belgianwaffle

Dublin

Weekend Round-Up


Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland, Twins, Youngest Child

On Saturday we went to an old friend’s house for lunch. We’ve lost touch a bit over the years for no reason really just continuing our busy lives. It was delightful but, regrettably, we can never have them back as their house is undoubtedly the tidiest and one of the most beautiful we have visited. I particularly admired the floors which were varnished and had no gaps between the planks. They made the builders re-lay them as “you could see the foil backing of the insulation underneath in the gaps!” As I sit here looking at the foil backing in the insulation visible in the gaps between my floorboards, I can’t help wishing that Mr. Waffle and I were more forceful people. I am often reminded of Mr. Bennett’s assessment of Jane and Bingley when I think of us:

“Your tempers are by no means unlike. You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will always exceed you income.”

I am not sure about the generosity but I can vouch for exceeding our income.

After visiting our friends, we called around to the grandparents. Of late, Michael has become obsessed with getting home before dark. It is hard to be home before dark all the time in January. Michael spent his time looking reproachfully out the window which made for a not entirely restful visit.

Sunday saw the Princess up to do the first reading at mass. This was a huge relief as the second reading which she normally gets was 1 Corinthians 6:13-15,17-20. One of the unfortunate teenagers had to work her way, very gamely, through that one.

On Sunday afternoon we prodded the children out. They were not happy. We went into town to get Herself runners and wandered around Trinity a bit aimlessly. We went into the Book of Kells and the Long Room library – interest levels from boys despite being told that it was the model for the Jedi archives (or was it): zero.

It’s nice though:

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And it was all pretty empty on a late Sunday afternoon in January. Of course, we weren’t home before dark. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth in outer darkness.

Glamour, Excitement, Bins*


Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Ireland

Bin services in Dublin have been privatised and are no longer provided by the city council.

This has led to much woe, not least of it related to the truly phenomenal amount of dumping of domestic refuse in lanes around the city. Apparently the private contractors are not as willing to continue providing for rubbish collection when the punters do not pay. I happen to know that the city council will provide this service free of charge for 5 years as that is the length of time they continued to collect bins from our tenants while we lived in Brussels – happily collecting the bins while the tenants happily ignored the bills and reminders. When we terminated the lease, said farewell to the tenants and moved back to our house, the city council presented us with a steep bill for rubbish collection for the previous five years and refused to collect our bin until we paid it. Appeals to the (departed) tenants were unavailing and we ended up having to fork out a fortune.

While this did not leave me with any particular affection for the council regime, the move to private providers has been appalling for us. Greyhound, the only bin company which serviced our last house regularly forgot to collect the bins at all. Mr. Waffle had to ring them most weeks. They only began collecting your bins when you had made payments in advance. But they didn’t tell you that. It was shambolic. When we moved house we had the option of another company and we transferred with delight to Oxigen (I don’t know why they spell it that way but please don’t think I can’t spell oxygen) and all has been sweetness and light until today when they did not collect the bin. Mr. Waffle called them. “Oh sorry, you should have got a letter, we are no longer collecting from your area, we have transferred your account and your credit to City Bin.” Call to City Bin follows. They don’t do our area. Oxigen agree to mediate with City Bin to persuade them to cover us. Oxigen will do one last pick up for us. In fact, it looks like there is only one provider who will service our area. Oh excellent, we’re back with Greyhound.

The free market is not doing it for me. Total disclosure requires that I reveal that privatisation of city bin services in Cork has created no problems whatsoever. Cork is perfect, though.

*Only two of these words are relevant to the content of the post. Honestly, could this be more exciting?

Christmas Round-Up


Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland, Princess

On Christmas Eve, we went to midnight mass which starts at 9. Baffling, I know. The Princess had to sing a solo and carry the baby Jesus to the crib. Before doing the latter she had to hold him up for the congregation to view and part of me was very afraid that the porcelain baby Jesus would tumble on to the steps of the altar and break but, mercifully, no.

Christmas Day itself passed off peacefully, you will be pleased to hear. We had various in-laws for dinner and it was all very pleasant. We played some games after dinner with varying degrees of success. Least successful was “Articulate” where due to a lack of attention during team formation, the three adult men in the room were put playing together and wiped the floor with the rest of us. The object of the game is to describe a word which your team mates try to guess. My own personal triumph was when Michael, who was playing with me, said, “They used to oppress us!” “England!” I shouted triumphantly pointing at my sister-in-law’s husband who is English but is not personally responsible for 800 years of oppression etc and is, on the contrary, a charming dinner guest. The answer turned out to be “Europe”. Clearly, the anti-troika rhetoric has had an impact on Michael. After the less than happy “Articulate” experience, we played a charades type game which involved holding the Princess’s Christmas phone up to your forehead. Oh yes, she got a phone from Santa and is very pleased.

Finally we passed to playing cards where the London contingent cleaned up and between them won pretty much everything – they had complementary skills. They made up for this by inspecting several Minecraft worlds which the children had created with every appearance of interest.

Today we went for our now traditional St. Stephen’s Day orienteering trip in the Dublin mountains. Although Christmas Day was beautiful, even when we set out this morning it was overcast and shortly after leaving home it began to rain and expanding on that theme it rained more and more heavily. We got there and we ran through the mud. The children were pretty cheerful considering that they got their feet wet and were frozen.

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I think we have had pretty bad luck with the weather at this event given that it almost never rains in Dublin. Really. Cork, now in Cork, it rains. Speaking of which, we are off to Cork tomorrow so fine weather beckons. I wonder whether they might like left over turkey.

And how was your own Christmas?

The End of the Recession


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

I went for afternoon tea with some friends in early December. One of our number had been deputed in October to book us in to the Westbury in town. No dice, the Westbury was booked out for afternoon tea as were the Shelbourne and the Merrion [in October!]. We eventually got the last seats in the house in the Four Seasons in Ballsbridge. When we arrived it was heaving. Afternoon tea was pleasant but prices began from an eye-watering €38. And there was no shortage of takers.

Gasp, frankly.

Questionable Wisdom


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Princess

They had a Christmas quiz, in English, in the Princess’s class. One of the questions was, “What did the wise men bring to the baby Jesus?” Mostly, the answers the teams came up with were the standard ones: gold, frankincense and myrrh. One table, however, came up with “gold frankincense and fingers”. If you speak Irish no further clues are available as to why they reached the unlikely conclusion that the baby Jesus received a gift of fingers.

If you do not, you should know that the Irish for gold, frankincense and myrrh is ór, frankincense agus myrhh [our celtic ancestors, I suppose, not having much experience of or need for the last items, there are no particular Irish words for them]. The Irish word for finger is méar. Do you see where we are coming from here?

Party On


Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland

Yesterday we had a Christmas party from 4-7 for friends and neighbours. The invitation specified that children were welcome. We discovered that not only does everyone we know now have children but they are also quite big – 5-10 age range. Babies were few on the ground which was very odd.

We paid two local teenagers to help out and although that definitely helped, I was still a shadow of my former self at the end. Of course, no one arrived until 4.15 and between 3.45 when the teenagers arrived and 4.15 we all sat looking at each other and feeling excruciatingly awkward, as well as friendless (us, not the teenagers). However, people more than made up for it and vast numbers came and it was actually quite pleasant, if busy. As a bonus, we now have enough chocolate and alcohol to take us through the Christmas season in exchange for some tepid mulled wine and a soggy mince pie for everyone in the audience, so, a win all round, I guess.