belgianwaffle

Ireland

Wash out


Posted in: Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Reading etc., Twins, Youngest Child

It was a bank holiday weekend here. On Saturday morning, the boys spent the morning playing football and hurling in glorious sunshine. On Saturday afternoon, I took the children to Newbridge where, despite the website’s advice to the contrary, the farm was open and full of young things. The children saw chickens hatching, piglets feeding, fed baby goats themselves, patted shetland ponies and generally had an excellent time. It was a good job that we took full advantage of the sunshine on Saturday as after this the weather was unremittingly gloomy.

On Saturday night, Mr. Waffle and I went to see “Arcadia” at the Gate (voucher a birthday present from my kind sister). It’s all about maths and rather long but quite enjoyable all the same. However, we met a man Mr. Waffle knew from school and he and his wife had an 8 week old baby at home – it was their first night out and they found it rather heavy going and ran away at the interval. Never mind.

On Sunday, we went to see the Tall Ships. This was a spectacular success for us last year but this year, it was not to be. It poured rain with particular intensity and fervour. The Princess was pretty cheerful but even a cup of tea and juice on a Dutch boat could not cheer up her brothers. They trailed along miserably muttering rebelliously about the rain.

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When we got home, we all had to strip to our underwear and we huddled in front of the television watching Sponge Bob and making pathetic sniffing noises. I understand from the weather forecast that Dublin was alone in receiving a biblical soaking and the rest of the country basked in sunshine. I wish we had gone to the attempt to bring together the largest number of twins in Ireland in Carrickmacross instead.

Nothing daunted, today I prodded my reluctant troops out of the house and we went to Newgrange where it also poured rain. It all passed off peacefully enough initially. We had lunch in the visitor centre, we saw a DVD, we wandered round the interpretative centre.

Then we went to Knowth and it poured. It was dull. The guide was cross with us as the children climbed on the mounds (a misunderstanding on our part, you are only allowed to climb on one mound – the one with a path).

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043” Top of Knowth

We were not helped by the fact that there were no other children on the tour. The other tourists were very kind, saintly, elderly people (Canadians, Mr. Waffle thinks) who seemed to have a far higher tolerance for small children than the site guides. I suppose it wasn’t their job to worry about Ireland’s neolithic culture being destroyed by the under 8s and this made them more carefree.

The bus back from Knowth to the visitor centre (only 5 minutes, mercifully) was particularly hideous as two of my three children wanted to sit beside me (Michael didn’t care) and only one of them could. The Princess wept bitter tears. Then, on the next bus to Newgrange, she sat beside me and Daniel cried very loudly. Newgrange, however, was quite good value. It was short. The guide spoke in terms the Princess could understand and she was fascinated and, best of all, given the weather, it was underground.

They did an exciting simulation of the winter solistice – they turned off all the lights and then when it was pitch black, they shone a light down the passage. Obviously, not as exciting as the winter sun illuminating the chamber but not bad all the same and we all enjoyed it. Our standards had been suitably lowered by our drenching at Knowth.

So maybe not a fantastic day but, you know, very worthy. To my intense delight when I asked the children what they liked best about the day, they didn’t say “the crisps we got after lunch” but the moment when they stood under the mound in Newgrange in the pitch dark.

First Communion


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

It’s May, it’s the season. I wondered where the children in my daughter’s school made their first communion. Upon enquiry, we were told that they were likely to change the venue as this year the church had been double booked for a funeral. I’m not sure whether you have to be catholic to find that funny.

Sweet Pea Carnage


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle

I bought sweet peas in March and grew them on the windowsill. They thrived. I planted them out two months ago and put up netting using garden staples. I was assisted in this process by three small children with hammers so it was more traumatic and less effective than I would have liked. The sweet pea all died. I was gutted, but then, some, miraculously, came back to life; they climbed, they thrived, I watered them and cooed over them. I got excited at the prospect that I might actually have flowers.

This morning, I drove into school with the children and Mr. Waffle. When I got there, I realised that I had, idiotically, left my briefcase at home. Mr. Waffle dropped me back home. I decided that I would cycle back into work. Mr. Waffle went about his business. I went in the side gate to pick up my bicycle. I cast my eye over the garden and, to my horror saw that the netting had come adrift, decapitating my sweet pea and leaving them trailing miserably on the ground.

Time was marching on but I felt it was vital to attempt to repair matters. Whether my employer would have shared this view remains, thankfully, a moot point. The back door was bolted, so I thought it would be easier to reattach the netting with the heel of my shoe than going round the front, letting myself in and getting a hammer. This is why, when I should have been in my place of work, I was standing one legged in the mud hammering with a shoe. There is a moral here somewhere. You will be pleased to hear that, as of this evening, the sweet pea is recovering.

Also, and unrelated, email from my husband as follows: “I see a letter in today’s Irish Times suggesting that we are a sitcom (Single Income, Three Children, Outrageous Mortgage).”

2 degrees of separation


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle

I live in a small country. Pretty much everyone in Ireland knows everyone else.

Whenever my husband and I watch the news there is always at least one pundit/reporter/other person whom one or both of us knows. This evening, for example, there was a man from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign talking angrily about the Israeli attack on the flotilla coming into Gaza. “Oh” said my husband, “he was in college with me.” Pause. “He’s Jewish.” However, Mr. Waffle’s moment of the match this evening came when his bicycle (tied to a railing) was visible behind a reporter for several seconds.

Let me tell you another story. I met some new people through friends one evening. We were all chatting quite happily when one of the women I hadn’t met before (v. glamourous, pretty, beautifully made up, terrifying heels, long blonde hair) asked me what I thought of a topical political issue. I gave my view. She gave her diametrically opposed one. We discussed. She got crosser and crosser. Though her concern was legitimate, many of the facts she adduced to support her argument were wrong and I told her so (ever tactful). Our common friend, seeking, I thought, to give the conversation a safer direction, asked what we thought about Bono telling Ireland to meet its development aid targets while moving part of U2’s business to the Netherlands to avoid tax. As my friend said, “Where do they think governments get their money from? They get it from tax revenue and it is hypocritical of Bono to preach that revenue should be spent on development aid and then moving his tax payments elsewhere.” Although this was old news, I felt that it would give us some common ground as who would defend U2 in these circumstances. But no, this other woman mounted a spirited defence of U2’s tax affairs. They gave huge amounts of money to charity, they still paid a lot of tax here, other companies outsourced to minimise their tax liability, Ireland used the same trick to draw in revenue from other countries. My friend remained implacable, I was with my friend. Feeling that matters were getting quite tetchy, I jested “Ireland is full of begrudgers.” “Are you one of them?” she snapped at me. Of course I am but, you know, nobody likes to be called a begrudger. “Do you work for U2?” I joked. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

Have I mentioned before that everybody in Ireland is only 2 degrees of separation from Bono?

In Tents


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Princess, Siblings, Travel

The Princess and I graced Cork with our presence this weekend. We travelled down on the, very expensive, train and came back by the newly constructed motorway. Well actually, only a stretch of motorway was newly constructed but it completes the Cork to Dublin motorway. The journey, door to door, took us under two and a half hours. When I was young, it used to be easily five hours. As a friend once said to me – whatever they take away from us, they can’t take back our roads.

It’s always nice to go to Cork. I settled into the old familiar routine, leaving the doors open to irritate my father, refusing to let my mother feed sweets to my daughter, stealing my sister’s moisturiser at bed time – do you think she left a tube of leather shoe cream on top of her make-up case on purpose? It’s only harmful, if ingested, but, frankly, it is also sub-optimal when applied to the face.

The Princess and I went to the market to buy dinner and were charged with getting a rack of lamb from Ashley. I was mildly pleased that though I haven’t been there for 20 odd years, he still recognised me and when I consulted with my mother on the telephone, he beckoned me and said “tell her that I have a leg of lamb for €25”. “Are you still in Belgium?” he asked. “No, I’m in Dublin.” He shook his head sadly at the error of my ways. I ran into our fishmonger’s son last time I was back. They had been going for something like 100 years but when Mr. Sheehan retired, none of the children fancied taking it on. There’s a parable there somewhere but I think it needs an Irish Times columnist to develop it fully.

We went into the Crawford for a look at the sculpture and a cup of tea. I made her walk around the plaster cast of the Torso Belvedere but she was much more taken with a 19th century statue of Hibernia. I once attended a lecture on sculpture and the lecturer said two things which have given me much pleasure and I will now share them with lucky old you: 1. sculpture is three dimensional, always walk around a sculpture to appreciate it fully, 2. sculpture is heavy and often, the sculptor will have to put something behind the subject’s legs so that it is not too heavy to stay upright. At its most uninspiring this is a tree stump or column – visible in this statue on Dublin’s main street but it can also lead to more exciting flights of fancy. On this occasion, our reward for circling Hibernia was to find her dog’s tail sticking out the back of her chair.

When we got to the cafe, I felt peckish. There was a full Irish breakfast on the menu. I ate it. I regretted this. No sooner did we get back to my parents’ house than herself announced to everyone that her mother had eaten more than she had ever seen consumed in one sitting and proceded to enumerate the full contents of the Irish breakfast. This led to all manner of anxious questions. “Was I not being fed properly at home?” “Was there something that should be bought in anticipation of my arrival?” So impressed was my child with my enormous intake that she also reported it to her father when she returned to Dublin the following evening. I feel like some kind of circus performer.

On Sunday afternoon, we were scheduled to drive back to Dublin with my sister. The question of my little family inheriting the parents’ tent has been canvassed (ha ha) over the past number of months. On Sunday afternoon, my sister said, “You should take the tent, it’s now or never.” Why did I believe her? Bits of the tent were everywhere – in one wardrobe, on top of another and – insert drumroll – in the attic. As I stood at the top of the attic ladder holding a bunch of poles while my mother’s and my daughter’s anxious faces peered up at me, I knew that I had made a mistake. My sister had disappeared to deal with some particularly intractable problem related to the start-up menu on the parents’ computer. Mercifully, she came and rescued the poles, only slightly hindered by her niece who had lodged herself on the bottom steps of the ladder. As well as the tent, my mother pressed upon me two sleeping bags and two fold up beds. There was a lot more kit that I wouldn’t let her give me. Partly because my sister’s car is a Golf and there is only so much camping equipment you can fit in a small VW. Partly because I worried my husband would kill me. I then realised that I had no idea what the tent looked like up. My mother suggested that we should pitch it in the garden so that I could see. Two principal objections presented themselves: 1. It was raining; 2 I was hoping to get home before nightfall. My father searched his files for instructions and though I saw directions for putting up the trailer tent over his shoulder (sold ca. 1995 – a real pain to put up), but of the instructions for the, I am assured, 6 man tent I took away yesterday, there was no sign. The only information I have is that the two longer poles go into the ground first and after that it is all intuitive. Mr. Waffle and I are going to try pitching it next weekend and I fear that it will not prove intuitive as rain threatens and three small children ask repeatedly “Can I help?” My mother who, in her heart of hearts, cannot believe that I am a grown-up, said to me anxiously “You won’t be foolish enough to put it away wet, will you?”

And in other news, the cat had her adolescent health check. Yes, really. The vet says that the cat needs to go on a diet. She is not going to enjoy that.

Busy, busy, busy


Posted in: Family, Ireland

Saturday

I am godmother to the child of conservative catholic parents. He made his first holy communion on Saturday and we were invited to the house for tea, buns, sandwiches and the use of a bouncy castle. Off we went and very pleasant it was too. Largely because of bouncy castle which allowed the grown-ups to chat peacefully while the children exhausted themselves.

Obviously, as it was the home of very devout catholics, we were the most wishy-washy people there. Aside from the relatives, who, I think, were largely lapsed. Dramatis personae, aside from ourselves and relatives consisted of the local priest (young by priestly standards, mid 30s, I’d say), a friend and her six children and another couple and their child.

The priest and the communicant’s mother had recently been on a pilgrimage to Turin with a group. We relived highlights of this which was absolutely hilarious. The church in Ireland attracts eccentrics and they had their fair share of them on their trip to Turin. In particular, one elderly lady became obsessed with getting two young men whom she knew on the trip. They were in Italy and she felt that they would love to join. The priest told her firmly, no, (as they hadn’t paid) but she managed to smuggle them into her room and persuaded some unfortunate nun to let her double up with her. She then smuggled them in to see the shroud of Turin also. The priest announced that she would be barred from the next pilgrimage. “How?” I asked. “We’ll give her name to the tour operator and ask them to tell her it’s full, if she calls.” The deviousness of the clergy. They’re used to dealing with odd people, I suppose.

Talk turned to the first communion ceremony itself. For historical reasons, first communion in Ireland is a little like weddings in other countries; people who would never go near a church under normal circumstances, take part in this religious ceremony. This means that often parents have only the vaguest idea of what to do during a church ceremony (the expression unchurched, which I only came across for the first time recently, was tossed around like snuff at a wake). According to my informants the parents spoke throughout mass and took calls on their mobile phones. One father assumed that the bringing up of the gifts was the start of the first communion moment and leapt in front of the procession and held it up while he started photographing madly. Amusing all the same.

The woman with six children was home schooling them (yes, really, because Irish schools aren’t catholic enough) and was married to a man working as a eurosceptic in Brussels. Not, prima facie, my cup of tea. We did not touch on politics and this was probably a good thing. But I have to say, she had six lovely, polite, confident children and she herself was charming though pretty tired looking. As you would be, I imagine, if you home-schooled 6 children aged from 12 to 9 months and your husband worked in Brussels, five days a week. I know that there is lots of home schooling in the US but almost nobody home schools in Ireland and I was fascinated by how she was getting on. She said it worked for them but she wasn’t at all pushy about it. I was filled with admiration. Particularly as, while her six, SIX, children were being polite, charming etc. my eldest was lying on the sofa explaining to the first communicant’s grandmother why he was vile (there was an incident on the bouncy castle).

Sunday

Sunday was the nicest day of the year so far and we had a plan. We went to Ireland’s Eye which is an island off the North coast of Dublin.

We had a slightly rocky start as our ferryman was abused by a rival who flounced off with the words: “I wouldn’t travel with him, he has no licence and he’s an alcoholic.” The red face and shaky hands of our captain lent some colour to the latter accusation but he navigated the 300 meter chasm between Ireland’s Eye and the mainland without difficulty. The Princess was entranced. She had never been on a small boat before and hung over the edge peering into the water. The island has a martello tower and she exclaimed, “It’s like Kirrin Island.”

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Everyone was pretty peckish by the time we got to the island, so we had our picnic. I picked an idyllic spot which turned out to be right in the centre of a circle of nettles and thistles. Alas.

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However, it did mean that we got to see some seagulls’ eggs. Until the seagulls came back and dived and flapped at us while we ran for safety.

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Then we went down to the beach and swam and played with buckets and spades while the rich arrived in droves in their yachts.

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Then, it was time to gather all our gear and get the ferry back.
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At the end of the pier, the children and I got ice cream while Mr. Waffle went to get the car. Daniel dropped his and the Princess very nobly gave him the end of hers instead. She repented of this kind gesture and began lobbying me for another ice cream. I resisted. She stomped off in a huff. This is something she does when she gets very cross. It was difficult for me to go after her as I had the two ice-cream besmeared boys and mountains of kit. When her father came, I was peeved. I stomped off with him and the boys up to where he had parked the car leaving her hiding behind a sign, reasoning that I could collect her in a moment and haul her off when I had disposed of my encumbrances. When I went back, I knew something was wrong when I saw her with two older Americans whom we had passed earlier. Yes, indeed, she was in floods of tears and thought we had gone without her. I don’t think that I have ever seen the poor mite so happy to see me. The kind Americans were, understandably, relieved and pleased to see me. The whole interlude lasted no longer than five minutes but she was very woebegone. Sometimes I forget how small she is really despite her will of iron. She confided to me that she didn’t trust the Americans and had planned to slip away and go back to the ice cream shop and tell them that she was lost. I was pleased to see her instincts were so sound as I have always told her to go to a shop and explain her predicament, if she is ever lost. On the other hand, I hope she will grow better at guessing which grown-ups are likely to abduct her (something she has been warned of in school, I fear) and which are not for it is hard to imagine a more innocent looking pair than the kindly Americans. All’s well that ends well. Another learning experience for both of us.

Monday

Mr. Waffle and I did not work today and went on one of our occasional walks in the Wicklow hills. Mindful of previous reprimands by readers of this blog, despite the cool and misty weather, I did not wear jeans. I was very grateful as the clouds blew off and it got warm during our walk. I wish I had brought suncream, though, as now my face is like a tomato. Alas.

We went on our longest walk yet. Three hours. Snigger not, hikers. The first half of the circuit was delightful. Warm, but not too hot, downhill to a lake with mountains on either side and not a soul there but ourselves. We saw loads of deer. The undergrowth was full of bluebells. God was in his heaven all was right with the world. We forgot the camera but here are some internet pictures.

The way back was uphill and hot and we got lost and we trekked for miles. To our intense surprise we emerged just by where we had parked the car. We left a small sacrifice to the god of lost hikers and high tailed it to Hunter’s for afternoon tea in the garden before coming home.

Lovely. And I managed to finish the weekend papers too.