Mr. Waffle

A Sobering Thought

7 May, 2023
Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Twins, Youngest Child

Michael is planning to study history in college and he went for a chat with a neighbour who is a history lecturer. Mr. Waffle ran into the neighbour and thanked him for his time and asked what his own 18 year old daughter is thinking of doing. “She doesn’t know,” said her father, “She’s probably going to take a year off. This generation are all going to live until they’re 90 and work until they’re 70, so they might as well have some fun now.”

In other news, Mr Waffle has got my cold. He’s sick as a dog.

Was It For This?*

6 May, 2023
Posted in: Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Reading etc., Siblings, Twins, Youngest Child

Your correspondent has had a busy 24 hours. Last night Mr. Waffle and I went to see Bruce Springsteen. I can’t honestly say that standing in a field for about four hours was the finishing touch I needed to recuperate fully from my cold but Bruce does do a good concert. I thought that there might be some kind of…intermission, I mean he is 73 but no, he kept going for three hours solid. He jumped. I was honestly concerned that one of the elderly gents on stage would have a heart attack. Or perhaps someone in the stadium. Just so you know, Bruce Springsteen fans are mainly bald family men in their 50s and 60s. Some of them bring their children to concerts which lowers the age profile. Some of them bring their wives which slightly improves the gender balance. All attendees were taller than me.

Honestly, the environment was, entirely wholesome, family fun. I did enjoy it – what a show – but I was quite surprised by how many songs the Boss has written since the mid-80s when I was last paying attention.

We cycled to and from the venue and I was delighted with myself and slightly smug (doubtless I will burn for this) as we sailed by traffic chaos on the way in and on the way home. I was a bit worried about our bikes but the fans were all round polite pillars of society, so I really needn’t have been. All was well, not so much as a light missing on our return to where the bikes were locked to Sheffield stands right beside the venue. This was not a crowd that goes in for utility cycling much I’d say, so bike parking was readily available.

When we got home about 11 (Bruce is 73, he played for three hours, what more do you want?) Daniel, who had gone to the beach with friends, still wasn’t home. In fairness to him he’s pretty good to answer when you call so my inevitable panic was of short duration. He was coming home – he and his friends had had dinner in town. I waited up. There was mild drama. One of his friends had got the bus in the wrong direction and ended up in Crumlin when she wanted to go to Clontarf (these places are far apart). She texted the group and said her father was furious and had told her to get home by herself. She had missed the last bus. I was outraged and dithering about what to do but mercifully her father relented. All this took time though so I was late to bed and not at my bright and beautiful best next morning when I got up at 8.

“Why 8?” you ask. I was going to a coronation brunch. I am not proud but a friend of mine offered and off I went. Leaving poor Mr. Waffle cleaning up cat vomit from the kitchen floor, I went to my monarchial extravaganza. I mean look it’s free pageantry kindly paid for by the old oppressor. As you may have guessed, I am a little ambivalent. But, I have to say, I really enjoyed it. I thought the ceremony was great – surprisingly moving – and the music terrific. Who knew there were so many functionaries in Britain who could speak so well to an audience of thousands in the church and lots more on TV? Man of the match had to go to the young chorister who had the first words in the whole ceremony and delivered them as clearly and collectedly as if he’d been practicing every day of his life. Perhaps he was, I wouldn’t put it past the British to have someone who is trained from birth.

I could have done with more focus on women’s dresses but still very enjoyable. And brunch was superb. We didn’t crack open champagne at the moment of coronation because 1) it felt a bit like mass and drinking in mass feels so odd and 2) it was probably a bridge too far.

I suppose, it’s a big thing that has happened in my lifetime. I remember my father talking about when the old King died (George V to you) and we do have a relationship with the neighbouring island with their big events, willy nilly, being a bit ours too. I well remember when Charles and Diana got married we went over to my mother’s friend’s house and watched it on TV. And, I might add, my mother’s friends were an Irish speaking family. Am I protesting too much? I guess, as they say, relationship status: it’s complicated.

When I got home, my brother was packing up to leave having stayed for a few days. Michael said wickedly, “We should tell Uncle Dan where you were.” I would suffer unmerciful slagging, if my brother heard about this, so I managed to persuade Michael not to tell (what will be the end of this?). “But it is here, on the internet,” you protest. To my lasting chagrin, my brother does not read my blog. “I must,” he says weakly, but he never does. Bitter? Moi?

And how was your own coronation experience, if you partook? Did anyone make the quiche? And how about Penny Mordaunt’s scene stealing sword gig?

*The title comes from this poem by WB Yeats and is general shorthand for doing something which is perhaps not totally worthy of the Republic. Has wide application.

The relevant stanza is:

Was it for this the wild geese spread/The grey wing upon every tide;/For this that all that blood was shed,/For this Edward Fitzgerald died,/And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,/All that delirium of the brave?/Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,/It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Debacle

5 May, 2023
Posted in: Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Twins, Youngest Child

Daniel is always hungry. He regards our house as a food desert. He is constantly concerned about what he calls “food insecurity”. He is quite the foodie and very good at cooking for himself but it takes time and he is usually starving in the process.

Last Friday, school finished at 10 and he and Michael were the only sixth years who went in. I have thoughts. They did a mock English paper under their teacher’s supervision. When it was over and they were going home, their teacher gave them a tray each of sandwiches and pastries which were left over from an event and insisted that they take them despite considerable reluctance on their part. The boys brought them home on their bikes with great difficulty.

Mr. Waffle misunderstood the importance of the sandwiches and threw them in the bin. Daniel went into the kitchen for a sandwich and he is still furious a week later and has told everyone he knows about our sins (despite my repeated efforts to wash my hands of this and throw Mr. Waffle under the bus, there is a view that somehow, Svengali like, I made him do it and it is my fault). Nobody wanted the 20 pastries but I managed to give them away on Olio. Herself says it is only a short step to putting up left over bowls of soup (which I used to mock). I suppose that is true but I am still pleased with myself.

Self-Improvement

4 May, 2023
Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Reading etc., Travel

I’ve signed up for six weeks of various exercise classes. Due to a variety of other commitments, I have only been once. To Pilates. I was stiff for a week. Thanks for asking. Maybe I will go again this week, if I’m feeling strong.

I think I have mentioned that I have also been learning Ukrainian all year. I am absolutely useless at it. I have finished the Ukrainian Duolingo course which is short (unlike say, Spanish, which goes on forever). I am now doing mild conversation classes with a Ukrainian. She’s a bit despairing I think and keeps sending me links to foreigners speaking fluent Ukrainian which is not helping at all. I think she means to encourage me. Humiliatingly, I still regularly get tripped up by the alphabet and when I read aloud I am like a small child in senior infants anxiously sounding out each word – to be clear, at the end after all my sounding I may not know what the word actually means so I am worse off than the senior infant. Curse you, Saints Cyril and Methodius.

Unhelpfully, I started doing Russian Duolingo as well, just because it had more lessons. It’s quite like Ukrainian and I need practice on the alphabet. It’s sort of like I started learning Dutch and German at the same time with no knowledge of either. As I go through my lessons, my long-suffering teacher will sigh and say, no, that’s Russian again.

I read an interesting article which said the following about the relationship between Russia and Ukraine:

Earlier in the night, Peter had made the comparison to Britain and Ireland. As between Britain and Ireland, between Russia and Ukraine there are innumerable cultural and linguistic and personal interweavings -so many that the two nations could never be wholly separate or wholly different-but that did not mean they were not distinct. That did not mean that the colonial nations of Ukraine and Ireland could be anything but independent and self-determining. And as in Ireland’s relationship to Britain, the crimes of the past would never be forgotten by Ukraine. They would be set aside in the name of commerce or family connections, but there would be, for centuries to come, a barely suppressed rage.

My Ukrainian teacher is prepping me for after the war when Mr. Waffle and I can go and visit and I will finally be able to put my hard won knowledge of basic restaurant vocabulary to use.

May Bank Holiday Round Up

3 May, 2023
Posted in: Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Siblings, Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

I have been absent. My blog has been unwell but now, I think, I hope, that all is well. I have paid a man money and he has resolved matters. It was pleasing that even the tech expert was baffled by what had happened and had to himself engage with my webhost with various questions I could in no way understand.

You find me languishing at home with a slight head cold after a very busy time. Thrills.

First up, I have attended my last parent council meeting. Eight years of indentured servitude over. Lord, I found it tedious, though occasionally useful. For reasons that are too dull to explain I got a hamper at our last meeting and it contained a lifetime’s worth of chocolate and a presentation box of Teeling’s whiskey which I was planning to give away as a present but before I could do so, Michael broke it. Win some, lose some.

I went to the pastels exhibition in the National Gallery which I would really recommend. Who did I see there only Elizabeth Farren, later Countess of Derby? You will recall that I saw a beautiful full length portrait of her with a muff in New York. Let me remind you.

The one in the National Gallery was much less flattering but it disclosed the vital information, inexplicably ignored by the Met curators, that she was originally from Cork. Good girl yourself, Elizabeth.

Mr. Waffle and I went to see an amateur production of “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Not too bad actually and we had dinner after in our friends’ house. Our hospitality debt is currently of almost unfeasible proportions.

Last Friday, we had a woman who used to mind the children when they were small around for tea. She was super-nice and always adored the children and they were very fond of her too. She was delighted to see the boys and they were saintly and talked to her for ages, particularly Michael who stayed for her full two and a half hour visit (Dan had training). Her health has not been great and I think she’s quite lonely. She looked amazingly well though. We had a long chat and one of the things she said was that her first language was Alsacienne (sp?) but none of the young people speak it now which is a shame. I am a big Francophile but I think their attitude to minority languages leaves a lot to be desired. Obviously Alsace is a very contested part of France and she talked a bit about her parents’ hair raising experiences during the second world war. And also her own hair raising experiences of trying to get a new flat in Dublin when her landlord sold up. She’s in housing for older people now and she has a nice small apartment and she can stay there indefinitely. She’s very pleased but as it only came through a fortnight before she had to vacate her previous accommodation, it took a lot out of her.

On Saturday night, the boys and I went to see Foil, Arms and Hog in Vicar Street. Honestly, they’re hilarious.

A couple of weeks ago, a guy I had gone out with in Rome in 1993 contacted me. We hadn’t totally lost contact after I left Rome and we’d been to each other’s weddings in 2000 and 2001 respectively but we basically hadn’t seen each other since. His youngest daughter was doing an English course in Dublin and he and his wife were visiting, could we meet up? I invited them to dinner on the bank holiday Sunday (I thought we might have a barbecue, pause for laughter). He sent me a photo of his family, I sent him a photo of mine. None of us have got any younger but we have produced 6 beautiful children between us.

Anyway on the Sunday they arrived. I nearly lost my life not only were the parents and the English learning child in Dublin there but also the other two children. We had enough food but it was touch and go and only my ludicrous over-buying saved us from disaster. On the plus side, all the children got on like a house on fire. Their eldest (20) who looks like a sporty cool dude was a complete nerd on the inside and he and Michael really bonded. Almost the first words out of his mouth when he came into the house were “You have Risk Game of Thrones”. Sadly, this is true. It’s so strange – but really nice – to see people again after such a long time and their children who you never knew existed. The parents work in Geneva and they seem to have three Swiss children even though she is Spanish and he’s Italian. The children’s Spanish and Italian is perfect as is their French, obviously, and I can tell you their English is pretty good too.

On Monday, exhausted from our day of hosting, the boys stayed home to swot for the Leaving Cert which (terrifyingly) is now next month (they were pretty impressed by the more relaxed system that appears to apply in Switzerland and the Swiss kids were equally horrified by the ides of everything hanging on one exam). Mr. Waffle and I went to Kilkenny for a day out. Mr. Waffle’s great grandfather was a fireman in Kilkenny (thank you 1911 census records) and we went and inspected his house which was a solid brick built construction. And we also visited Kilkenny Castle – finally value for my OPW family card – and did the tour. I was, yet again, so impressed by the quality of the OPW tour guides. One of the first inhabitants of the castle in the early 1200s was Isabel de Clare who said the guide, inherited a lot of her land from her grandfather who was a king. Could this be the daughter of Richard de Clare or Strongbow who basically started the 800 years of oppression? It could indeed and the guide threw in for free that Isabel and her mother Aoife are buried in Tintern Abbey in Wales which I am now keen to visit.

And my brother pitched up at our house on Monday with all his worldly belongings. He has got the ferry home from France and is on his way back to Cork but working from Dublin for the week. He likes to keep us all on our toes.

And how was your own bank holiday weekend?

Easter Round-Up

21 April, 2023
Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

I came home from America on Wednesday morning, March 29 so I did not totally welcome that it was school quiz night on Thursday evening March 30. I will not miss being on the school parents’ council. However, it all passed off peacefully enough. Because Ireland is small, the son of my mother’s best friend from college has a child in our school. I was chatting to him on the night and we were exchanging reminiscences from our childhood. I recalled that his mother had mentioned to me that he always went to Cheltenham. “How did you get on?” I asked. “I’m not telling you because you’ll tell my mother,” said he. Badly, I surmise. That’s what she thought too when I told her.

Months ago, I booked the play “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” for myself, Mr. Waffle and the boys. It was on the Friday night (March 31) at the start of the school holidays. What could go wrong? Little did I think that the school would completely scupper us by scheduling Leaving Cert orals – German on Saturday, Irish orals for the Sunday and French orals for the Monday. “Leaving Cert Irish orals on Palm Sunday in a catholic school?!” said my sister. You betcha. Anyway, Daniel decided he was too busy/nervous to go to the play but Michael came with us and enjoyed it.

The orals were stressful and Daniel, who is really good felt that he did not totally do himself justice but I am sure he will be fine. Michael was happy enough. My dentist told me that his son got to re-schedule his orals because he was playing rugby for the Ireland U-19s. No such facility was offered for the theatre going public, I fear.

To celebrate the end of the orals and the proper start of their Easter holidays I offered to take the guys to the Dungeons and Dragons flick, Dan refused but Michael and I had a good time. It was funny, even if you knew absolutely nothing like me but, of course, Michael got lots more of the in-jokes.

Herself came home for the Easter holidays on Saturday April 1, having raided the second-hand shops in Sofia to good effect. Her friend’s mother in London washed the haul she and her friend acquired. Twice. Then she said, “Come into my laundry room and smell.” Apparently it still smelt of cigarettes. Alas.

Anyway it was nice to have her home. We saw lots of her. Mr. Waffle’s sister and family were over from London and we had everyone to Easter lunch at our house. It was lovely to see everyone. I think we all had a good time.

The youngest cousin brought bunny ears that she had got for Easter. We all got to try them. Big hit.

Herself turned 20 during her time at home (full post to follow eventually) and she and I went out to spend the voucher for afternoon tea in the Shelbourne that my brother had given me for my birthday. Really very pleasant.

We had a small birthday tea at home as well. I have some lessons to learn about large numbers of candles on cakes.

But we got there just in time.

Joe Biden came to visit and I had to travel through the city in the face of many warnings. I gambled and won as Joe and I had the city to ourselves all the other Dublin denizens having bailed out. I felt very much a part of the visit as helicopters hovered over my home making Dublin safe.

For our farewell dinner before herself went back to England, I booked an Ethiopian supper club. A set menu and a lot of eating with your hands. Latter was difficult but overall interesting. Something that looks a bit like a Breton pancake is the base layer of Ethiopian food and then various stews and dips are arranged on top. The Ethiopian national dish – the name of which eludes me – was the success of the evening.

The next day, we took herself to the airport to go back to England. She checked in on the drive to the airport. When we got there, the luggage machine told her that she was at the wrong airport. Further inspection revealed that instead of booking a Dublin to Gatwick flight she had in fact booked and checked into a Gatwick to Dublin flight. Miraculously a woman at the ticket desk was able to change her to a later flight that day to Gatwick for a change fee of €50 and no further cost. A triumph for Aer Lingus. We went off to Malahide for a breakfast celebration and then went home where her brothers were pretty surprised to see her back. She said that she had left home a couple of hours previously as a fully functioning adult but she had come back as a small child. In fairness, it was a most unlikely lapse. Her father went into work and I drove her out to the airport again. I felt like I spent the day on the road to the airport. And all for the purpose of sending away my beloved firstborn. Sigh. I hope your own Easter holidays were satisfactory.