belgianwaffle

Reading etc.

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…

Book Club: An Incomplete Social History


Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Reading etc.

I’ve been in book clubs since I was in my late 20s. Always all women. I wouldn’t say that reading books is/was entirely incidental to these groups but I always found it to be secondary to the pleasure of being with a group of friends.

The first one I joined in Brussels was a very sophisticated affair with hard books and a serious focus. I only got in because they wanted some more English speakers. I quite enjoyed it though all of the other members were slightly terrifyingly beautiful (all Dutch and Swedish bar me and my English friend) and had very impressive jobs (our biggest coup was a Dutch MEP – look I was in my 20s we were all a lot more impressionable then). We read worthy books around a theme and if it was your turn to lead debate, then you read the book and wrote up reading notes for the others. Once a year we had a black tie dinner with partners. Yes, really.

When I came back to Ireland in 2000, I missed the camaraderie of the Dutch (really it was basically Dutch – v organised and immensely thorough) book club and set up one with my friends in Dublin. This is still going strong – first Monday of the month for nearly 20 years. We take a relaxed approach to reading the book. Mostly at least one person has not read the book and, on at least one occasion, no one had read the book. It makes me really happy because without this book club I think I would have lost contact with a lot of my friends from that time, just because we’re all busy and lots of us have children. When I came back from my stint in Brussels in 2008, I rejoined seamlessly. I love it. [A parenthesis here – did I set up another book club while I lived in Brussels between 2003 and 2008? I most certainly did.] We have a core group – lots of lawyers – and a revolving cast of members who come and go. Three of our core group are sisters and I am almost certain one of our revolving cast left in horror because she heard them talking to each other without knowing they were sisters. Sister one remarked that sister two’s new coat was not a success and sister three agreed. There was then a discussion of sister one’s new haircut and all three agreed that it was probably a mercy she wore a wig for work. I could see new member thinking that this was a tough school.

And then, eight or nine years ago, a friend of Mr. Waffle’s invited me to join her book club. This was different again – held about once every six weeks on a Sunday afternoon, always in our foundress’s beautiful, beautiful house – this is one where everyone reads the book and we have a very structured discussion about it and then go next door to the dining room and have the most wonderful afternoon tea. In the course of this we discuss weighty political topics and current affairs but also all sorts of gossip. It’s lovely to make a group of new friends in your 40s. Mr. Waffle’s friend (he sometimes says plaintively ‘she is my friend, it’s very unfair that you see so much of her’ – I think of her as a shared resource) is from Limerick so many of the members of the group are from there also and as my mother was from Limerick there’s something about their voices and expressions that remind me of her. They’re a diverse bunch with a couple of media people so they always have excellent gossip. The Sunday before last was the book club’s tenth anniversary and there was a book club quiz (I love a quiz) and a goody bag for each member with a bottle of gin from the Isle of Harris (our foundress’s husband is half Scottish); various cards and bookmarks and a mug. I nearly died of happiness. It was the surprise and the delightful nature of it.

I was reflecting the other day for women and men of my generation our mothers played tennis and golf and bridge but for my children’s generation, their mothers will all have been in book clubs. I wonder whether the days of book clubs are numbered or whether they will be with us forever?

Supporting the Arts


Posted in: Reading etc.

Mr. Waffle and I went to see a one man show called “The Fetch Wilson”. It wasn’t bad. It was in a new arts space which turned out to be a slightly damp room above a pub. To be fair, it was upstairs from a much nicer room which was showing “Kissing the Witch” and you could buy tickets for a double bill but I didn’t feel able for two and a half hours of theatre, an hour and a half of which was a staging of an Emma Donoghue short story. Admirable, I’m sure but I plumped for the “darkly comic” one man show. It had its moments and it was, to be fair, far, far better than “The Bluffer’s Guide to Suburbia” which is unlikely to be bested in the worst play of 2019 competition.

The woman on the door told me that this theatre company are doing a Christmas special and I think I might force Mr. Waffle and the children to go. Something to look forward to.

Fastnet Race


Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Reading etc.

When I was 10 the Fastnet Yacht race was a disaster and a lot of people died. I don’t really remember much in the news from when I was young but I remember this and the Whiddy island disaster because they seemed local catastrophes and my parents spoke about them. Along with the Tuskar Rock air crash which happened the year before I was born, they were background disaster news which was local to us. Even then, like all Cork people, I was a Cork partisan.

So, on that basis when RTE put out a radio documentary about the 1979 Fastnet race, I was curious to have a listen. The first thing that struck me was that many of the voices on the radio were old men who sounded just like my father – all restraint and composure and very Cork . These are people you don’t hear so much on the radio here – it’s mostly Dublin voices of all ages. And I heard some names I knew because this is Ireland, and my father used to sail a lot, and one of the people speaking was a colleague of a friend.

And I was surprised how very terrifying it was and somehow the calm, low level way these (mostly older, mostly men) spoke about it made is seem somehow more terrifying. I was fascinated. Highly recommended if you think you might be at all interested.

In a highly competitive field, I think that recommending a radio one documentary may be my most middle aged move yet.

Reading


Posted in: Reading etc.

“Home Fire” by Kamila Shamsie

I thought this was a really good book. Thought provoking and well written. I’m still thinking about it and I found the end really shocking. It’s based on Antigone. Do not, in any way, let that put you off.

“Other People’s Countries” by Patrick McGuinness

There is no plot to this. A man who grew up between countries (Belgium and England – and many others where his parents worked) tries to capture the essence of a small town in Wallonia. The writing is exceptionally good. I loved it.

“The Children of Men” by PD James

I generally like science fiction and the concept here is clever – people have stopped having children and the end times are coming – and the consequences well thought through. The narrator is, deliberately, I think, quite unsympathetic. There are parts where it works really well but ultimately I found the narrator’s relationship with the main female character unsatisfactory and that made it drag a bit for me.

“Big Sky” by Kate Atkinson

I love Kate Atkinson and I loved this book. It’s about modern day slavery and not as grim as that sounds although quite grim in places. Furthermore, Hodges Figgis accepted €20 in stamps on various loyalty cards (several of them out of date) which I managed to dredge up from the bottom of my handbag (people love to be behind me in the queue) and I got it free. Rejoice.

“The Silence of the Girls” by Pat Barker

I found this quite interesting as my classical education ended at 15 and a lot of the Trojan war is Greek to me. Sorry.

“Paradise Lodge” by Nina Stibbe

You know, fine, Nina Stibbe can be very funny in places but the narrative as a whole never hangs together particularly well. Amusing and undemanding, you could do a lot worse, I suppose.

“The Long Earth” by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

A science fiction offering. I found volume one grand but I have no desire to go on and read volumes 2-5 as my son Michael did with every appearance of enthusiasm.

“Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling” by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen

This is a cultural phenomenon in Ireland. It’s about a girl from the country adapting to Dublin and its notions. Very funny in places but occasionally a bit saccharine.

“The Importance of Being Aisling” by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen

But look, sure, I came back for book 2.

“Once, Twice, Three Times an Aisling” by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen

Mr. Waffle bought book 3 on the e-reader. I hate the e-reader. “But”, he said, “it’s great value, as she’d say herself.” There was a bit in it where Aisling waxes lyrical about the value of an IKEA blue bag and I realised that she and Mr. Waffle were soul mates. He loves an IKEA blue bag.

“Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom” by Catriona McPherson

I’m still loving Dandy Gilver. There are 14 of them and I hereby signal that I am going to read them all. I don’t love the detective bit as I find it embarrassingly hard to follow but I love the personalities and the period charm (they’re all set in Scotland in the 20s and 30s).

“Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble” by Catriona McPherson

What did I tell you? I will be reading them all.

“Dandy Gilver and an unsuitable day for a murder” by Catriona McPherson

Yes, really.

“Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses” by Catriona McPherson

Every single one.

“A Step So Grave” by Catriona McPherson

This is a Dandy Gilver mystery although her name does not appear on the cover.

“The Winter Ground” by Catriona McPherson

And so is this.

“The Enchanted April” by Elizabeth von Arnim

I don’t know that I was enchanted now but I found this story about four women who are thrown together renting a castle in Italy appealing enough in a mild way.

“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl

This is a very famous memoir of a concentration camp survivor writing about his time in the camps. Although he is a pretty positive person, I found it a very grim read.

“Clock Dance” by Anne Tyler

I love Anne Tyler’s writing style and her characters. Plot is always a bit less important and it says a lot for her strengths that I don’t really mind that.

“Standard Deviation” by Katherine Heiny

This was very funny in places but sometimes it felt like a range of gags in search of a plot. I though it was grand but I have to say that Mr. Waffle really enjoyed it.

“The Dutch House” by Ann Patchett

This is a lovely book. It’s about a brother and sister and their relationship and the house they grew up in. I would really recommend it.

“The Great Hunger” by Cecil Woodham Smith

This is a classic book and although, I gather, scholarship has moved on in some ways, still a very comprehensive and readable summary of the famine and what happened to people during and after.

NaBloPoMo


Posted in: Reading etc.

It is November so I am partaking in National Blog Posting Month and I will be posting every day. I am unclear whether this is still a thing on other parts of the internet, perhaps I am like those soldiers in the jungle still fighting World War II many years after hostilities have ceased. Something for you to look forward to.