belgianwaffle

Ireland

Surely not cupboard love


Posted in: Ireland, Princess, Travel, Work

The Princess was in Ireland with her father last week. When she left on Monday morning, she was sad to leave me. By the time she arrived in her grandparents’ house at lunch time, she was so excited to be there that she couldn’t spare the time to speak to me on the phone. This continued for the duration of her stay. I was amazed on Thursday, when she came back, how delighted we were to see each other. Really thrilled, big hugs, much affection.

This week, I am away for work and she has consented to speak to me on the telephone which is a great relief. This morning she said “Mummy, I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight” and I was was very touched (our girl can be a tough cookie). The first thing she asked, though, when she got on the phone, was “have you got my crunchie?”

Update – She is consistent too.  The first thing she said when I arrived in the door last night was “have you got my crunchie?”  “That’s no way to greet your mother or indeed anyone,” I replied.  She paused smiled broadly, gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear “have you got my crunchie, please, Mummy”.

Weekend


Posted in: Family, Ireland, Princess

On Saturday we went to Planckendael again – it’s like a safari park but less glamourous.  I have had it with Planckendael.  The Princess said that she would rather go to the supermarket and conducted herself accordingly throughout the trip.  We paid 50 euros to get in (and the boys were free) and they spent their time looking at frogs in the river and playing in the elaborate playgrounds. “Will we go and see the giraffes?”  “No!”  The Princess mortified me by going into meltdown at the entrance to the cafeteria where she wanted to stay watching television.  She lay on the ground, blocking the door and screeching.  This loud screaming in public is a very recent development and I am desperate to stop it.  We then climbed up a rope yoke which the Princess loved but the boys were scared and had to be carried.  It is hard to walk up a rope surrounded by netting carrying a small boy.  We got down eventually, the Princess did not get down.  There were words.  We lost her at one point and I was terrified.  There were further words.  We instructed her that, in future, if she ever got lost and could not find someone who worked in the establishment, she was to ask a Mummy to help her.  Yes, yes, picture the scene, there you are having a nice time with your family in Flemish and a weeping lost little girl attaches herself to your group – fabulous eh?

On Sunday, we had our upstairs neighbours and some friends around for coffee.  Our upstairs neighbours are lovely Italians.  There are only two of them and every time I go into their flat which is the same dimensions as ours but oh so different, I am convulsed with envy.  They have white furniture (no children, obviously).  She is finishing a PhD in art history and has acquired all kinds of lovely furniture at auctions and flea markets over the years.  It looks lovely in our 19th century building, unlike, say, my self constructed coffee table from Habitat.  Anyhow, over coffee yesterday the talk was all of our return to Dublin (with the occasional digression into how the recent NATO war training exercise went, from my friend C – she who combines defence work and orchestra management in her portfolio of activity – good news, we won).  They were all curious about what our house in Dublin is like and I, with my fondness for histrionics, put my head in my hands and said “hideous, absolutely hideous”.  I had, alas, completely forgotten that the Princess was there and she looked up at me, shocked and tearful and said “But Mummy, you said that our house was lovely.”  Much furious and, I fear, ineffective backpedalling followed.  I could kick myself.

The house isn’t really hideous, it’s just small and in need of some work.  I was talking to the heart surgeon about it last night and she put her finger on the problem: just as all our friends are settling in the houses they are going to be living in for the rest of their lives, we are moving backwards.  That is exactly the problem.  All our friends are moving in to nice big houses and we are going back to a starter home.  It’s not hideous, it’s relatively hideous.  I hope that in 3 or 4 years we’ll be able to move somewhere nicer but, for the moment, we will have to make the best of it.

Meanwhile, the heart surgeon is back at work after a mere three months (she does live in America so this is extraordinary luxury by their standards) and working weekends and nights and so on (as is her doctor husband) with a 3 year old, a two year old and a three month old.  She is expressing four times a day.  She’s also decided to renovate her kitchen.  I can’t quite imagine how tired she must be.  She told me, in tones of great glee, that, as she had a couple of tough procedures today, her husband was going to mind the baby last night and she was decamping to the third floor for a full night’s sleep.

I’ve been keeping a secret


Posted in: Belgium, Family, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Princess

No, for the umpteenth time, I am not pregnant.

The Christmas before last I said to my husband that we had to decide whether we were going to move back to Ireland or stay in Belgium because, if we were going to stay in Belgium, we had to buy a house. A three bedroomed, second floor flat is not ideal for bringing up three small children. We decided that we would move to Dublin in September 2008. Now, obviously, it didn’t make much sense to tell anyone about this decision in December 2006, so I have been not telling employers, employees and children for a long time. It’s exhausting.

Last week, Mr. Waffle told his employers. On Friday we told the Princess that we are moving back (some of you may consider that this is a radical solution to our difficulties with L). On Monday we told our childminder and our babysitter. And today I formally told my employer and colleagues and now I am telling you.

Mr. Waffle and the Princess are in Dublin this week. In an excess of efficiency they have visited her new school (an Irish language school – please don’t ask). After hearing her father and the headmaster converse in Irish for ten minutes, she ran from the room telling her grandmother that this was “pointless and useless”. I can tell it’s going to go well. What do you think? She’s also got her school uniform, this is more pleasing. It has a tie. There will be photos.
I am very sad to be leaving this great job and my lovely colleagues. I am very sad to be leaving Belgium and my friends here. On balance though, I think we are doing the right thing. We are very fortunate in both having lovely families with whom we get on very well. We want to see more of them and so do our children. I want my children to be Irish not Belgian (though I see that the Princess is testing this enthusiasm by already adopting the nastiest of Dublin accents, she said to me on the phone this afternoon “Oi don’t want to talk to you, Oi don’t loike the phone”). One of the best things about going back was how our friends in Dubin reacted; they all seem to be genuinely delighted. Despite all its shortcomings (and oh they are many), I do like Dublin and I know I will enjoy living there.

For obvious reasons, the move has been very much in my mind since Christmas but I didn’t want to blog about it ar eagla na heagla (see how I’m taking to this Irish thing?) but I have been taking notes and now I’m putting them here. Because I can.

8 January

Ask my mother what she did with all our furniture when we moved from a large detatched Georgian House to a much smaller semi-detatched Edwardian one. Answer: Moved it all and got rid of none. My mother points out that result has been 20 odd years tripping over pieces of furniture and an attic which strikes terror into her heart. On the plus side, she says I can now have the Nelson sideboard, if I want it. Point out that I have more than enough furniture of my own for my tiny house.

9 January

Prepare first spreadsheet.

January 10

Asked the garage whether they would sell us a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side. They were reluctant. They said that it would be expensive and we would have to wait a year. In inimitable Belgian fashion, 6 (yes 6) people behind the reception desk ignored me for some considerable time but finally, to their evident regret, had to relent and pay me some attention.

January 11

Consider for the umpteenth time the amount of our stuff. My mother often says to my sister (to the latter’s intense irritation): Helen, you have too much of this world’s goods. She’s not the only one. Wonder what size is the attic in our house in Dublin. Curse myself for never even having looked in the attic when we bought the house. My sister says to me, “Mummy is delighted that you are coming home”. I am touched until she adds, “she says that maybe finally you will take all of your stuff out of her house”. My father-in-law is also anxious that we should remove all our stuff from his garage (barbecue and large outdoor heater – a wedding gift from the time when they were a sign that you were trendy rather than a sign that you are an eco-terrorist). My mother-in-law has, however, volunteered to mind our antique sewing machine until we have a house large enough to accommodate it. I suspect that my father-in-law is unaware of her kind offer.

14 January

After much humming and hawing decide to travel to Ireland for interview I am most unlikely to get on the basis that, if I did get it and the job came up in September my family would be able to eat every day rather than just every second day. This problem would mostly affect me and Mr. Waffle as the children prefer not to eat anyway.

18 January

Mr. Waffle hands in notice to the creche. The boys will be finishing there at the end of July. I will be a little sad to end our relations with our excellent creche.

21 January

Flight is delayed and arrive, Cinderella like, at friends’ house in Dublin at midnight. My friends are up awaiting my arrival with tea sympathy and advice. I love their house. It is a home from home as I used to live there. In fact, due to the many parties my husband and I held there, many people still think it is ours. Alas, it is not. I have stayed in the spare room many times and always enjoyed an excellent night’s sleep. On this occasion, I do not. Some vagary of their security system means that the overhead light flashes on every two hours and wakes me in considerable alarm. It is distressingly like being with small children.

Interview is, as expected entirely brutal. At the end, I ask about how many people they expect to appoint and they tell me that they give comprehensive feedback. I say I will look forward to that to general laughter from the board. I’d like to think that they were laughing with me but, I doubt it. [Didn’t get the job].

23 January

Princess and I go round to Glam Potter’s house and I reveal to her sum total of our likely income in Ireland for first two years. She is appalled. How will you survive? I am not comforted.

17 March

Having refused to think about or organise anything for the move in two months in the hope that, oh I don’t know, it would organise itself, I am jolted into action by a series of questions from my mother and brother who are visiting over the weekend. The heart surgeon rings from America and asks a series of hard questions as well. I am now worrying actively.

The Dutch Mama asked whom I had told about my plans to return. I explained that we was waiting until the end of April to tell our children, our employers and our employees about our plans and that I was slightly dreading this event. I was comforted her reply:

Dreading?

Sure it will be brilliant.

Employer: I’M LEAVING! (implicit, for something better, didn’t I always say you don’t pay me enough)

Employees: I’M LEAVING! (implicit, for something better, look at what an exciting international life I have)

Children: Guess what? Brilliant news. Mammy has got a great new job in Ireland, and we’re going to live in a house with a garden, and you can have a swing of your very own, and we’ll be able to see granny every single weekend. Won’t it be just great! And we’ll come back on lots of visits too. And we can invite your friends to come and play on your swing. And we’ve found you a lovely school.(I’d leave out the gaelscoil detail for now if I were you).

Life will be way easier for you in Ireland, and lots of fun.

25 April

Mr. Waffle has told work he’s leaving. I’ve told my boss informally and will hand in my notice next week. Tonight we decided to tell herself. At first, she was very excited but then as the implications sank in, she became distinctly apprehensive. “Why can’t we move to a house with a garden in Brussels; Brussels is my home”. This is true, she has never lived anywhere else and we have never given her any reason to believe that we would move somewhere else. That was, perhaps, foolish in retrospect. “Where will I go to school?” “In Dublin.” “What language will they speak in school?” If I had realised that I was going to be asked this quite so early in proceedings, I would have prepared a different answer from “Irish”*. She started to cry. She was scared, she wouldn’t understand and all her friends were here. This was the first time I really, really realised that we are definitely going and I felt like crying myself. I love Brussels. However, we perked her up as best we could and stressed the advantages which are many – well, otherwise, why wouldn’t we stay here? I am afraid for her. Mr. Waffle says, I can’t have it both ways, saying that she’ll be uprooted from all her friends one minute and agonising that she has no friends the next. Actually, he’s wrong, I can.

* There is a reason why we are sending her to an Irish language school and it’s largely and embarrassingly to do with the fact that Ireland isn’t quite the classless society it once was.

How different, how very different from the home life of our own dear Queen


Posted in: Belgium, Ireland, Princess

I was born in Cork and grew up there. I went to school with Cork children. My mother was considered mildly exotic because she came from Limerick (adjoining county about 40 miles away). We had a girl in our class in primary school whose mother came from Dubin and this was considered so exotic that there was an article about her mother in the Evening Echo. As I remember it, the headline was something like “Dublin Woman moves to Cork”; it’s not as though her mother was famous or had done anything very thrilling once she got to Cork. I suppose I’m saying that Cork in the 70s and 80s was a pretty homogenous place.

Obviously, going to school in Belgium, the Princess was never going to be in a class full of her compatriots but what amazes me is the range of nationalities in her class alone: Poles, Belgians, Pakistanis, North Africans, South Americans and one Irish girl. This morning she explained to me that she had a cooked lunch in school yesterday (itself a matter calling for some investigation as she had left the house with a sandwich, but we will leave that to one side) but not the same as the “musulmans” because they don’t eat meat. I explained to her that the English word was Muslims and they do eat meat but it has to be prepared in a particular way. It is amazing to me that she knows more about other religions and other cultures at four than I did at fourteen. I can’t help feeling that there is quite a lot to be said for globalisation all the same.

Parochial


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

Me: Why does the Irish Times Magazine assume that it can refer to Blackrock and everyone will know it’s a Dublin suburb?

Friend in Dublin: Well you did.

Me: There is a Cork suburb called Blackrock.

FiD: Is there?

Me: And this week they referred to Ranelagh with no indication as to where it was.

FiD: But you know where Ranelagh is, you lived there for years.

Me: That’s not the point. And when they referred to Oughterard in the same article, they put Co. Galway next to it in brackets. Is it utterly inconceivable to them that there might be people out there who know where Oughterard is but don’t know that Ranelagh is a Dublin suburb?

FiD (unanswerably): Not Irish Times readers.

As my loving husband says, if it annoys me so much, why do I read it? Doubtless to have my prejudices confirmed, how can they not be by a publication which, for years, put Northern Ireland under home news and Cork news under regional news, regional news, humph.

This weekend, there was an essay on David Marcus in the Review section. It said, inter alia, “But even the first issue of Irish Writing could stand on its own as a tribute to his taste, his instinct for the zeitgeist – remarkable in a young man from the provincial city of Cork – his guts, his determination and ultimately, his brass neck”. “[R]emarkable in a young man from the provincial city of Cork“? I nearly choked on my rice krispies. The discovery that the patronising man who wrote the essay is actually from Cork, quite frankly, made matters worse not better.

The article also says that “many readers may never have heard of him”. I was surprised by that. I would have thought he was pretty well known in Ireland. I know he was thought to be an outstanding editor. I have to say, I’ve only read one of his books (“A land not theirs” about growing up Jewish in Cork) and I didn’t think that it was very good but I certainly didn’t think it was obscure.

I learned also that Marcus’s uncle was Gerald Goldberg a well known and respected Cork solicitor. Many years ago, I met an exceptionally irritating woman in Brussels who told me that Mr. Goldberg was never elevated to the High Court bench because he was Jewish. In fact, at the time he was practising (and possibly still at the time of his death), only barristers were eligible for appointment to the high court and traditionally, minority religions (including judaism) have been somewhat over-represented on the bench in Ireland as they tend to be solidly middle class which, funnily enough, is where most judges come from. I never did manage to get a word in edge ways with her and tell her this, so this is a much delayed and pointless riposte.

There is no Jewish community in Cork now (they all seem to have gone to Dublin to get married) and that is sad. A lot of Lithuanian Jews came to Cork in the late 19th and early 20th century and some of them, including David Marcus who is an exact contemporary, were at my father’s school and he had a lot of friends with exotic and different names; Berkhans and Solomons and Goldbergs. Maybe with this new wave of immigration from Eastern Europe, we’ll get some of them back.

Finally, a classic from the birth announcements:

Brontë Philomena. Born…at the Whittingon Hospital in London to besotted parents David and Lisa.

I have a certain sympathy for “besotted parents” – I haven’t got a heart of stone, you know – but Brontë Philomena? No, really, no.

Conversation with a Dublin Taxi Driver or All Human Life is Here


Posted in: Ireland

Him: Where to?

Me: The airport.

Him: Where are you going?

Me: Brussels.

Him: Just for the day?

Me: Actually I live in Brussels.

Him: Department of Foreign Affairs?

Me: Er, no (elaborate on current job).

Him: They speak Flemish there, don’t they?

Me: Some elaboration on the Belgian language regime.

Him: Je ne parler pas Francez.

Me : Oh well, never mind.

Him: Aber ich kann sehr gut Deutsch sprechen.

Me (surprised): Ich habe Deutsch an der Schule gelernt aber jetzt sprech ich sehr slecht Deutsch.

Him: Long and apparently fluent spiel auf Deutsch which is almost entirely unintelligible to me.

Me: Oh right.

Him (starting a new tack): Was Santy good to you?

Me: Er, alright. Was he good to you?

Him: He was good to the wife, she got a Fendi bag, an iPod nano, a big gift set of beauty care things and a diamond ring [carats specified but now forgotten by me] mounted in platinum. The wife has a few nice pieces. [Reminisces] I was in Antwerp in the diamond district once and I got two diamonds [again, carats specified but now forgotten by me] and then I had them mounted in platinum earrings by a friend who’s a jeweller here. Oh yes, the wife has a few nice pieces.

Me (reeling): Gosh and um, what did Santa bring to the children?

Him: A 28inch flat screen wall mounted television for their bedroom, a Wii (?) player, stocking fillers and the rest.

Me (reeling further): And what did you get yourself?

Him: A gun.

Me (faintly): Oh yes.

Him: Full details of the gun.

Me: Where do you shoot?

Him: Open land.

Me: What do you get?

Him: Rabbits, hares, deer, pheasants, ducks.

Me: Do you eat them all?

Him: Long description of how to gut and hang animals followed by information on some of his favourite recipes. They were having venison burgers the following night.

Me: Isn’t venison tough?

Him: Very detailed recipe.

Him: The young fella (9) had a day off school yesterday for a teacher training day so I took him shooting with me and we bagged nine hares. He’s an excellent shot.

Me (making mental note to stay off open land all the same): Good for him. How did you learn to shoot? Did you grow up on a farm?

Him: No, no, Dublin born and bred. I was in the army for 15 and a half years.

Me: Ah right.

Him: Medical discharge, got blown up in the Lebanon. Was in the Lebanon twice, Kosovo once and Somalia. [This was covered at some length, I have compressed it for you. I am merciful].

Me: What was the Lebanon like? How did you get on with the Israelis?

Him: We had this guy used to come and do our washing. We called him Paddy Joe, he called himself Paddy Joe [I doubt this somehow, not to his family and friends]; he was a nice old fella, seven or eight children. We were driving along the road one day and we saw him with all his gear on his ancient van. The CO said to pull over and we did and asked what happened. The Israelis had flattened his house that morning. We had a whip round for him; it wasn’t much but there were tears in his eyes when we gave him the money.

Me: There aren’t many Irish soldiers who have been in the Lebanon who have fond memories of the Israelis.

Him (indignantly): They were always shooting at us.

Me: Do you miss the army?

Him (a bit sadly): I do, yeah. You’d miss the old camaraderie and that.

Me (bracingly): Well, I’m sure that driving a taxi in Dublin is interesting too. Did you start when they deregulated?

Him: I did but they’ve handled that very badly.

Me: Have they? Why?

Him: Do you want the politically correct version or the real version?

Me (hopefully): The politically correct version.

Him: Momentarily nonplussed

Me: Alright, tell me.

Him: I’m not xenophobic or homophobic or anything like that. But the taxi regulator doesn’t do background checks on foreigners [or gays, clearly]. A woman is entitled to know she is safe in a taxi. I had a girl before Christmas, a big girl, who told me that a black taxi driver asked to touch her breasts.

Me: A foreign black taxi driver?

Him: They could be putting people in taxis who have previous convictions for rape or sexual assault, look at this.

He points me towards an article about a Czech national who has been convicted of raping and murdering a 37 year old mother of two.

Me: Was he a taxi driver?

Him: No, but he was a foreign national he should have been checked, the guards should have known where he was.

Me (leaving aside the questions of penal policy and its efficacy): Well, he was from an EU member state and, you know, we have the right to move freely in all the EU member states and it’s reciprocal. I mean, there could well be Irish rapists in the Czech Republic.

Him: I lived in Germany and they checked my papers all the time.

Me: And those of the Germans too, they have an ID card system. Would you like us to have an ID card system?

Him: Absolutely.

Me: Silent smugness as I feel I backed him into a corner. There is no way a taxi driver wants ID cards. It’s just against nature.

Him (new tack): Are you from the Southside?

Me: Very southside, I’m from Cork.

Him: Went to Cork on holidays a couple of years back. Beautiful place. After Dublin, I’d like to live there.

Me: Restrain myself from pointing out the error of his ways.

Him: We’re going to Majorca this summer.

Me: Very nice too, I’m sure.

Him: The wife went to book in December, do you know how much it cost for two adults and three children?

Me: No (though I am sure you are going to tell me).

Him: €3,700.

Me: Gosh, that is dear.

Him: That’s what I thought so I was down at the wife’s parents on new year’s night, just looking at the computer, right, and do you know what I found? Two weeks in a villa with a pool and a hired car and room for all of us an the wife’s parents as well. Guess how much?

Me: I couldn’t.

Him: : €3,900

Me (thinking): YOU”RE A TAXI DRIVER. WHAT DOES YOUR WIFE DO?

Me (saying): God, that was fantastic.

Him (clearly psychic): I won’t be driving the old taxi for much longer now.

Me: No?

Him: No, I’m starting my own business.

Me: What are you doing?

Him: I’ve patented a system for sorting municipal waste. My accountant has raised €5 million capital.

Me: Gobsmacked silence.

On recounting this to Mr. Waffle, he said that when the taxi driver asked where I worked, I should have said that I worked for the revenue, audit division.