belgianwaffle

Ireland

Is There Snow in the Mountains?


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

For the first time this year, the weather is cold and there is, in fact, a light dusting of snow in the mountains which are visible from most places in Dublin.

Everywhere looks lovely in the bright frosty weather we are having at the moment. However, I worked from home today and will be working from home tomorrow (normally I tend not to for a range of dull reasons). I can tell you that the dining room where I live and have my being when working from home is baltic, central heating at full blast notwithstanding. I spent the day with a hot water bottle at my feet. My poor aloe vera plant (my companion when working from the dining room) looks like it’s having a nervous breakdown.

I am just about to leave the house for dinner with friends and I believe it may be somewhat warmer outside than in.

More exciting content tomorrow.

Weekend Round Up


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle

Saturday

Mr. Waffle and I went out for breakfast together and then he went into the office and worked all day. Sigh. I did various underwhelming things: I went to the dry cleaner, the library, the cobbler and the greengrocer. I attempted to get through some part of the mountain of newsprint which I brought into the house.

Sunday

I went to mass and we had a reading that I always enjoy. I’m really not seeing that turn the other cheek spin which emanates from the New Testament.

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Since Mr. Waffle was not working for the afternoon we had a mild outing to the Botanic Gardens. It lashed rain.

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We ran from greenhouse to greenhouse and looked at the plants.

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I imagine Wittgenstein had a similarly gloomy experience in November 1948.

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There was an AI exhibition in the space upstairs from the cafe which was mildly interesting. I mean, I’ve had worse outings but I’ve had better also.

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And then home to the fire to make a determined effort to finish off the papers. And how was your own weekend?

A New Dispensation


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

I think I have said before that I’m finding it a bit logistically challenging to be the parent of three adults.

While I was really glad to have them all on the summer holidays with us this year; the organisation of this was complex.

For day to day matters, herself is in England so this is not really an issue. For her Dublin based sibings, however, logistics are a daily pain. When I was in college, my memory is that my mother cooked dinner every evening (always my mother, sign of the times) and if I was in, I had dinner and if not, I skipped it. But it just seems wasteful to cook for four when only two of us are going to be there. Whatsapp is full of “Who is home for dinner tonight?” messages.

Often the house is empty when I leave for work and when I come home which is not entirely unwelcome but just different. We’re a bit more atomised, I guess.

As you know, Mr. Waffle is Lord of Laundry but one morning he had to go to a meeting and asked me to put out the clothes. I went out to the back garden. Mr. Waffle was gone to his meeting, Daniel was already in a lecture and I was unsure of Michael’s whereabouts. I became surer when I tried to get back into the house after completing my labour of love and found the back door dutifully locked by Michael before he had left for college. Fortunately I had my phone and I rang him, “Where are you?”. “On the bus,” said he. He had to get off the bus, come home and let me in again. He was very apologetic but as he pointed out, he knew his father had gone out and who would have thought that I would be out putting out the washing? I can’t feel this would ever have happened back when they were all at school. Sometimes it’s more like four adults living together. Other times definitely not, I suppose.

Unrelated: I saw a giant chameleon on the street.

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Onwards and Upwards


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

I may have mentioned before that I am thrilled by the successes of my friends.

You are probably familiar with the Gore Vidal line “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.” I wouldn’t say that was never true for me but as I’ve got older I’ve got much more philosophical. Particularly when my female friends take on important roles, I feel their success is something bigger than themselves and I love that for them and for me and my children.

My school friend who I met last night has just got a big job as a site manager for a pharmaceutical company. So exciting. On cross-questioning, she told me that there are 3 female site managers across the company’s 47 sites, so some work still to do but it’s a start.

My friend in Holland (Mr. Waffle’s friend first, I have to concede) was offered a chance to go to Aruba for work for six months. She is a mother of 4 – two in college and two still in school. “Are you going to do it?” I asked her awestruck. “Anne,” said she, “I’m in my 50s who is going to offer me a chance to do something like this again?” And off she went, presumably with military style logistical preparations, behind her. The other day she sent Mr. Waffle a photo of a selection of her children and herself and her husband celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary in Aruba. I was delighted. My only regret is that I am now back at work and in no position to go to Aruba on holidays.

6,073 Tweets


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Reading etc.

I deleted my Twitter account a while back. For the past number of years I have really only been using it to push out blog posts. There were a couple of readers who came across from Twitter and believe me every reader is precious. But yet, this blog is a hobby not a job and the idea of sharing my content (such as it is) regularly on Twitter was becoming increasingly unappealing.

I am an early adopter and started my time on Twitter in 2007. Early tweets had sadly disappeared by the time I deleted my account so 6,073 is a very conservative estimate of the number of beautifully crafted tweets I put out into the world; my 200 or so followers were doubtless grateful. I did enjoy Twitter for a while but ultimately, it just made me a bit cross and it took up so much time. Overall, I am glad to be gone.

I see the Guardian has given up on Twitter as well. Two big beasts going at once, Elon Musk must be terrified.

Just in under the wire tonight as I was out for dinner with a school friend in Skerries in North Dublin. Apparently the best place in the world to live but quite the drive from the city, I can tell you.

Celebrity Culture


Posted in: Ireland

The traditional Irish approach to seeing celebrities is to ignore them. Partly because we respect their privacy, partly because, as a friend of mine said, “I wouldn’t give them the soot of it.”

I’m not sure whether these days are going but, as the Princess pointed out to me, I would still prefer to give a celebrity the cold shoulder than to pay him or her any attention. I’m not sure that’s still true for everyone, but perhaps.

There’s probably a reason for that. Laura Kennedy an Irish Times columnist who covers living in Australia, philosophy and make up (eclectic) had a beautiful piece recently about Tom, her little nephew in Limerick, who has special needs.

In Ireland, we value conformity. It is central to the Irish political and social project, stemming from a time when uniformity around collective identity was a key tool in combatting imperialism and cultural erosion. That had its benefits. We live in the legacy of some of its drawbacks.

You can’t wear a trench coat to the pub without your friends making Blade Runner references. We like people to fit in. We like to make it clear that we notice when they don’t, in both small, silly ways and larger, more serious ones. It’s a feature of our culture and for people like Tom, it has a higher cost than for the rest of us.

I think that’s probably true.

It’s also maybe why people are in general so friendly. Recently I saw the following (for me anyway) second tier, um, celebrities on the street: Brian O’Driscoll, Michael McDowell and the former archbishop of Dublin. To clarify they were not together. Each of them had a familiar face but not one I could immediately place so I went on the assumption that they were acquaintances of mine whom I had forgotten (a sadly all too familiar experience) and went in for the big hello. Each of them greeted this random stranger with a cheery hello back. It was only after I had passed them in each case that I realised that they were mildly well-known people who were strangers to me.

I have a friend who many years ago did something similar with her then TD (member of parliament) who was also a Minister. He cut her dead. She realised who he was a bit later and never voted for him again. His political career is now long over and although, one assumes, not solely due to this encounter, I don’t imagine it helped.

I went to an Argentinian restaurant recently for the first time (nice, surprisingly low on steak but containing real Argentinian customers saying “sho” and asking for limonada) and I thought I recognised my waitress. “Did I see you doing Irish language stand up?” I asked her. She confirmed that I had done and I told her she was great which she was. I thought, though, that she was a bit mortified about supplementing her income in this way (but, honestly, surely everyone knows that the big money isn’t in Irish language stand up?). Anyway I wish I’d just stuck to my guns and politely pretended I’d never seen her before in my life.