belgianwaffle

Ireland

Down Among the Women


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

This post is inspired by the depressing news that an able female politician has resigned for personal reasons. I sympathise, I really do, imagine having a young child and a job where you have to commute between two locations. And your husband also has a job where he has to commute between two locations (and not the same two – they both have to be in Dublin but have constituencies in different parts of the country). And the hours are long. But she was actually known in politics, no one had ever heard of him. Of course, it was their decision to make and if it’s the right thing for them, who am I to quibble. But yet.

The text below is lifted from the site of the National Women’s Council of Ireland:

Only 13% of those elected to the Dail (lower house of Parliament) are women.
This percentage has risen by only 1% over the past 10 years.
At this rate, it will take 370 years for the percentage of women in the Dail to reach 50%.
The percentage of women appointed to the Cabinet in this Government has declined by 7% while the percentage of women Ministers of State has decreased by 11%.
Only 17% of those elected to the Seanad (upper house) are women.
Only 16% of elected Councillors are women.
The percentage of women appointed to State boards has rarely reached 40% although this has been an official Government guideline since 1991.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and Public Service consists of 16 men and just one woman.

And then an Oireachtas (Dail and Seanad) report itself announces gloomily:

Since 1990, when Mary Robinson was elected as Ireland’s first woman President, Ireland’s rate of women’s political representation has reduced drastically. In 1990, Ireland was in 37th position in the world classification of women’s representation in the lower or single house of national parliaments.

However, by October 2009 Ireland had fallen to 84th position, with 23 women TDs out of 166 (13.8%); ranked equally with Djibouti in East Africa (www.ipu.org).

The report considers quotas for women quite extensively. It seems to me that, generally, the most vigourous opponents of this idea are women. Perhaps because they are the ones whose views are always sought. I remember when the report came out, a number of female politicians were asked their views on this vexed question. And it is vexed. A number of them said words to the effect of “I got here on my own merit, it can be done and I don’t approve of quotas.” The implication in their view was that quotas are almost like cheating. And that view has a lot of sympathy. Suppose there is a better man for the job, yet it is given to the woman, wouldn’t that be terrible? The unfairness and, of course, the wrongness of that.

Now, consider this: some time ago, medical schools in Ireland became concerned about the fact that the majority of their incoming medical students were women. Girls were performing better in the final school examination that controls entry to medicine. A new additional entry test for medicine was devised to try to balance entry by gender. There was some outrage. One of the things that struck me though was at no point did anyone raise the two issues which are invariably raised when quotas for women are suggested:

1. Won’t those boys who got in on the “aptitude test” and would not otherwise have got in feel bad about the higher performing girls who they are displacing? Personally, I would feel terrible, if it were me…

2. Aren’t we risking not having the very best students as our doctors. Don’t we want the best students to be doctors?

But let’s be honest here, the real reason that they are so keen to get in men is that huge numbers of female doctors go part time in their thirties when they have children. Working as a GP seems to facilitate this. Working in a hospital does not. Who is going to man (no pun intended) the emergency wards? Perhaps though this indicates a need for a wider rethink of medical careers rather than a gender control of the intake. Perhaps the same is true for politics.

One of the most interesting things about female role models and confidence I have heard was from Maire Geoghgan Quinn. She was speaking about being offered the Gaeltacht portfolio by then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey. She would be the first female full cabinet Minister since the foundation of the State (Countess Markiewicz was Minister for Labour in the first Dail before independence). She is as tough as old boots, MGQ, but she said that when she was offered the job, the first thing she said was “Do you think I’m up to it?” She said that it is a comment she has always regretted. I find it almost unbelievable that someone like her would have said that. I think it shows two things: 1. that the fact that she was to be the first full female cabinet Minister in some 60 years weighed on her mind and 2. that like many women lacked confidence in her abilities. There might be something in this role model business.

[Now, clever readers, the title of this post refers to a novel by a well known feminist author – guess away, no googling.]

Weekend round-up


Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland

It was heritage week. Getting into heritage week events is a bit like getting your children into a good secondary school in Dublin. You have to start before you might conceivably have thought it was necessary. The minute the brochure came out at the end of July, I attempted to book us in to three events. One was already fully booked but the other two came good. On Saturday we had a children’s tour of Farmleigh which, though led by a slightly forbidding woman, was actually very well done. She had stories from the last children who lived in the house (now grown-up Guinnesses) and she handled the crowd very well. It was her outdoors colleague who was less successful. His job was to introduce the children to the horses and donkeys on the estate. On the face of it, this was the easier job. However, he was the kind of man who likes to complain about his job and he told the utterly uninterested audience that you might think that he would be allowed to name the foals but no. That job goes to the general manager. And then when he goes on his holidays, the lad who looks after the horses doesn’t talk to them and they’re wild when he comes back. He would do anything with horses but he won’t get up on one, not for all the tea in china. And so on.

The mild success of Saturday was, however, completely eclipsed by the trip to Kilmainham Gaol on Sunday. The authorities in the gaol had gone to a lot of trouble and they put together an excellent tour for children. Firstly the children were given sheets of paper with their “crimes” and sentences on them (things like vagrancy, 6 months hard labour) and photographed. Then they were marched single file into the gaol carrying their crimes in front of them. Then they met the governor, Obadiah Bartley, who harangued each of them in turn for their “‘orrible crimes” in a strong Yorkshire accent. It was unfortunate that the Princess was the first child he came to as she collapsed in nervous tears even as Daniel whispered to her that it was “only pretend”. The children were then put in a cell, accompanied by parents, if they wished. Herself sat in the corner weeping hoping that the governor would not come to inspect her. The boys were already starting to enjoy themselves. On emerging, the children met prisoner 98 (an actor dressed up in prison gear) and went into his cell to see what he ate and what work he was doing. Even the Princess started to enjoy herself. Then they went out to the exercise yard in single file and marched around. Prisoner 98 attempted to escape and they ran after him and stopped him. Then they followed the Governor as he locked up prisoner 98 in the “smelly cell” in the basement. The Governor said that the children had all been good and he would pardon them. He then asked whether prisoner 98 should be released also but they were unanimous that he should be left to rot. Children have no bowels of mercy. They were then given their release papers.

The children were sufficiently reconciled to the Governor that they even got their picture taken with him and prisoner 98.

Weekend Round-Up – More a Stream of Consciousness than an Actual Post


Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland

Let me see, the boys and I went to Dublinia which was dull but they seem to have come away with an abiding interest in bubonic plague. We went to mass where our parish priest dutifully hung Daniel’s picture of the crucifixion on a marble pillar. We had that great reading that starts “Vanity, vanity all is vanity”, which is both beautiful and pointed. Dinner with the cousins and in-laws.

Went to see the National Transport Museum which is appeallingly amateurish. The website is far more professional than the premises. Had lunch on a bench by the playground in Howth eating Beshoff’s take-away chips. A group of German tourists looked at us very disapprovingly. My sister rang from Bahrain and disapproved. Despite being sneered at for our poor eating habits/vulgarity, the children still didn’t eat anything. Daniel sucked the ketchup off his chips and then passed them on to the seagulls. Sometimes, I despair. Then, a walk at Howth Head where the Princess astonished us by running all the way. Michael did not surprise us; he insisted on travelling all the way back up on his father’s shoulders. Daniel was tired but manful.

001

Then out to the cinema with sister-in-law to finally see Inception.

More Holiday


Posted in: Family, Hodge, Ireland, Middle Child, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

Wednesday

The children began to wonder how the cat was getting on in our absence.

I decided to grace my relatives with our presence. We picked up my mother and drove north to Limerick. The children were exemplary in the car. First we visited my uncle and aunt who have a shop. They each got a bag to fill with goodies. They were ecstatic. They were fantastically well behaved and I glowed with pride as they uttered please and thank you with no prompting. They did not go so far as to refuse the proferred treats (proper polite behaviour in rural Ireland – you must say no thank you several times before yielding) but as townies I think that was forgiveable. Then they settled down to watch a DVD which I had thought to bring with me which guaranteed silence and further good behaviour (some might call this bribery). Over tea, for their own obscure reasons, my mother and my aunt and uncle reminisced about pig slaughtering. “Remember,” said my mother, “how the pig used to squeal and do you remember the blood gushing out from its throat.” My aunt who is, clearly, a more sensitive soul than her husband or his sister confided to me that after seeing pigs slaughtered as a child, she can’t eat bacon or pork.

Then we went to my aunt and cousin’s farm. We had visited at Christmas when the children loved going on the tractor in the dark in the pouring rain so I had high hopes for this trip in daylight in sunshine. I was not disappointed. They absolutely loved it. They got to go on the tractor again and collect a bale of hay.

Hay

They met the calf they had named at Christmas (I was pleased to note that he had kept his name and he hadn’t been slaughtered – two worries dealt with). They brought the cows in for milking and then helped to milk the cows and feed the calves. It was fantastic. Now, Michael demonstrates milking a cow by attaching suction tubes, taking them off and spraying the cow’s teats (with water, disinfectant, who knows? Well probably Michael but I’m not going to wake him up now to check). Farm to fork – I think these children know where their milk comes from.

I was in the kitchen eating rhubarb tart with my mother and aunt. My new found enthusiasm made me go out and inspect the vegetable beds where the rhubarb was grown. They were weed and slug free with rows of healthy looking vegetables. I have not at all inherited my relatives’ green thumbs, alas. I returned to find that my mother was talking about rats. Farms are full of rats, it appears. Back on the farm where she spent her teenage years she was reminiscing happily about my grandfather’s rat trap. Apparently you run a plank up the side of a barrel of water and another down the other side. Rats are very curious and they will climb to the top to see what’s in the barrel. They think that they can jump to the other side, but they can’t and they drown in the barrel. “Who emptied the barrel?” I asked. My mother didn’t know, that sounds like a lovely job and probably why the barrel rat trap never caught on in a domestic setting.

We got home about 11 and to my horror all three children were still awake and anxious for the full bed time routine. It was midnight before I got to my own bed with herself tucked in beside me to keep her safe from Voldemort.

Thursday

I woke to the sound of the Princess admonishing her brother: “You were much less trouble when you were a small boy, Daniel,” she said to her four year old brother.

The Princess got a cactus spine in her finger and howled for her father who is far more sympathetic than I am. The boys, inspired by their sister, also began to wonder where their father was. As I pointed out to him, he was only 24 hours less popular than the cat.

After the long drive of the day before, I decided to have a quiet day. The highlight was to be a trip into Youghal to have a pizza in a nice place we found last year. I starved them for the morning (no snack!) so that they would eat lunch and arrived into Youghal at 12.20. It started to rain. The restaurant did not open until one. There is only so much you can do in the rain in Youghal for 40 minutes with three starving children. I capitulated and brought them to another restaurant. It was quite, quite vile. The food was inedible, the children squirmed under the table, the service was atrocious. The Princess refused to eat her pizza and she was quite right, it was pale and undercooked. My chowder was horrible. The children insisted on having scones for desert. The three scones arrived on one plate with no jam (advertised attraction). Our main courses were not cleared away, my tea never came and when I finally managed to get someone to find the jam (my most imperative need as Michael was howling lustily for same) he brought back marmalade and said that was all there was. In the toilets, before we left, Michael managed to knock a picture off the wall on to Daniel’s shoulder. We stepped back into the rain less restored than you might imagine. There was a tourist centre. We went in. There was quite an interesting exhibition but I couldn’t look at it in any detail as the entrance to the exhibition was through an expensive tourist tat shop. The children were entranced. They had each been given a fiver by both my mother and my aunt and the amounts were burning holes in their pockets (or under the table or wherever they let the money drop for me to pick up to forestall a wail of “I’ve lost my money!”) I suggested in vain that €5 fridge magnet with a dolphin was not a prudent investment, that €8.50 for a sheep to stick to the window was both criminally expensive and a deeply unwelcome addition to our household. The Princess said, “I thought it was OUR money.” Alright fine then but you won’t be able to afford much. The shopkeeper took an interest in their travails and gave them money off the sheep and the fridge magnet. Herself lent some of her money to Daniel so that he could afford his dolphin magnet and a water pistol while she herself invested in a cut price starfish magnet. They were delighted with themselves but some unhappiness ensued when a) both magnets broke on the way home and b) Michael discovered that he couldn’t eat his sheep.

After the trials of the morning, when we got back, I got out the portable DVD player, put on Kung Fu Panda and took myself off to make tea and read the paper cover to cover to restore my broken spirit.

Friday

Mr. Waffle came back at lunch time. On our way to collect him we stopped off at the local supermarket to buy plasters. I also bought cereal for breakfast except that they didn’t have any Special K which the Princess likes so I let her have a variety pack to ease the pain. Michael asked to buy chocolate fingers. Oh alright, I said. They all asked for a treat. I weakly gave them a Kinder egg each. Michael got a water pistol (following complex negotiations, I will spare you). I got some strawberries for herself as well. As the cashier packed up my purchases she smiled at the children and said, “Are you having a party?” Yes, indeed, a new low for my shopping.

After the excitement of picking up their father we took my mother to East Cork for the afternoon where she dutifully admired our friends’ house and the sea view.

Saturday

Our Hiberno-Dutch friends had their fourth and, I think, final child recently. They decided to have a big party for the christening in Mitchelstown where the Dutch Mama is originally from. We arrived early for the 12.30 christening. This was our undoing as we thought that we would have time to have a quick bite to eat in town. We did not. When we arrived back in the church at 12.50, the child was christened and Mr. Waffle was rigid with fury (it is hard when the rest of your evil family just do not care about being late). He mellowed as we met friends at the church. It was a huge group. There must have been 40 children (our pension needs will be met, hurrah). We went back to the Dutch Mama’s sister’s house where there was a marquee with enough food to feed an army, two bouncy castles and two babysitters to meet the needs of the younger members of the group. Unfortunately, it was the wettest day of the year so far and all of our children went on the bouncy castle. Afterwards, Michael sat in his underwear watching the “Princess and the Frog”. The Princess was too big to countenance this and sat wrapped damply in a towel. Daniel only went out after the DVD was over. Despite the damp, we all had a very pleasant time. I think I am finally reaching the bit I remember from my own childhood when we went off to play with gangs of children and the grown-ups sat together talking.

When we got into the car to go home, the children all stripped out of their wet clothes and travelled back naked which they hugely enjoyed. Our (childless) friends M and R were staying the night in their house and R arrived slightly before we got back. I think he was surprised to see three naked children scamper in from the car. “It’s a different world,” he said wonderingly. He did, however, enjoy watching Michael imperiously demand that all the rice be removed from his dinner plate and before going out to his party, R pointed out to Michael that quite a few grains had been left behind.

Sunday

The children were up at dawn with, as far as I can see, the sole objective of waking up M and R who are unused to the patter of little feet. “Shhh,” we would hush. “We are being quiet,” they would shout down the stairs. M and R were the picture of virtue saying, “No, no, no, not loud at all.” Then a last trip to the beach on to lunch at my parents’ before driving back to Dublin where we were greeted with something bordering on enthusiasm by the cat.

Two points worth noting: Doggy did not travel with us – the first time ever he has been left to languish at home – and nobody wet the bed. Milestones, I assure you.

Offline in East Cork


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

Did you miss me? No, don’t tell me, it’s probably better for both of us, if I don’t know. I have been at my friends’ house in East Cork for the week bonding with my children. No television and no computer. It was surprisingly pleasant. And the good news is that I have prepared for you a blow by blow description of our trip. Go on, admit it, you’re delighted.

Saturday

We drove to Cork in the morning. I know I am becoming somewhat tedious on the subject of the new road to Cork but as a child I spent a minimum of 6 hours on the road to Dublin with my parents and now it can easily be done door to door in three hours. So we were able to have lunch in my parents’ house and then spend the afternoon in Garryvoe. Quite amazing.

On the road from Cork to Garryvoe there is a lake with swans. Mr. Waffle said to the children, “Regardez, des cynges!” “What kind of signs?” asked Daniel. I’m not at all sure this French lark is going as well as I hoped it would. “Is signes not the French for signs?” I asked. “No,” he said, “road signs are panneaux.” The French, they torture me because they can.

The children were delighted to see the beach and promptly flung themselves into the water fully dressed. Fortunately, our friends’ house is right beside the beach and we were able to drip home without suffering from hypothermia.

003” Beach

That evening, I taught herself how to make breakfast for her brothers in the hope that this might allow me to stay in bed a little longer. This was only moderately successful as the excitement her task generated meant that she was bouncing around until 11.30 that night and up again at 6.30 asking anxiously whether it was time to make breakfast.

Meanwhile, Daniel had gone into our bedroom to be alone. When we went up to bed we discovered that he had put to good use the key to the door and locked himself in. We began by whispering and ended by shouting and banging the door but he slept on oblivious. The Princess giggled hysterically and her father became rather annoyed and took himself off to Daniel’s bed. Using my Enid Blyton lore I stuck a piece of paper under the door and wiggled the key in the lock with a corkscrew. The key landed with a thud. Unfortunately, even, if it had landed on the paper (which it did not) it was too wide to fit under the door. Fortunately, every room in our friends’ house had a key and all of the locks turned out to be the same so all was well. The next day, we put all the keys on top of the doors.

Sunday

Mr. Waffle got the train back to Dublin at lunch time and after dropping him to the station in Cork, the children and I visited my parents. I visited a cousin in hospital and we then retired to our East Cork fastness and out to the beach. The Princess was, by now, on Harry Potter book 5 and she went to bed with it. I was summoned to her room at 11 to look for Voldemort under the covers. She came to sleep with me.

Monday

I realised that part of the reason I am never normally cross with the children is that Mr. Waffle does it for me.

My plan for the day is that we will go to the beach until 11 and then on to the fleshpots of Leahy’s fun farm. A plan calculated to bring joy to the hearts of small children one would think. But no.

We have a very frustrating morning. It is a beautiful day and I try, unavailingly, to persuade the children to come to the beach. No, no, they want to stay at the house. The Princess has started on HP book 6. At 10.30, they fancy a snack. I lure them outside by promising to buy them ice cream in the shop. I plan to make it a brief stop on the way to the farm. We go to the shop. Do they have to have ice cream? I suppose not. The Princess fills a bag with what I used to call “penny sweets”, I’m not quite sure what they are now, cents sweets? I make her put half of them back. She is unhappy. We buy buckets (for reasons which are unclear we appear to have packed only one leaking bucket from the sample of hundreds available at home) and a spade (one of our three has been carried away by the tide). I end up spending 17 euros on what was a trip out for an ice cream. No one says thank you. I am unhappy. General peevishness.

It is not yet time to go to the fun farm according to my, suddenly dictatorial, timetable. We go to the playground near the beach. The weather is uncharacteristically warm and sunny. I mop up ice cream. I apply sun cream. I discover, to my horror, there is only enough in the bottle to cover two children. I suggest that we go to the shop to buy more. Nobody will come with me. I consider leaving them and nipping across to the shop on my own. I decide that I can’t, the boys are only 4, after all and herself is really too small to mind them. I sit in blazing sunshine and pray for rain. It does not rain. I try to assert myself again and fail. Michael (the un sunblocked child) assures me that he will not burn. This is unconvincing as his skin is lily white and he cannot prevent sunburn by will power alone.

The Princess suggests that we test out the new buckets on the adjoining beach for a moment. Weakly, I agree, “but only for a minute”. Once they get on the beach, the children are delighted. I am very bitter that I did not assert myself earlier in the morning and force them to come out. I sit there feeling v. warm (no sunscreen for me either) and praying for rain. It does not rain. The children are having a fantastic time. I am fretting about sunscreen. They have waded into water to their waists despite my begging them not to and will need to go home and change before we go anywhere. It’s time to go home, I say sternly. They ignore me. I sit there getting crosser and crosser. To add to my chagrin, another mother is skipping in and out of the waves with her small son clearly having a fantastic time as I sit on the rocks glaring at my disobedient offspring like some kind of archetypal malevolent step-mother.

Eventually, I lose my temper and announce enough is enough we are leaving. I march towards the car in a towering fury. No one follows. Michael is not budging, he wants to make a sandcastle in his new bucket. The buckets are those square ones with turrets and he is diligently filling it with wet sand from under the water. He ignores my angrily hissed instruction that it will not come out and keeps filling. I give up and angrily help him fill it to the brim. We turn it over, it does not work, he howls. I march off foaming at the mouth with him trotting behind me in tears. I roar at the other two to follow. Daniel, who despite his own temper is actually made very miserable when either of his parents are cross, starts to cry and say “Sorry, sorry, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault.” I am impervious and as I march towards the car with my gloomy troops, I begin to enumerate their faults. “I am in charge,” I announce “and, in future, when I say jump, you say how high?” They are unfamiliar with this particular cliché and my temper is not improved by having to explain what it means. The Princess says coldly, “There’s no need to shout.” A triumph of parenting.

Despite this, frankly inauspicious, start to the day, the trip to the fun farm is a huge success. We arrive at 12 and do not leave until 6. Lunch appears something of a low point as the children tuck into chips and nuggets and I have an uninspired toasted special. In fact, had I known at that point how low my standards on the children’s food would slip later in the week, I would have been a great deal more relaxed.

024 Snake

018 Tractor

At the same time as we were there, there was a bunch of children from the Chernobyl children’s project. They are let in free every year, apparently as part of Mr. Leahy’s programme of corporate responsibility (though I really doubt that he would put it in these terms himself – I have met him both times we were there and he looks and acts exactly like a Cork farmer in his 60s). This is part of a project where Irish families take in children from Chernobyl for a fortnight’s holiday every summer. I couldn’t imagine doing this myself but I really admire families who do year after year. Most of the children seemed fine although there were a couple who were clearly mentally handicapped and I think many of the others probably have nasty, less visible, problems.

Tuesday

We went to the Observatory after a slightly annoying tour of Cork suburbs (only 15 minutes from the ringroad said the brochure, it omitted to add if you know where you are going as signs are few and far between). The children were pleased and I found myself pondering our infinitesimal smallness in the face of the cosmos. A success then until Daniel wet his trousers because he was too absorbed in moving species to their correct habitat to go to the toilet. They all sent a message to space. Michael has been driving me demented since asking where exactly his message is now. Messages travel at the speed of light and the interface helpfully indicated that it would take 1.2 seconds to reach the moon, a month to reach Jupiter and so on. Had I known I was going to be cross-questioned on this for days, I would have paid a lot more attention at the time. Anyhow, it’s going to take 122 years before it reaches its ultimate destination so I have been quoting that at him.

I deposited the children at my parents’ house and went into town to buy trousers, underpants and socks for Daniel feeling that he couldn’t stay naked from the waist down. I don’t much like out of town shopping centres and I prefer to shop in the city centre. As I have always lived near town, I usually walk. On this particular day, it was raining and I drove. I now understand why city traders complain about lack of parking. The whole thing was a nightmare. The city fathers in their wisdom had closed Patrick Street north bound, chosen to relay cobbles on the Coal Quay and have not yet repaired the wall near the Mercy hospital where the river overflowed its banks late last year leading to a lengthy diversion. Cork is small but it was nearly three hours after driving in that I staggered back to my parents’ determined never to repeat the experience. The authorities have been plugging the fact that Cork is one of the Lonely Planet’s top 10 places to visit in 2010 but, clearly, the Lonely Planet people left their cars at home.

I’m exhausted and it’s only Tuesday. More tomorrow, if we’re all feeling strong.

New national colours


Posted in: Ireland

I passed three teenagers sitting on a low wall wearing short shorts.

Their legs were the only colours you see on Irish women: Sunburnt pink, tangerine orange (fake tan) and snow white. It’s quite unusual to get a sighting of these last two together. Must have been some kind of detente.