month and after some hesitation we picked it. I was not previously familiar with it. I’m not sure it was a perfect choice, I will say. I mean “this world ain’t big enough for me” went over quite well but “travel slow cause you might fall down to the world below” was, in retrospect, not a line you want to hear repeated at a cremation. We were all a bit unnerved when the undertaker told us he had never heard anything quite like it at a service before. It was funny though and cheerful and it is something to remind us of a very beloved aunt who would have enjoyed it herself.

1936

Bedside Manner


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

My 94 year old aunt is in hospital. They don’t know what’s wrong with her which is not great, I suppose but she seems comfortable enough.

I schlepped down to Cork to visit her. She was moderately pleased to see me (not as pleased as she had been to see my sister who came the day before with the Guardian) but quite tired. I sat by her bed for a good while as she dozed. I had an opportunity to overhear another visitor speaking to a pretty deaf friend who was also a patient on the ward. The visitor was a member of the 1966 hurling team which won the all-Ireland and broke Cork’s 12 year drought. He seemed in pretty good nick notwithstanding his age. He was reminiscing with his friend about the All-Stars in his day – an award for great players. He said, “Remember it was sponsored by Carroll’s cigarettes then”. O tempora, o mores.

Anyway my poor aunt is still in hospital but she seems to be alright despite the absence of any real diagnosis.

Birthday Excitement


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Siblings

My sister’s partner had a big birthday and she arranged a mild event for him at the weekend which passed off very well until the moment I realised that I was the oldest person at the lunch table. I mean everyone else was still having a good time but I was, as the young people say, shooketh.

She also brought me more papers from my parents’ house which I have been dutifully sifting through.

Here is my father in 1946 looking very slender in a picture from his time as a college debater in UCC. More women than I would have expected (expectation – none).

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I also found this menu from Jammet’s from 1946. I enjoyed the “It is illegal to serve butter with lunch or dinner”.

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On the back, it’s signed by a variety of artistic luminaries and some people unknown to Wikipedia (Lady Cornelius McGillicuddy anyone?).

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Where did this come from? I am not related to any of the signatories as far as I know (and I feel I would know). Did some relative of mine disturb these people at their dinner? In fairness, that seems very unlikely. It also seems pretty unlikely that any relative of mine would be running with such a lofty, arty crowd. At best, we were much more commerce than art. A mystery, probably not one which will ever be resolved at this point.

I also found my mother’s French copy book from secondary school in the late 40s/early 50s. I have no idea why she kept it, as honestly, it is a record of academic misery. It didn’t seem that bad to me – I mean super handwriting and some difficult topics covered in the text – but the marks were less than stellar. I asked Mr. Waffle to have a look and having seen the teacher’s handwriting he asked whether the teacher was French. I think she was actually, as my mother’s school was run by an order of French nuns and I have vague recollections of her talking of her ongoing struggles with the francophone nuns (some of them were definitely Irish though including the fantastically named Mother Borgia of whom my mother was very fond and who came to visit us a number of times – she taught physics, however, which was where my mother’s strengths lay). Anyway, those nuns, they set high standards and my mother’s French, imperfect though it may have been served us in good stead on holidays in France in the 70s and 80s.

More news from the archives as we get it.

Done


Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

So what have I been up to? I know you are on the edge of your seat out there. I went to the Dalkey book festival last Saturday. I mentioned it to a friend in the context of not being available for something else and he said, “[Snort] the Dalkey book festival, could you be any more middle class?” Well, I could, in fairness. I could actually live in Dalkey which is a lovely sea side village with the most expensive houses in the country.

I enjoyed my trip to Dalkey. Mr. Waffle and I went to see Lea Ypi whose book I recommend. I found her interesting. Quite angry and still, I think, at heart a communist. You can take the child out of Albania etc. The setting was a Protestant church and I found the seats exquisitely uncomfortable. A former colleague of Mr. Waffle’s was there and she asked a hard question. I was suitably impressed but it disappeared in the deluge of other questions.

The parents of a boy who was in Daniel and Michael’s class in primary school had a party to celebrate their third and final child finishing primary school. In a very real way, we helped them to find the school. The mother met the Princess in the park – aged 5- with her minder and cross-questioned her on the school. She liked what the Princess said and the cut of her jib more generally and decided to send her precious first-born there which is how he ended up in Dan and Michael’s class. I have never before considered how much you have in common with parents of children who went to the same primary school as yours. Even if we didn’t know the parents (and we knew lots of them) we mostly knew them to see. We were all able to admire the school class photos which our hosts had dug out. It was a lovely idea and everyone had a great time. There was even dancing.

Sunday was Fathers’ Day – bit of a quiet day but, you know, grand. Mr. Waffle got a card and a present. And I thought a bit about my own father who was always pretty disapproving of Fathers’ Day; a festival designed by Hallmark, in his view.

No idea what happened on Monday but on Tuesday I was up with the lark, out for a swim, then a cycle in, alas, driving rain which I had not at all planned for.

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I then had a very satisfactory long lunch with a friend, cycled up to the school for a last engagement (uniform swap, all of the children’s uniforms have been given away, I am a model of efficiency) and on the way home from school I found a swarm of bees in the lane and got a beekeeper to come and take them away. Your correspondent was exhausted but broadly pleased.

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Wednesday was June 21 the longest day of the year and also the day of Dan’s last Leaving Cert exam. It was physics and he was pleased with the paper. In the newspaper a teacher was quoted as saying that it was “a very fair paper”. “That’s teacher code for easy,” said Dan. Herself was pleased with results also so it was a good day all round.

Thursday saw me beating the locked doors of the church with a new father to get in for a baptism prep meeting. The house of the Lord is never closed eh? Anyway, in fairness, the parish priest let us in so new father’s trek from the other side of the city was not in vain (he believes our church to be a half way point between his wife’s family and his, I believe he is mistaken).

And today was Michael’s last exam. It was economics. He had a long time to prepare and he was not enjoying working when Dan was finished but at last the day dawned. He did not like the paper, sadly, so has finished on something of a low. However, it is done and as my father used to say, “students are very poor judges of their own performance”. We all went out to lunch to celebrate. That’s really the very, very end of school. How peculiar.