belgianwaffle

Ireland

Eeek!


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

My children do not enjoy as diverse a diet as I did when I was their age. In part this is because I am not at all as good a cook as my mother and in part because they are the pickiest eaters in Ireland.

I am spending a couple of days with my parents (photos of flooding may follow, hold your breath) and this evening my mother cooked prawns for the offspring. It was then that I realised that they had never even had a frozen prawn before, let alone one still encased in its shell. They gazed in horrified fascination at the little bodies laid out for their delectation. They winced as I screwed off the thorax and pulled out the edible part. The Princess then began to create new bodies using the heads and pincers. The boys were too afraid to even touch them. So, your best guess, did they eat any dinner tonight?

A lesson in gender equality


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

Male friend with whom I am having lunch: I have to fill in one of these pointless EU gender equality things.
Me[neutrally]: Mmm, what do you mean?
Pause to pass up a folder to older gentleman struggling to reach it from his barstool [lunch in the pub, some stereotypes are true].
MF: Ach, you know, just ticking lots of boxes and really, do we need it?
Me: Well, it depends, I suppose.
Pause to pick up the umbrella which has tumbled from the older gentleman’s grasp.
Older gentleman in patrician tones: Thank you very much young lady, you are like [pauses to search for top compliment from range available to him], you are like a really excellent P.A.
MF: Bite your lip, bite your lip, ok we need the gender equality thing.

Homage to Myles


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

From Frank McNally’s column last week:

“…New metaphors were badly needed at the time. As long ago as 1999 – probably during a wet day on Hope Street – I called elsewhere in this paper for the decommissioning of the peace process’s “deadly arsenal of clichés”.

This included an estimated 40,000 windows of opportunity, 50,000 variations on the theme of moving the situation forward, and perhaps half a million phrases to describe nothing happening: including such foreign imports as “log-jam”, “stand-off”, and the French-made “impasse” (which was smuggled in, probably via Libya, during the late 1980s but never deployed properly because most broadcast journalists lacked the necessary phonetic training).

And this was only the more recent material. If you went back further, there was any amount of other stuff lying around, like those old jokes about the “Carmelite and the ballot box” and the need to take “all the nuns out of Irish politics”.

Rust might have made these unusable, I thought. But even so: most newspaper readers would not rest easy until the material was put permanently beyond use. I recall wishing that we could just dump all the clichés “in a big hole somewhere, and pour concrete over them”… ”

Look, nobody said that all of the NaBloPoMo content had to be original.

Quality Time


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Middle Child, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

I don’t work on Wednesday afternoons. I collect the children from school and bond with them.

Last Wednesday, there was a demonstration and I arrived late to collect them. A guard shouted at me as I tried to manoeuvre past the crowds of marching off duty guards, nurses and prison officers (cross about pay cuts). The children were full of reproaches. The school had sent text messages to parents asking them to come early as they knew about the demonstration. I didn’t get a message. I could tell that neither the principal nor the children believed me though it was quite true. Thus, I was feeling weak when the Princess asked whether we could to the vile greasy caf adjacent to the school.

I tramped in crankily. I had exactly €7 in cash on me and cafs do not take cards. The children were told that they could spend two euros each. Michael and Daniel each got a drink and the Princess got a particularly greasy bacon sandwich which she devoured with every appearance of enthusiasm. This was the cause of some friction with her brothers who were anxious that she should share and got a microscopic piece of bacon and some crisps each (of course, the sandwich came with crisps). The Princess told me that Brian Cowen was taking all her teacher’s money. I endeavoured to explain to her the financial crisis and the arguments for cuts in public spending. Very cannily, she instantly asked whether her father and I worked in the public sector or the private sector.

Having only parked the car for a quick scurry to school rather than an extended snack, I realised that I would need to feed the meter. I abandoned my children with the injunction not to move and left them in the care of the Polish greasy caf lady. I came back to find them all still in situ. We finished, put on coats, went outside, got to the traffic light and the Princess announced “I want to go to the toilet”. Excellent. We all traipsed back in, everyone went to the toilet. While Michael was in the toilet, herself asked whether she could have a drink of his juice. He said yes but, when he emerged from the toilet, he discovered she had taken more than he bargained for. He began to cry and we put on coats again and traipsed out of the cafe with a howling Michael bringing up the rear.

Having reached the safety of the car, I said to the Princess “I assume that you have your school bag”. But, of course not. I left them in the car and flew back to the cafe where it was sitting waiting for me.

An hour after emerging from school we were finally on our way to the science gallery which has consistently provided entertaining exhibitions and did not let us down on this occasion. The children happily created a number of new animals and I would have loved a go myself but they were not in the mood for sharing. We met a colleague of mine on the way back to the car and they all said hello politely and she said “what nice polite children” and I was ecstatic (low bar these days) until two seconds later when Daniel started tugging my sleeve and saying “Muuum” in that whiny voice that small children sometimes favour.

On homewards where we had to settle down to homework. I promised a half an hour of television when homework was over. Homework, normally a 15 minute exercise lasted ages as herself had an impossible word search which stymied me (Mr. Waffle of course, found the last word instantly and annoyingly on his return home). So a bit hard to get dinner on and general fratchetiness all round.

Over dinner, Daniel turned to me and said anxiously, “Will F be collecting us from school tomorrow?”

If u do not forward this to 6 people, u will have 6 months bad luck


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

I have a friend who, very reprehensibly, forwards these kinds of email. Clearly, I always delete them while making a tutting sound. One arrived today and I deleted it and forgot about it until I got home this evening. I found three letters from the revenue commissioners announcing that they had reassessed my tax returns for 2004, 2005 and 2006 and telling me cheerily (in light of the state of the exchequer) that they calculated that for those years I had an additional liability of €6,000. 6 months of this kind of luck could beggar us.

The Epitome of Cool


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

Myself and Mr. Waffle went to see the Saw Doctors on Saturday night. As we were going into the Olympia, two young men about town were passing. We were happened to overhear a snatch of their dialogue. “What’s on?” “The Saw Doctors.” “Ah, that old shite.”

The Saw Doctors have been around for about 20 years. They have a particularly Irish flavour to their music and very funny lyrics. Mr. Waffle maintains that the further you are from rural Ireland the more you will like the Saw Doctors. He is a bigger fan than I am but his friend from Fermoy (not a fan) is married to a Londoner who is wildly enthusiastic.

They attract a bizarre demographic. Sitting in front of me was a bald man of about 70 wearing a suit and tie and a fáinne. Beside me was an older gentleman wearing a baby blue v-necked golf jumper. He was accompanied by a young man of 17 or 18. They both knew all the words of all the songs. The concert also boasted a couple of children and loads of 20 somethings.

The Saw Doctors themselves are not as young as they once were. When they sang about leaving “the Christian Brothers’ school“, I couldn’t help thinking that it’s been a very long time since they left the Christian Brothers’ care. That song, about emigration, is topical again for the first time in 20 years so maybe the Saw Doctors are due a serious revival. Again, when they sang “Red Cortina” (remember the Cortina?) and mentioned “Christmas party 77”, it was clear that a large part of the audience wasn’t even born in 77 let alone meeting a first love (though a significant minority would have been 20 years married in 77). I’ve been humming it all week. What’s great about the Saw Doctors is that they sing about a very specific Irish context. Their songs really couldn’t have been written anywhere else – I mean, take for example the one about baling hay.

Apparently they’ll be back in Dublin in February, there’s something to look forward to.