belgianwaffle

Family

Minutes


Posted in: Family, Mr. Waffle

The holiday sub-committee formally reconvened tonight having reached no decision at its last meeting. Time is pressing and, if resolution is not speedily achieved, it is likely that the issue will have to go to plenary. This will present its own unique difficulties as two of the plenary members can only say “ball” and “mama” and interpreting their votes will be a fraught process.

While the fundamental issues before the sub-committee remain unchanged, new information is regularly becoming available which feeds into the decision making process going forward. In the matter of summer holidays, it was originally proposed that Mr. Waffle would take six weeks of leave: one month of parental leave and two weeks of holidays. Unfortunately, work commitments in July mean that he may no longer be able to do this. The Princess finishes school for two months at the end of June and the boys’ creche is closed for August. The sub-committee has formally agreed that the Princess can be accommodated in a series of courses for the four weeks of July though no such courses have as yet been identified and agreed by all parties. Pending resolution of the over-arching holiday arrangement package, this issue has been parked. It is, however, likely that the task of organising this will be delegated to Mr. Waffle who has shown particular expertise in this area on previous occasions.

The information on the July holiday period has presented particular difficulties for the sub-committee and it is a matter of considerable regret to the sub-committee that the business of Mr. Waffle’s employer cannot be subjugated to the Waffles’ needs in relation to their extensive summer holidays. The sub-committee actively considered a motion of censure but, under pressure from Mr. Waffle, the motion was ultimately withdrawn. Nevertheless, the sub-committee asked that it be minuted that this is a particularly vexed issue as the original proposal was satisfactory to all parties: namely that Mr. Waffle and the three junior Waffles would travel to Kerry to meet formally with the babysitting team (or team grandparents as they are known in committee jargon), one of the current Ambassadors to the Holy See and the latter’s spouse, children and grandchildren. The Holy See team are close friends of team grandparents and their children the youthful companions of Mr. Waffle. They will not be the Holy See team forever and when they go back to the distant land from whence they came, joint holidays in Kerry will be more challenging. The sub-committee, therefore, spent some time discussing this issue. All parties were extremely disappointed that no solution could be reached and this led to what were arguably circular and certainly futile discussions. A suggested compromise of travelling to West Cork for a fortnight in late July/early August to at least stay with team grandparents is under active consideration. At this point the chair deeming that the sub-committee had progressed as far as was possible on this issue and called for a break for a cup of tea.

Subsequently, the sub-committee reconvened and moved straight to item 3 on the agenda “American Holiday”. The arguments for and against were again rehearsed by members of the sub-committee. They might be summarised as follows:

The climate of Chicago is one of extremes – members of the plenary are likely to deal poorly with extreme temperatures;

The Chicago welcoming committee is primed and its premises are in order. Members of the sub-committee are enthusiastic at the prospect of inspecting the Chicago branch’s newly acquired premises and the surrounding area;

A nine hour flight may stretch the participants to breaking point;

More particularly as it will be followed by jet lag and, eventually, a nine hour flight back and further jet lag; members of the sub-committee expressed particular concern as to whether members of the plenary would be amenable to this kind of activity;

The issue of cost and convenience also arose: should the group choose to fly from Ireland, then they will fly free to Chicago courtesy of the branch office which is willing to put its airmiles at the disposal of head office. The sub-committee has two reservations in relation to this – should the group take such a generous gift from the branch when these costs should, more properly, be borne by head office and would it not be more convenient to fly from Brussels in view of the particular needs of members of the plenary. As against this the sub-committee noted that the 3,000 euro which would be saved by availing of the Chicago branch’s offer is not a negligible consideration in these times of increased budgetary constraints and predicted economic slowdown.

At this point barracking from the bedroom caused the meeting to break up in disorder.

Executive Summary

Internet, please tell me, are we mad to think of taking three small children to Chicago in August? What will we do when we get there? Does anyone have any advice?

O frabjous day


Posted in: Family, Princess, Work

Today is my birthday.

To celebrate, I took yesterday off work. On Thursday my lovely, lovely colleagues surprised me with cake, flowers and chocolates. This is as a direct result of my insistence on constantly reminding the people around me of the date of my birthday. How can people be expected to remember, if you don’t remind them? And, if you’ve forgotten, it’s never too late to send a card.

Mind you, this conversation was was not entirely what I hoped for:

Me: It’s my birthday, happy birthday to me. Gosh I’m so old now. Who would have thought youthful little me would ever reach this great age. Goodness gracious me, go on, go on guess how old I am.

Foolish work colleague: 40?

Indignant me: 38!

And, after a particularly busy period, things are going swimmingly at work in general at the moment.

The Princess greeted me with this the other day:

The excitement. However, since she is left handed and firmly believes that the world should be ordered to suit her, this is what I got on my birthday card:

Lovely all the same.

As it is my birthday, I reserve the right to put in here whatever random things take my fancy. This, as you will be fully aware, is not the kind of operation we usually run here at waffle blogs incorporated. Please see below, Cinderella of the ancien régime:

The Princess is very taken with “Barbie of Swan Lake” these days. What can I say; it was recommended to us by friends. We will cut them in future. It stars Frasier as the baddy and Janice from “Friends” as his daughter. You would think that at least one of these people had enough money to be saved from the indignity of doing voiceovers in “Barbie of Swan Lake”. So taken is the Princess with this that Mr. Waffle has bought her the music by Mr. Tchaikovsky. She is unclear as to why Mr. Tchaikovsky is so derivative and composes music identical to that made famous by Barbie but she likes his stuff. You may see her dancing/flapping to the music here.
In conclusion, you might like to know, 38 is a lot of candles and this isn’t the half of it:

Reality Television


Posted in: Family, Mr. Waffle, Work

Whispering male voice with peculiarly patronising tone: Mr. Waffle is home alone until Thursday while his wife is off for a work trip (or an illicit break of the working mother as it is better known). He has faithfully promised her that he will not be cross with the children while she is away even if they cry all the time and conspire to make him late for work.

Whispering male voice continues: Mr. Waffle returns from work and is left alone with his three small children. [Camera pans around scenes of chaos; the boys cry and the Princess is bold]. We see Mr. Waffle remaining calm and firmly putting her in the “coin colere”. The annoying whisperer observes: The boys continue to cry; will Mr. Waffle remain true to his promise or will he snap? Daniel gets sick. Michael crawls away while Mr. Waffle mops up. The Princess wees in the confines of the “coin colere” because, as she explains, she couldn’t go to the toilet because she was in the “coin colere”. Michael calls merrily from the bathroom “I’ve climbed on to the cistern and I’m trying to get my head into the toilet bowl from here”.

In fact, my loving husband, tells me it wasn’t as bad as I might have imagined when I left first thing on Monday morning but he said that Wednesday was a particularly low point. In the morning, he dropped her highness to school with the boys in the buggy. Then he walked home and loaded them into the car and took them to the creche and climbed up to the third floor with the boys crawling ahead. At lunchtime he picked her highness up from school and deposited her at the glam potter’s house and went back to work. In the evening he collected her and then the boys. A fatal error. He should have collected the boys first. The boys were cranky, the Princess was cranky. He had to get shoes on all of them and carry/chivvy them down three flights of stairs and get them into the car. Hideous. But now I’m back from no internet land and I will mind my loving family and post all the material I wrote while I was away.

Finally, I see that I belong to the most discriminated against group in the British workplace. And who will be paying the pensions, eh?

Recent culinary disasters or this is all very dull stuff but why should I suffer alone?


Posted in: Belgium, Family, Princess, Youngest Child

A while ago, I had some cold cauliflower which I decided to use up by turning into cauliflower cheese. I was undaunted by two significant facts which in retrospect should have daunted me: Mr. Waffle and the Princess do not like cauliflower cheese and I had never made it before. I turned to Mr. Conran for help (one of the many cookery books Mr. Waffle brought to our marriage). The quantities were for a head of cauliflower and it all seemed surprisingly complex. This is where I made my first mistake. I decided I couldn’t be dividing everything by four so I cooked the rest of the cauliflower. Then, Mr. Conran’s recipe had tricky bits in it like “make a mornay sauce” but add extra butter. So with a greasy thumb, I flicked between the cauliflower cheese and the mornay sauce recipe. And then it transpired that the mornay sauce recipe was a variant of another recipe on a different page; you know the kind of thing “as x sauce but with ingredient a instead of b and five times more c”. So I created a lifetime’s supply of cheese sauce using recipes from three different pages of the book. It tasted quite nice too but that didn’t encourage the Princess or Mr. Waffle to indulge and a head of cauliflower cheese lies waiting in small packets in the freezer to be fed to my sons over the rest of their lives until they leave home when they will be taking the remainder with them to university.

Regular readers will, I am sure, recall that I bought wild boar in the supermarket months ago. Last week, I decided to cook it. I used Mr. Waffle’s “La cuisine pour tous” which is a terse French cookbook originally published in 1932. It assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of the reader. None of your sissy modern day explanations for Ms. Mathiot although she does give excellent instructions on how to manage the hired help and how to lay a family dinner table. The recipe for the marinade gave quantities for some of the ingredients in dl. I was not sure how much a dl was and neither was Mr. Waffle and none of our cookbooks gave instructions on this point and we were too lazy to turn on the computer (foolish, foolish people). We decided how much a dl was (by looking into our hearts and comparing the results) and using the handy calpol measuring spoon we carefully spooned in what we believed to be the correct quantity of vinegar. The beast was marinaded and on Friday night served up to my misfortunate family. Actually, the boar itself wasn’t too bad. A bit gamey but not tough. Regrettably the sauce didn’t taste of cloves or peppers or sherry or red wine (3/4 of a litre) or anything really, other than vinegar. I am reassessing our guess on dl quantities. Mr. Waffle and I gamely (ha, ha) ate some but the Princess, very sensibly, refused to have any truck with it. However, later in the evening on our way to the cinema, Mr. Waffle turned to me and said “I’m not quite sure how to put this but, do you think we could stop for a toasted sandwich?”. Who was I to quibble. And to round off the evening, the film was quite, quite dreadful. May I recommend that you avoid Code 46? Having seen Samantha Morton in this, Minority Report and Morvern Callar, I have decided that I have suffered enough and I am going to foreswear any film in which she features in future. Happy Feet, anyone?

And finally, in other news, the royal grandparents are in situ for the week, minding the Princess for mid-term. They are not yet exhausted from their labours but we aim to send them back to Dublin shrivelled husks. Mind you, the Princess refused to go out with them this morning because she wanted to stay home admiring herself in her Snow White carnival outfit. They took Michael out instead (Daniel was napping) and he nearly expired from happiness at having two grown-ups all to himself. She did let them take her out this afternoon though. I am sorry, obviously, that I didn’t mention to her grandparents that she has got into the habit of putting on as many underpants as she can at a time. Not as sorry though as her grandmother who had to take her to the toilet in the local cafe and help her out of 14 pairs of underpants.


Gargle


Posted in: Family, Siblings

About once a year I suffer from dreadful sore throats. I wrote about the last one here. It wasn’t as bad this year as only one side of my neck swelled up like a puffer fish and swallowing was a little easier but it lasted 9 agonising days. I blame the fact that by the time I was old enough to get my tonsils out the operation had fallen out of favour with the medical fraternity.

It seems that in recent times, I get my spectacular sore throat when my parents-in-law are there to witness my agony. I think I have often said that I am very fond of my mother-in-law and one particularly appealing aspect of her personality is that she never gives advice. Even when you ask for advice, she is cautious about giving it. There is little so delightful to the parents of young children. She’s a psychologist; she knows it’s much better if we work it out for ourselves.  However, in relation to my sore throat she threw her usual caution to the wind and suggested that I gargle with Disprin. I looked at her with deep disapproval. If she had any idea about the razor blades being strung and twanged across my throat she would not be suggesting gargling. I remembered that she had done this the previous year as well and had even gone so far as to send my father-in-law to a pharmacie de garde (special open on Sunday pharmacy) to pick some up for me. I responded politely and vaguely, clutching my neck protectively.

On Friday afternoon, I discovered, to my horror, that I was out of paracetemol.  Not to worry, there at the bottom of the medicine box was the previous year’s packet of disprin, still pristine in its packaging.  Watched by a deeply amused Princess, I decided I might as well give the gargling a go.  The pain, the agony, the indignity. I hopped around the place yelping (quietly – no voice).  I am not sick much and have never, mercifully, sustained any serious injury but I would rank the pain I have experienced and can remember as follows:

1. The flu

2. Impaling my arm on a railing and, subsequently, getting it stitched.

3. Breastfeeding for months through blood and tears.

4. Gargling with disprin and bouncing about the barbed wire apparently embedded in the angry, pulpy mass that had previously functioned as my throat. 

5.  Nasty itchy all over rash for months.

6.  Annual migraine (painful but brief – one day in darkened room with wet cloth clamped to forehead)

7.  Early pregnancy nausea.

8.  Immediate post-childbirth aches.

9.  Late pregnancy aches.

10. And least painful by some degree, in fact, to be honest not painful at all, giving birth with an epidural.

You realise what the point of this is, I assume.  Oh yes indeed, it worked.  It didn’t make me better but it did abate the pain sufficiently to allow me to eat something which was most welcome and I continued to gargle every four hours (the pain) until today when my sore throat assumed normal winter cold dimensions and I am more or less back to normal.

In other news, it is my brother’s birthday today.  To celebrate, he went jogging in Phoenix Park where he lost his car keys.  It’s chilly, what with it being early February and all that and I imagine he was scantily clad for his jog and he certainly hadn’t brought with him his phone or his wallet or his house keys or a change of clothes or any of the other useful things that were sitting patiently in his car.  Some kind pensioner took pity on him and drove to the nearest garage where they refused to cut a key for him as he hadn’t thought to bring the car chassis number on his jog either.  The pensioner set out to drive him home but half way there my brother decided that his housemate was unlikely to be at home and able to let him in so the kindly pensioner finished his taxi service for the day depositing my feckless young brother by his car.  He rang the AA (presumably with the help of the kindly pensioner) and they towed the car home for him where, thanks to a kindly cosmos, his housemate was, in fact, in.  Happy birthday, feckless younger brother, the present is in the post.

Random links


Posted in: Family

– Updated to add – People, there is fantastic stuff on grandparents down in the comments section.  Please can I have some more to make it seem that my blog is exciting and interesting. Please.

Still sick as a dog. How can that be? I dragged myself into work yesterday partly because there was a meeting I had to attend and partly because the three kiddies were going to be at home. I was sustained by my colleagues who rushed to the supermarket to buy lemons and honey (imagine) and were deeply sympathetic. Of course their sympathy was only a drop in the ocean of self pity in which I was floating. I take my hat off to full time mothers with no escape like poor Minkleberry.

Have you all seen this unfortunate newscaster from a UK TV station?

I saw a lovely post by another Anne on her grandparents. It made me realise, sadly, I don’t know enough about my grandparents’ relationships. My paternal grandfather died when he was 36 and my maternal grandfather died shortly after I was born. But what Anne says about life for her grandparents was true even for my mother growing up. I have broadband but for years they had no electricity and running water (I gather that this was something of a sore point between my grandparents – he was a bit of a property magnate in an early 20th century Irish small farmer kind of way and he owned a number of properties one of which they had happily lived in for a number of years and which boasted not only a location in town but the twin attractions of, you guessed it, electricity and running water, however, nothing would do him but to go out to the country and run a farm). My mother went to mass in a pony and cart. I know they had a car as well, but I think it must have been later. I know this because my mother told me that she backed it into the pillar of the gate to my grandfather’s lasting chagrin – he is departed but his ire over this incident lives on in my mother’s regretful recollection. They had a constant stream of maids and farm hands working in and around the house. My grandfather used to go to some small distant farm and bring back new maids. Country maids were always best, you couldn’t trust those city girls. It all sounds slightly feudal. Do you know about your grandparents’ youth? Share.