belgianwaffle

Ireland

More from multicultural Ireland


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

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.

NaBlPoMo – Still on 20six

Geepeemama

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.

Pog

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


Posted in: Dublin, 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


Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Reading etc.

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.

Six degrees of separation


Posted in: Ireland

So, I was off with no internet in Caherdaniel.  Remote, secluded west Kerry.  Also wet west Kerry.  I’ll come back to that.  What with the remoteness and the seclusion but presumably not the wet, west Kerry appears to be attractive to the famous. I was somewhat surprised to see a statue to Charlie Chaplin in Waterville.  I was even more surprised to hear from my mother-in-law that when hitching round the ring of Kerry with a friend (this is the kind of bohemian family I have married into) in her youth, she ran into the famous comic.  They both pretended not to recognise him and had a chat about the weather (wet, of course).  My mother-in-law had her camera in her bag but decided to leave him in peace but when they were parting her friend blew their appearance of cool indifference by saying “Well, goodbye, Mr. Chaplin”.

Meanwhile in Dingle, many years ago, a friend of mine who is something of a celebrity in his own right his father being one of Ireland’s best known literary giants was out on a walk when he came across a lost American tramping about in the rain (that rain again).  When the American asked for help, my kind friend took him back to his hotel not deeming it safe to leave him alone in the wilds of Kerry.  They chatted on the way back and took a mild shine to each other but it was not until perusing the Kerryman the next day that Billy realised that he had been touched by greatness because Tom Cruise in a press conference had said “I wouldn’t be here at all, if my good friend Billy had not found me and brought me to this hotel”.  He was over to make that grisly flick “Far and Away“.

Finally, as you will be aware, everyone in Ireland is closely linked to Bono, so you will be unsurprised to hear that the house my parents-in-law rented for 20 odd years in Caherdaniel (though not this year, alas) was owned by Bono’s uncle.  Apparently there was a lot of speculation locally that it might be left to Bono (though why this would be when the man has children and grandchildren of his own is unclear) when he died but he obviously decided that Bono had enough stuff and the pop superhero and his family were not, in fact, holidaying down the road from us.  However, I know that you would like to hear that had Mr. Waffle played his cards right, he could have, as a young man, babysat for Bono’s little cousin Rupert.

 

Today’s news


Posted in: Ireland, Twins

Rang my mother for a chat but she hung up on me to hear Bertie give a funeral oration at CJ‘s obsequies.  She got back to me quickly.  She felt it lacked grandeur as Bertie cannot pronounce his ths (a fatally common Irish failing – do you wonder why I had years of elocution classes?  Wonder no longer).  I am as shocked that he has died as I was the day I heard Margaret Thatcher was deposed.  I thought that he would go on forever.

In other news, the Dutch Mama has sent me an email containing this line:
“Our Austrian friend is coming to visit on Sunday with her twin baby boys…about a month old now and (I’ve been so looking forward to telling you this) sleeping through the night!! “Mr. Waffle says that travel often upsets small children.  Let us hope for the best.

Hot off the presses


Posted in: Ireland

I got this message the other day from a friend of mine who has just gone on maternity leave:

“Don’t respond to this email as my locum now has access to this and I was only in briefly to catch up on your blog and to do the accounts.”

In recognition of her dedication I called her this morning, I got her husband.
Me: Hello,how are things?
Him: Eh? Who?
Me: Me, Anne.
Him: Oh hi.
Me: How are you?
Him: Fine, great, tired.
Me: Has the baby arrived, then?
Him: Yes, he arrived at 2.00 am this morning.
Me: Gosh, congratulations, what are you going to call him?
Him: I don’t know.
Me: Is his big sister pleased?
Him: She doesn’t know that he’s been born yet.
Me: Um should I get off the phone while you tell the immediate relatives first?