Ireland

Surprising

27 July, 2025
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle

Mr. Waffle and I had a great time in the Phoenix park today where we went to watch a polo match. Have you ever been? I can totally recommend. The rules are immensely complex and involve, inter alia, handicapping each player (you start at -2 and work your way up with +1 generally being international standard and 8-10 people in the world at +10); the direction of play reversing after every goal; and a lot about the line of play which I can’t say I totally understood. All of this (and more) was explained to me by a friendly Australian who was unfortunate enough to be sitting beside me. The commentator knew many of his audience were pretty ignorant and spent some time explaining the five kinds of foul in polo; to be honest not really time well-spent as far as I was concerned, I remain pretty confused on this point.

I have no idea what the standard of play was but it was extremely exciting as the horses and riders went tearing up and down the, I want to say, pitch. During the break all of the spectators went out and stamped the divots back in place which I found kind of hilarious. I will certainly be back with my new found polo knowledge. It is free to attend and numbers are low so they need all the support they can get.

Il Mio Onomastico

27 July, 2025
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

When I was an au pair in Italy in the summer of 1988 (and can I tell you that it is appalling to think that the child I minded must now be 39), I awoke on the morning of July 26 to find a rather appealing pair of green ruffled pyjamas in a parcel on the end of my bed.

What was this for you ask (as did I). It was my saint’s name day. Not something I had ever been aware of before and certainly not something that was celebrated in Ireland. I was charmed; and I would remember occasionally over the years but mostly I forgot. However, yesterday, a religious friend texted me “Happy St Anne’s Day!” so I remembered and this morning lit a candle at the rather pedestrian statute in the church. Can’t say that St. Anne was experiencing a great deal of love on her name day judging by the number of candles lit but perhaps they had gone out overnight.

Update – Secular (patroness of the arts etc.)

1 July, 2025
Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Princess

In rapid succession I went to the following events at an arts festival: David O’Doherty (covered earlier, try to keep up), Paul Murray (rather earnest but interesting author of, inter alia, “The Bee Sting”) and Louise Lowe. I found the last the most interesting (Mr. Waffle accompanied me – he was supposed to come to the other two as well but pressure of work prevented him and having run into loads of people I knew at both earlier events who were wondering why I was there on my own – not to mention the expense of getting two tickets when only one turned out to be needed – I was pretty pleased to have him there but I remain mildly resentful about his previous unavoidable absences, as you can possibly tell from this lengthy aside).

Louise Lowe is a director of a theatre company called ANU and I have been to loads of their productions and they are always interesting and usually good. I found her absolutely fascinating. She has a really unusual way of looking at things and she is intrigued by the audience and uses all kinds of different approaches to bring them closer to the production. So enthused am I that I have become a supporter – so far all this has got me is an opportunity for early access to tickets to a play I saw already last Christmas but I remain optimistic.

I have been to see the Mainie Jellett & Evie Hone exhibition in the National Gallery a couple of times. Interesting, but I did not love a lot of the art. Much like the Irish Times in the 1920s, it appears I am not ready for modernism in Irish art.

Like the curate’s egg though, good in parts.

Nice to see an old friend from the Crawford Gallery on tour anyhow.

My brother got me a voucher for an “art afternoon tea” in the Merrion hotel for Christmas. They have an amazing art collection and you get to look at it; get a brochure on it; and eat cakes inspired by it. Not cheap (though free to me) and quite difficult to get a booking but I would recommend. Herself accompanied me. We enjoyed our experience.

I was listening to the German classical music radio that Mr. Waffle favours when I heard this number I have not heard in over 40 years. We learnt it in school for choir. To be honest I thought it was a bit mawkish but hearing it really brought me back. It’s by Handel, apparently, who knew? I have to say, you’ve got to applaud Mrs. O’Shea’s vaulting ambition for the 14 year old girls in her charge.

Mr. Waffle and I went to tenth anniversary celebratory drinks for the Dublin Inquirer to which we subscribe. It’s run on a complete shoestring but I like their enthusiasm and I like getting a print edition delivered. The drinks were upstairs in a pub and a bit primitive but we got to meet all the journalists and the editor. We also met the mother of one of the journalists. It was that kind of evening. The journalist was American but her mother was Irish (though she had lived in America for many years) and had just that morning arrived in from the States to show support (“I’m here as a subscriber,” she said enthusiastically but she was the only subscriber who had travelled 5,000 kms to be upstairs in a pub). She told us that on arrival that morning, she had discovered through the inevitable channels that her old headmistress’s funeral was that very day so she and her mother (the journalist’s grandmother – are you still with me?) went to the funeral and had lunch in the convent with the nuns which she very much enjoyed. I enjoyed this exchange myself as it confirmed all my beloved stereotypes about Irish people and funerals.

Our media subscriptions may yet beggar us. We subscribe to the Inquirer, the Irish Times, the Guardian and the Canard Enchaîné which you might have thought was plenty. The other day Mr. Waffle said to me “According to Haaretz…” “Sorry, what?” I said. He said, “I’m a subscriber. I felt they needed some support.” I mean yes, but that’s a lot of news organisations to keep afloat.

We went to the Dalkey book festival. Dalkey is a lovely little village beside the sea near Dublin. Our hopes for a lovely day were dashed by the bucketing rain. We went on our bikes and although our rain gear is good it wasn’t exactly the pleasant cycling experience I had envisaged. Also Dalkey is full of electric SUVs. I mean it’s good that they are electric, I guess, but they steal up behind you and unnerve you as you cycle along, like a snowboarder swooshing down the mountain after you as you are attempting a tricky turn.

We went to a panel talk on the manosphere. I was very underwhelmed. No new insights and I have decided that a panel with four people and a host is never going to give you any depth. I bought this book all the same, I had heard the author on a couple of podcasts and the book sounded interesting, though like everyone else, she had no real chance to shine on the panel. Not a triumph.

What was a triumph was that I had booked a restaurant for dinner and despite the literature loving hordes who had descended on the town we got our dinner and a window seat from whence we could see the crowd at the pub across the road, come out, get driven in by the rain and come out again.

As we were sitting watching the crowds surge in and out of the pub we saw Mr. Waffle’s brother and his wife locking their bikes to the pole across the road so we rushed out to say hello. Then another friend came up and we all had a nice chat until the rain started again and we all scuttled back to our various locations.

After dinner we went to see Paul Howard talk about Ross O’Carroll Kelly. Wouldn’t be a massive fan myself but Mr. Waffle enjoys the books. Mr. Howard packed out the ballroom of the hotel and the local crowd loved him (technically, I think Ross may be from Foxrock but Dalkey appears to be close enough). It was grand but I spent much of the evening in shock as Mr. Waffle pointed out an apparently very elderly gent whom I did not recognise at all but turns out to have been one of my (younger) lecturers from college. Disturbing.

To recover, we had a drink in the town with the friend we had run into earlier and his wife who was one of the volunteers shepherding literature enthusiasts from venue to venue.

As you will be no doubt aware, Bloomsday was June 16. I’m not a huge Joyce fan but a friend of the Princess’s who is doing a PhD on Joycean stuff was over from England to give a lecture so we went along to show support. Mr. Waffle found it interesting; I thought it was quite hard going myself but we both agreed that it was better than the Dalkey panel, so there was that.

And finally in cultural news, Mr. Waffle and I saw “Jane Austen Ruined my Life”. Grand but nothing to write home about. A bilingual film about a French woman who loves Jane Austen. It is supposed to be set in a big English Georgian house but it is a quite obviously entirely French big house so I found that amusing. We get our thrills where we can.

How have your own cultural outings been going?

A Project

25 June, 2025
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Siblings, Twins, Youngest Child

We have a lot of books. I was lamenting my book overload problems and commenting on my long term plan to get built in bookshelves in the dining room (v long term – about 12 years at that point) to my sister and she pointed out that her friend is married to a carpenter and perhaps he could do it for us. I seized the day.

We began decanting books from the existing bookshelves on May 10. This was exhausting. My sister commented when she saw the piles “bookshelves are a really good storage system”. She is obsessed with storage systems but she wasn’t wrong.

Will we just have a look at that again from another angle?

It’s not like we hadn’t selected any books to give away but I would have to concede that progress on that front was pretty poor. I note from inspection of the picture below that the giving away pile initially included “A Town like Alice” which I subsequently rescued. Not a huge success.

Then we had to move the existing bookshelves out of the room. We moved them upstairs. Some of them we repurposed but some we needed to give away. I placed ads on various “things to give away” websites. We had some interest but not as much as I would have hoped and, indeed, one bookshelf that I want to lose remains squatting upstairs.

As always when dealing with the public, one is surprised by people’s unreliability and how little people take in of what one writes. One young woman turned up with a granny shopping trolled to take away a set of bookshelves and seemed disappointed when shelves which I had specified in the ad needed a van to take away would not fit. A number of people believed that the shelves could be dismounted but found as I had specified in the ad that they could not (Habitat glued them as well as screwed them together, I don’t know why but they were pretty sturdy). Two young Latin American women (one from Chile, one from Mexico – we had a chance to chat later) turned up at 11 at night to collect a smaller (but still heavy) bookshelf and proposed to carry it to their accommodation about a mile away; they could barely carry it down the stairs with our help. I drove them home with the shelf in the boot for which I will doubtless get my reward in heaven.

The desk where I compose this deathless prose was removed also. That’s why there hasn’t been deathless prose for a while. I do not enjoy typing on the phone.

We also removed from the room a Victorian pod table (this link shows the kind of table which I note was for auction; was in better condition than mine and was cheaper than my repair estimate, we move on) which used to belong to my Nana and which, sadly, lists. Having moved it out along with the vast stock of photographs which used to sit on it, I bit the bullet and called an antique furniture restorer to come and have a look at it. Ages for him to come. Ages for him to send the estimate (“I’m on holidays at the moment, text me again in 10 days”) and within 20 minutes of him sending the estimate, I got a contrite call from Mr. Waffle telling me he had broken the leg off the table while trying to put it back together. I nearly cried. In the end, you will be relieved to hear, the restorer said that his estimate was already so vast that fixing the leg made no difference; he didn’t put it in those terms but that was the implication. When can he collect it you wonder? “Text me after the weekend and we’ll agree a date.” Of course.

John the carpenter made the shelves in the room. He looks after the children at home so he could only work 10-2 (after dropping the children to school and before picking them up). It took a good while but it was an excellent job. He left us for a well-earned family holiday on May 27 (and returned after the holiday to fix a number of other items around the house which had been bothering me for some time and which I had raised with him during his time with us – honestly my marriage to Mr. Waffle united the two unhandiest people of our generation).

Then nothing happened until June 11 when the painter was finally free to come. Based on progress on day 1, I thought this would be a quick job.

Well that was stupid of me.

The painter left us on June 18 and then the paint had to dry. Finally, on Sunday June 22 we began putting books back on the shelves. It certainly felt like the longest day of the year. Our relationship nearly broke down over the categorisation of memoir and biography. I wanted a separate historic biography section but it was not to be and now Bruce Springsteen is beside George III and if you think that’s right, you’re wrong. My legs have only just recovered from climbing up and down the ladder.

We did find some more books to give away with great reluctance. Our selection of coffee table books about Brussels, for example, took a bit of a hit.

I said to Mr. Waffle, “This feels like Swedish death cleaning”. “Don’t worry,” said he, “there’s still a huge selection of 90s novels for the children to throw out after we die.” It is true that 90s novels feature strongly as those were formative years for us and also, now we are much more likely to borrow from the library than to buy a book. I also have a huge collection of very heavy art books which I have not had access to in years. Quite excited to see these and also a bit nervous that the shelves will not bear their weight. But behold the finished product.

My brother came to stay last night and I made him admire the bookshelves. He had to admire because they are admirable and I made him. “But why do you need so many books?” he asked, spoiling for a fight. “You will never read them all again,” he said pointing out the blindingly obvious. “Well, they’re to show people how clever we are as well,” I said. “In that case, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ by Stieg Larsson isn’t doing a lot of heavy lifting.” Unanswerable.

I could honestly do with fewer tradesmen in the house after our epic bookshelf project but earlier in the summer we met a solar panel salesman. Our neighbour had got them and we went with the same crowd. The salesman made it sound amazing and pain free. It has not been amazing and pain free. Among the elements not covered by the salesman but articulated by the engineer who came some weeks later in the salesman’s wake was that we would need to get our own electrician to link the hot water tank in the utility room to the fuse box beside the hall door (surely there was already some link?). Anyway the electrician came and said we would need to get rid of all of our under stairs shelves to fit the wires; next day John the carpenter came back, talked to the electrician and took everything out (all the contents of under the stairs are now in the utility room, thanks for asking) and the electrician is going to come back on Friday. And I am hoping John who, I suspect, is regretting that he ever came near us, will come and put them back next week. And we still haven’t actually got the solar panels. More on this story as it develops.

Michael has taken to singing this song around the house.

The Eye of the Beholder

29 April, 2025
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Reading etc., Siblings

I was at the Hugh Lane Gallery recently. Francis Bacon’s studio has been reconstructed in the Gallery; and has been a big attraction there for many years. It was brought piece by piece from his London attic and re-instated in the Hugh Lane. I am not a big Francis Bacon fan but it is interesting. I took a photo and sent it in to the family group chat captioning it “My worst nightmare”. A hilarious line reflecting on the artist’s studio and my own slight obsession with tidiness. Like many of these hilarious lines of mine, it went unread in the family group chat except by my saintly husband who, on first glance thought it was actually my parents’ attic in its glory days (it has now been tamed by my sister in a project stretching over many months). I have to say, actually, it does resemble the attic except there is marginally more floor space in the studio.

Everyone has an Angle

27 April, 2025
Posted in: Ireland, Mr. Waffle

I was at mass in a Capuchin church this morning. In the sermon the priest spoke about the late Pope. “Do you remember where you were when it was announced that he was Pope?” asked the priest. Nope, afraid not. The priest said, “I was in intensive care in Beaumont Hospital”. Well, that would be memorable. “I was working there as a chaplain.” It’s a rollercoaster.

He continued “When I heard the name the Pope had chosen, I thought it referred to St Francis Xavier [founder of the Jesuits – the Pope was a Jesuit] but it was actually a reference to our Francis [St. Francis of Assisi – famously a friend of the poor]. He was a Jesuit Pope with a Franciscan heart.” I’m not sure that would necessarily be the Jesuit take but who can say. It is possible that for those of you not familiar with religious orders the reference to the Capuchins may create some further confusion. For the relationship between the Franciscans and the Capuchins, I refer you here. To educate and inform, that’s me. My father’s first cousin was a Capuchin and he married myself and Mr. Waffle; I have a soft spot for them.

As a wishy-washy liberal Catholic, the late Pope was my guy and I am slightly nervous about who will come next. It’s funny, sometimes, I feel like I am the last practicing Catholic under 60 in Ireland and I can feel a bit self-conscious saying I go to mass in certain circles (this is a real turn around from my youth, I can tell you) but suddenly when the Pope died, everyone had an opinion and everyone knew all about it. I felt like I imagine the Olympic trampolining contestants feel: no one knew anything about your sport or even that it was an Olympic sport and you were trampolining away there in the shadows and suddenly, not only does anyone know all about your sport but they have views on the minutiae of it and how points are awarded and all the rules. That said, I was once at a table quiz years ago and one of the questions was, “Under what name is Jorge Bergoglio better known?” We were all stumped though I did say, “I know that name, it’s someone alright.” So I was a bit ahead of my team mates though my genius insight didn’t gain us a point obviously. Great was my humiliation when I discovered that it was my guy.