belgianwaffle

Ireland

Sodden Oxen


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Middle Child, Twins

Daniel and I explored the customs surrounding Chinese new year on Saturday.  We went to a hairdresser in the north inner city where all the customers and all the hairdressers were Chinese.  Ni hao to you too.  Daniel made friends with a little Chinese girl and she filled us in on what happens.  “People will throw money at me,” she informed us gleefully in her Dublin accent.   There are about 11,000 Chinese people in Ireland according to the last census figures.  The barber whom Mr. Waffle patronises dismisses this.  He says that there are 11,000 on Parnell Street alone.  He is clearly bitter about the competition.

Continuing our authentic Chinese theme, Mr. Waffle and I went for dinner to a Chinese restaurant in Parnell Street on Saturday night.  It was not very nice, alas.  We parked nearby and while Mr. Waffle went to get a parking ticket, I went and peered into a large somewhat delapidated Georgian house where a big van parked outside, bright lights and a wide open door in the pouring rain indicated that they might be making a film.  I hoved up to the three lads standing in the doorway and asked.  In fact, no, they were making a music video for Emmett Scanlon.  “Who’s he?” I asked.  “Me,” said the one in a shirt with ruffles.  “Don’t you recognise him?” asked one of the others.  “He’s going to be famous.”  Not famous yet though.  He directed me to his website and as an act of human charity, I am going to put in a link to it because Emmet and his mates seemed to be quite a nice bunch.

Finally, we went to inspect the Chinese new year celebrations in the city on Sunday.   We brought my sister too because bonding with her niece and nephews is very good for her.  The kids made kites.  The driving rain made it difficult to get them to fly.  The children would have been happy to watch the Silk and Bamboo trio all afternoon but the adults were getting wet and dragged them away.  They did get to shake hands with a person dressed as an ox, so this softened the blow of not being able to see the dragon over the top of the Chinese ambassador’s umbrella.

Apparently the ox is known for fortitude.  Well, I’d say that he’ll need it this year.

Waking the Celtic Tiger


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

It’s all a bit hysterical here at the moment.   You can’t turn on the radio without somebody telling you that we are all DOOMED!

I asked Mr. Waffle (fount of all knowledge, as you know) what happened to the soft landing we were promised and he tells me that “it turns out that the fundamentals weren’t sound after all”.  That’s alright then.

I had lunch during the week with a very pessimistic friend.  He has just remortgaged his beautiful house so that he can make it even more beautiful (extension, underfloor heating, walls taken apart to put in insulation – couldn’t he just have put on another jumper, seriously?).  He is worried about what will happen should Ireland go bankrupt.  What will happen to his beautiful house?  He gloomily prophesied that Mr. Waffle would have to go back to Brussels and send remittances to keep us all afloat.

I had a friend for the Princess round.  She is a little German girl (if you were German, would you put your child in an Irish language school?).  Her parents came too.  We talked about the economy (what can I say, it is all pervasive).  They were recruited from Germany for the boom.  Ah, I joked, you should move to Poland now; apparently, Poland is the new Ireland.  “Actually, our company is moving to Poland,” they said.  He has taken redundancy and they are moving back to Berlin as soon as he finds a job there. And how, we ask ourselves, is their daughter going to keep up her Irish?

Dell had a big plant in Limerick and they are moving to Poland.  My cousin will lose his job.  The Irish Times had a big feature on workers in Lodz and how they are taking the news.  I must say they seemed very realistic about it all.  Dell will probably move somewhere else in ten years.  They are leaving Ireland now, later they will leave Poland.  In some way, I think we fooled ourselves about foreign direct investment.  The Americans love Ireland we said to ourselves and we all speak English, their companies will stay forever.  I suppose if they were that indifferent to cost and related considerations, they could just have stayed at home.  Anyhow, I don’t see the Poles saying “there’s a big Polish community in Chicago, they’re bound to stay here because of their traditional links with Poland”.  Meanwhile, a man made redundant by Dell was showing extreme stoicism to the Irish Times “Nobody will starve to death”.  I suppose not.

It’s funny because it doesn’t feel like a recession to me, not like the 1980s.  My sister and I went to dinner on Wednesday night.  It was raining.  I had booked a table for two.  When I went in, the restaurant was empty.  Aha, I thought, the recession strikes.  Fifteen minutes later, the place was heaving.  In the early 90s we had “jobless growth”.  We kept getting told that things were getting better but unemployment was not falling and it didn’t seem like things were getting better.  Now we have jobless growth in reverse.

I listen a bit to Radio 4 and there the talk is also of recession but in a much more relaxed manner – has Gordon Brown’s spokesman rung in the middle of any show to ask them to stop creating panic – I think not (probably too busy analysing poll data).  I read an article somewhere that said that poor people who get richer lack the “inter-generational security” of the middle classes.  Ireland lacks the inter-generational security of the middle classes.  We’ve only been rich for ten years and we just have the national pension fund to call on when times get tough.

I have started reading an Irish economics website.  I’m not sure why since it only depresses me.  However, there was recently some much needed relief from the storm clouds that the website likes to whip up (collective noun for economists anyone – a correction of economists, a downturn of economists, a recession of economists, a depression of economists?). A contributor called Jim O’Leary was marking papers and generously gave us the following gem from one of the next generation of economists:

From the frontiers of knowledge (yes, it’s grading time again): “Fiscal contraction was first noticed in the 1960s by a man by the name of Fiscal and it was him who derived the short, medium and long run effects of it and how they would occur and the reasons for it…”  

Thank you, Jim, for drawing this to the nation’s attention when we needed it most.

Land of (equal) opportunity


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

Equal pay was forced upon Ireland by the EU (how can you not love it?) on accession in 1973.  Despite the then Government’s fighting a dastardly rear action to protect unequal pay for equal work, the EU won the day.  The Government, resigned to its fate, decided to appoint a number of equality officers to ensure that the principle was observed.  However, as you can imagine, it took a while for the new arrangements to be implemented and for some time there were transitional arrangements in place.

The outcome of this was that when the equality officer posts were advertised, they were advertised on the transitional scales with lower pay rates for women than for men.

[Insert relevant cliche here – perhaps “you couldn’t make it up”]

Here’s how old I am


Posted in: Cork

I grew up watching black and white television with two channels.

When I was a small child, married women were not allowed to work in the civil service or the banks.

I know what a soda stream is and I have tasted its products (not very nice, kids).

I watched the Berlin Wall fall and Nelson Mandela walk free (on the telly but live).

I saw “Who framed Roger Rabbit?” and was amazed and dazzled by the technology (it mixes real people and cartoons).

I watched the original series of Charlie’s Angels and was the proud owner of the 1977 annual.

I got Super Trouper the Album for Christmas when it was newly released.

I remember my cousins getting a video recorder and how we all marvelled at its miraculous, magical workings.

I didn’t use a computer when I was in college; there was no internet; there was no google.

I grew up without email.  When I began my working life, everything came in and out by post.

I was once expert in the use of the dictaphone.

I used faxes every day.  I remember when faxes were shiny new technology and they used shiny paper too from which, hilariously, the text faded away on the files where it was carefully kept.

I had a part share in the office mobile phone which was so heavy that you had to carry it around in its own special case.

I believed that Burlington socks, Benetton scarves, legwarmers, Adidas Roms, ankle boots (welcome back ankle boot – I see you have rejoined us in the new century) and  parka jackets were very cool.  Ideally all worn at the same time.

From an original idea by the ever estimable Finslippy.  Tell me, how old (or young, if you really feel that’s appropriate and tactful, in the circumstances) are you?

Domestic Felicity


Posted in: Dublin, Middle Child

We have a new carpet on the stairs, it is cheap, as these things go, and it is beige.  It has made me more happy than I believe a carpet should.

I wish, though, that we hadn’t got it laid the week we finally started toilet training Daniel.

Weekend Round-up


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

I decided to take the children to Cork for the weekend.  Thanks to the portable DVD player, the train journey passed off peacefully.  We took a taxi to my parents’ house.  The taxi man was horrible.  This is the first time I have ever had a horrible taxi man with the children.  Normally, I find they are very patient and tolerant and at this time of year, they tend to make polite enquiries about Santa Claus and are, generally, sweetness and light.  As I piled the children into the back seat, this man began revving the engine.  As any parent of young children will know, strapping them into their seats is a lengthy operation involving kicking and swearing.  Once they were in, I tried to get my bags in the boot but it was locked.  With a theatrical sigh, the man turned off the engine and came round to open the boot.

I sat in the front which, in retrospect, was a mistake.  After three hours in the train, the children were a little, um,  boisterous.  Daniel kicked the window handle.  “He’ll break it,” said the taxi man.  “Stop,” I said firmly to Daniel.  “He’s kicked it again,” the Princess announced primly.  I gave her my force ten glare to which she protested, all too audibly, “Don’t you want me to tell the man Daniel’s kicking the door?”  The taxi man then said grimly, “I’m not cranky [manifestly untrue] but, if you can’t control your children, I’m going to have to pull in and put you in the back with them.”  “Fine, pull in please,” I said while hissing at Daniel to, for God’s sake, stop kicking. “I am cranky!” said Daniel loudly [manifestly true].  We pulled in and I got into the back.  Daniel started screaming blue murder and lashing out all round him.  “He hit me,” whined the Princess.  “He hit me too, now hush,” I muttered to her.  Daniel continued screaming as I tried to get him on my lap and get a belt round both of us.  The taxi driver drove on.  I arrived at my parents’ house a shadow of my former self.  While I was not tipping the cranky taxi driver, the wretched mobile phone rang too.

I called round to my aunt that evening.

Aunt: What a lovely surprise to see you.

Me: Suitable reply.

Her: You’re looking..ok.

Me: Fit of giggles.

Her: Well, I used to say to people that they were looking great but they always say they have just recovered from flu or something so I have downgraded my compliments.

Later.

Aunt: I was at mass the other evening and I saw people filing up to communion and the thought slipped into my head “all bloody middle class”.

Me: But you’re middle class.

Her: I’m not.

Me: But you have a degree.

Her: Mmm.

Me: And you’re rich.

Her: But I feel working class.

Me: I’m not sure it works that way.

I come from a long line of eccentrics.

I note that the powers that be have demolished the “Western Star“, watering hole of generations of students.  My father used to drink there when he was in college.  He knew Starrie who inherited it from his parents, so it must have been there since, at least, the 1930s.  God, is nothing sacred?

My father was in unusually reminiscent form at the weekend.  When he was a small boy, in the late 1920s, he lived in South Pasadena for a number of years.  He remembers passing a valley that was all lit up at night because they were making a film; the ice man coming with his enormous block of ice that was put in the bottom of the ice box with a fork; coming home to Ireland on the boat and going outside in Halifax and seeing the rigging all frozen.  Truly, the past is another country.  I would love to hear more of these stories but my father is not one to talk very much about his past.  Usually, when you ask him, he says “I forget and goes back to his paper in a marked manner.”

We went to the Lough to feed the ducks, as is our custom when in Cork.  They were hungry.  Every bird in the place came hurtling towards us.  Michael got bitten on the hand by a swan who was unhappy with the speed of bread delivery.   The seagulls flapped their wings aggressively in my face.  Daniel got chased by some greedy pigeons.  Only the Princess came through unscathed.  I told her that when my great uncle Dan, her grandad’s uncle was a boy, the Lough used to freeze and people used to go skating there.  We still have his skating boots in the attic.  My prudent daughter observed that this must have been very dangerous as the ice might have frozen unevenly.  That girl is her father’s daughter.

Michael, despite absence of any sign of a temperature, spent the day lying down at inopportune moments moaning that he was sick.  After I had put them to bed, I began to worry and decided to lay in Calpol.  Driving around Cork the Saturday before Christmas looking for a late night pharmacist to sell me Calpol, I felt vaguely envious of the scantily clad young girls laughing outside pubs in the drizzle.  I eventually tracked down Calpol at the 24 hour Tesco in Bishopstown (something I immensely disapprove of but needs must) and stood glumly in a queue at 11 at night with huge numbers of unfestive shoppers.  All this for a boy who subsequently asked me to “stop kissing me all the time.”  Kind Daniel explained that “it’s bold for Michael but nice for me.”  At least I am still permitted to kiss one of my sons.

Train ride home was too hideous to describe in detail but we had to wait an hour and a bit in the station which more or less entirely exhausted the children’s goodwill towards travelling.  By the time we arrived in Dublin Daniel and the Princess were roaring and hitting each other, Michael was lying in the aisle muttering that he was sick, I was hissing, cajoling and apologising and the occupants of the crowded train were ignoring us as best they could, God help them.