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Mr. Waffle

Can only help weight loss as part of a calorie controlled diet


Posted in: Hodge, Mr. Waffle, Twins, Youngest Child

Saturday morning when I came down to breakfast, we had the following scene:

Michael (dancing around the floor and pointing): The cat has got a dead bird, the cat has got a dead bird.
Mr. Waffle (not looking up from the paper): Really, well fancy that.
Me: Eeek, dead bird, dead bird, dead bird.
Mr. Waffle (leaping from the table): Bloody hell (or words to that effect).

To the cat’s intense chagrin, he removed the corpse from her clutches and put it in the bin. All weekend, we’ve been finding tiny, downy, baby bird feathers under the presses. The killer in our midst doesn’t care.

Regular readers may recall that the cat has been put on a diet. She’s fighting back.

Wash out


Posted in: Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Reading etc., Twins, Youngest Child

It was a bank holiday weekend here. On Saturday morning, the boys spent the morning playing football and hurling in glorious sunshine. On Saturday afternoon, I took the children to Newbridge where, despite the website’s advice to the contrary, the farm was open and full of young things. The children saw chickens hatching, piglets feeding, fed baby goats themselves, patted shetland ponies and generally had an excellent time. It was a good job that we took full advantage of the sunshine on Saturday as after this the weather was unremittingly gloomy.

On Saturday night, Mr. Waffle and I went to see “Arcadia” at the Gate (voucher a birthday present from my kind sister). It’s all about maths and rather long but quite enjoyable all the same. However, we met a man Mr. Waffle knew from school and he and his wife had an 8 week old baby at home – it was their first night out and they found it rather heavy going and ran away at the interval. Never mind.

On Sunday, we went to see the Tall Ships. This was a spectacular success for us last year but this year, it was not to be. It poured rain with particular intensity and fervour. The Princess was pretty cheerful but even a cup of tea and juice on a Dutch boat could not cheer up her brothers. They trailed along miserably muttering rebelliously about the rain.

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When we got home, we all had to strip to our underwear and we huddled in front of the television watching Sponge Bob and making pathetic sniffing noises. I understand from the weather forecast that Dublin was alone in receiving a biblical soaking and the rest of the country basked in sunshine. I wish we had gone to the attempt to bring together the largest number of twins in Ireland in Carrickmacross instead.

Nothing daunted, today I prodded my reluctant troops out of the house and we went to Newgrange where it also poured rain. It all passed off peacefully enough initially. We had lunch in the visitor centre, we saw a DVD, we wandered round the interpretative centre.

Then we went to Knowth and it poured. It was dull. The guide was cross with us as the children climbed on the mounds (a misunderstanding on our part, you are only allowed to climb on one mound – the one with a path).

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043” Top of Knowth

We were not helped by the fact that there were no other children on the tour. The other tourists were very kind, saintly, elderly people (Canadians, Mr. Waffle thinks) who seemed to have a far higher tolerance for small children than the site guides. I suppose it wasn’t their job to worry about Ireland’s neolithic culture being destroyed by the under 8s and this made them more carefree.

The bus back from Knowth to the visitor centre (only 5 minutes, mercifully) was particularly hideous as two of my three children wanted to sit beside me (Michael didn’t care) and only one of them could. The Princess wept bitter tears. Then, on the next bus to Newgrange, she sat beside me and Daniel cried very loudly. Newgrange, however, was quite good value. It was short. The guide spoke in terms the Princess could understand and she was fascinated and, best of all, given the weather, it was underground.

They did an exciting simulation of the winter solistice – they turned off all the lights and then when it was pitch black, they shone a light down the passage. Obviously, not as exciting as the winter sun illuminating the chamber but not bad all the same and we all enjoyed it. Our standards had been suitably lowered by our drenching at Knowth.

So maybe not a fantastic day but, you know, very worthy. To my intense delight when I asked the children what they liked best about the day, they didn’t say “the crisps we got after lunch” but the moment when they stood under the mound in Newgrange in the pitch dark.

Table manners


Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Princess

Our daughter eats with her fingers. The boys aren’t actually too bad, and she has good days, but, broadly speaking, her dining habits leave a great deal to be desired. This drives my husband bananas. Mealtimes are rendered hideous by his desiring the Princess to use her cutlery (in increasingly cross tones) and her subsequent ire. She firmly believes that attack is the best form of defence.

The other night she had a friend at dinner. A friend who is a full six months older than her. The friend startled us all by eating rice with her fingers (something, even the Princess wouldn’t try). I am hoping that witnessing these exciting table manners will make my loving husband a little less exacting on the whole table manners front. Tell me, do your children use their cutlery?

Sweet Pea Carnage


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle

I bought sweet peas in March and grew them on the windowsill. They thrived. I planted them out two months ago and put up netting using garden staples. I was assisted in this process by three small children with hammers so it was more traumatic and less effective than I would have liked. The sweet pea all died. I was gutted, but then, some, miraculously, came back to life; they climbed, they thrived, I watered them and cooed over them. I got excited at the prospect that I might actually have flowers.

This morning, I drove into school with the children and Mr. Waffle. When I got there, I realised that I had, idiotically, left my briefcase at home. Mr. Waffle dropped me back home. I decided that I would cycle back into work. Mr. Waffle went about his business. I went in the side gate to pick up my bicycle. I cast my eye over the garden and, to my horror saw that the netting had come adrift, decapitating my sweet pea and leaving them trailing miserably on the ground.

Time was marching on but I felt it was vital to attempt to repair matters. Whether my employer would have shared this view remains, thankfully, a moot point. The back door was bolted, so I thought it would be easier to reattach the netting with the heel of my shoe than going round the front, letting myself in and getting a hammer. This is why, when I should have been in my place of work, I was standing one legged in the mud hammering with a shoe. There is a moral here somewhere. You will be pleased to hear that, as of this evening, the sweet pea is recovering.

Also, and unrelated, email from my husband as follows: “I see a letter in today’s Irish Times suggesting that we are a sitcom (Single Income, Three Children, Outrageous Mortgage).”

2 degrees of separation


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle

I live in a small country. Pretty much everyone in Ireland knows everyone else.

Whenever my husband and I watch the news there is always at least one pundit/reporter/other person whom one or both of us knows. This evening, for example, there was a man from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign talking angrily about the Israeli attack on the flotilla coming into Gaza. “Oh” said my husband, “he was in college with me.” Pause. “He’s Jewish.” However, Mr. Waffle’s moment of the match this evening came when his bicycle (tied to a railing) was visible behind a reporter for several seconds.

Let me tell you another story. I met some new people through friends one evening. We were all chatting quite happily when one of the women I hadn’t met before (v. glamourous, pretty, beautifully made up, terrifying heels, long blonde hair) asked me what I thought of a topical political issue. I gave my view. She gave her diametrically opposed one. We discussed. She got crosser and crosser. Though her concern was legitimate, many of the facts she adduced to support her argument were wrong and I told her so (ever tactful). Our common friend, seeking, I thought, to give the conversation a safer direction, asked what we thought about Bono telling Ireland to meet its development aid targets while moving part of U2’s business to the Netherlands to avoid tax. As my friend said, “Where do they think governments get their money from? They get it from tax revenue and it is hypocritical of Bono to preach that revenue should be spent on development aid and then moving his tax payments elsewhere.” Although this was old news, I felt that it would give us some common ground as who would defend U2 in these circumstances. But no, this other woman mounted a spirited defence of U2’s tax affairs. They gave huge amounts of money to charity, they still paid a lot of tax here, other companies outsourced to minimise their tax liability, Ireland used the same trick to draw in revenue from other countries. My friend remained implacable, I was with my friend. Feeling that matters were getting quite tetchy, I jested “Ireland is full of begrudgers.” “Are you one of them?” she snapped at me. Of course I am but, you know, nobody likes to be called a begrudger. “Do you work for U2?” I joked. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

Have I mentioned before that everybody in Ireland is only 2 degrees of separation from Bono?