belgianwaffle

Ireland

In fairness to taxi drivers


Posted in: Dublin

I got a taxi to the airport this morning.  The taxi driver was particularly interested in art nouveau and art deco.  He has been all over the world with his wife photographing things (Napier is too far though).  He told me that after the foundation of the Irish State, the Office of Public Works got a group of young architects together and told them to hop off to Europe and get some ideas.  He says that there is an art deco block of flats on Townsend street that is nicked from a model he saw in a book of Dutch art deco drawings.  He was absolutely fascinating and extremely knowledgeable.  I am feeling a warm glow towards taxi drivers and that’s not something that happens very often.

 

Everywhere I have ever lived – 2000-2003


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

Back to Dublin which was shockingly expensive.   I brought Mr. Waffle with me and he was shocked too.  For about a year I lived alone in a beautifully decorated three bedroom house in Ranelagh which belonged to an architect friend of a friend who was looking for a reliable tenant.  As well as being beautifully decorated, it had a fantastic collection of art and architecture books.  Unfortunately, her son who had been safely living in China for many years wanted to come home and, understandably, I suppose, his mother felt that he had more of a right to the house than I had.

However, fortune smiled upon me and two old friends who lived next door decamped to Bosnia and I was able to move into their house.  Despite regular arguments about the rent (them – don’t bother; us – no, we must; them – well not much then – they were our favourite landlords ever) I was very happy there.  I got married while I was living there and it was our first married home so it has all kinds of positive associations.

When I go to visit my friends now, I always feel very at home in their house which I am sure they welcome particularly late at night when I’m showing no sign of leaving.  In fact, a number of people I know still think it is actually my house and when we came back to Ireland said “you still have your house in Ranelagh”.  If only.

For work reasons, after a couple of years, Mr. Waffle and I decided to move back to Brussels.   With what I can only describe as spectacularly poor timing, my friends came back two months before we were due to move to Brussels.  Furthermore, they wanted to live in their house.

We found a short let in a new apartment block. The flat belonged to a colleague who had yet to live there.  It was small for two and in a somewhat soulless part of Dublin.  It was sub-tropical inside.  We got a printed note from the builders saying that the condensation was, essentially, due to people breathing in the flats and we had only ourselves to blame.  I was six months pregnant, sick and miserable.

Boy were we glad to shake the dust of that place from our feet and move back to Brussels (though at this stage it was getting strangely repetitive).

Everywhere I have ever lived – 1995-1998


Posted in: Dublin, Princess

With some trepidation, I moved back to Dublin.  I needn’t have worried, I found it a much more welcoming town than I had done when I was a poor student.  It was much better being a poor young professional.  God, I was so skint.  I can remember going for coffee and only having water because it was two days to payday.

I lived with (just with, not with) a lovely man who was immensely house proud.  We were happy together for two years but when he upbraided me for chopping a tomato on his draining board, I knew our ways had to part despite his very beautiful and conveniently located house.  I then moved into a colleague’s old house and had a scarlet bedroom and a bracing cycle to work along the sea front.

After a couple of years, the office wanted to second someone to Brussels and a colleague and partner in poverty (we drank tap water together two days before pay day) encouraged me to apply with the words “you have to – look at the pay”.  This turned out to be unfortunate for him in the short term as I got the job and he did not but now he has a very important job so all is well in a cosmic karmic way.

Tomorrow – Brussels II

Today – some confusion

Princess (looking at a map): What does NL stand for?

Me: The Netherlands where the Dutch Mama and her family live.

Princess: And where Peter Pan took Wendy so that she would never grow up.

Everywhere I have ever lived – 1993


Posted in: Dublin, Travel

Once I qualified, I passed over the opportunity to work in an Irish country town and moved to Rome.

I shared a rather nice ground floor flat in Trastevere with two Danish girls and I thought that they were extremely exotic.  I was disappointed when they moved out and a Dutch girl moved in – so much less thrilling.  However, I had my ancient moped and enjoyed whizzing round Rome on it.  I thought that I was fabulous circling the Colosseum – you know, Roman Holiday and all that.

In other news at mass this morning we had this reading from the book of proverbs.  Note to self, get busy with wool and flax.  Then the gospel was the one about the talents which is the Bible’s clearest endorsement of capitalism.  Not, perhaps, a particularly uplifting set of readings though I was glad to be reminded of where one of my favourite lines comes from: the servant who makes nothing gets thrown “out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth”.  I was also delighted to see, from my internet research, that verses 10-31 of the proverbs reading are “an acrostic, each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.”  I knew you would like to know.

Everywhere I have ever lived – 1992


Posted in: Ireland

I spent a couple of months in a small town a long way from Cork at the request of the managing partner.  I wouldn’t say I regret it precisely but I would say that a) there is not a lot to do in small Irish towns in winter and b) however pleasant he and his family may be, it’s probably not a good idea to live with your boss.

Tomorrow – Rome.

Everywhere I have ever lived – 1991


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Travel

It is distressing but I am a little hazy about the details of when I moved to Dublin to study.  I was only there for a couple of months and I thought it was cold, gloomy and dull.

This impression may have been reinforced by my accommodation.  My friend and I had inveigled our way into a short term let by assuring the landlord that we were nurses (a profession which he appeared to regard as entirely trustworthy).  The place where we were living had been inexpertly divided into flats.  We had a main room which boasted a calor heater as its sole source of heat and a carpet as old as time.

We shared a bedroom which had no source of heating at all.  It gets quite cold in Dublin in winter.  We bought a portable heater.  Despite the fact that it got quite warm (I accidentally melted my doc martin’s on it), the room remained arctic.

Our friendship was brought under severe strain by my friend’s chronic lateness.  She was not an early riser and she could not get out of bed.  We were on the same course and, the organisers, having made a very accurate assessment of the enthusiasm levels of trainee solicitors, kept an attendance register and, if you were late or did not attend, your master would be told and, worse, you would have to travel to Dublin to repeat the day.  This made me extremely keen to get there on time.  Every morning, F. would get up late as I paced up and down.  Then while I stood whining in the doorway, she would painstakingly lace up her 18 hole doc’s.  Then we would cycle like the wind and arrive, panting, just in time.

After those months together, I think we might both have liked a break but, unfortunately, we had already bought tickets to go interrailing together for a month which we did with almost no sulking except for that time when we were looking for the pantheon and I took us outside the city walls in Rome based on my expert powers of navigation.