Mr. Waffle had to take a conference call this morning at 8.30. He sat at his desk in his socks [this is the new normal etc.] and as the call progressed he found himself wondering why his socks were damp. At the end of the call, he had a look under the desk and discovered that he had taken the call with his feet resting in a pool of cat vomit. Say what you like about the physical office, but this was not a problem before everyone started working from home.
I hope your Monday was cat vomit free.
Daniel was 15 on September 27. As usual, the birthday post is late.
He seems to me very tall and big now and he has a very deep voice and he’s started to shave. It’s only when I see him with groups of his school mates that I realise that he is about average dimensions. At home, he can sometimes seem very grown up.
He really enjoys listening to music and took some piano lessons in between this year’s various lock downs. His uncle had a spare keyboard and it is installed in his bedroom for practice. He has a fantastic ear for music and, indeed, for accents. He does a great Donald Trump but, happily, that’s a skill he may need to use less in the future.
He is still my sportiest child. This year, he had training in the back garden during lock down. We all made an effort but some of us more than others.
The other day he came in after having run 10km. I was suitably impressed. He is so fit. And he’ll give any game a go.
When we go out on the bikes now, I really hold him back. I don’t mind him passing me on the hills, really, but it’s the speed and effortlessness with which he does it that is faintly depressing.
He’s still playing for the A team in the GAA club and he absolutely loves it. He paid the ultimate price for his enthusiasm, killing a front tooth. Here he is, after his root canal, looking pretty cheery, in fairness.
He also likes basketball.
This summer he started to really enjoy going to the beach.
He used to hate it but this year something clicked and he started to love swimming in the sea and he became my reliable companion at the beach. We got into freezing waters nationwide.
He’s started playing more chess of late and he and his brother play online even though they live in the same house and we have a chess board. They are both very fond of a card game called “Magic: The Gathering”. It’s a licence to print money but they do play for hours and hours.
He also enjoys playing on the x-box and plays Minecraft and Overwatch with his friends which has been a godsend in these Covid times.
He has learnt that for his parents, if he wants to communicate by electronic means, email is a good way to do so. He regards this as strange but is willing to make the extra effort and also to read whatsapp messages.
He still doesn’t read much and insofar as he goes in for reading, it tends to be science/factual stuff rather than fiction although he does like manga cartoons. It can be hard to keep him stocked with these as he finishes them in no time.
He’s academic and does well at school. He didn’t get a chance to shine in the Junior Cert because it was cancelled due to Covid but he didn’t mind. He found it really hard when school went online only and he is much more settled now he’s back in real rather than virtual school.
Last Easter he was supposed to be in France but, obviously, couldn’t go. This summer he was supposed to be doing a course in Engineering for three weeks. He did it last year and loved it but it went online for a week this summer and he had enough of online and didn’t go. This year, he’s in Transition Year and his schedule is flexible. So he started doing an extra physics course one day a week. It started off with everyone on campus (all the young physics enthusiasts) but after a couple of weeks had to move online. It’s not half as much fun as really meeting with people with similar interests and a whole day online is long. I’m hoping next term might be better for him.
He’s still doing a weekly French conversation class and his comprehension and French accent are pretty good although written French is a bit of a mystery. He is nonetheless a resource for his classmates when they are up to give French presentations.
He spends a lot more time in his room these days. He is still very friendly with his brother though.
They get on really well and have loads of interests in common.
He finds his sister very annoying a lot of the time but a couple of weeks ago he got stuck on a physics question and she came and helped him out (frankly, his parents are absolutely useless) and it was lovely to see the two of them getting on so well and working together.
I love this picture of them before dinner out; we were all starving and ratty and Daniel was trying to spread joy and happiness.
He likes meeting his cousins who live across the city although, for obvious reasons, we haven’t seen much of them this year. His other cousin went back to London a year ago. So not a huge amount of interaction since then as she’s only 3.
He continues to be very fond of the cat. Fonder than he is of the rest of us sometimes as we are all quite annoying.
He has become a much less picky eater and this is wonderful. He’s really willing to try new things. I rejoice. He’s also got quite good at cooking and has made pizza for us all reasonably regularly. He makes his own pizza dough which I still couldn’t do, let alone being able to do it at 15.
He is reasonably tidy and dutifully partook in the cleaning rota earlier in the year. He learnt a lot from that, I have to say. These lessons will stand him in good stead. I was delighted when he offered to hoover the house recently because it needed it. It did.
He can be very kind and obliging. Here, he is, dutifully helping me decorate the tree last Christmas.
And here he is, helping out at the barbecue when the inevitable summer rain hit.
This has been a tough year for us all in different ways but I think Daniel really missed the structure of sport and school earlier in the year. And even though we are back in level 5 lockdown, he can now do training and he’s back at school, even if he’s all masked up and a lot of activites are restricted. He seems a lot happier with some kind of escape for all his energy.
Just in September he started volunteering in a charity shop and I was really impressed by his commitment and his ability to make friends with his co-workers. He actually learnt a lot during his short time there – including how to work a cash register and just how much stuff gets donated to charity shops, “Mum, they really don’t need any extra stuff from you,” he assured me. Crushing.
Overall, I think things are ok for him at the moment but I feel he’s missed out on a lot this year. He doesn’t seem particularly put out but I am so glad that this vaccine is coming.
He’s a really good and obliging child and, in life, things do seem to broadly go his way; he’s clever, he has friends and school is relatively easy for him. His family love him but we are, of course, a source of some frustration and mortification to him and it may be a number of years before we stop driving him crazy. Particularly his mother who as recently as this morning gave him a hug and kissed him while he was playing an online game with his friends with audio on his headphones on.
Me: Barack Obama has a playlist for his new book.
Mr. Waffle: Another new book? Any more new books and he can become President of France.*
*Any French politician planning a run for high office gets a book out first. It’s true, really. And I’m not even going to start on former PM Dominique de Villepin.
On Saturday night we had “Rouge” from the French film festival for cinema night. Honestly, the excitement of seeing something new was thrilling. Mr. Waffle was able to book a slot and stream it from his laptop via the projector onto the screen. This, frankly, opens up a whole world of films for cinema night. The film itself was billed as the French “Erin Brocavich”. And, yes, imagine Erin Brocavich as made in France: not much humour and a fair bit more nuance. It was good but I’m still a bit traumatised.
I bought Christmas leaf teas in Lidl and spent all weekend sampling them. Delighted with myself.
Daniel spent a good while on Saturday working away at his physics problems for this outside school course he is doing during Transition Year. He got through them and was quite pleased with himself. On Sunday he cycled to and from training in the rain and was much happier than you might expect afterwards. Particularly in view of the fact that he appeared to have lost much of the epidermal layer on the left side of his body following what I can only imagine was a spectacular sliding tackle on the astro turf pitch.
Mr. Waffle and I made Michael go for a walk around the block with us in the rain so that another weekend would not pass wherein he had not seen outside. Herself spent most of the weekend studying in line with a punishing schedule she has devised for herself. She did take a brief break on Sunday afternoon to go for a walk with a friend in the rain.
I forgot to mention that our lovely childminder who we had for years sent the boys a birthday present which arrived in the post on Monday. He went back to Paris to work as a tour guide and I worry that he is on the breadline (it is not a good year for tour guides) and shelling out from his savings to send them presents. I do hope not. The boys were genuinely delighted to get his card and present though which was nice.
And still no cleaning rota. There had better be a plan to exit level 5 soon or the house may become a health hazard.
I fell off the wagon again and stayed up until 3 in the morning looking at my phone. Why, why? I’ve been pretty good generally at putting it away in the evening and not going back to it but once I do, disaster. I blame Joe Biden. As a result of my late night, I got up relatively late and then, with pretty limited enthusiasm threw myself into work.
Herself helped Daniel with his physics work for this Thursday course outside school that he’s doing which was terrific as his parents are absolutely useless to him. Then he cycled up to GAA training. When he came home, he asked me whether there was a cleaning rota and I said, “No”. “Well,” said he, “I’ll hoover the house anyway, it needs it.” What a hero, in fairness, and his father did the bathrooms again so we are approaching clean. Very gratifying.
Herself spent the afternoon in an endless hideous zoom call with a national student representative body. After some consideration she decided she had enough on her plate and that she wouldn’t put herself forward for office. Good call.
I finished working about 3.30 and myself and Michael and Mr. Waffle went out for a cycle to the Botanic gardens. Michael is sick of the Botanic Gardens but is resigned to his fate. We saw lots of squirrels. I love a squirrel, very exciting.
The Irish Times produces this magazine called “The Gloss” every couple of months. It’s strangely compelling in a dreadful kind of way. Herself was reading it this morning and announced that she is not going to have Christmas dinner outdoors. Apparently this is what all the cool kids are doing.
This evening we played online games with the relatives in London; reasonably successful. Uncle A in London is good at finding games that work for all ages which is not easy.
Finally, and this could be my most boring factlet to date (and worse, one which I may have already shared), I bought a woollen throw for the end of the bed and I am absolutely delighted with it. Pulling it up over the duvet at night is like slipping into a warm bath. I should have got one years ago.
Finally, finally, I mentioned previously that Heather is blogging every day and you really should have a read. Her posts are a delight. I particularly enjoyed today’s post.
I have subscribed to Apple Pay: very exciting. We’re getting our excitements where we can. We’ve turned on the Aga, delightful though I am slightly dreading the bill in due course.
Mr. Waffle picked up what I hope are the last of the apples. These have fallen after the pickers came and took 83kgs and the gardener pruned the trees. I mean, how many can there be left?
I met the next door neighbour while clearing up in the garden and he says they’re going to get their scullery extended. Since we share a sloping scullery roof, it probably makes sense for us to do ours at the same time but I’m not sure we can a)stand it or b) afford it. Food for thought.
I have completely abandoned the cleaning rota and decided that we can live in squalor for the duration of lockdown. Perhaps a mistake but I’m willing to give it a go.
Do you remember that over the summer I wrote about the two girls on paddle boards who were rescued after 15 hours at sea? It was such a nice news story in all the Covid gloom. A local fisherman had worked out where they were likely to be and he and his son went and found them. Apparently the fisherman drowned during the week. Isn’t that just awfully sad?
I have an interview on Monday and as part of it I have to give a presentation. I practised it on herself and she said that she had seen a new side to me. Pause. “Actually no, it’s the person who makes me put away my laundry.” That is certainly the vibe I am going for.
Between interview prep and work, today has been underwhelming, however, cinema night tonight, rejoice. And I see Joe Biden has won the America election. It could all be worse.
Updated to add: We had “The Martian” for cinema night. It was Michael’s choice and we all enjoyed it very much. He’s delighted with himself.