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Reading etc.

Reading or a Brief Break from Plague News


Posted in: Reading etc.

“Paula” by Isabel Allende

A friend gave me this to read. I am not a big fan of magical realism and did not enjoy it. She gave it to me in perfect nick and I returned it sodden as I had got caught on the bike in a downpour. I felt very bad, she said graciously, “Never mind, it’s part of the history of the book now.” I liked that very much and it made me feel less of a heel.

“The Second Sleep” by Robert Harris

I’m not a huge Robert Harris fan but I liked the concept here and I thought parts of the execution were clever and it sustained my interest to the end, but I did not love it. It imagines a post-apocalyptic world where they are in a new middle ages about 800 years after the apocalyptic event.

“Persuasion” by Jane Austen

A classic re-read. On re-reading I found Anne Elliot unspeakably irritating. Regrettable but there it is.

“Becoming” by Michelle Obama

I got this for Christmas 2018 and put off reading it as I didn’t think I would like it much but I really enjoyed it and found it a very good read. Preferred it to her husband’s books, I have to say.

“An Almost Perfect Christmas” by Nina Stibbe

Vignettes of the author’s Christmases past. Light reading: mildly entertaining and undemanding. I liked it and occasionally it made me laugh out loud.

“No Coward Soul: A biography of Thekla Beere” by Anna Bryson

This is the story of the first female Secretary General of an Irish government department. She got the job in 1959 and it was, if memory serves, 36 years until the next female SG appeared and there are still only 2 as I write so not a huge improvement. The writing is a bit pedestrian and there is too much about industry and commerce policy in the 1950s and 60s for my liking but it’s an interesting book and she was an interesting person. Maybe not for everyone though.

“Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty

A page turner and quite well written. It’s about a bunch of people in a spa/retreat each with his or her own secret. Probably too many characters. I did really enjoy the author character though.

“Night Boat to Tangier” by Kevin Barry

I hated this book. It’s not a novel, it’s poetry. That’s fine if you want poetry but it is masquerading under a novelistic form and I did not enjoy that. I must confess that some of the writing is almost eerily beautiful and there were set pieces and lines that made me laugh. It’s largely set in Cork and it is lovely to see my home eloquently described in print. And the author is eloquent. Not enough though. Also, what Irish novel mentions early on that one of the main characters is Protestant and then fails to refer to it at any point later on or make use of it in any way? I refer the author to Chekhov’s gun: “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

“Lady in Waiting My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown” by Anne Glenconner

Did I enjoy this? Oh yes I did. The writing is pretty awful but what a story. This woman has had a really unusual life and being lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret is the least of it. Very well worth a read.

“Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone” by Catriona McPherson

Still reading all the adventures of English sleuth Dandy Gilver. She’s married to a Scot and they all take place in a different Scottish location. They’re set in the 1920s and 30s and I love them all. They also make me really, really want to visit Scotland. That said, this is my least favourite of the series.

“Dandy Gilver and the Reek of Red Herrings” by Catriona McPherson

More wonderful Dandy.

“Dandy Gilver and a Most Misleading Habit” by Catriona McPherson

Still hard at the sleuthing.

“The Turning Tide” by Catriona McPherson

The last in the series to date. I hope Ms. McPherson is busily drafting the next one as I have now read all of the published volumes. Alas.

“Three Homes” by Lennox Robinson, Nora Dorman and Tom Robinson

Herself got us tickets to see a Lennox Robinson play for Christmas. Prior to this, I had not realised he was from Cork and I became fascinated by him. I got this volume co-written by himself and his brother and sister from the library. I fear that it is now out of print.

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I loved the descriptions of Cork, from the 1880s on and the stories in the book. He talks of his father coming out of the Protestant cathedral in Cork (a spot I know well) and seeing a crowd cheering for the Prince of Wales and he throws his hat in the air with the best of them. It transpires, however, that they are in fact cheering Parnell (which he as a unionist would never have done) and what’s more, his silk hat was lost for good.

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They also refer to a habit in magazines to have pictures of famous people at various ages and titling them, say, “Miss Ellen Terry, aged 5, aged 18 and present day.” Obviously, by the time they got to “present day” the celebrities would be more raddled with age than when in their prime and the family got into the habit of describing anyone older as “present day”. This is something that should clearly be revived.

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If you can get your hands on it, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I absolutely loved it. It is gentle and kind as well as entertaining and a perfect read for plague season.

“My Uncle Lennox” by Seán Dorman

Continuing my Lennox Robinson inquiries, I got this self-published autobiographical novel out of the library. Lennox is a bit more peripheral than the title might have you imagine. Mildly entertaining in places but not much extra insight into Lennox.

“Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I didn’t expect to like this much but I did. I’m going to read the rest of the author’s books now. It’s about people who have been away from Nigeria for a long time and then come home and their notions. It’s also a love story.

“Ulysses” by James Joyce

I didn’t read it, I listened to it on audio book (shout out to the wonderful library app BorrowBox which allows you to download audio books for free). It was 27 hours. I mean, the story only covers one day, so that seemed excessive. Interesting in places and actually quite funny from time to time. Very Dublin and an awful lot of what was around in 1904 is still unchanged today. I was actually going past Davy Byrne’s pub when the recording was talking about Bloom’s gorgonzola sandwich there and I went in his footsteps as far as the national library. Glad to have listened overall but a definite slog.

“The Improbability of Love” by Hannah Rothschild

Thought this was only alright. Somebody finds a painting in a junk shop that turns out to be by Watteau and it leads to all kinds of romantic entanglements.

“House of Trelawney” by Hannah Rothschild

Better than the previous offering but still not my cup of tea. English landed gentry have large house and have fallen on hard times. Adventures of various family members and relationship with the house and each other. Has its moments.

“Daughter of Empire: My Life as Mountbatten” by Pamela Hicks

Not the best written book I have ever read but very entertaining in places. The author has a fund of funny family stories from a very unusual and well-connected family. Undemanding, makes good plague reading.

Out and About


Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Michael, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Reading etc.

The Alliance Française had a games night and, even though it was a school night, I insisted on bringing the boys and Mr. Waffle. I felt that the boys might enjoy it and that it would be good for their French. In my mind’s eye, I saw them sitting down and bonding with another group of board game-loving teenagers, ideally Francophone board game-loving teenagers, and having a great time while myself and Mr. Waffle went off Bewley’s and had a nice cup of tea. This did not happen. They did not enjoy it, it was not good for their French. It was all grown-ups who came with their own gangs of friends. There were no other teenagers. What was agonising for Michael, in particular, was that these were his people playing his kind of games but with no room for him. We sat in a corner, the four of us and tried to muster enthusiasm for playing in French games which we could equally readily have played at home and despite the enthusiasm and helpfulness of the librarian doling out games, it could not really be called anything but an abysmal failure. Alas.

We went to see Knives Out in the cinema and, unlike everyone else in Ireland, I thought it was only alright. The others enjoyed it though. We also went to see JoJo Rabbit which I enjoyed in a mild way but found myself distracted by the woman in the row in front who kept her phone on throughout: messaging, whatsapping, posting to instagram. It was spectacularly annoying but I was too craven to tap her on the shoulder and say something in case she was cross with me and I had to sit behind her for the rest of the film which would ruin it for me. So I sat there stewing in bitterness.

Herself bought us theatre tickets for Christmas which was a bit over-generous given her very limited budget, poor mite, but anyway they were for Drama at Inish at the Abbey which I found surprisingly enjoyable. I had thought it was going to be something like The Playboy of the Western World or the Beauty Queen of Leenane – all a bit West of Ireland gloom – but it’s not. It’s by Lennox Robinson (who was from Douglas in Cork, I mean, who knew?). It was written in the 30s and it’s about a group of actors who go to a seaside resort in East Cork (clearly Youghal) and put on works by Chekhov, Ibsen and Strindberg. The residents take the plays to heart and start acting like characters in the plays. I feel I would have got more out of it had I been a bit more familiar with the source material but still not bad at all. Annoyingly, the man in the row behind me seemed to find it knee-slappingly funny and I felt a bit short-changed when I considered his hilarity compared to my mild amusement but there you go. Inevitably, at the end there was a standing ovation. I can’t remember the last time I went to a play in Dublin when there hasn’t been a standing ovation. I feel it’s a slightly devalued currency at this stage.

Mr. Waffle and I were invited to a Burns night supper by friends. His mother was Scottish so I suppose this was why they got into this in the first place. It was in the Royal Saint George yacht club in Dun Laoghaire organised by the Dublin Scottish Benevolent Society of St. Andrew. In advance we regarded it with some trepidation as we both had head colds but we were sufficiently recovered on the night to have a good time. The Burns night supper was completely unknown to me as a thing in advance and I had never tasted haggis in my life. My friend helpfully described it as being a bit like a wedding with speeches after dinner and some singing. An early highlight was the “Ode to a Haggis” which was delivered with great verve. Also, I found that I really like haggis – it’s delicious. The speeches, I understand, follow an unwavering pattern with a speech on Robert Burns “The Immortal Memory”; “A Toast to the Lassies” and “A Toast to the Laddies”. I found myself sitting right in front of the speakers which was fine until the singer sang one of Burns’s numbers (A Man’s a Man for A’That) unaccompanied and very loudly, eyes closed, face puce and about two feet from me. It was a little overwhelming. He sang a couple of later numbers accompanying himself on the guitar and I found these less stressful. We toasted the President and the Queen of England. I don’t remember doing the latter before in this jurisdiction. Since the yacht club still has the Union Jack engraved in the top of its gilt edged mirror it all felt a little odd. But Dun Laoghaire is a bit odd that way.

The speech on Burns was fine – continuing the Abbey Theatre theme it was delivered by one of co-directors of the Abbey, a Scot, Graham McLaren. I wonder how much he is enjoying that role as the Abbey always seems to have a couple of controversies on the boil. Anyway, to Burns, I have to say, I knew he was an important Scottish poet but hadn’t quite realised his role in the Scottish national psyche (I should have guessed from earlier when Mr. Waffle showed me a picture from a Scottish friend of his who is married to an Austrian – it showed her slightly grumpy, Austrian teenage son, decked out in his kilt for Burns night in Vienna). The “Immortal Toast” man gave lots of Robert Burns and his influence on me and Scotland stories.

The highlight of the toast to the lassies was a rather drunken heckler sitting at the table behind me who roared at the speaker that it was “RAbbie Burns, not RObbie Burns!” There was some communal singing which I enjoyed very much and which felt oddly like mass. And we sang “Auld Lang Syne”.

Our friends who invited us are members of the organising society and they were allowed to bring up to four people. In advance they explained that we would be joined by four other people at our table of ten. Our friends said that last year they had worried about what old fogies they might be put beside only to find themselves beside four people in their 20s and realising that they were the old fogies.

There were quite a few people there whom I knew from other contexts including a good friend of mine (who is also, coincidentally a colleague of our host, yes, Ireland is tiny and we all know each other) who was there with her Scottish husband (appropriately attired in kilt) and who was actually put at our table but tragically between our group of 6 and her and her husband there was a couple (lovely people I am sure etc.) unknown to any of us so that was a little unfortunate.

Overall though, a rather thrilling and exciting new experience to have at my vast age. Recommended.

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2019 Retrospective


Posted in: Reading etc.

2020 is the first year that I haven’t had a paper diary. The end of days is upon us, I’d say. Let us rely on my blog for a review of 2019 notwithstanding the paper diary.

January

Oh God, January 2019 when we all got flu and the builders moved in. The memory is still horribly vivid. January 19 would have been my father-in-law’s birthday. The extended family met in his local pub in his honour. He would have liked that.

February

The misery, building works continuing, my wretched course assignment due.

March

The builders finally left. I turned 50. We went skiing. All in all, a far better month than those that preceded it.

April

We went to Tours and explored the Princess’s haunts from her time there. She turned 16. I gave up on Twitter and restored hours of every day to myself. I continue to be smug and twitter-free. I started another course, simultaneously with the one I began in October 2018. I experienced definite regret.

May

Blog entries are thin and in consequence I have no idea what happened. If it wasn’t blogged, did it even happen? I finished off course one. It nearly killed me.

June

My mother died. 2019 will always be, for me, the year my mother died. Looking back over blog entries, I see that her last coherent words to me may have been in March when she said, “Your hair is lovely.” She had been sick for such a long time but it was a shock. I still think about her all the time; my sister gave me an opened bottle of her perfume and I think of her every time I wear it; for months I couldn’t reread a Georgette Heyer as they reminded me too much of her, I don’t know whether I’ll ever reread “The Nonsuch” much of which I read aloud to her when I visited her in the nursing home; and I think of how she was my greatest supporter in all things. I regularly visit her best friend from college a delightful and entertaining woman of whom I am now very fond although I found her a bit terrifying when I was a child. When I visited her recently, I said in passing, “My mother adored me.” “I wouldn’t get carried away,” she said. Tart but appealing.

July

Even flicking back through July entries makes me feel slightly exhausted. The range of activities which we arranged to entertain our children over the summer holidays was extensive. We also made a lot of jam. Daniel told me the other night that he has a playlist that reminds him of things and he has a song that reminds him of cutting up plums with me. He also has one that reminds him of the day we moved house – when he was 7 – and he and his brother stayed with his grandparents and in the morning they were wrapped in blankets, let watch television and eat toast and honey. It seems a particularly fond memory.

August

Triumphantly successful holiday in Estonia and Finland except for missing our flight to Estonia.

September

The boys turned 14. They took it in their stride. I finished course 2. I am never getting another qualification as long as I live.*

October

This is when Daniel got the tooth injury that eventually led to root canal the following January. Mr. Waffle’s sister and her husband and little girl moved back to England. I was sad. They were a joy to have in Dublin and their little girl a constant source of delight and entertainment. Maybe we should visit them in London. Herself is standing ready to be babysitter in swinging London should she be called upon to serve.

November

National blog posting month: exhausting but no particular theme emerges.

December

“Blazing fire and Christmas treat” No sleet though.

*Possibly not true but definitely felt true in 2019.

And We Like Sheep


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

Mr. Waffle and I went to Handel’s Messiah in the local church last night. It was completely sold out – the organ restoration fund thanks you – and all very nice but it is long. A good 3 hours including the interval. It took a lot out of me but at least I had thought to bring a cushion and I imagine I was quite a bit more comfortable than the local bigwigs who graced the performance with their presence but had not had the forethought to bring their own cushions.

Today is my beloved grandmother’s birthday. She was born in 1897 and died in 1984. I always think of her in November.

That’s all I’ve got for today. More tomorrow when I am feeling stronger.

Ents Officer


Posted in: Reading etc.

I am in charge of this family’s arts outings. Often, it must be said, unsuccessful, but I am still high from the success of “The Alternative” which we saw last month as part of the Theatre festival.

I didn’t book us in to a Christmas show last year. I just couldn’t find anything I liked except in the Gate Theatre where they were re-doing “The Great Gatsby” which the Princess and I had already seen and for which tickets were €50 a head.

I missed having something so, in a sign that the boom is certainly back, I have booked us in to the Gate’s Christmas offering – A Christmas Carol- at exorbitant expense. I really hope the children like it…