belgianwaffle

Reading etc.

Whinging Poms or knocking the neighbours


Posted in: Reading etc., Work

Most of my friends in Brussels are English and they are, well I would say this, but really they are, lovely people.  Charming, entertaining, interested, interesting, funny.

I spend some time in England for work and, again, I really like the people I meet.  In general, I find English people are obliging and helpful and, other than the odd taxi driver, I’ve found them reasonable and sensible.  I also read a lot of blogs by English people and, again, I find them entertaining and agreeable.

Are you feeling a big but coming?  Well here it is.  The tone of public discourse in the UK as set by the press, the radio and the television is relentlessly negative and whiny.  I listen a lot to Radio 4 (the programme ‘You and Yours’ being a non-stop whine fest) and I read the British papers from time to time – perhaps not so much the television but I do watch the BBC news occasionally.   I am Irish, I may not be in the best position to criticise the British or, more particularly, the English; I have some prejudices though possibly not the ones you imagine.  Do you think that is going to stop me? Hah.  Do not tell me that I should ignore the English media; they’re whiny but they’re good.

I think that it is very laudable that the British have high standards for their politicians.  I think that they are over the top in their criticisms of financial impropriety.  My God, if they had to face what we have in Ireland, they would all keel over.   The media is in a state of permanent moan about the NHS but it really is a very good system compared to that available in Ireland at least and though I am enamoured of the Belgian system, it’s not free at the point of delivery.  Free.  Imagine, nothing to pay.  You can go into the doctor and get treated for nothing.  That is fantastic.  Are people pleased?  Does the media pat Britain on the back? Not a bit of it, the doctors are dreadful, they just confirm what you’ve discovered yourself on google, it’s all a ghastly mess.  And Britain has relatively low taxes to boot.  Amazing.  Occasionally, a columnist in the papers will say, when I was in hospital my treatment was fantastic but moan, moan, blah, blah collapse of the NHS.  It is as though, the British have decided en masse that the only way to improve anything is to moan about it constantly.  It is tedious and it appears to be ineffective as another moan is that things are getting worse all the time.  Would they stop.  Perhaps it is ineffective because the government, in thrall to public opinion and the media, keeps tinkering with major areas like health and education before having had a chance to see whether the last tinkering was at all effective.

I appreciate that good news doesn’t sell papers but, it seems to me that the difference in the Irish papers is there is more outrage than whinging.  I mean the health service actually is a national disgrace in Ireland.  In England, lots of people, apparently, can’t get free dental care; I don’t hear so much about people dying on trolleys in hallways because there are no beds for them.

And yes, I’m sure I don’t know all the ins and outs of it and I can’t really talk because I’ve never lived in England and I’ve mixed up England and Britain but there it is.  You know they say that the French think they are wonderful and have the best of everything and that they are better than anyone else and the British think that everything they have is dreadful and poorly run and hideous but they are still better than everyone else?  Well, I think that might be true.  It would explain a lot wouldn’t it?

I await your outrage and indignation with interest.

Too many cooks or, possibly, this is what it sounds like when doves cry


Posted in: Family, Mr. Waffle, Reading etc.

Late on Sunday afternoon we went out for a short walk and it was not a success. The Princess lost interest in walking; Michael and Daniel demanded to be carried and so did she. We had to carry them and cajole her back home and by the time we got there, the four senior members of the party were annoyed to various degrees. Michael having had his demand met; to be carried home reclining in his mother’s arms not on her hip was pretty sunny.

When we got home, it was about 6.40. “If we are going to have roast chicken, we will not eat until 8”, I announced gloomily. Mr. Waffle was keen that we should have Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding with roast chicken is an abomination but he was adamant as it is one of the few things the boys will eat at the moment. 8 was too late for dinner, we decided. “I’ll make the chicken and mushroom thing” I said. To my horror, Mr. Waffle remained adamant on the Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding with rice, mushroom and chicken in a cream sauce is an unspeakable abomination. I stomped off to the kitchen and chopped up an onion and some garlic. I hunted high and low for the mushrooms which I knew we had bought the day before. I stomped in to where Mr. Waffle was reading to the children and asked where the mushrooms were. “Ah, gosh, yes, I used them all yesterday in the beef stogonoff”. I stomped back to the kitchen and threw the onion and garlic in the bin in a marked manner and started preparing parmesan chicken which does not require mushrooms or onion or garlic (very nifty recipe actually). Mr. Waffle came into the kitchen, he wanted to make the Yorkshire pudding batter. “Fine” I said and flounced off conscious that it would have only taken me two minutes to get the chicken into the oven where it could start its half hour bake (should I explain that the kitchen isn’t really big enough for two and somebody has to stop the children from killing each other). He did his evil work with the batter, I subsequently polished off the chicken and put it into the oven.

It became apparent that the Yorkshire pudding and the chicken would not coincide. “We can have the Yorkshire pudding as a starter”, I said bitterly. I then realised that, really, I would have to make gravy as Yorkshire pudding without gravy is etc. etc. I went into the kitchen and looked longingly at the chopped onion I had fired into the bin in a rage and chopped another and set to on the gravy. As I was adding stock to my butter flour mixture (I believe people who can really cook call it a roux m’lord) and anxiously whisking the very hot mixture seeking to avoid lumps (something I have never actually done in any circumstances, however ideal), Mr. Waffle came into the kitchen to pour the Yorkshire pudding mixture into the oven. I glared, he retreated nervously, I stomped off.

The Yorkshire pudding was ready 15 tense minutes later. The children tucked in delightedly to their lumpy gravy and pudding feast. I grudgingly had one. Mr. Waffle, damn him, is a dab hand at the Yorkshire pudding and it was really very tasty. This from a man who had never even tasted Yorkshire pudding before he met me. As you can imagine, this did not make things any better. Inevitably, my chicken and rice offering was spurned with contumely by my children. Mr. Waffle ate enthusiastically, nervously heaping praise on the cranky chef.

Later as we were giving the boys their bath, my loving husband said to me that I was still cross. Normally, though lots of things make me cross, I haven’t got the energy to stay cross for long and like my father and my brother I am inclined to get over things quickly and forget my rages. But I had a brief insight into what it is like to be my mother or my sister both of whom are very even tempered but once roused are very difficult to calm. I knew I was being unreasonable and I wanted to stop being cross but I just couldn’t let go. I think I may have been talked down later after a soothing cup of tea.

And while we are talking about family disharmony, do you think there was some unhappiness preceeding the insertion of this announcement in the birth announcements in this weekend’s Irish Times:

Stevenson – Kilsheimer (Washington D.C.) – My grandmother in her eagerness to announce my arrival (Irish Times, Saturday January 19, 2008) unfortunately gave me the wrong names. I am called Miles Andrew.

Parochial


Posted in: Ireland, Reading etc.

Me: Why does the Irish Times Magazine assume that it can refer to Blackrock and everyone will know it’s a Dublin suburb?

Friend in Dublin: Well you did.

Me: There is a Cork suburb called Blackrock.

FiD: Is there?

Me: And this week they referred to Ranelagh with no indication as to where it was.

FiD: But you know where Ranelagh is, you lived there for years.

Me: That’s not the point. And when they referred to Oughterard in the same article, they put Co. Galway next to it in brackets. Is it utterly inconceivable to them that there might be people out there who know where Oughterard is but don’t know that Ranelagh is a Dublin suburb?

FiD (unanswerably): Not Irish Times readers.

As my loving husband says, if it annoys me so much, why do I read it? Doubtless to have my prejudices confirmed, how can they not be by a publication which, for years, put Northern Ireland under home news and Cork news under regional news, regional news, humph.

This weekend, there was an essay on David Marcus in the Review section. It said, inter alia, “But even the first issue of Irish Writing could stand on its own as a tribute to his taste, his instinct for the zeitgeist – remarkable in a young man from the provincial city of Cork – his guts, his determination and ultimately, his brass neck”. “[R]emarkable in a young man from the provincial city of Cork“? I nearly choked on my rice krispies. The discovery that the patronising man who wrote the essay is actually from Cork, quite frankly, made matters worse not better.

The article also says that “many readers may never have heard of him”. I was surprised by that. I would have thought he was pretty well known in Ireland. I know he was thought to be an outstanding editor. I have to say, I’ve only read one of his books (“A land not theirs” about growing up Jewish in Cork) and I didn’t think that it was very good but I certainly didn’t think it was obscure.

I learned also that Marcus’s uncle was Gerald Goldberg a well known and respected Cork solicitor. Many years ago, I met an exceptionally irritating woman in Brussels who told me that Mr. Goldberg was never elevated to the High Court bench because he was Jewish. In fact, at the time he was practising (and possibly still at the time of his death), only barristers were eligible for appointment to the high court and traditionally, minority religions (including judaism) have been somewhat over-represented on the bench in Ireland as they tend to be solidly middle class which, funnily enough, is where most judges come from. I never did manage to get a word in edge ways with her and tell her this, so this is a much delayed and pointless riposte.

There is no Jewish community in Cork now (they all seem to have gone to Dublin to get married) and that is sad. A lot of Lithuanian Jews came to Cork in the late 19th and early 20th century and some of them, including David Marcus who is an exact contemporary, were at my father’s school and he had a lot of friends with exotic and different names; Berkhans and Solomons and Goldbergs. Maybe with this new wave of immigration from Eastern Europe, we’ll get some of them back.

Finally, a classic from the birth announcements:

Brontë Philomena. Born…at the Whittingon Hospital in London to besotted parents David and Lisa.

I have a certain sympathy for “besotted parents” – I haven’t got a heart of stone, you know – but Brontë Philomena? No, really, no.

English Catholics


Posted in: Reading etc.

The English are a funny bunch and particularly funny in their attitudes to catholics. I found an article in the Independent which struck me as bizarre. I have commented on bits of it because it’s my blog and I can. You can read the whole thing here, should you so wish. It is, inevitably, inspired by Tony Blair’s conversion which has flummoxed the nation.

“In 2006, it was revealed that Father Seed had regularly been celebrating Mass at 10 Downing Street for cradle-Catholic Cherie Blair and the couple’s four Catholic-educated children. Did Tony attend too? Father Seed looks surprised that I even need to ask: “Of course.””

Well, yes, because I would have thought that it would be rude not to, particularly if it was a family mass. For me, it would be odd, if he hadn’t gone along. You know when he married Cherie, he promised to bring any children up Catholic. That’s what we’re like, us Catholics, we think of everything. And isn’t the expression “cradle catholic” hilarious and faintly derogatory? Almost implying she became a catholic before she knew any better and had she been older and wiser she certainly wouldn’t have done it, not like Tony. I’m forced to point out that, by rights, their children should be “cradle-catholics” as well and not just catholic educated. Where will it all end? Rome will invade.

“Father Seed, though, is a friar, a member of a religious order that is part of the Franciscan family. So, while the Jesuits were founded as a quasi-military religious order to reconvert Europe after the Reformation, the Franciscans have an older, less aggressive mandate: to support those in need. That is how the man sitting opposite me sees his work: helping people through a spiritual crisis. Whether or not they end up converting is immaterial. “We are all Christians. And that’s that. Therefore the pilgrimage we make is a movement of Christ, and if it is an authentic movement, we should be joyful about people becoming Catholic or Anglican or Methodist.””

Of course, for us, the Jesuits are the intellectuals of the Church, though conceding their role in the counter-reformation, for me the Jesuits say smart, smart, smart not agressive, agressive, agressive. You know, we send money to the missions, you know we actually are supposed to want to convert everyone, even the nice Franciscans.

“So he started going to say Mass in their flat above Number 11 Downing Street. Father Seed is eager to portray this special treatment not as a privilege, but as a kind of torture. “Mrs Blair” – he never uses their first names – “absolutely hated it. She hated not being able to go to Mass with everyone else.”

I absolutely believe this. Part of the nice thing about going to Mass is that sense of Catholic community and though I never appreciated it when I was younger, I do now. Mass at home is nice from time to time for a special occasion. All the time, and they must have felt slightly cut off.

“For some in the press,” he continues, “it seems that Mr Blair’s reception came in the end as a shock. Though there was no reason why it should. I suppose it is the phenomenon that Catholicism is seen as seriously naughty.”

It is an odd choice of words. Catholicism is more traditionally seen as rather upright, moral and – at least in matters sexual – not in the least bit “naughty”. Only when you are married, straight, in the missionary position, not using a condom and want to conceive a baby is about as naughty as it gets.

Have to say that I am with the journalist here but I get what the priest says as well. To the English, Catholicism seems to be all about exotic foreigners, smells and bells, ceremonies and rites and not children running up and down the aisle inadequately restrained by mortified parents.

“I was asked to preach in the Tower of London,” Father Seed counters, “on the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. I think I was the first Catholic priest to get in – and get out.” He has a nervous laugh. “And there is something about that; that Catholics were once about to blow up Parliament. There is still something mysterious and naughty about us. It is to our advantage. Catholics in this country are, in reality, a fairly conformist group, but we are still seen as nonconformist. Had Mr Blair become a Methodist, for example, I don’t think there would have been the same reaction.”

I think that this must all relate back to the whole issue of loyalty to Rome; although it is extraordinary that this should still be an issue as it is many centuries since Rome has been a temporal power, though I can see how it could have been an issue, say around the time of the gunpowder plot. Lytton Strachey’s “Eminent Victorians” is very good on the 1870 Vatican Council and the impact the declaration of the doctrine of papal infallibility had on the English [if memory serves something like – they’ve gone too far this time]. Would like to quote “Eminent Victorians” to add glamour to the text but cannot find it. Am nevertheless pleased that I have, in the sentence before last given the impression that I have read several books on the 1870 Council which, unfortunately, we all know, is far from the truth.*

“The question of Blair’s timing, though, remains interesting. By leaving it until he had left office, there was a sense that Tony Blair was either embarrassed by his decision, or regarded it as improper for a Catholic to be prime minister. Hardly evidence that Catholics are conformist? “I don’t think it is that,” Father Seed corrects. “There are some good reasons why he did it when he did it, but they are more private. But the time was right. If it had happened while he was in office, it would have caused him more difficulty, that blurring of the public and the private. The same would be true if it had been immediately after he left office. By waiting, it was very dignified, very correct, very quiet. No announcement.” Was he there at the private ceremony? “I can’t say,” he replies. I take it as a yes.”

The timing is interesting though, isn’t it? Was Britain not ready for a Catholic Prime Minister or was it just a matter of personal conscience for Tony Blair. It seems a little unfair to speculate but my feeling is that a practising Catholic would have a lot more difficulty in winning the affection and the votes of the English than an Anglican who went to services a couple of times a year. It is the exact opposite to America where you must parade your religion or risk electoral suicide. Do you think that there might be a middle ground?

* Found the whole of “Eminent Victorians” on line here.

Have a look at this quote:

“He [some minor bit character, never mind] was now engaged in fluttering like a moth round the Council, and in writing long letters to Mr. Gladstone, impressing upon him the gravity of the situation, and urging him to bring his influence to bear. If the Dogma [of papal infallibility] were carried, he declared, no man who accepted it could remain a loyal subject, and Catholics would everywhere become “irredeemable enemies of civil and religious liberty.” In these circumstances, was it not plainly incumbent upon the English Government, involved as it was with the powerful Roman Catholic forces in Ireland, to intervene? … There was a semi-official agent of the English Government in Rome, Mr. Odo Russell, and round him Manning set to work to spin his spider’s web of delicate and clinging diplomacy. Preliminary politenesses were followed by long walks upon the Pincio, and the gradual interchange of more and more important and confidential communications. Soon poor Mr. Russell was little better than a fly buzzing in gossamer. And Manning was careful to see that he buzzed on the right note. In his despatches to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, Mr. Russell explained in detail the true nature of the Council, that it was merely a meeting of a few Roman Catholic prelates to discuss some internal matters of Church discipline, that it had no political significance whatever, that the question of Infallibility, about which there had been so much random talk, was a purely theological question, and that, whatever decision might be come to upon the subject, the position of Roman Catholics throughout the world would remain unchanged. Whether the effect of these affirmations upon Lord Clarendon was as great as Manning supposed, is somewhat doubtful; but it is at any rate certain that Mr. Gladstone failed to carry the Cabinet with him; and when at last a proposal was definitely made that the English Government should invite the Powers of Europe to intervene at the Vatican, it was rejected.”