belgianwaffle

Dublin

Everywhere I have ever lived – 1993


Posted in: Dublin, Travel

Once I qualified, I passed over the opportunity to work in an Irish country town and moved to Rome.

I shared a rather nice ground floor flat in Trastevere with two Danish girls and I thought that they were extremely exotic.  I was disappointed when they moved out and a Dutch girl moved in – so much less thrilling.  However, I had my ancient moped and enjoyed whizzing round Rome on it.  I thought that I was fabulous circling the Colosseum – you know, Roman Holiday and all that.

In other news at mass this morning we had this reading from the book of proverbs.  Note to self, get busy with wool and flax.  Then the gospel was the one about the talents which is the Bible’s clearest endorsement of capitalism.  Not, perhaps, a particularly uplifting set of readings though I was glad to be reminded of where one of my favourite lines comes from: the servant who makes nothing gets thrown “out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth”.  I was also delighted to see, from my internet research, that verses 10-31 of the proverbs reading are “an acrostic, each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.”  I knew you would like to know.

Everywhere I have ever lived – 1991


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Travel

It is distressing but I am a little hazy about the details of when I moved to Dublin to study.  I was only there for a couple of months and I thought it was cold, gloomy and dull.

This impression may have been reinforced by my accommodation.  My friend and I had inveigled our way into a short term let by assuring the landlord that we were nurses (a profession which he appeared to regard as entirely trustworthy).  The place where we were living had been inexpertly divided into flats.  We had a main room which boasted a calor heater as its sole source of heat and a carpet as old as time.

We shared a bedroom which had no source of heating at all.  It gets quite cold in Dublin in winter.  We bought a portable heater.  Despite the fact that it got quite warm (I accidentally melted my doc martin’s on it), the room remained arctic.

Our friendship was brought under severe strain by my friend’s chronic lateness.  She was not an early riser and she could not get out of bed.  We were on the same course and, the organisers, having made a very accurate assessment of the enthusiasm levels of trainee solicitors, kept an attendance register and, if you were late or did not attend, your master would be told and, worse, you would have to travel to Dublin to repeat the day.  This made me extremely keen to get there on time.  Every morning, F. would get up late as I paced up and down.  Then while I stood whining in the doorway, she would painstakingly lace up her 18 hole doc’s.  Then we would cycle like the wind and arrive, panting, just in time.

After those months together, I think we might both have liked a break but, unfortunately, we had already bought tickets to go interrailing together for a month which we did with almost no sulking except for that time when we were looking for the pantheon and I took us outside the city walls in Rome based on my expert powers of navigation.

Dirty old town


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

A little break from the houses.
I have now been back in Ireland for three months.  We’re settling in, I suppose.

Dublin is a funny place.  I left it before I had children and it is very different to live somewhere with children.  I have found that Dublin is not the big city I thought it was when I lived here last.  It is dozens of small communities sitting, somewhat reluctantly, under the umbrella title of city.  Dubliners like to live near where they grew up.  Very near.  As in around the corner.   This makes it surprisingly intimate for a city with a population of over a million.

I have been shocked by the very visible poverty I have witnessed on the streets of Dublin.  It’s rough despite a sustained economic boom in Ireland over the last ten years.  There are drug addicts roaming the streets high as kites during the day.  There are many people who seem to have fallen through the net.  At the tram stop there are young fit men regularly aggressively begging from unfortunate tourists.   There are mad people everywhere, stomping, screaming, gesturing.  In Temple Bar the other day, I saw a teenager stamp on a pigeon with a damaged wing.

Then there is a lot of money.  I have been amazed by the number of behemoth SUVs which now block the (small) streets of Dublin.  House prices may be falling but small suburban homes are still selling for over a million euros.  I was in the IFSC recently and I was astounded by the offices I visited.  They were far more impressive than any I have visited in Brussels (though the place did seem to be run by 22 year old accountants, much in the way that the European Parliament on Fridays appears to be run exclusively by young women wearing crop tops).    From the top floor, as far as the eye could see, all the way to the Dublin mountains, there were cranes, building, building, building.  It was hard to believe that this recession thing will ever really take off.

Yet surrounding the IFSC is one of the very poorest parts of Dublin, the North inner city.  This rising tide does not appear to have lifted all boats.   The surrounding squalor, poverty and deprivation present a very stark contrast to the sleek premises in the IFSC.  Someone told me that Belgium has one of the smallest poverty gaps in the EU and Ireland one of the widest.  This definitely feels true but I just looked it up on the internet and it isn’t.  Nevertheless, there is a very visible gap in Dublin; perhaps it is just perception.  Or perhaps, Dublin does not reflect the national trend (certainly, I do not feel that there is the same visible deprivation in Cork).

For a little balance, I thought that you might like to know some of the good things about my adopted town as well.  After all, I have chosen to live the rest of my life here, so I must believe it has some merit.

Dublin enjoys a beautiful situation.  From all sorts of unlikely places in the city (including our back garden) you can get views of the Dublin mountains.  It is on the sea, unlike Cork which, alas, is on an estuary which is really not the same thing at all.

It is composed of several charming little towns, swallowed up by Dublin but still enjoying much of their own character.  The centre of the city is compact and, in places, remarkably handsome.  My father always said that Dublin is like any city in the North of England.  There is some truth in that but, as a capital, it enjoys many more splendid buildings than, say, Manchester.

Irish people are friendly.  It is still true and they tend to be indulgent to children and happy to talk to strangers.  Initially, when people addressed me I would often think (rather frantically) “do I know you?” but I’m used to it again now and I love it.

Dublin is very buzzy.  Recession or no recession, the streets are full of people talking and laughing well into the night.  During the day time, the place is heaving.  And demographics are in Ireland’s favour, still.  There are lots of young people and they add a certain rakish excitement to the mix.  And there are whole new immigrant communities – this is a much more heterogeneous Dublin than the one I left.  This is a very different Ireland; when I was in school there was a girl in our class whose mother was from Dublin, this was so exotic that it got an article in the Evening Echo entitled, if memory serves me “Cork girl moves to Dublin”.  Well, we’ve moved on a lot from then, even Cork people are less insular.

Also on the pluses, it’s very easy to reach Cork by train from Dublin.

Deeply disconcerting


Posted in: Dublin, Middle Child, Twins

At 2.30 this morning, Daniel woke up.  I went blearily downstairs to get him a bottle (no advice please).  Near the microwave, I felt something squishy under my naked foot.  There were two slugs disporting themselves on my kitchen floor.  Tell me would it have been better or worse had I been wearing my scholl sandals?  Also, how did they get there?

Disapproving musings


Posted in: Dublin

There was an article in the paper recently on free range kids, something I’ve seen knocking around the internet over the past couple of months (am I the last person to notice how many things in the papers seem to be stale versions of what has been on the internet for ages?).  It was a Dublin version of what everyone has been saying – our children have no freedom because we’re too scared to let them take any risks.

Since our return to Ireland, we have been struck by the suicidal behaviour of Irish pedestrians who throw themselves across the road whenever they get a chance.  This is particularly noteworthy as in the 5 years since we last lived in this country, everyone has acquired an enormous American SUV.  And we do not have American roads and infrastructure and these cars are ludicrously enormous on our small streets.  (These two paragraphs are connected, bear with me).  The other morning, Mr. Waffle passed a private boys secondary school near his parents’ house and he saw a fleet of these vehicles dropping off their precious passengers to school.  He said it looked absurdly like an army of mercenaries had decided to take over South County Dublin and were rolling up to the school to make it their headquarters: “The revolution storts* here”.

*This is not a typo, there is a nasty Dublin accent where the “a” sound is substituted by an “o”, I live in fear of my children picking it up but given where we will be living, they are much more likely to pick up a different nasty Dublin accent. It’s hard to know whether to be glad or sorry.

North Side/South Side


Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Ireland

Cork has a north/south divide but it is as nothing to the chasm in Dublin. The river Liffey separates the largely affluent south from the largely less affluent north. My husband’s family are from one of the most prosperous southside suburbs. We will be living in the north inner city. A 30 minute drive (off-peak), the river and a whole world separate these locations. May I share some sample conversations? Of course I may, it’s my blog.

Relative (you know who you are): You must join the [local] library, it’s wonderful for the children.

Me: But it’s miles away [for me].

Her: Of course [smiling encouragingly] they must have libraries on the Northside too.

I took myself off to the house of my new friend from the cafe along with herself and Daniel. She was charming and delightful but disappointed that we would be living so far away.

Me: It’s not that far, really.

Her: Mmm.

Me: Honestly, we move back to Dublin and it’s like the Northside is further away than Brussels.

Her: Of course, in many ways, psychologically, it is.

This weekend we are very Southside as I have taken the children to Cork while Mr. Waffle wraps things up in Brussels. Maybe he will be able to sell the car (hollow laugh).
I heard the Princess explain earnestly to her brothers: “Now we are in Dublin, Ireland but we are going to take the train to another country, Cork.” Clever girl.

The train ride was rendered less hideous by the charm of the teenager opposite who shared crisps and buttons with my offspring. She was travelling with her mother and several siblings. Her mother was a large lady with an IRA tattoo (and, people, I don’t think that this is an individual retirement account), so it just goes to show – you should never, never get a tattoo.