Siblings

France II – Île de Ré to Arcachon

29 September, 2025
Posted in: Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Siblings, Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

Thursday August 28, 2025

My late mother-in-law, of whom I was very fond, was very excited when the new Luas (tram service) arrived in Dublin. Despite having a commuter rail service which went to her house, she would often try to develop plans which involved getting the Luas to Sandyford which was the nearest point to her house to which the Luas went but, you know, not very near and not at all as convenient as the existing rail service. Whenever an arrangement is overly complex we describe it as being like the Luas to Sandyford. In a Luas to Sandyford type arrangement we decided that we would charge the car at the Lidl outside St Martin de Ré. Mr. Waffle brought the car to the Lidl and made his own way home; then he and I both cycled to St Martin and had breakfast; then I cycled home while Mr. Waffle drove home (I get home first proving, yet again, the superiority of the bicycle); then we both drove back to Lidl; then Mr. Waffle cycled home and I drove home. Are you with me? On the way home google maps indicated to me that it would be 2 minutes faster to cut off the main road. I did. Google maps is not really set up for European arrangements, I think. It sent me along an unpaved dirt road along the side of a field and then up a sandy trail near the house where I thought I would get stuck. Google maps loves that sandy wooded incline as it had sent us there by bike earlier in the week. It is not suitable for bikes or cars and happily I did not get stuck but, seriously, look at this picture from inside the car.

Compare this to the comfort of travel by bike on the island. The house even came with bespoke bike parking inside the front door which compared well with the car parking around the corner.

In the afternoon, herself arrived! The island is really near the airport so we had her picked up and whisked to the house in no time. We went for dinner out to celebrate. Hurrah.

Friday August 29, 2025

I went out with herself in the morning for a bit of an adventure and to show her the island. We did some mild shopping. Such was the excellence of the whole bike riding situation on the island that even herself who is not normally a bike fan (possibly in part due to my slightly rabid advocacy) said that she enjoyed cycling.

In the afternoon my beloved middle child arrived having survived exam season, an uncle in residence and the painter. I have to say it was very nice to have all my chickadees together.

Poor Mr. Waffle was a bit under the weather but still took a bus to the Lidl car park (“this is where I live now, apparently”) to pick up the car which he was charging in anticipation of our drive south the following day.

Saturday August 30, 2025

We were up with the lark. “To improve their service” to me, our Airbnb hosts had given us the opportunity to hire our sheets and bedlinen. I was not delighted and honestly think that bedlinen could have been included in the cost, I would gladly have paid a bit extra to have the beds made and not to have created a loclinge account. I had to predict the two hour window when laundry should be collected. Check out from the house was at 10 so I felt laundry should be collected before we left. So I selected the 8-10 window. This meant we had to be up and showered by 8. Were people enthusiastic? They were not. Did loclinge even turn up before we checked out? Non.

We dropped herself to the station to get the train down to Arcachon as the car was a bit small and we felt it would not be conducive to good relations to put all the children in the back. The roads were quite busy on the way down but we stopped for a long lunch in a service station (as glamorous as you might imagine) to – you guessed it – charge the wretched car. Mr. Waffle was thrilled by the fast charger and he said gleefully (after an initial disappointment when all the charging stations were full, but mercifully someone left) “It’s like the early days of motoring.” Honestly, could do without it.

Herself arrived in Arcachon first and after some tension over which I will draw a veil, we managed to find the station, collect her and drive to the house. I really liked the house. The living quarters were upstairs and it felt like living in a tree house.

There was a nice heated pool out the front and I took myself for a swim while Mr. Waffle and herself went to the supermarket to lay in supplies. One of the features of the car was that it sometimes didn’t start for us; to be fair, I think this is a feature of automatic cars more generally that they won’t start if you don’t have your foot on the brake when you turn on the engine? Anyhow, Mr. Waffle and herself were stopped at the exit from the car park and, of course, couldn’t start the car engine. Almost immediately the woman from behind beeped them. When there was no progress she hopped out of her car and shouted at them “Il faut avancer!”. While they knew that they had to advance, they couldn’t seem to persuade the car to do so. “How long will this take?” huffed the irate French woman. “About 3 minutes,” said herself with a confidence born of nothing. Their progress was possibly further impeded by both of them becoming mildly hysterical with laughter something which I suspect did nothing to calm down Madame. Anyhow, they made it home safely.

We had take away pizza for dinner and recovered from our day of excitement.

Sunday August 31, 2025

Arcachon is a small place but we were a bit of a step from the centre in quite a suburban area. We walked to what we thought was a cafe but it turned out to just be a boulangerie and, I regret to say, not a very good one at that.

We continued on to 11.30 mass. We were quite early so made meandering progress stopping at a corner shop and a newsagent and dutifully admiring the local architecture (much more of which anon). Still, despite our efforts, at 11.20 we ended up sitting on a bench across the road from the v ugly church considering our entertainment options for the next 10 minutes. I double checked my phone and realised that mass was at 11. We galloped across the road. There was no mass. On the back of an envelope pinned to the church door there was a notice saying “No mass at 11; mass at 7 this evening instead”. Not a great system if you ask me. Michael, who had stayed in bed for the whole adventure was amused but the rest of us were less than entirely delighted.

Mr. Waffle and I drove to the centre of Arcachon and did some mild supermarket shopping; it was hard to find an open supermarket and while I really welcome this at a theoretical level, on a practical level, it has some drawbacks. It was absolutely lashing rain but I said that since we were in town we should have a poke around. Rain soaked; a real end of season feeling.

But there were signs that the weather may have been nicer in the past and that the people of Arcachon would prefer if you didn’t parade around the town in your swimsuit. It seemed a very improbable concern on that particular day.

Michael resolutely refused to go out in the driving rain but the other two were curious and we went into town for a look around.

Mr. Waffle didn’t come “I’m going to the Lidl car park – my new home in France,” said he. He managed to leave the car charging in Aldi overnight and got the bus back to the house. I’m not sure that we were experiencing all of the advantages of having a hired car. Herself observed that the electric car was like the B plot to the holiday.

Since the weather for the next day was scheduled to be dreadful again, we decided that we would drive into Bordeaux. We spent the evening hunting online for a car park in Bordeaux with a compatible charging station for our car. Fun times.

More excitement to follow. Stay tuned.

France I – Île de Ré

26 September, 2025
Posted in: Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Siblings, Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

Friday 22 August 2025

We arrived in La Rochelle – direct flight from Dublin and an absolutely tiny airport at the other end very close to the city – a recommended way to travel. Strongly against my advice, Mr. Waffle, stirred by the spirit of adventure, hired an electric car. We do not own an electric car at home. I felt the holiday would be exciting enough without adding in an electric car challenge but Mr. Waffle felt it would be an interesting experiment practically on home ground (we are very familiar with France and its ways but it is not, in fact, home ground). “Right,” I said, “I think this is crazy but if you really want to do it, you can, but you will be responsible for all of the charging and making sure it works.” These were conditions he blithely (and it will be no surprise to you to learn, ultimately foolishly) accepted.

When we took the car, we were hoping for some guidance on the electric angle but Messrs Thrifty said “There’s a charging cable in the boot, off you go.” They indicated that we might like to download an app to find out about charging locations. Ominous.

For this initial part of the holiday, only Michael was with us. We drove into La Rochelle – so far so good with the car – and took ourselves to the hotel where we were staying the first night. Michael was pleased to be alone in his hotel room.

I found La Rochelle to be delightful. Despite having been there previously a number of times, due to my remembering almost nothing, it all seemed quite novel to me. It’s an extremely bike and pedestrian friendly city and it was lovely to wander around and finally be on holidays.

We had dinner in the square opposite the town hall and began what was due to be an ongoing struggle namely, speaking in French to the French.

When we got back to the hotel that evening I discovered that despite bringing the largest bag ever on holidays I had forgotten to pack shorts, cleanser, socks and pyjamas. Oh well, as my mother used to say, we weren’t going to a desert island.

Saturday 23 August 2025

We had a lovely breakfast in a cafe in La Rochelle which Mr. Waffle found for us – credit where credit is due, it’s not all misguided electric car decisions. We then strolled around the town. We went to the market and visited the weird bunker museum where the Germans had been. Mildly interesting.

Have a look at some poorly photographed German propaganda.

I enjoyed the second paragraph of this poster announcing the liberation to the locals. “[The liberation] is due to the heroism of the fighters from our country or from our empire and the brave support of our great allies” (emphasis added). You’ve got to admire the French, I mean, they were occupied and, well, you know the Vichy regime; at best they were supporting the allies but they always bring a singular vision to this kind of thing.

There’s a lot of history available in La Rochelle. It used to be a big Protestant town and I think you know how that went down ultimately in France.

After lunch (a bit unsatisfactory, despite the range of great spots available due to hunger and timing we ended up in a fast food crêperie – least said soonest mended and all that) we went to the supermarket to stock up for our house on the island.

There’s a big bridge linking the island to the mainland but it is €16 over and back so you wouldn’t want to be going every day.

We stayed in a delightful little town called La Flotte. The airbnb was nice with a really lovely garden but slightly over-engineered (himself was very handy – lots of complex gimmicks). It also had fish, guinea pigs, two cats and chickens. On the plus side, this meant lots of fresh eggs but it was a lot of livestock to keep up with. “You chose to stay in a house with animals,” said Madame cheerfully. At one level this is true, the livestock were not a secret, but at another level, we booked late and took what we could get. Mr. Waffle yet again impressed me with his knowledge of weird French stuff by asking if Linky the cat was named after the electricity smart meter they use in France. He was not.

Sunday 24 August, 2025

Leaving Michael to bond with the house, Mr. Waffle and I strolled into town to look for breakfast stopping off to hire bikes on the way. We found a breakfast place on the seafront with a couple of punters sitting out front. “Could we have breakfast?” We could not “service terminé”. Honestly 9.30 seemed a little early to have finished the breakfast service. Was there anywhere else we could get breakfast? The waiter gave an irate shrug and gestured onwards. I was glad to see that the legendary French rudeness had not abated while I had been away. We went around the corner and found ourselves in the centre of the town (lots of breakfast options) which was built around a charming little harbour.

We went on to mass. Like all French masses, it was practically endless. I was struck, however, by how many children there were. In contrast to mass in Dublin where hair is grey, white and fair, there were dark heads everywhere and lots of the middle aged as well as children. Interesting. Like La Rochelle, the island had been a Protestant stronghold which (rather unwisely) got help from the English so was turned back to Catholicism with extreme prejudice as they say. There was a bell given to the church by Cardinal Richelieu to celebrate this turn of events.

After mass we went to the market which, in this touristy place, weirdly ran every day. We got some lovely fruit. Fruit is so much nicer in France than at home; I guess it has less far to travel. I remember having nectarines and peaches in France when we went on holidays there with my parents in the 70s and being amazed how delicious they were. I feel that there were no nectarines in Cork in the 70s but can that be right? And the difference between a hard peach in Cork and a soft, juicy one in France was vast. Despite the improvements in supply chain, it still feels that French fruit is much, much better.

I went to the butcher to get lunch and saw a large canvas on the wall. It featured Cork man Ronan O’Gara who is the coach for the La Rochelle rugby team (and if you haven’t seen this video of him exhorting his troops in…French, you haven’t lived) and a past pupil of the same school my father and brother attended. A home away from home. I had a brief chat about it with the man at the cash register – big fan – also getting an opportunity to explain that I was not in fact English (as George Bernard Shaw famously said when someone asked whether he was English “au contraire”). As we were to discover, Île de Ré seems to be extremely popular with the English middle classes and to the French eye, the Irish and the English are indistinguishable; an exhausting period of correction beckoned.

After lunch I had a swim in the glorified paddling pool in the back garden; not unpleasant, I must concede. Refreshed, we cycled back into town, Michael perched slightly precariously on my back carrier until we got to the bike hire place where we picked up a bike for him too. The island is the most cycling friendly place I have ever been on holidays and is criss-crossed with a huge network of segregated cycle lanes which were used by a range of people of absolutely all ages. The towns are set up around bikes and pedestrians and there is hardly any driving. I was really struck that the cars we did see were what I would consider normal sized cars not the ludicrously enormous SUVs which are so much a feature in Dublin (I speak as the owner of an enormous station wagon here so I understand that I am part of the problem).

We decided to cycle to St Martin de Ré. This was a terrible decision; yes, the cycling infrastructure was great but it was like cycling in an oven.

The town was really pretty but I was far too hot to appreciate it properly. We did wander the quaint streets of the old town and they were quaint but we had to stop more than once for a sustaining drink.

I made the guys climb up a tower. I love a tower with a view. I was not disappointed: great views.

I also took the opportunity to visit the pharmacy. I had a mosquito bite on my hand which had swollen up in an alarming manner. The island is basically one big marsh so mosquitos are inevitable. I am not sure that the pond in the back garden of the Airbnb was much of a help either. I was not the first mosquito bite that pharmacist had seen and almost before I had finished speaking she had slapped three items on the counter: a steroid cream; anti histamines and a homeopathic remedy. Had she pointed out to me that one of these items was homeopathic, I would have left it behind me but there you are. I would have thought they would have had pretty strong rules on this in France but, if so, they were observed in the breach.

Suitably recovered we braced ourselves for the homeward journey but we were pleasantly surprised to discover that it was only about 15 minutes back the house.

Monday 25 August, 2025

We went on the obligatory lighthouse visit. Although the lighthouse on the far north of the island was perfectly reachable by segregated bike lane, it was far and we were slightly scarred by our very toasty experience the previous day. It’s called Phare des Baleines (lighthouse of the whales) and in the tat shop outside there was a whale shaped butter dish that I came very close to buying. But I resisted on the grounds that I have two butter dishes already and how many does one person need but still I slightly lament it. It was nice in the standard lighthouse way.

It boasts a view of an older lighthouse which is novel.

We had lunch just beside the lighthouse. A touristy spot and rather slow but not unpleasant.

After a swing by the supermarket we went back to the house to find that there was a power cut which meant that we couldn’t put the blinds up. Sub optimal.

As we were sitting in the gloom, I managed to chip a tooth. Alas. However, due to my depressingly close involvement with my dentist, I had an appointment already booked for the week we returned. Nonetheless unsatisfactory.

I am pleased to report that the electricity came back reasonably quickly and we were able to get out again. We had a lovely cycle into town and a walk around. It was a really charming little town.

Oysters are big locally and are available 24 hours but I am not sure getting oysters from a dispenser can ever be a good idea.

We got slightly lost on the way home and enjoyed an exciting cycle through the forest. It’s all an adventure. I’m not sure whether it was there or elsewhere that a daring mosquito bit me just below my eyebrow. You have to take your chances, if you holiday in a marsh, I guess.

In other disappointing electricity news, our solar power app (very exciting material as you will know, if you have ever been bored by someone who has had solar panels installed) failed. We rang home where my brother and middle child were living together in a sort of odd couple arrangement but nothing untoward seemed to have happened (I can exclusively reveal that we rebooted the internet when we got home and it all worked fine again).

Tuesday August 26, 2025

This is the unwelcome sight that greeted your correspondent in the morning. Tactless members of the family said that they didn’t notice anything. I felt like Quasimodo (“I’m ugly, ugly“). It was quite sore too. Happily, I was in a location where wearing sunglasses was appropriate. In case you didn’t know (and why would you?), the symbol of the island is a donkey in trousers – traditionally, they put donkeys legs in trousers to stop them being bitten by mosquitos. I have to say that I shouldn’t have been surprised by my mosquito issues, the signs were there.

Mr. Waffle and I went out to breakfast overlooking the harbour which was very nice and I was able to observe the English middle classes at play from behind my dark glasses. Regular readers will know how much I like to complain so I enjoyed telling Mr. Waffle about my sore thumb until he observed that I was “the only person ever to have got gamer’s thumb from doing online Sudoku”. A very depressing and entirely accurate insight.

After lunch we cycled to Ste Marie de Ré and had a lovely swim at Montamer. The tide was extremely far out when we arrived but came in super quickly. I went in first and I came out and warned the others about the fast-advancing tide. The beach was kind of stony but Mr. Waffle parked his shoes on rocks a good way from the shore. Nevertheless when he emerged, a good Samaritan was holding them up in the air having rescued them from the advancing tide. Exciting stuff. We had a restorative cup of tea and ice cream in the town before heading back. The town was on the opposite wilder side of the island and I decided that all the nice towns were those facing the mainland built around harbours based on…nothing. Great was my rage later in the holiday when I discovered that one of the “plus beaux villages de France” was only a little way further up the coast. Next time.

We had dinner at home; something eggy for me. The hens were busy producing 2-3 delicious fresh eggs a day but I was the only one in the house who liked eggs. A challenging time. Have a view of the garden with the hen run in the distance.

Wednesday August 27, 2005

Michael peered at my eye in the morning and said, “If I saw this, I would never think it was a mosquito bite; I would think it was some kind of deformity.” Thank you, Michael, great news.

Another breakfast behind dark glasses in la Flotte before cycling to the ruined abbey. It was mercifully a bit overcast. The abbey was quite like a lot of abbeys we have at home but you know, grand.

We went on to the Fort de La Prée which, as a tourist offering I would say is still in development. Vauban who did the more impressive fortifications in St Martin apparently called it a “fort d’operette” which is perhaps a bit harsh but you get the picture.

Cycling around the island, it is really very beautiful and all of the buildings are tasteful and similarly decorated. It is apparently “hyper reglementé”. I noticed that there were no solar panels and apparently they have only very recently been permitted. Shutter shades are all the same. I saw this in the market showing the range of acceptable colours.

I am a bit ambivalent about this. On one level it is lovely and really delightful but it feels a bit constrained and unreal. Weirdly, it reminded me of the Lake District in England where strong planning rules are also a feature. I mean, what we have in Ireland (bungalow blitz anyone?) is not good but I am not sure that this is the solution either.

Michael and I had a quiet afternoon at the house while Mr. Waffle spent two hours looking for a place to charge for the car. The Lidl had two slots but one was full and one broken; the Intermarché’s slots were broken (he asked inside, do you know how desperate he must have been to actually ask?) and the chargers in the Leclerc wouldn’t fit the car. He signed up to the Chargemap app. They took €14 from him and gave him the unwelcome information that the physical card was now on its way to Dublin. He came home muttering furiously that maybe another app was the solution. Disturbing all round.

The child in Dublin repeating an exam under sub-optimal conditions (Uncle – agent of chaos in the house, painter in the house, parents away) did fine. Relief all round.

Mr. Waffle disappeared for another 2 hours. He had a new app and he found somewhere to charge it but the car charged very slowly; only a couple of percent over 30 minutes. Honestly it was not going well.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Sibling Content

21 August, 2025
Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Siblings

My brother was going to stay Sunday night as he was going to the Oasis gig but then cancelled as the tickets were too dear. I would say that most people had probably secured their tickets sometime in advance of the Friday before the gig. As the children say, “He’s not a tame uncle, you know.” He’s full of surprises. However, he met one of them for lunch recently and parted with €50 as well which was gratefully received by the indigent student fund trustees. Herself is scheduled to meet him in September when she returns from her extensive holidaying. She’s a regular dining companion. I can’t help being concerned that it may all beggar my brother.

My sister hasn’t been in Dublin for ages and the last time she was up it lashed rain and our only outing was a rather grim stroll around the block. However, we have been down to Cork for her not fifty yet party. I have to say, it was pretty good. She had a pizza van parked in the driveway; a magician; a children’s entertainer; and herself and Michael were scheduled to give a historical tour of the area but had to extemporize and give the talk inside instead because of the phenomenal rain which, arguably, follows her around. Still, a pretty impressive logistical feat. I contributed my mite by digging up baby pictures for her to hang up around the house. I think it’s fair to say that, notwithstanding the challenging climactic conditions, a good time was had by all.

It was the weekend of the all-Ireland hurling final and Cork were favourites to win. The city was festooned in flags. Consider this motorway bridge on the approach to the city.

On our drive back to Dublin, I said, “Will we listen to this hurling match on the radio?” I have literally never watched a full championship match in my life, let alone listened to one on the radio but my curiosity was piqued after our Cork flag experience.

GAA commentators are known for their quirky style so I was only mildly surprised to hear the commentator opening with the line, “Belinda Carlisle said ‘heaven is a place on earth’ and today she could be talking about Croke Park”. Anyway, to cut a long story short Cork were winning comfortably in the first half and then utterly collapsed in the second allowing Tipperary to win. It was such a collapse that it was noteworthy in all kind of ways. It spawned a series of headlines and none of them flattering to Cork. Apparently there is a phrase indicative of solid contentment in rural Tipp – “the hay saved and Cork bet”. Well they delivered on that on the day.

It was a bad day for the bookies; for the man who got “Cork All-Ireland Senior Hurling Champions 2025” tattooed on his arm; and for the woman who decided that now might finally be a good time to take an interest in Gaelic games.

A Project

25 June, 2025
Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Siblings, Twins, Youngest Child

We have a lot of books. I was lamenting my book overload problems and commenting on my long term plan to get built in bookshelves in the dining room (v long term – about 12 years at that point) to my sister and she pointed out that her friend is married to a carpenter and perhaps he could do it for us. I seized the day.

We began decanting books from the existing bookshelves on May 10. This was exhausting. My sister commented when she saw the piles “bookshelves are a really good storage system”. She is obsessed with storage systems but she wasn’t wrong.

Will we just have a look at that again from another angle?

It’s not like we hadn’t selected any books to give away but I would have to concede that progress on that front was pretty poor. I note from inspection of the picture below that the giving away pile initially included “A Town like Alice” which I subsequently rescued. Not a huge success.

Then we had to move the existing bookshelves out of the room. We moved them upstairs. Some of them we repurposed but some we needed to give away. I placed ads on various “things to give away” websites. We had some interest but not as much as I would have hoped and, indeed, one bookshelf that I want to lose remains squatting upstairs.

As always when dealing with the public, one is surprised by people’s unreliability and how little people take in of what one writes. One young woman turned up with a granny shopping trolled to take away a set of bookshelves and seemed disappointed when shelves which I had specified in the ad needed a van to take away would not fit. A number of people believed that the shelves could be dismounted but found as I had specified in the ad that they could not (Habitat glued them as well as screwed them together, I don’t know why but they were pretty sturdy). Two young Latin American women (one from Chile, one from Mexico – we had a chance to chat later) turned up at 11 at night to collect a smaller (but still heavy) bookshelf and proposed to carry it to their accommodation about a mile away; they could barely carry it down the stairs with our help. I drove them home with the shelf in the boot for which I will doubtless get my reward in heaven.

The desk where I compose this deathless prose was removed also. That’s why there hasn’t been deathless prose for a while. I do not enjoy typing on the phone.

We also removed from the room a Victorian pod table (this link shows the kind of table which I note was for auction; was in better condition than mine and was cheaper than my repair estimate, we move on) which used to belong to my Nana and which, sadly, lists. Having moved it out along with the vast stock of photographs which used to sit on it, I bit the bullet and called an antique furniture restorer to come and have a look at it. Ages for him to come. Ages for him to send the estimate (“I’m on holidays at the moment, text me again in 10 days”) and within 20 minutes of him sending the estimate, I got a contrite call from Mr. Waffle telling me he had broken the leg off the table while trying to put it back together. I nearly cried. In the end, you will be relieved to hear, the restorer said that his estimate was already so vast that fixing the leg made no difference; he didn’t put it in those terms but that was the implication. When can he collect it you wonder? “Text me after the weekend and we’ll agree a date.” Of course.

John the carpenter made the shelves in the room. He looks after the children at home so he could only work 10-2 (after dropping the children to school and before picking them up). It took a good while but it was an excellent job. He left us for a well-earned family holiday on May 27 (and returned after the holiday to fix a number of other items around the house which had been bothering me for some time and which I had raised with him during his time with us – honestly my marriage to Mr. Waffle united the two unhandiest people of our generation).

Then nothing happened until June 11 when the painter was finally free to come. Based on progress on day 1, I thought this would be a quick job.

Well that was stupid of me.

The painter left us on June 18 and then the paint had to dry. Finally, on Sunday June 22 we began putting books back on the shelves. It certainly felt like the longest day of the year. Our relationship nearly broke down over the categorisation of memoir and biography. I wanted a separate historic biography section but it was not to be and now Bruce Springsteen is beside George III and if you think that’s right, you’re wrong. My legs have only just recovered from climbing up and down the ladder.

We did find some more books to give away with great reluctance. Our selection of coffee table books about Brussels, for example, took a bit of a hit.

I said to Mr. Waffle, “This feels like Swedish death cleaning”. “Don’t worry,” said he, “there’s still a huge selection of 90s novels for the children to throw out after we die.” It is true that 90s novels feature strongly as those were formative years for us and also, now we are much more likely to borrow from the library than to buy a book. I also have a huge collection of very heavy art books which I have not had access to in years. Quite excited to see these and also a bit nervous that the shelves will not bear their weight. But behold the finished product.

My brother came to stay last night and I made him admire the bookshelves. He had to admire because they are admirable and I made him. “But why do you need so many books?” he asked, spoiling for a fight. “You will never read them all again,” he said pointing out the blindingly obvious. “Well, they’re to show people how clever we are as well,” I said. “In that case, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ by Stieg Larsson isn’t doing a lot of heavy lifting.” Unanswerable.

I could honestly do with fewer tradesmen in the house after our epic bookshelf project but earlier in the summer we met a solar panel salesman. Our neighbour had got them and we went with the same crowd. The salesman made it sound amazing and pain free. It has not been amazing and pain free. Among the elements not covered by the salesman but articulated by the engineer who came some weeks later in the salesman’s wake was that we would need to get our own electrician to link the hot water tank in the utility room to the fuse box beside the hall door (surely there was already some link?). Anyway the electrician came and said we would need to get rid of all of our under stairs shelves to fit the wires; next day John the carpenter came back, talked to the electrician and took everything out (all the contents of under the stairs are now in the utility room, thanks for asking) and the electrician is going to come back on Friday. And I am hoping John who, I suspect, is regretting that he ever came near us, will come and put them back next week. And we still haven’t actually got the solar panels. More on this story as it develops.

Michael has taken to singing this song around the house.

The Eye of the Beholder

29 April, 2025
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Reading etc., Siblings

I was at the Hugh Lane Gallery recently. Francis Bacon’s studio has been reconstructed in the Gallery; and has been a big attraction there for many years. It was brought piece by piece from his London attic and re-instated in the Hugh Lane. I am not a big Francis Bacon fan but it is interesting. I took a photo and sent it in to the family group chat captioning it “My worst nightmare”. A hilarious line reflecting on the artist’s studio and my own slight obsession with tidiness. Like many of these hilarious lines of mine, it went unread in the family group chat except by my saintly husband who, on first glance thought it was actually my parents’ attic in its glory days (it has now been tamed by my sister in a project stretching over many months). I have to say, actually, it does resemble the attic except there is marginally more floor space in the studio.

Whatever Works

28 April, 2025
Posted in: Princess, Siblings

When herself came home over Easter, she found her copy of a VERY LONG work on Spinoza on the floor beside her bed. She had to give a talk on Spinoza once (the reason for this eludes me) and this book was part of the spoils of that adventure, I think. She was a bit surprised that the book was on the floor as she felt she would not have left it there but she thought no more about it until she met my brother for lunch.

He occasionally stays with us in Dublin and sleeps in her room. It transpired that when he was here, he had been reading Spinoza. We were all a bit surprised; it just didn’t seem his kind of thing. She clarified. He had been using it as an aid to sleep. He was still at the early stages but he found it exceptionally soporific. He pointed out to herself that the preface indicates that it is good for the student, the lecturer, the casual reader and the in-depth scholar. It was, however, his freely expressed view that it was good for none of these people. Let us trust that the author can be philosophical about the additional off label use (as it were) to which his scholarly work is being put.