Chatting to a friend on the phone the other night, I was reminded of an event from the holidays the memory of which I had, for some reason, suppressed. The Sunday before Christmas, I wanted us all to go to mass. The Princess did not want to go. I insisted. She screamed roared, sulked, refused to put on her coat. As always when there is a deadline, matters went from difficult to impossible. I went on ahead with the boys. My parents-in-law live near a very busy road. Michael took advantage of a moment’s inattention on my part and nearly stepped in front of a speeding car. I got such a shock. I was very contrite as Mr. Waffle always insists they are put in the buggy but I want them to walk because they hate the buggy and walking is good for them. Not as good for them as staying alive, I have now decided. I picked them both up and wrestled them into the buggy amid howls of protest. At this point, Mr. Waffle emerged with a screaming Princess. “Why, why do I have to go?†Me (also screaming in a model of good parenting) “Because I want you to, is that too hard to understand? Can you think of anyone but yourself for just 10 seconds?†Boys form background of howling – a sort of Greek chorus to our main event on the public highway. Still in shock form Michael’s brush with death and furious with the, entirely unabashed, Princess, I join my children and succumb to tears. Evil daughter remains adamantine in her protests. Boys keep howling. Mr. Waffle says bracingly as he shepherds along his tearful flock “Will we all sing a song?â€
Ireland
And how did you get over the Christmas?
Peacefully. Largely. We spent a couple of days in Dublin, then down to Cork on the train for a week or so and back to Dublin for New Year.
Santa Claus played a large part in our celebrations. When we got to Dublin airport, tired and ratty after a 2 hour delay, he was waiting in arrivals with a big sack of sweets and toys. When we arrived at Mr. Waffle’s parents’ house, it was to discover that Santa had sent an email to announce that there would be presents in the hall (two tractors and a princess dress, since you ask). When we got out of the train in Cork, Santa was waiting for us. I was startled but somewhat touched to see my three children run into his arms and give him a big hug. A number of older ladies then went up and danced with him. The next day was Christmas day and Santa was active overnight. Santa delivered dinosaurs for the boys and a range of things for herself including a pair of sparkly silver shoes, several sizes too small. “Stupid Santa,†I said. “No, Mummy, Santa has been very kind, don’t say that, we can give these shoes to a poor child with small feet,†said Pollyanna. The rest of our time in Cork was slightly bedevilled by continued requests to find a poor child with small feet.
To fit us all in my parents’ house, my sister had moved in with my aunt who lives next door. This was very kind all round. There were a number of difficulties, however (not for us, as my sister would no doubt tell you, bitterly). My sister, after long years in America, is used to houses which can be warmed throughout to the same temperature; there are no such houses in Ireland. Furthermore, the uniform temperature she likes is very warm indeed. My aunt has central heating but doesn’t bother using it much. She sleeps with the window open. She is very hardy. Despite my aunt leaving the central heating on for days and finding herself gasping for air in the garden, my sister found it necessary to sleep in thermal underwear, wrapped in an electric blanket, covered in a sleeping bag and topped off with a hat. She also had a portable heater beside the bed. Actually not the bed as such because my aunt decided that she didn’t need any spare beds a couple of months ago [take it up with the professional declutterers]. She slept on an air mattress which my aunt had got from a friend. It was very swish but, alas, leaked slightly.  We were awkward guests and, though no one complained, I couldn’t help feeling just a tiny bit guilty about the level of inconvenience that we caused to everyone. In retrospect, the low point was probably when we commandeered the study for Daniel’s cot because he wasn’t sleeping in our room. He lay there solemnly drinking his milk while my sister was tried to get her invoices out before the end of the month in semi-darkness. “You do know,†my mother hissed “that your sister is trying to run a small business from that studyâ€.
The boys will eat very little. This was brought home to me by the sight of their cousin J dutifully devouring everything his parents put in front of him and by my mother informing me at regular intervals that ‘those children will eat nothing’. I don’t really care about this because I am heartless. Mr. Waffle, however, is most distressed by it and this tended to cast a pall over many meal times.
Those children also got a mountain of presents from devoted grandparents, aunts (special mention to the aunt who felt that all of them should get a present every day they were in Cork) and uncles.   When we returned to Dublin it was to find that Santa had been (again!) and left stockings for each of them. We struggled back to Brussels heavily laden with goodies and prepared for the last day of Christmas.  Yesterday was Women’s Christmas and Mr. Waffle was nice to the Princess and me on the strength of it.  Not as nice, though, as the Befana who called to our Italian neighbours upstairs and, finding that they were both grown ups, left three long red stockings filled with treats pinned with clothes pegs to the lift outside our door.  For a while we thought that she had left lumps of coal but consultation with the neighbours revealed that they were actually an extraordinary coal like sweet. Finally, last night we had our Galette and the Princess got the fève. What with Saint Nicolas on December 6, Santa Claus on the 25th and the Befana yesterday, it has been a rolling Christmas treat and the return to regular arrangements this morning was greeted with mournful demeanours and protest.
Presents and family bonding aside, the highlight of the holiday for the Princess was holding a starfish at the aquarium and for the boys feeding the ducks in the Lough. I feel that this says something but I’m not quite sure what.
Why my poor mother has a lot to put up with
My mother: So, Alf is coming tomorrow to give me an estimate for painting the kitchen.
My father and I in unison: “Where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.”
Alf did come in due course and it turns out that his son runs for Ireland and had just had to turn down a scholarship to a US university because he failed maths. The irony is that Alf’s nephews and nieces are extremely good at maths having competed in the maths olympics (there’s a whole world out there, people). His sister married a mathematical genius who, incidentally, is my friend the heart surgeon’s mother’s brother. Are you still with me? Did I mention that I come from a city that’s really a small town?
On Friday the Princess and I travelled to Cork with friends from Brussels. These friends have somewhat complex domestic arrangements. They are a gay couple. They come to Cork every second weekend to visit a daughter who lives with her older brother, her lesbian mother and her mother’s partner. The lesbian couple and their children used to live in London where, I’m sure, this kind of thing is not unusual at all but I have to say I felt twinges of foreboding when they moved back to Cork. Unnecessary. Not only does no one care but there is another lesbian couple with children living on the same estate as them. In many ways, the world is getting better and better. However, it turns out that the child’s paternal grandmother is from my mother’s home town in Co. Limerick and we know all about them, oh yes, including my friend’s aunt the nun. My mother is curious to know what she makes of it all but religious are very right on these days.
Do you ever wonder why I crave the anonymity of the big city?
More from multicultural Ireland
I had to go to the local shop to get a packet of tampax. To avoid theft and to torture customers, small shops in Ireland keep tampax behind the counter. I looked at the crowded shop and thought “I am 37 years old, I have given birth to three children, I can surely ask for a packet of tampax without undue embarrassment”. I came to the top of the queue and faced the Chinese man behind the counter. Two elderly men in flat caps stood patiently behind me.
Me: Could I have a packet of tampax please?
Him: Sorry?
Me: A packet of tampax.
Him: What for?
Me: Sorry??
Men behind me in queue: Cough, cough.
Him: What it for?
Me: Um.
Him (enlightenment dawning): Ah, sorry. Small, medium or large? (I love that question).
Me: Medium.
Him (triumphantly smacking a packet of thumbtacks on the counter): Here you go.
The clue is in the title. She’s a GP and a mama. Her daughter is very like mine to my great amusement. In fact, in many ways, her life sounds like mine, except of course, that she is a doctor bringing joy and good health to humanity and I am a worker drone thinking up performance indicators and writing annual reports. As well as writing about her children, she does the odd post about seeing things from the GP’s side of the desk and this is all very interesting. Let me give you a tip, if your doctor has a bad cold don’t say “Doctor, you should be the one taking antibiotics”. Apparently, though she will laugh politely, it palls after a while and, anyway, she will be itching to tell you a cold is a virus.
When I started posting at 20six, I instantly noticed that there was someone who seemed incredibly popular. Who was this pog anyway? I started to lurk on her site. She was a London party girl, that’s who she was. I started to enjoy a glitzy social life involving all night parties in cool London locations as well as a day job in something mediaish and exciting (though she was rather dismissive about this latter). It was another world. A lot of the blogs I read are more of the same world; I like that, it’s nice to be reassured that you are not alone and it’s entertaining to find others in the same boat as you but pog is a completely different world and I like that too. As it turns out, the cool girl has a heart of gold and now regularly reads my blog (can I tell you how excited I was the first time she left a comment?), which I hope will mean that she will keep up with the partying rather than settle down to produce kiddies in the short term. The cool girl is also a cook and when I was unable to eat anything in the later stages of my last pregnancy, sent me recipes artfully combining the few things I could eat. She also made bread from scratch. Including the yeast which she described as heaving in her kitchen in a large vat. What else can I say?
Confusion in Multicultural Ireland
Non-Irish Trader in organic, right on market: These sardines come from Latvia.
Mother-in-law: From Latvia. Goodness. Tell me, how do you say ‘thank you’ in your language?
Trader: Merci.
Mother-in-law: That’s not Latvian, that’s French.
Trader: I am French.
The Wind that shakes the Barley
The scene: A bunch of Pres boys stand around ad libbing about rebellion in a Ken Loach film. Including yer man Cillian Murphy who was a couple of years behind my brother in school (clang).
Me (sotto voce): God they’re dreadful, do you think that they’ll be with us for long?
Mr. Waffle: I’d say we’re stuck with this lot until 1923.
Later.
Leader of flying column, Teddy O’Donovan, ad libs on why they must support the treaty: We have to give this thing a green light.
Mr. Waffle: What’s a green light Teddy?
Alas, I know very little about Irish history and I kept having to ask Mr. Waffle for important historical information like, when did the War of Independence end and what was the name of the famous guy from North Cork? Truce was summer 1921 and Tom Barry, since you ask. He hissed at me “didn’t you do any history at all in school?” I replied with great dignity that I had given up history at 15 and stopped at the Renaissance and I could tell him all about the great Florentine painters later.
It was my choice. I wanted to see a Cork film. And there were lots of Cork accents which was entertaining. Although the socialist was from Dublin, as Mr. Waffle said, no one would believe in a Cork socialist. But Cork was burnt down by the Black and Tans, so you would think that it might feature in the flick but, as my mother would say, devil a bit. In fact, I didn’t recognise anywhere they filmed though I see it was shot on location in county Cork. And the dialogue was desperately clunky. I loved Ken Loach’s film “Raining Stones”, I think it was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. I really hated “Land and Freedom” though which was about the Spanish civil war which featured the same kind of exposition as this film. Lots of scenes with young revolutionaries sitting down and setting out their reasons for fighting. Desperately tedious stuff.
I have no idea why this film got rave reviews (in the English papers) and a palme d’or, perhaps it’s because the English feel guilty about Ireland and the French always enjoy a film that is mean to the British.
Still dire and all as it was, it did make me think. I mean we all knew that the Black and Tans were brutal and that our grandparents were all involved in the war of independence – Mr. Waffle’s grandfather’s house was burnt down by the Black and Tans and my grandmother, who worked in the telephone exchange, used to pass on to the IRA messages she heard passed between British army officers. But our grandparents, they were so law abiding, as Mr. Waffle said, the most conservative revolutionaries ever. I did hear about some old fella who fought the war of independence refusing to go to the reinstated commemoration parade for 1916 because, as he put it, the State had an army for years and why hadn’t it invaded Northern Ireland. You have to admire a man who sticks to his principles.