belgianwaffle

Ireland

Stair na Teanga


Posted in: Ireland

At primary school, I spoke a great deal of Irish. All the day-to-day interactions of the school were in Irish. My best friend from school spoke Irish at home and I spent a lot of time in her house. I didn’t think of Irish as a subject at which I could be good or bad, it was just part and parcel of life. I didn’t have views about the Irish language. It was just there, like English, something you were surrounded by. It had no status in my mind as a “language”. It was not like exotic French or German which my parents spoke when they didn’t want us to understand them. Irish was homely, domestic, natural, easy and not at all exciting. Unlike, I now realise, the parents of many of my contemporaries, my parents spoke good Irish and were fond of the language. Although we never spoke Irish at home, they would often quote bits and pieces of Irish poems and use the odd word here and there. Only the other day, I was telling my mother about a mural the boys had done in school entitled “Anois teacht an Earraigh” and she was into the second verse of the poem before I could stop her.

When I was 12, I started secondary school. A lot of things happened that year. I moved house. I moved school. My best friend dumped me (alas, but so it was): I used to follow her around mournfully like a whipped puppy/a depressed ex-girlfriend (delete as you feel appropriate). Obviously, this meant I was no longer spending a great deal of time in her house. I became a gloomy teenager. I met French and we fell in love. One of the things I didn’t particularly notice at the time was that my relationship with Irish changed too. Irish was taught very differently at secondary school. It did not in any way infuse the school environment which was firmly anglophone. The idea that you might bring a message from one teacher to another in Irish was ludicrous. My first Irish teacher at secondary school was perfectly competent but suddenly I was learning Irish in a very overt way and it was new to me. For the first time I became conscious of a huge hostility towards Irish from my peers. They hated Irish, they hated Peig though we had yet to encounter her unique brand of pessism (her book begins “I am old woman now with one foot in the grave” and goes downhill from there). Anxious to be liked and regardless of my positive experience to date, I hated Irish too. I fervently envied the girl who came home from America aged 12 and was therefore exempt from studying Irish.

At age 15, I was sent to the Gaeltacht for a couple of weeks. This was a moderately successful outing. It was my first time meeting Dubliners in any significant numbers and I was astounded at how poor their Irish was – worse than mine even after three years of steady decline. The authorities said that you would be sent home, if you spoke English and I was convinced that the bean an tí was listening to our every word. This made me very nervous as an intense 13 year old Dubliner would regularly buttonhole me to talk about SALT: it was the 1980s, we all thought there was going to be a nuclear war but no one more so than him. Alas, his vocabulary was insufficient to ask for more milk at breakfast let alone talk about nuclear extermination and I was very tense as he expounded on the difficulties in English. Many Irish people have fond memories of the Gaeltacht as where they had their first kiss but I was a timid convent girl and all I can record is that it was the first place that I held hands with a boy (for clarification, not the 13 year old Dubliner but a 15 year old Cork boy). I returned to Cork, if not with renewed enthusiasm for the language, certainly with a firm sense of my own genius as benchmarked against my Dublin peers.

I have absolutely no recollection of what grade I received in Irish in my junior certificate (or “the inter” as it then was). This is startling when I recall how much energy and angst I invested in this examination at the time. I started in fifth year with no very great enthusiasm for Irish but still ready to give it a go as an important part of my plan to maximise my points for college. Fate was not destined to favour me. I did not like the Irish teacher I had for the last two years of school. He was indifferent to me. He had his favourites and on these he lavished attention. The rest of us were left to sink or swim. With the help of a grind from my cousin, I floated near the surface. Certainly, the long monologues which my teacher favoured were no help. He would, in English, tell us about his relationship with his wife “never let the sun go down on a quarrel girls” – banal advice that, frankly, was less important than that of our biology teacher who said to us, banging his metre stick between each word, “Remember BANG you BANG can BANG get BANG pregnant BANG at BANG any BANG stage BANG of BANG your BANG cycle.” Since I and many of my peers had just progressed to holding hands with members of the opposite sex, that advice was not relevant to many of us at the time but let it be noted that in all the time I was in school, only one girl got pregnant and she had transferred in from another school after the end of compulsory biology classes. I digress. In two years, we received exactly two pieces of written Irish homework (two essays, since you ask) which might have entailed some out of class work for our Irish teacher. He enjoyed speaking about relationships and made us squirm in our seats by addressing in detail matters a middle aged man ought, in my view, to gloss over when speaking to a room full of 16 and 17 year old girls. The biology teacher, mentioned earlier, covered human reproduction without a joke or a double entendre and nobody squirmed. You might be terrified in his class but, at least, you weren’t embarassed.

To be fair to my Irish teacher, the curriculum did seem to give him significant opportunities to talk about sex. We did Pádraic Ó Conaire’s short stories. They must have been very radical when they were written in the early 20th century and I am mildly curious to revisit them now, but at the time, they were dull and difficult. My teacher got great mileage out of Nóra Mharcais Bhig. If memory serves me, this is a story about a young woman who went off to London and made her fortune. Her father called his boat after her, possibly with remittances she sent home. Everything was rosy but then she came on a visit and it transpired that she was making her money from prostitution. Well, you can see that this offered scope to my teacher’s particular genius. We also did a story about Salome and John the Baptist. The teacher focussed very much on the sensual nature of the dance which led to John losing his head. Another set text was Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Gráinne. Again, to be fair, there was a lot of material for our man to work with. The plot is that a handsome warrior and a young Princess elope and are chased all over the place (material ripe for Disney, I now realise). It seems to me that a great deal of our time in class was spent speculating on when Diarmuid and Grainne might have consummated their relationship and there might, perhaps, have been scope for other discussions. My favourite set text was “Stair na Teanga” or the history of the Irish language. In part that may have been because there was so little opportunity to work sex into the discussion on the text. However, it was also about the history of language and where it came from and that is something that I am still fascinated by. I can remember the illustration in the text showing the Indo-European languages spreading over Europe and Finnish and Hungarian with their own special arrow (subsequent coversations with Finns and Hungarians have revealed, disappointingly that those roots are so far back that neither group can understand a word the others say).

On balance, however, it would be fair to say that I sat my Leaving Certificate and said goodbye to Irish without a hint of regret.

Irish popped up again when I wanted to qualify as solicitor. There was a test of basic Irish. If the idea was that this was to ascertain our ability to do conveyancing through Irish, I cannot feel that the test was in any way adequate. However, easy and all as it was, it did nearly give me heart failure and I worked diligently on the set texts and duly passed. I again said my goodbyes to Irish with considerable relief and something approaching bitterness. Why was the first national language always torturing me?

Subsequently, Irish only featured in my life as a useful thing to have, if you felt that you were being ripped off by a taxi abroad. Then you and your Irish friend could speculate on whether this was the case in the first national language secure that no one else on God’s earth would understand you.

Then, I met my loving husband. My husband is from Dublin. My experience in the Gaeltacht made me certain that his Irish would be poor to dreadful. In fact, when it came up, it turned out his interest in languages extended to Irish. He spoke very good Irish and had been a member of the Cumann Gaelach in college. You might think that I would have been impressed by this. If so, you haven’t been concentrating, I mocked him for his interest in the Irish language.

Life continued. We had children and then we moved back to Ireland. While we had been away a phenomenon had been growing. Irish was becoming trendy. Young women with glossy make up and straightened hair were to be seen on television every night of the week speaking in Irish. Parents were choosing to send their children to Irish language schools. I waw unmoved. I thought that this was madness. On our return to Ireland my focus was on maintaining the children’s French and I had no intention of sending them to an Irish language school. But then, events conspired against us. We had been imprudent; we had not put our children down for a local school at birth. There was a Gaelscoil with places not too far away and the principal seemed nice, so we decided to give it a go.

As I watched my children acquire fluency in Irish something struck me in a way it had never done before. Irish is a language. I love languages; I am fascinated by them, why would I hate Irish? Every day, I go into the children’s school and speak, very mediocre, Irish to the teachers and the principal. I attended an event where the moderator, though from Dublin, spoke beautiful Irish; I thought why would I not want to be able to speak our first national language like that? I started to listen to Radio na Gaeltachta (which is very dull and quite hard to understand and full of details of funerals in the west of Ireland, but never mind). I suddenly realised that there were two Irelands – the main one, where I lived, and a very small rural Irish speaking one. Something that really existed, that wasn’t quite the dead letter I had thought that it was (though watch this space, the death of the native Irish speaking Gaeltacht is regularly announced). I thought to myself, this is a language I can learn with minimal extra effort. I already have the basics, I just need a bit of work. The cultural background which it takes time and effort to acquire in other languages? I already have that. How lucky is that? I saw Des Bishop learn Irish. Good Irish. If an AMERICAN can do that, why on earth can’t I? I am surely starting from a stronger position than Des Bishop. My mother’s father’s family were native Irish speakers – not my grandmother’s though as she married down – her family were “above the Irish”. As you can see the status of the language has varied over the years.

So, I looked into it. Having grown up in Cork, I had no awareness at all that Irish had different dialects. The Dublin children, God help them, all know that Irish has different dialects as their teachers come from all over the country. Only Munster people teach in Cork. Munster Irish pronounces the ends of words, Connemara Irish (which seems to have superior status in the minds of Dubliners) does not and nobody can understand Ulster Irish as they don’t open their mouths while speaking. So, in Irish “he was not” is “ní raibh sé” in Munster Irish that would be pronouced “knee rev shay” in Connemara Irish they would say “knee row shay”. Now, you must understand that “bh” is pronounced “v” in Irish, so Munster Irish is, clearly, better in every way. There is a feeling abroad, however, that pronouncing every letter is a bit anglicised and really, the best Irish is only loosely related to the words written on the page and the rules of pronouciation. Insert growling sound here. Incidentally, I thought you might like to know, Irish has no word for no. You have to repeat the verb every time. Some people think that this is part of its charm.

So, I have views on Irish dialects, I attended a short Irish course. And now I’ve got a teach yourself Irish course book out of the library. I heard a good programme on Radio na Gaeltachta on Saturday. Where will it all end?

The Problem with OCD


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle

Mr. Waffle took the children to visit his parents an hour ago and isn’t due back for another 2 hours. It’s all peace and tranquility here. In a moment I am going to take a black bin bag upstairs and fillet the children’s rooms of forgotten toys lurking at the bottom of the toy baskets.

What, you ask have I been doing in the first hour of my freedom? Did I read the Sunday papers while having a relaxing cup of tea? Did I replace the inner tube on the back wheel of my bicycle? Did I just play on the internet? Oh no, I did not. I organised the children’s lego. By colour and brick size. I also made a tractor and a police car to make sure that we have all the pieces. We laugh that we do not weep.

Trains, planes and automobiles


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Middle Child, Princess, Siblings, Twins, Youngest Child

I took the children to visit my parents in Cork at the weekend. The whole thing was hellish.

My friend the portable DVD player ran out of battery an hour and a half into the train journey to Cork and for the remaining hour and a half I had to entertain the children using only my own mental agility. The train was packed. The children whacked each other; they shouted; they cried; I cringed. I had contemplated not bringing the Princess to Cork at all as she had a nasty cold and had been off from school for a couple of days. During that long journey, I frequently wished that I had not brought her. She announced to the whole carriage in her piercing tones that if we wanted to treat her so badly she was leaving and then flounced off. Several times. She fought with her brothers and whacked them. At home, the Princess has largely foresworn physical violence even when very much provoked, alas, this was not to be the case on tour.

We had timed our trip to Cork to coincide with my mother’s birthday and visits by my brother and sister – the idea being that they would help me to child wrangle. My brother was due to arrive on Saturday morning and the boys and I went to collect him from the airport. Unfortunately, he had given us the time his plane left Dublin not the time it arrived in Cork so the boys and I spent 40 minutes in the car waiting for him to arrive. Tense times. Lunch was late. Further tension and some lying on the floor and screaming. After lunch, my brother, in an effort to atone for his sins, nobly took the boys out to the back garden and played football with them. Unfortunately, due to his exciting social life, he was rather tired and went off for a restorative nap shortly afterwards. My sister meanwhile had been stuck late at work on Friday night and then Saturday slipped away from her and it was afternoon before she was on the road and then she got a flat tyre (in case you ever need to know, the nuts come off anti-clockwise as you look at them) and with one thing and another, she wasn’t going to arrive until Saturday evening. I took the boys to the park. I tried to lure the Princess out of the house also but she wouldn’t come. I knew she would enjoy it once she got there and that it would be good for her but I just didn’t have the energy for cajoling and then shepherding them all to the park so I left her behind telling her that I wanted the bedroom tidy when I got back (which, to be fair, it was). The park went fine actually and by the time we got back, my sister had made it to Cork.

On Saturday night, my sister cooked a birthday dinner for my mother. All very pleasant. At about 10.45 she brought in the birthday cake. The Princess came racing downstairs to partake of the goodies and stayed up until 11 eating chocolate cake. The inner voice which (as someone once said) seldom adds anything to my happiness warned me that no good would come of this. I parcelled her back to bed and decided to let the morrow take care of itself. At 11.30 my sister dropped my brother down town (that social life again) and came back at 11.45 suggesting we should play cards. Weakly, I decided to stay up for one game. It’s funny how quickly one reverts to old roles in these situations: my mother recklessly overbid; my aunt was the sage expert; my father always held the best cards but got slightly carried away by the sight of the ace of trumps and the ace of hearts in his hand; my sister won; I got cast. as ever, as the weakest link in the chain of cards. Gall and wormwood. The errors of others are overlooked as they know the right thing to do but just neglect to concentrate; my errors on the other hand are regarded as showing a startling ignorance of the basics of the game. This must be why I particularly enjoy playing with my husband as he must be one of the world’s worst card players and I shine in his company. Anyhow, with one thing and another, replaying hands and so on, it was well after one o’clock when I extricated myself, glumly handing over cash to my sister. I understand that the others kept going until after my brother came in at 2.30 in the morning.

So, as you can imagine on Sunday morning at 7.45 when the children rose to meet the day, I was not my bright and beautiful best and no one else appeared at all. I heard them tripping down stairs and clumped after them. The three of them were sitting on the sofa in a darkened room staring hopefully at a blank tv screen. Reprehensibly, I turned it on and crawled back to bed without even offering them breakfast. At 10.00 I came back down and they were still watching eagerly. There were howls of protest when I turned it off and the scene rapidly descended into chaos. Then next hour and a half was hideous. Michael lost the plastic lid of his Thomas watch and cried lustily as the household searched for it and only stopped crying when it was restored to him a good half hour after its initial loss was discovered. They all fought like nobody’s business. I carried a howling, flailing Princess to one room and a howling Daniel to another and told them to stay there until I said they could come out. Michael clung to my leg crying piteously “My brudder, let my brudder out.” My mother followed me about saying in the slightly hushed voice she uses when the children are misbehaving “Is there anything I can do?” Much snapping on my part, leading to further unhappiness.

There is a certain inevitable dynamic which plays itself out when I take the children to Cork. I want my parents to see the children at their best; the children appear to have no very clear idea what their best is; I love my mother but we have, ahem, how can I put this, high expectations of each other; finally, and not negligibly, my parents have a stool that doubles as a small ladder – the children like to sit on it, they fight to sit on it at mealtimes and the lucky winner bangs the steps on the floor at regular intervals despite increasingly hysterical requests from me not to do so. My father is one of life’s pessimists and has no expectations of anyone. Though I disapprove of this, I cannot but find it extremely restful when my children are misbehaving and he is quite resigned to it rather than saying in shocked, subdued tones “Do they normally behave like this?” It was also useful, incidentally, when I was learning to drive and he sent me out with gloomy prognostications that I would crash the car. When I actually did crash the car he was quite sanguine on the basis that it was bound to happen.

Throw the following facts into the mix also: my mother loves to feed her family. My children do not love to eat. She asks me anxiously “what will they eat?” I say snappily “If I knew, I would tell you, I am not deliberately keeping this from you.” Unhappiness. It is a grandmother’s prerogative to treat her grandchildren. I know this. However, since my children will not touch anything savoury, we are thrown back on biscuits, sweets, ice creams, waffles. I feel I am constantly saying no to my poor mother as she spells out the food options and the children, of course, knowing that these things are there, whine for them, so I yield. Everyone is happy for five minutes. Then the cycle starts again. Then their teeth fall out and they grow obese.

So, where were we? Oh yes, on Sunday morning. I decided that I just couldn’t take the children to mass with my parents. The children would behave so badly, it would be appalling. We would all die of mortification as they raced up and down the aisles and climbed under the pews and I would have a nervous breakdown trying to keep them silent in their seats. I just couldn’t face it. My mother was horrified. I said tentatively that I might go to the church across the road with my brother later. My brother went out to mass. The children calmed down and I decided to chance it. Unfortunately, my parents have one of these very secure doors where you need a key to get out as well as to get in. Had I thought to provide myself with a key? I had not. So we stayed at the house by ourselves. The children behaved perfectly. They didn’t fight, they played nicely together, they sat down and ate lunch. Then, before any further trouble could break out, we said goodbye, gathered ourselves up and had my brother take us to the train.

The DVD worked intermittently on the train. In one of its off phases, the Princess and Daniel started to fight and she kicked him on his head under the table. There were two very virtuous children sitting opposite us. In a silent rebuke they sat quietly in their chairs for the three hour journey – no toys, no books, just civilised conversation. Meanwhile, it was world war three and a host of cracker crumbs across the aisle. My mother had given them each 2 euros on leaving the house (too scared by me to give them sweets). I thought that this would be good as I could substitute cash, if they lost it (yes, I know, I am weak) but they spent their money on the tea trolley and got change as well as crisps and sweeets. Then they crawled around the floor saying – where’s my 20cents, where’s my 5 cents and so on. At one point Daniel announced “I want to do a wee.” So, I took him off to the bathroom threatening the other two with dire consequences, if they misbehaved in our absence. I stood in the queue on tiptoes which allowed me to see the other pair and when we got to the top, Daniel insisted on going in alone which suited me. As I stood outside, a little voice came from inside “Mummy, can you get me down from the toilet, I’m stuck.” Since he had locked the door this was going to be a challenge so I cajoled him down and there were sounds of great shuffling and heaving inside. When he opened the door, I darted in. Before we washed his hands, I said “did you flush the toilet?” “No, because I didn’t do a wee,” he said. “Why didn’t you do a wee?” I asked. “Because I was only joking that I wanted to do a wee.” Of course. The other two were still alive on our return. Very daringly, I sent the Princess to the restaurant car alone to pick up supplies. I was a little nervous that she might get lost or get overlooked in the queue but she returned bearing a bottle of water triumphantly aloft. I was very proud. But then she started fighting with her brothers again, so I got distracted.

By the time we got back to Dublin, I was fit to be tied. I consigned them all to the care of their father and took public transport home. When I got home, they were reproachful: why had I gone away? Alas, they were also utterly ignorant that they had played a role in my chagrin (Daniel seemed to have the glimmerings of an idea). A lengthy discussion with each of them in turn yielded only the information that they had had a great time in Cork. They appeared to only have the mildest awareness that their behaviour might have been in any way unpleasant: ranging from Michael, who denied everything, to Daniel who conceded some sins and the Princess who said “I hate it when you use your sad voice, can we draw a veil?”

Let us draw a veil. I do wonder what I am doing wrong, though. I appreciate that at ages 6 and 4 responsibility for their poor behaviour is much more mine than their’s. Do they, in fact, not understand what behaviour is expected of them? Do I yield too easily to them? Is it just because there are three of them so close together in age (I can’t help noticing that supernanny spends more of her time with families with twins than would be statistically expected)? There is something about all of them together – there are never problems, if there are only two and it doesn’t matter which two. Will they ever learn to be polite and well-behaved? Sometimes I despair – of course, sometimes I am filled with hope and delighted by them. Just not at the moment. Anyway, one thing I have learnt, I will not be taking the three of them to their grandparents’ house together again, if I can help it.

Now, how was your weekend?

The Romantic at Work


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Work

Me: Listen to the seagulls.
Colleague: Yes, they are very excitable today.
Me: Imagine, before this building was here, centuries ago when the Vikings were here, even before that when there was no Dublin at all, the same seagulls were screeching around the sky on this very site.
Colleague: Well, hardly the same seagulls.
Me: OK, not exactly the same seagulls…

Is it just me?


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

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Leaving aside the difficulties with random capitalisation and the apostrophe, is there anyone else out there who thinks that the words rugby and romantic are not natural bedfellows?

How did you get over the Christmas?


Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Family, Ireland

The peculiar Irish relationship with the definite article means that this has been a regular question since my return to the metropolis. Full of excitement, let me tell you.

Christmas Eve

We went skating with the children. My sister-in-law came too which was a mercy as she was able to help in keeping the children upright. My children appear to have no sense of balance. They tottered around the edges. I took each of them around the rink in turn. Michael simply lifted his feet off the ground and let himself be carried; herself keeled over determinedly backwards despite my hissing “lean forwards”; only, Daniel, who has the best ball sense too, showed the remotest sign of getting the hang of it. Mr. Waffle has sworn never again.

Christmas 09 069

The day was rendered slightly hideous by the knowledge that Mr. Waffle’s brother and his family who were going to Sicily for Christmas (to stay with Italian relatives) were facing a very real prospect of, instead, spending the day in Beauvais airport due to poor weather. They had set off at 6 in the morning. There were regular apocalyptic updates throughout the day. But due to a Christmas miracle and a €300 taxi fare, they made it safely and texted us in the early evening to say that they had arrived in Sicily.

Later, the stockings were hung by the chimney with care and Santa was amazed to see that one had been left out for Hodge. He did what he could under the circumstances and came up with a jar of tuna fish.

Christmas 09 120

She also had her own list:
Christmas 09 106

Christmas Day

Up with the lark. Fantastic Santa presents. General happiness. Mass passed off reasonably peacefully except for the bit beforehand when a weeping Michael refused to leave the car for reasons I now forget and, in what can only be called an example of excellent parenting, I threatened to stamp on his new cuddly toy in the ice unless he moved promptly. Cue more weeping and no movement. Let us draw a veil.

After a brief lunch in our own house, we moved out to the esteemed grandparents where more presents and Christmas dinner were provided – hurrah! There were also various cousins for drinks and, for once, we had the required number of presents. Unfortunately, and I say this with considerable bitterness, there was a mixup with the Kris Kindle thingamijig and I ended up presentless. However, my mother-in-law nobly stepped into the breach with an offer of babysitting during the day time while Mr. Waffle and I went out to lunch. Ours to spend in January, hurrah.

St. Stephen’s Day

We stayed over with the grandparents and left about lunch time with the boys leaving the Princess behind as her kind aunt was taking her off to the local puppet theatre. It is not clear to me how this treat of high order passed off but I fear it did not go well. Since all sides have taken a vow of omertà, we may never really know what happened.

Again, your correspondent completely failed to anticipate that although we were enjoying Christmas dinner away from our home, we might require some festive food ourselves and we returned to short rations.

27 December

We left Dublin (without Winnie and Nounours but with 2 doggies, progress of a sort) and whizzed off to Cork on the wonderful new roads. My parents, my aunt and my brother and sister had munificent presents for us and the children. The only slight downside being that afterwards Michael started to cry, if he met someone who didn’t have a present for him.

We were staying in our very kind and generous friends’ house in Garryvoe. I say this because I am very grateful and I would like to emphasise this before I start being ungrateful. It is an eco home built by sustainable energy Ireland and I was quietly confident that we would be delightfully toasty there. And we were, eventually. An hour after arrival having carefully followed the boiler instructions in Swedish (did you know that my husband speaks rudimentary Swedish, no really, who would have thought it would be so useful) the radiators were still freezing. I texted my friends in their [doubtless toasty] house in Spain asking for suggestions. R, who is merciful, suggested “follow instructions on back door of pellet burner”. Little did he know that we had already done so leading to one warm room but highlighting the coolness of the rest of the house. M, was cruel but pragmatic, he texted “Shiver. They will be fine tomorrow.” The children and I huddled together in bed and Mr. Waffle lay across our legs. We stayed there until the children were asleep and the risk of hypothermia seemed minimal. In what can only be described as very good timing, my mother had earlier given both boys thermal pyjamas and my sister had given the Princess a dressing gown. I had my fleecy pyjamas and Mr. Waffle slept in his clothes. And we are all still alive. In fact, the following day, and thereafter, the house was delightfully toasty with underfloor heating downstairs and warm radiators upstairs. The only mild complaint being the unique ventilation system which makes it sound, though thankfully not feel, as though the wind is indoors.

28 December

Oh yes we did. We went to the pantomime. Aladdin in the Everyman. I don’t think that the children have ever enjoyed a pantomime more and they are still singing the songs. An added bonus was that, as we arrived slightly late, I wasn’t forced to spend the price of a couple of tickets on random tat (pantomimes are now accessorised by windmill torch yokes).

After the pantomime, we met an old friend of mine who lives abroad and very generously gave the Princess a beautiful dress which she said thank you for very prettily (not, alas, a given). The boys were given a Horrid Henry book each and, to my horror, tossed them aside in disdain saying that they were stupid books. The shame, the shame. And they like Horrid Henry.

29 December

My friend, the heart surgeon, was home from Vermont for Christmas with her American husband and her four children under 5. The youngest of whom was just six weeks. We went to visit them at her mother’s house. Her mother confided that she was slightly relieved that the days of having 14 to dinner were about to end as they were going back to America the following day. The baby was very good and I was suitably impressed but his mother was very worried about him. Her worries were not ill-founded as, alas, the following day, after they had flown home to the US, he was in intensive care in Boston with whooping cough where he is still. The misery for everyone. Poor little mite. This cast something of a pall.

30 December

The children and I left Mr. Waffle to wander the quaint streets of the old town and took ourselves off to Limerick with my mother. My mother is from Limerick. As a staunch Cork loyalist, I try to forget this but blood will out. My friend the best dressed diplomat, also from Limerick, says that I use a lot of Limerick phrases and I am far better at cards than my Dublin husband (a low bar – he had to double check the rules of beggar-my-neighbour over the festive season). I am not horsey, though, we take what comfort we can from that.

It is about an hour’s drive from Cork to my aunt’s house in Limerick. In the course of that drive, the children were unbearable. My mother was appalled and I have seldom seen them behave worse. The problem is, of course, that you can’t do your worst in the matter of threats, cajolery and bribery when in the presence of your mother. A low point was when Daniel, maddened by the Princess reaching out from the seat behind and pulling his hair and unable to reach anyone from his car seat, used his gun to hit Michael over the head and draw blood [gun subsequently confiscated until return to Dublin]. We had to stop for toilet breaks, we had to stop twice to pick up offerings for the relatives. My mother tried to ring to say that we were nearly there but pointed out reproachfully that the noise from the children was such that she had no idea whether anyone had picked up the telephone or not.

By the time we got there, I was beside myself. My mother suggested that I tell them about my aunt. I mentioned for the first time that she owned a shop (a small one, crucially, attached to the house). This news was greeted by rapt silence. When we went into the house, through the shop, the children nearly died of happiness. My cousin brought them into the shop and let them choose a drink each. The joy. They were so overwhelmed by being in a strange house and, more particularly one with a shop attached, that they were very silent and well behaved leading my saintly aunt to remark that they were very good children. I hadn’t been in that house myself in maybe 20 years and what I found very peculiar was that it had hardly changed at all. A picture of my cousin’s horse had appeared on the wall where there used to be a holy water font (did I tell you I once looked for a holy water font in IKEA, no sniggering please) but otherwise it was as though the house had been frozen in time when I left it. In an arrangement that used to be traditional in rural Ireland (and may still be for all I know) the house was split in two and my Nana had her own rooms on the other side of the house. My cousin asked if I wanted to see my Nana’s room and, of course, I did. A lot was the same: the old piano, the dining room table and chairs but in front of the sofa, there was the largest television I have ever seen alive in captivity. I suspect she would not have approved. I looked into her kitchen which has become something of a store room for odd things. I have a very vivid memory of helping her make brown bread there.

My uncle and aunt have six grown-up children and two were there the day we visited. One, S, had been home for Christmas and was going back to America the following day, the other D, lived locally. The Princess pointed to D and asked in an awed whisper whether he was the cousin who had pulled my teddy’s head off. In a family of six, I suppose, it was always likely that it would be the child nearest to me in age who would fight me for my teddy bear and tear off its head leaving my Nana to stitch it back but I had told the Princess of his transgression in such dramatic terms (not in preparation for the visit, I hasten to add, just in general) that it stayed in her mind. I nodded grim confirmation and poor D blushed to the roots of his hair for the sin of 37 years ago. At this point I took my mother and S to the nursing home where my uncle was recovering from an operation and left D and my aunt to the tender mercies of the children. When I came back, it was to the sound of delighted laughter as my cousin had used the time to send them up and down the stairs on my uncle’s chair lift thingy. Upon my mother’s muttering that these things cost €35,000 (really, can that be true?), the fun had to end but even that did not quench their joy because while I was away, my aunt had let them loose in the shop and they were allowed to take three things each. The Princess and Daniel had gone wild on chocolate and Michael had taken a packet of cream crackers.

We then pushed on another 25 kilometers to where my other aunt lives on the farm which my grandfather had owned and where my mother’s fear of cows had acquired legendary proportions (if your father is a dairy farmer, a fear of cows is both unusual and awkward). We arrived at 4 and my aunt had been waiting with lunch ready since 2. She was resigned as she commented that my mother’s family was never on time for anything (my husband will be pleased to know where that gene comes from). The children ate almost nothing (as ever) but my aunt expected this as they were city children. I protested that I had eaten everything as a child and I was a city child. “No,” she said, “your mother was from the country and that made the difference.” Perhaps it did but, if so, I can only wish that she had passed on the knack to me.

After dinner, although it was dark and sleeting, my lovely, saintly cousin who runs the farm, took the children out to have a go on the tractor. I had brought their wellingtons for this very purpose. The Princess, looking out at the weather, thought better of the adventure but the two boys were keen. They sat up in the cab beside my cousin: he let them blow the horn (somewhat to my shock but we were miles from the nearest house, of course – see, city girl), move the fork thing on the front, turn on and off the lights and, best of all, sit on his lap and drive the tractor. They drove up and down the long drive to the road and I went back into the house to find my mother and aunt chatting by the fire and my daughter staring at the ceiling. My aunt was telling my mother a long and gloomy story which was deeply inappropriate for the ears of a six year old but try as I might I could neither lure the Princess out nor lead my aunt to happier topics. It reflected my own experience – a quintessential part of my childhood was going to Limerick and hearing deeply inappropriate stories for children my age (hotel owner who murdered his wife while children begged guests to come and save their mother, anyone? yes really – Limerick is the centre of national gloom). Eventually, I dragged the Princess out and when she actually saw the splendid nature of the tractor for herself, she insisted on getting up too. Then they took out some milk for a five day old calf which they had the privilege of naming. After much deliberation, they called him Tommy.

When they all came in from their labour on the farm, I asked my cousin how long Tommy was likely to be with us. He cocked an eye at me and said “About two years.” “When he dies, can you tell me where he’s buried so that I can come and visit his grave?” asked the Princess. I think that I may have an incipient vegetarian on my hands.

Then a long very wet drive back.

31 December

Day spent recovering from the exertions of the previous day. Mr. Waffle and I went to bed at 11.05 which, he pointed out to me, is New Year in Belgium.

1 January

In the morning as part of our new year’s resolution to get out more, we prodded the children out of the house with pitchforks and made them walk on the beach which they actually quite enjoyed.
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Alas, when it was time to clean the house before leaving, the children were placated in less wholesome ways. Consider this model of good parenting:
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Then a hideous drive back to Dublin. We completed half the journey in a record 1 hour and 21 minutes admiring snow on the Galtees. Daniel swung his hands round and said, “Look Mummy, Alaska.” There is a boy in their class from Alaska (really) and he has made a big impression on our boys.

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Once we left Munster for Leinster, freezing fog descended and the roads became horribly icy. We crawled to Dublin and, when we got there, we crawled into our beds.

2 January/3 January/4 January

All a blur mostly dominated by the wretched cat. She greeted our return with modified rapture. This may have been because she was being fed hot milk in number 4 every night we were away and had actually been taken into the owner’s bed in number 5 (because she was crying on the street). In an effort to salvage my reputation, I pointed out that someone came in every day to feed the cat and that she had free access to the house via the cat flap. The cat, not realising that she is not a dog, followed us all the way to mass on Sunday. The children and I went into mass and Mr. Waffle carried her home. On his way back he met three young thugs who asked whether he had any cigarettes. When he said no, a thug punched him and cut his lip. At 11.30 in the morning. Somewhat unnerving. As I was relating this in hushed tones to a neighbour, the Princess overheard me: “Did Daddy really get hit?” “Yes, I’m afraid he did, sweetheart.” “Well, it’s a good thing Hodge wasn’t hurt too.” Quite. On Monday afternoon we went round to a neighbour’s for tea and the wretched cat followed us again. The Princess roared at her “You’re supposed to be independent”. My feelings precisely. The cat took it amiss and ran into yet another neighbour’s house – they had unwisely left their door open – so I had to penetrate the interior and haul her out. Great was her outrage when we reached our destination and she was excluded. When our hostess opened the door for someone else, Hodge shot in. I put her out. She stayed peering in and meowing pitifully on the drawing room windowsill for a while but eventually gave up the struggle. On our way home, one of our elderly neighbours was ahead of us clinging to the fence and struggling to stay upright on the icy hill. When I caught up with her, I discovered that part of the reason why she was struggling was that she was carrying Hodge who had clearly decided that she would prefer not to get her feet wet.

5 January

I ventured into work. Michael hung on to me in a most affecting manner and said “stay, Mummy, stay”. I felt really bad about going to work (even though I was leaving him with his father for heaven’s sake) and thought, he needs his Mummy. Then I kissed him goodbye and he said “Yeuch, slimy kiss”. So I suppose we are both ambivalent.

Aside from slipping on the ice and falling on my bottom, work was uneventful.

6 January

The last day of Christmas brought “extreme weather conditions” to Dublin. Stop sniggering North Americans. There was snow. We were scared. Our little family drove into town for lunch because we are stupid. After lunch, we were going to buy wellingtons but the children were cranky and I said that I would take them home in the car and leave Mr. Waffle to buy wellingtons and walk home. We set off in a flurry of snow. A journey which normally takes 15 minutes took an hour and fifteen minutes. It was absolutely terrifying. Cars were sliding, buses were sliding, twice I had to stop on a hill and very nearly couldn’t get going again. The children were unable to see the danger as we were inching along in heavy traffic and ignored my petrified pleas to be quiet and let Mummy concentrate. Picture the scene. I am on a hill, the bus in front of me has its hazard lights on and is lurching forward then slipping back. I am in first gear with my foot to the floor and my wheels are spinning and the engine is groaning. Daniel is bellowing that his shoe has fallen off and can I pick it up off the FLOOR. Michael is whining that the Princess is KICKING. And the Princess announces, I want to do a WEE. By the time we got home, I was shaking all over (though uninjured).

Mr. Waffle arrived in the door ten minutes after us having had a nice walk in the snow and carried out all kinds of errands. He took the children round the corner to test out their new wellingtons and to play on the road where all the neighbourhood children had gathered and a man was skating. Yes, with skates, down the very hill I had driven down, oh so cautiously, only a short time earlier. It was all very nice really (once I was out of the car). I have never in my whole life seen snow like this in Ireland. The children are enjoying an extended Christmas holiday as school is now closed until Monday or possibly beyond as extreme weather conditions continue.

So, that’s how we got over the Christmas.