belgianwaffle

Ireland

It’s a Jungle Out There


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Princess

Mr Waffle had a work triumph and we had a weekday outing to Howth to celebrate.

We had lunch and a walk. A classic combination. After lunch, I got a 99 and we went for a stroll on the pier. There weren’t any people around.

On the exposed pier, the seagulls saw me and my ice cream and started flapping around trying to take it from me. In the absence of other punters I was (if you’ll forgive me) a sitting duck. I scuttled along anxiously guarding my ice cream but a seagull came diving in from behind and took a big mouthful. They’re big animals, you know. In what I have to say was not my finest hour, I threw the ice cream on the ground and abandoning the others I dashed off the pier shouting at the seagulls “Take it you bastards”.

Achievements in Renovations


Posted in: Dublin, Hodge, Ireland, Mr. Waffle

God, 2025 nearly killed us:

we put in solar panels and a battery (visits from sales, engineers, plumbers, electricians, actual installation);

we put in new bookshelves in the dining room (built in situ and took weeks and weeks, pleasing result but lengthy disruption);

we had the house painted inside, not all of inside but most of inside (the most disruptive thing we did, horrendous – the painter was extremely taciturn and the only thing he said to me that wasn’t directly concerned with the job in hand was, “your cat, she hates me.” She really did.);

we got a new carpet on the stairs (painter recommended having removed the old one for painting, possibly for the best; in contradistinction to all other services the carpet people I asked for a quote from emailed and texted me to say they were coming and despite me saying that actually we had gone with someone else, I only finally managed to put them off on the day they were coming to install their carpet whether we wanted it or not);

we had the brass stair rods and fenders dipped (so shiny, would 100% do again);

we had a man come in November for a couple of days and clean up the garden front and back (already the weeds are re-sprouting sniffing the fresh January air);

we bought a huge new rug from the antiques man up the road and we put it in the dining room replacing my great aunt’s rug which was too small and had a number of holes from when my parents had it in front of the fire and errant coals had landed on it and once the cat pooed on it so it was not as lovely as it was in its heyday – it’s in our bedroom now, in case you were wondering what happened to it;

and finally a man came and rehung our pictures after the painting finished.

This last was possibly a bit indulgent but even though he judged our art collection (cheap prints, inherited daubs), he did a great job in hanging things. However, I wanted lots of smaller pictures over the sofa. (“A scatter hang,” said he, disapprovingly – he’s a big fan of giving art space but I like to stack things on top of each other like this, so there was a bit of creative tension). I envisaged something tasteful but I did not like it when he’d finished even though I loved everything else. “Sit with it,” he said. I have sat with it. I still don’t like it. I suppose I’ll have to redo it myself.

My father used to say “houses are nothing but trouble”. Was he wrong?

Too High or Too Low*


Posted in: Family, Ireland

I have this theory about Irish people that we always have to do things to an extreme extent. It’s only fair to say that I have found very little support for this view among other Irish people.

However, you will recall that for a long time we were the best Catholics. Now we are the best liberals. We always wanted to be the best Europeans. When we had the bailout we were the best country at taking our medicine; we were never going to default like the Argentinians (I mean, they took that to their own extreme).

I don’t know if it’s a post-colonial thing or a small country thing or what. When I was growing up it was drummed into us by home, school, society that if you were going abroad you were representing your country and you couldn’t let us down. I’m not talking about going abroad to perform in the maths Olympiad here, I’m talking about a camping holiday in France.

Though all this does remind me of a funny story my mother told me. Shortly after she finished her master’s degree in Cork, she got a DAAD scholarship to continue her chemistry studies in Freiburg in Germany. It was the late 50s/early 60s and Ireland was poor and Germany was enjoying its post-war economic miracle and it was a world leader in science. Her professor in UCC said to her, “They’ll have all kinds of equipment there you’ve never seen before but don’t go around saying ‘Ooh, I’ve never used that before’ – you’re a clever woman, you’ll work it out quickly enough.” And so she did.

Anyway, in case you didn’t know, one of the things we quite like about ourselves here is that we’re good at death: talking about it; managing the rituals associated with it and generally seeing it as part of life. Regular readers will know that I am blue in the face from going to funerals and removals (the evening event – handy if work means you can’t go to the funeral – though a couple of hours out of the office to attend a funeral is alright by most employers). I have seen more dead bodies than I can remember. I don’t think there is a person over, say, 10 in Ireland who hasn’t seen plenty of corpses. And many under 10s have seen them too, it’s just not all of them have had a grandparent die. My mother died in 2019 and we had a normal funeral, full church, lunch, lots of people we hadn’t seen in years, random relatives, colleagues and friends (hers, my father’s, mine, my siblings’), the lady captain of the golf club, whoever you’re having yourself, and every one of them had something comforting to say. When my father died over Christmas in 2020, at the height of Covid, there were only 9 mourners in the church for the funeral and it was quite grim. I liked the way though that during Covid, people started using the condolence section of that stellar resource rip.ie to write messages of sympathy. I have pages and pages from my father’s death notice. That’s something quite nice that remains a feature even though Covid is over and we’re all attending funerals to beat the band again.

So, I think my credentials as a funeral going Irish rip.ie enthusiast have been pretty firmly established here. Nonetheless, I saw this in the paper this morning and I thought this is ridiculous, we’ve overdone it again.

Seriously, RIP the podcast? They’ve got to be joking.

*Billy Joel fans will know that the next line of this immortal number is “Darling, I don’t know why I go to extremes”.

Projecting an Image


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Reading etc.

In the Irish National Gallery there’s a portrait of Joseph Leeson, later first Earl of Miltown, bigwig, painted by Pompeo Battoni who seems to have made a great living from painting grand tourists. Looks good, if a little portly, right?

In the same room, the authorities have chosen to hang a picture which is a parody of Raphael’s school of Athens by Joshua Reynolds. It was commissioned by Joseph Leeson’s nephew. It features the great and the good including Joseph Leeson, later first Earl of Milltown, bigwig. I am unclear how he felt about it but he is entirely recognisable and it somehow undercuts the adjacent formal portrait.

Truly, image management is a tricky issue.

Extracting the Positive


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

Ok, do not judge me but I went through our random cables box over the Christmas holidays and now everything is neatly coiled and labelled and we only have what we need. I am delighted. And furthermore I gave the spare cables away on Olio (a sharing app) and I can tell you, a lot of people seem to want random bunches of cables. Look what I gave away to a good home:

This is not the first time I have undertaken this exercise (the wretched things breed) so more of this fun will doubtless be available in the future.

Random Thoughts from the Aged


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Reading etc.

My father used to call those grey trousers he wore with a blazer his flannel bags. Does anybody say flannel bags anymore? I tried my children and they looked baffled.

When leaving the dinner table, the expression, “May I be excused?” was widespread in my youth. Has this too gone the way of the dodo?

At mass this morning, they said that the exit hymn is “God’s Spirit is in my Heart”. “What on earth is that?” I thought but once they started singing I found I knew all the words. I was sure, sure, sure that I hadn’t heard it since I was a teenager but the internet seems pretty firm that it first came out in 2002. I am baffled but maybe I did learn new hymns in my 30s? This seems very unlikely but who can say? Then Margaret Atwood was on Desert Island discs and she picked Beethoven’s pastoral symphony as one of her 8 discs. “Ho hum,” I thought, “I wonder what that is?” Yet another musical number Mrs. O’Shea taught the school choir, that’s what, though we learnt it with the following words which I feel Beethoven wouldn’t have approved of: Now winter is passing and soon it will be spring/with daffodils and tulips and birdies on the wing. I also recently heard for the first time in about 40 years “In an English Country Garden” – yet another number Mrs. O’Shea brought into our lives. It’s funny how these songs one learnt as a child can be really evocative.

I’ve been looking at slides from my childhood and although it is a pain to set everything up the images are so much better than the faded brown snaps from photo albums and I now respect my father’s commitment to slides though I was dubious for many years. When I see myself I recognise every single thing I am wearing and I know what feelings it evoked in me, what I loved, what I hated. I am fascinated by this as I am not very interested in clothes now. I wonder what happened to that youthful clothes lover.

I had lunch yesterday with my oldest friend, our parents were friends and as she is a year older than me (something she used to enjoy pointing out to me when we were little, but now, ah, how the tables have turned), I have known her since I was born. Anyway over Christmas she went to a 40th school reunion. “40, 40 years!” I screeched in horror. “That’ll be you this year,” she pointed out tartly. I am shocked. How did that happen? But also, perhaps it’s not as big a surprise as all that.