Ireland

Surprisingly Successful

17 January, 2016
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Middle Child, Twins, Youngest Child

We went in to see the Science Gallery exhibition a while ago and it was closed unexpectedly. Alas. I had paid for 90 minutes parking and it was lashing rain. I cast around for some alternative suitable cultural institution nearby with a cafe and a bathroom. We stood gloomily in the rain and I suggested that we could go through Trinity to the National Gallery.

It wasn’t that near and, I couldn’t help thinking, as we trudged through the rain, they weren’t going to like it much either when we got there. Much of the gallery is closed for extensive building work but the Turner exhibition was out for January and many of the gallery’s most famous paintings are crammed into a couple of exhibition rooms. I brought the children in for what I promised was a very quick look before getting a cup of tea. But the boys, in particular, were so interested, looking at the paintings and reading the captions and asking about them, that we stayed for ages.

It’s been years since I’ve brought them to an art gallery and perhaps I have left it too long. Or perhaps all the years when they were dragged unwillingly at a young age have prepared them to be engaged viewers at ten. Or perhaps, it was still lashing outside and we had nowhere else to go. Still I was very heartened and I see a whole new world opening up.

Quote of the Holiday Season

14 January, 2016
Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Princess

Herself, upon being required with her brothers to unload the dishwasher in her grandparents’ house having just done so in the house we were staying in in East Cork: “I was not put on this earth to unload the dishwasher.”

Toujours Carlingford

12 January, 2016
Posted in: Family, Ireland

On Sunday, the rain stopped for the first time in months. Inspired by this, I suggested that we go to Carlingford. Trips to Carlingford are always regarded with some suspicion by the troops as I continue to be unable to lay the ghost of the worst outing ever.

However, the omens were propitious. With only a brief stop off at the church to see whether the Princess’s handbag had been handed in (the sacristy was closed, I will now remove the tension she enjoyed all afternoon – highlight facing the prospect of telling the woodwork teacher that she had lost her locker key – by telling you that the bag had in fact been handed in and we were able to pick it up after evening mass) we made good time. It’s always a bit longer than I think – I timed it this time, it took 80 minutes which is 20 minutes longer than I always announce the drive will be.

We were well prepared with boots and wet gear. One of us, and not the one you might think, packed one hiking boot and one city boot.

However, he is not a complainer and although he fell over (source of great amusement to the children) and had to walk up a path that had become a stream, he was cheerful.

We have really become much better at walking. We had a map of the looped walk. It was perhaps a bit on the short side but everyone was cheerful. The views were absolutely amazing. There was snow on the Mourne mountains across the Lough.

And after our walk up the mountain, we went back into the town and had dinner in the pub.

I think the children might go back voluntarily but perhaps I am indulging optimism too far.

In other weekend news, the Princess made risotto for dinner on Saturday night and it was delicious.

Christmas and New Year

11 January, 2016
Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Family, Ireland

We went to midnight mass on Christmas Eve. For the first time, all of us managed to last until the end. This is not the achievement it might be given that it starts at 9pm (notwithstanding the inaccurate title). I must say that our parish priest makes every effort to extend the ceremony but we did manage to get home by 11.

Herself and Daniel were in the choir and were also selected to carry the baby Jesus to his crib after the Gospel. This filled me with fear as I couldn’t quite see how they were both to carry the porcelain figure. However, it transpired that Daniel was following with a candle rather than carrying the arms while his sister carried the legs. They were both clean and wearing their new Christmas clothes and they were suitably solemn. I was very proud.

On Christmas Day, Santa came and, I think, was reasonably successful. He didn’t get everything on Daniel’s list but it was a long list. We had my parents-in-law around for Christmas lunch and then afterwards, we all went briefly to visit the cousins before returning to collapse at home in exhaustion.

On the 26th we went orienteering with the cousins. As always, it absolutely lashed rain. Obligatory photo of damp children in the rain on St. Stephen’s Day:

Afterwards we went to the usual pub in the Dublin mountains for lunch. This was not a success. I waited for 70 increasingly bitter minutes for them to deliver to me a small breakfast. All of the food was slow but mine was the slowest. The service was appalling. Each time we asked where the food was they said it was coming but it did not come. And then they said we hadn’t ordered it. And then when my small breakfast finally appeared, it was nasty. I am still bitter but I suppose we will go back there next year as it is not as though there is a lot of choice in that neck of the woods. Sigh.

On the 27th we drove to Cork. My sister gave the children an enormous bag of presents each. Joy was unconfined. There was personalised nutella.

And Minecraft t-shirts:

We were staying in our friends’ house in Garryvoe in east Cork. The flooding made the Cork-Garryvoe drive quite dramatic and exciting but we survived.

We went to Kinsale and had lunch at the Bulman.

The view was a bit gloomy.

But, as nothing, compared to the weather they saw later the same week – although I did notice that there were some sandbags against the wall of the pub. I hope they helped in the face of this.

Alas, Charles Fort was closed for the holidays.

Despite our walk in Kinsale, outdoor activity was pretty limited due to the more or less constant lashing rain. Herself got to stay overnight with her aunt and go ice skating with her uncle both of which she very much enjoyed. We took the boys to Milano’s.

And then we scuttled back to Dublin. The countryside was absolutely sodden but we were safely on our elevated motorway. I started to get sick (again, for heaven’s sake) on December 30 and spent the remainder of the Christmas holidays snuggled up by the fire.

I appreciate that this is a late Christmas entry but I have only tonight eaten the last mince pie in the house (best before January 6) so not, you know, that late.

Happy new year.

It’s the Most…Socially Demanding Time of the Year

3 January, 2016
Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland

Between illness and the general social whirl, I have not updated you on December’s activities. Fear not, that, somewhat delayed, update is coming.

The boys had their annual Christmas performance with the school. Daniel who has been learning the tin whistle since November played a solo Christmas carol. We were very proud. Poor Danny, however, was a bit too nervous to enjoy it. Although we couldn’t tell that he was nervous and he played perfectly, he did not enjoy the experience, I think.

He was scheduled to play at the church Christmas fair but, unfortunately I had booked tickets for us to see a production of “A Christmas Carol” the same evening so it was not to be. He and his sister who was to sing at the event were not entirely delighted with me. Fortunately, Daniel quite enjoyed “A Christmas Carol” so I trust that that may have helped to deal with the pain. I decided that we would go to Milano’s for dinner in advance as a treat. I did not book. This turned out to be a poor idea, as it was full, and we ended up walking around Temple Bar trying to find an acceptable substitute. For the boys, there isn’t really such a thing. Oh woe. It is hard when what was planned as a “delightful Christmas outing for all the family” does not quite materialise as hoped.

We had people around for Christmas drinks on the day after the play. I may have mentioned that I was ill (ahem) but, really, we couldn’t pull back on all the invitations. My sister came up which was lovely but overall, I could not be said to have hugely enjoyed myself.

Later in the week we were scheduled to go to another friend’s Christmas drinks. Unfortunately, it coincided with the Christmas concert in the Princess’s school. We told her we couldn’t make it. She replied

Oh thatâ€™s a shame. I was in London at the weekend so didnâ€™t make yours; in contrast I understand to [mutual friend] who thought it was on this coming weekend. I am up to date with [mutual friend] as she arrived to my house last night, for this eveningâ€™s party. We are all at the top of our respective games.

Oh yes we are. The Princess’s Christmas concert featured her singing “Silent Night” solo but it was, alas, a bit difficult to hear her due to the enthusiastic amplification of the keyboard which accompanied the singing. Some of the students put on a very clever and quite funny Dublin version of “Romeo and Juliet”. Honestly, I have paid for productions I enjoyed less. I am really going to have to do some work on my Irish though. Although “Romeo and Juliet” was in English, everything else was in Irish and a lot of it was quite baffling to me.

By the time I finished work on the 23rd, I was, at last, recovered but really a shadow of my former self between socialising and coughing.

More Christmas news to follow.

Updated to add: Today, January 11, Mr. Waffle had lunch with a friend who hadn’t made it to our Christmas drinks. She confessed that she and family had turned up on the following day and seen us all through the window sitting around not partying. Realising that they had mistaken the date, they tiptoed away. Mr. Waffle expressed regret that they hadn’t come in but personally, I can only thank them from the bottom of my heart.

What George Boole and I Have in Common

20 December, 2015
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

Over the summer, the children and I went on a George Boole themed tour of UCC. Among the things I learned about the great man was that his wife was a great believer in an early variant of homeopathy and firmly believed that giving you a small dose of what had made you sick in the first place would help to cure you. The great man got a cold after walking home from work in the rain (something those of us from Cork are all too painfully familiar with) and his wife wrapped him in damp sheets to help him recover and it was too much for his constitution and he was carried off by pneumonia at the tender age of 49.

As attentive readers will know, I got sick on Sunday, December 6. I have been utterly unable to shake the cold since and announced to Mr. Waffle on Friday that if it was not better by next Friday, I was going to see the doctor and check whether it was pneumonia (a colleague has been diagnosed with pneumonia, it’s on my mind). “Good luck with that,” said he “as next Friday is Christmas Day.” Happily, however, this weekend, I finally, finally seem to be recovering. I am, fortunately, never normally ill. As a colleague who suffers from regular colds remarked to me, disapprovingly rather than admiringly, I thought “You normally have the constitution of an ox, don’t you?” I certainly have never had a cold for this long. Every night last week I was up for at least an hour between 2 and 4 coughing my little lungs up. I had to absent myself from the hall during the course of the Princess’s Christmas concert and cough away in the toilets and also, during a work conference where, mercifully, I was not required to be on the podium but where I hacked through the conference dinner like typhoid Mary [actually, does typhoid make you cough? You know what I mean anyway].

I don’t think that my condition was helped by the fact that every time I hopped up on my bike, the heavens opened and it lashed rain. It never normally rains in Dublin but apparently this has been the wettest November ever in Dublin and the rain held on grimly into December. There is no better way to get soaked than on a bicycle regardless of how good your rain gear might be.

But where you ask yourself, is my George Boole link? It was a low point, I have to tell you. I had returned from work late, peeled off my damp cycling gear, crawled into bed with a hot water bottle, a dose of Benylin, a lemsip, a temperature and my ever-present friend the cough. I was woken up some time later by the distinctly unpleasant sensation of wet sheets. Alas, my hot water bottle had leaked.