belgianwaffle

Travel

Offline in East Cork


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

Did you miss me? No, don’t tell me, it’s probably better for both of us, if I don’t know. I have been at my friends’ house in East Cork for the week bonding with my children. No television and no computer. It was surprisingly pleasant. And the good news is that I have prepared for you a blow by blow description of our trip. Go on, admit it, you’re delighted.

Saturday

We drove to Cork in the morning. I know I am becoming somewhat tedious on the subject of the new road to Cork but as a child I spent a minimum of 6 hours on the road to Dublin with my parents and now it can easily be done door to door in three hours. So we were able to have lunch in my parents’ house and then spend the afternoon in Garryvoe. Quite amazing.

On the road from Cork to Garryvoe there is a lake with swans. Mr. Waffle said to the children, “Regardez, des cynges!” “What kind of signs?” asked Daniel. I’m not at all sure this French lark is going as well as I hoped it would. “Is signes not the French for signs?” I asked. “No,” he said, “road signs are panneaux.” The French, they torture me because they can.

The children were delighted to see the beach and promptly flung themselves into the water fully dressed. Fortunately, our friends’ house is right beside the beach and we were able to drip home without suffering from hypothermia.

003” Beach

That evening, I taught herself how to make breakfast for her brothers in the hope that this might allow me to stay in bed a little longer. This was only moderately successful as the excitement her task generated meant that she was bouncing around until 11.30 that night and up again at 6.30 asking anxiously whether it was time to make breakfast.

Meanwhile, Daniel had gone into our bedroom to be alone. When we went up to bed we discovered that he had put to good use the key to the door and locked himself in. We began by whispering and ended by shouting and banging the door but he slept on oblivious. The Princess giggled hysterically and her father became rather annoyed and took himself off to Daniel’s bed. Using my Enid Blyton lore I stuck a piece of paper under the door and wiggled the key in the lock with a corkscrew. The key landed with a thud. Unfortunately, even, if it had landed on the paper (which it did not) it was too wide to fit under the door. Fortunately, every room in our friends’ house had a key and all of the locks turned out to be the same so all was well. The next day, we put all the keys on top of the doors.

Sunday

Mr. Waffle got the train back to Dublin at lunch time and after dropping him to the station in Cork, the children and I visited my parents. I visited a cousin in hospital and we then retired to our East Cork fastness and out to the beach. The Princess was, by now, on Harry Potter book 5 and she went to bed with it. I was summoned to her room at 11 to look for Voldemort under the covers. She came to sleep with me.

Monday

I realised that part of the reason I am never normally cross with the children is that Mr. Waffle does it for me.

My plan for the day is that we will go to the beach until 11 and then on to the fleshpots of Leahy’s fun farm. A plan calculated to bring joy to the hearts of small children one would think. But no.

We have a very frustrating morning. It is a beautiful day and I try, unavailingly, to persuade the children to come to the beach. No, no, they want to stay at the house. The Princess has started on HP book 6. At 10.30, they fancy a snack. I lure them outside by promising to buy them ice cream in the shop. I plan to make it a brief stop on the way to the farm. We go to the shop. Do they have to have ice cream? I suppose not. The Princess fills a bag with what I used to call “penny sweets”, I’m not quite sure what they are now, cents sweets? I make her put half of them back. She is unhappy. We buy buckets (for reasons which are unclear we appear to have packed only one leaking bucket from the sample of hundreds available at home) and a spade (one of our three has been carried away by the tide). I end up spending 17 euros on what was a trip out for an ice cream. No one says thank you. I am unhappy. General peevishness.

It is not yet time to go to the fun farm according to my, suddenly dictatorial, timetable. We go to the playground near the beach. The weather is uncharacteristically warm and sunny. I mop up ice cream. I apply sun cream. I discover, to my horror, there is only enough in the bottle to cover two children. I suggest that we go to the shop to buy more. Nobody will come with me. I consider leaving them and nipping across to the shop on my own. I decide that I can’t, the boys are only 4, after all and herself is really too small to mind them. I sit in blazing sunshine and pray for rain. It does not rain. I try to assert myself again and fail. Michael (the un sunblocked child) assures me that he will not burn. This is unconvincing as his skin is lily white and he cannot prevent sunburn by will power alone.

The Princess suggests that we test out the new buckets on the adjoining beach for a moment. Weakly, I agree, “but only for a minute”. Once they get on the beach, the children are delighted. I am very bitter that I did not assert myself earlier in the morning and force them to come out. I sit there feeling v. warm (no sunscreen for me either) and praying for rain. It does not rain. The children are having a fantastic time. I am fretting about sunscreen. They have waded into water to their waists despite my begging them not to and will need to go home and change before we go anywhere. It’s time to go home, I say sternly. They ignore me. I sit there getting crosser and crosser. To add to my chagrin, another mother is skipping in and out of the waves with her small son clearly having a fantastic time as I sit on the rocks glaring at my disobedient offspring like some kind of archetypal malevolent step-mother.

Eventually, I lose my temper and announce enough is enough we are leaving. I march towards the car in a towering fury. No one follows. Michael is not budging, he wants to make a sandcastle in his new bucket. The buckets are those square ones with turrets and he is diligently filling it with wet sand from under the water. He ignores my angrily hissed instruction that it will not come out and keeps filling. I give up and angrily help him fill it to the brim. We turn it over, it does not work, he howls. I march off foaming at the mouth with him trotting behind me in tears. I roar at the other two to follow. Daniel, who despite his own temper is actually made very miserable when either of his parents are cross, starts to cry and say “Sorry, sorry, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault.” I am impervious and as I march towards the car with my gloomy troops, I begin to enumerate their faults. “I am in charge,” I announce “and, in future, when I say jump, you say how high?” They are unfamiliar with this particular cliché and my temper is not improved by having to explain what it means. The Princess says coldly, “There’s no need to shout.” A triumph of parenting.

Despite this, frankly inauspicious, start to the day, the trip to the fun farm is a huge success. We arrive at 12 and do not leave until 6. Lunch appears something of a low point as the children tuck into chips and nuggets and I have an uninspired toasted special. In fact, had I known at that point how low my standards on the children’s food would slip later in the week, I would have been a great deal more relaxed.

024 Snake

018 Tractor

At the same time as we were there, there was a bunch of children from the Chernobyl children’s project. They are let in free every year, apparently as part of Mr. Leahy’s programme of corporate responsibility (though I really doubt that he would put it in these terms himself – I have met him both times we were there and he looks and acts exactly like a Cork farmer in his 60s). This is part of a project where Irish families take in children from Chernobyl for a fortnight’s holiday every summer. I couldn’t imagine doing this myself but I really admire families who do year after year. Most of the children seemed fine although there were a couple who were clearly mentally handicapped and I think many of the others probably have nasty, less visible, problems.

Tuesday

We went to the Observatory after a slightly annoying tour of Cork suburbs (only 15 minutes from the ringroad said the brochure, it omitted to add if you know where you are going as signs are few and far between). The children were pleased and I found myself pondering our infinitesimal smallness in the face of the cosmos. A success then until Daniel wet his trousers because he was too absorbed in moving species to their correct habitat to go to the toilet. They all sent a message to space. Michael has been driving me demented since asking where exactly his message is now. Messages travel at the speed of light and the interface helpfully indicated that it would take 1.2 seconds to reach the moon, a month to reach Jupiter and so on. Had I known I was going to be cross-questioned on this for days, I would have paid a lot more attention at the time. Anyhow, it’s going to take 122 years before it reaches its ultimate destination so I have been quoting that at him.

I deposited the children at my parents’ house and went into town to buy trousers, underpants and socks for Daniel feeling that he couldn’t stay naked from the waist down. I don’t much like out of town shopping centres and I prefer to shop in the city centre. As I have always lived near town, I usually walk. On this particular day, it was raining and I drove. I now understand why city traders complain about lack of parking. The whole thing was a nightmare. The city fathers in their wisdom had closed Patrick Street north bound, chosen to relay cobbles on the Coal Quay and have not yet repaired the wall near the Mercy hospital where the river overflowed its banks late last year leading to a lengthy diversion. Cork is small but it was nearly three hours after driving in that I staggered back to my parents’ determined never to repeat the experience. The authorities have been plugging the fact that Cork is one of the Lonely Planet’s top 10 places to visit in 2010 but, clearly, the Lonely Planet people left their cars at home.

I’m exhausted and it’s only Tuesday. More tomorrow, if we’re all feeling strong.

In Tents


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Princess, Siblings, Travel

The Princess and I graced Cork with our presence this weekend. We travelled down on the, very expensive, train and came back by the newly constructed motorway. Well actually, only a stretch of motorway was newly constructed but it completes the Cork to Dublin motorway. The journey, door to door, took us under two and a half hours. When I was young, it used to be easily five hours. As a friend once said to me – whatever they take away from us, they can’t take back our roads.

It’s always nice to go to Cork. I settled into the old familiar routine, leaving the doors open to irritate my father, refusing to let my mother feed sweets to my daughter, stealing my sister’s moisturiser at bed time – do you think she left a tube of leather shoe cream on top of her make-up case on purpose? It’s only harmful, if ingested, but, frankly, it is also sub-optimal when applied to the face.

The Princess and I went to the market to buy dinner and were charged with getting a rack of lamb from Ashley. I was mildly pleased that though I haven’t been there for 20 odd years, he still recognised me and when I consulted with my mother on the telephone, he beckoned me and said “tell her that I have a leg of lamb for €25”. “Are you still in Belgium?” he asked. “No, I’m in Dublin.” He shook his head sadly at the error of my ways. I ran into our fishmonger’s son last time I was back. They had been going for something like 100 years but when Mr. Sheehan retired, none of the children fancied taking it on. There’s a parable there somewhere but I think it needs an Irish Times columnist to develop it fully.

We went into the Crawford for a look at the sculpture and a cup of tea. I made her walk around the plaster cast of the Torso Belvedere but she was much more taken with a 19th century statue of Hibernia. I once attended a lecture on sculpture and the lecturer said two things which have given me much pleasure and I will now share them with lucky old you: 1. sculpture is three dimensional, always walk around a sculpture to appreciate it fully, 2. sculpture is heavy and often, the sculptor will have to put something behind the subject’s legs so that it is not too heavy to stay upright. At its most uninspiring this is a tree stump or column – visible in this statue on Dublin’s main street but it can also lead to more exciting flights of fancy. On this occasion, our reward for circling Hibernia was to find her dog’s tail sticking out the back of her chair.

When we got to the cafe, I felt peckish. There was a full Irish breakfast on the menu. I ate it. I regretted this. No sooner did we get back to my parents’ house than herself announced to everyone that her mother had eaten more than she had ever seen consumed in one sitting and proceded to enumerate the full contents of the Irish breakfast. This led to all manner of anxious questions. “Was I not being fed properly at home?” “Was there something that should be bought in anticipation of my arrival?” So impressed was my child with my enormous intake that she also reported it to her father when she returned to Dublin the following evening. I feel like some kind of circus performer.

On Sunday afternoon, we were scheduled to drive back to Dublin with my sister. The question of my little family inheriting the parents’ tent has been canvassed (ha ha) over the past number of months. On Sunday afternoon, my sister said, “You should take the tent, it’s now or never.” Why did I believe her? Bits of the tent were everywhere – in one wardrobe, on top of another and – insert drumroll – in the attic. As I stood at the top of the attic ladder holding a bunch of poles while my mother’s and my daughter’s anxious faces peered up at me, I knew that I had made a mistake. My sister had disappeared to deal with some particularly intractable problem related to the start-up menu on the parents’ computer. Mercifully, she came and rescued the poles, only slightly hindered by her niece who had lodged herself on the bottom steps of the ladder. As well as the tent, my mother pressed upon me two sleeping bags and two fold up beds. There was a lot more kit that I wouldn’t let her give me. Partly because my sister’s car is a Golf and there is only so much camping equipment you can fit in a small VW. Partly because I worried my husband would kill me. I then realised that I had no idea what the tent looked like up. My mother suggested that we should pitch it in the garden so that I could see. Two principal objections presented themselves: 1. It was raining; 2 I was hoping to get home before nightfall. My father searched his files for instructions and though I saw directions for putting up the trailer tent over his shoulder (sold ca. 1995 – a real pain to put up), but of the instructions for the, I am assured, 6 man tent I took away yesterday, there was no sign. The only information I have is that the two longer poles go into the ground first and after that it is all intuitive. Mr. Waffle and I are going to try pitching it next weekend and I fear that it will not prove intuitive as rain threatens and three small children ask repeatedly “Can I help?” My mother who, in her heart of hearts, cannot believe that I am a grown-up, said to me anxiously “You won’t be foolish enough to put it away wet, will you?”

And in other news, the cat had her adolescent health check. Yes, really. The vet says that the cat needs to go on a diet. She is not going to enjoy that.

Post-feminist volcano


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Travel

My loving husband was in Luxembourg (glamourous foreign destination revealed) for work. Ireland continues to be cut off from the rest of the world by the machinations of the unpronounceable Icelandic volcano. So, my loving husband flew to London from Luxembourg this afternoon, is currently standing on a train from London to Wales and later tonight will be getting the night boat which will bring him into Dublin at 6.55 fresh as a daisy. Irish airspace will reopen at 4.00 am.

The reason for the planes, boats and automobiles extravaganza is that the children are off school this week and I minded them today and yesterday and it is Mr. Waffle’s job to mind them on Thursday and Friday while I return to work. I pointed out that he would be in no condition to mind them tomorrow morning and I am putting off my return to the afternoon. I asked him with some asperity whether it would not have been better to stay in Luxembourg rather than martyr himself in this way. He pointed out straight back that he rang me this morning when the decision had to be made and I didn’t answer my phone. This is, alas, my “especial foible” so I retired in disorder.

There is a point to this narrative so bear with me. It illustrates my husband’s highly developed sense of duty. This sense of duty combined with an excellent upbringing and, I am sure, his own innate virtue, means that my husband and I share all domestic tasks: child minding, cooking, cleaning, laundry, bill paying, you name it, we share it. I have absolutely no complaints. But here’s the thing. We’re both stretched and exhausted. Yes, I am sure that it would be worse for me, if my husband were useless, but it’s no bed of roses either. I say this in some distress for I often see things to the effect that when men do their share, it will be all better. Well, based on my experience, it won’t be as much better as people seem to think. I suppose you can dispose of those tedious arguments people seem to have about laundry and hoovering and use the extra time to watch BBC 4. The traditional model works well for the working spouse (almost always the husband). The two parents working model where all the work is shared is exhausting for both parents. I can’t tell you how much it annoys me to have to concede this but there it is.

And today, the children and I went to the newly re-opened Natural History Museum which we all enjoyed very much. I thought you would like to know. If you ever find yourself at a loose end in Dublin with small children, I recommend it.

The Athens of the North


Posted in: Travel, Work

I was in Edinburgh for work last week. I was unenthused by the prospect. I had been before and I retained only a vague memory of a dull castle.

When I was 17, I went to Scotland to visit a friend I had made on a camping holiday in France the previous year. We had both taken part in the Miss Campsite competition and come first and second (modesty forbids me telling you who won, ahem) and this formed a bond. There was no internet in those days and we had to keep our friendship alive through letters and the very odd phone call and, most thrillingly, a visit to Glasgow. Her parents nobly drove us to Edinburgh for the day so that I could experience the excitement of Scotland’s capital. I retain much firmer memories of driving around the suburbs of Glasgow with Alison’s schoolmates (boys, cars!). We stayed in touch for many years but finally lost contact around the time she got permanent employment as an engineer with the local council (she used to make mini-roundabouts and we didn’t have any mini-roundabouts in Ireland at the time and my incomprehending indifference was the beginning of the end).

I arrived into Edinburgh late and flicked on the telly in the rather nasty hotel. I found myself watching a programme in Gallic on breeding sheep on remote Scottish islands. I was rivetted. Not by the sheep rearing but by the language. Gallic is very similar to Irish. It was sub-titled which was a big help to my comprehension but I would imagine that a fluent Irish speaker would have very little difficulty in understanding the spoken language and even I could tell that almost all the words were the same. The pronounciation was weird though, it was like hearing a Norwegian speaking Irish, that same Nordic intonation.

My conference the following day finished at 4 on the dot (in my experience entirely unprecedented in the world of conferences) and I sailed out to take the air. My sailing was considerably impeded by the road works associated with the creation of a tram line. The local, who was my informant on these matters muttered darkly about it. “It was just as bad in Dublin when we got our tram lines,” I said sympathetically. “Aye, but you got twice as many as we’re going to get.” “You’re only getting one tram line?” “Aye,” he said dourly (I was, obviously, delighted to meet a stereotypically dour Scot).

I made my way to Charlotte Square passing several school boys wearing short pants (really, short pants? and I bet it gets chilly in Edinburgh in Winter) and bright red knee socks picking up the red piping on their blazers. Very odd.

Charlotte Square is a beautiful Georgian Square designed by Robert Adam (who was from Edinburgh, who knew? alright, alright all of you) and one of the houses is open to the public. Normally the children accompany me on this kind of expedition and the relief of not having to constantly stop them running, touching or shouting was enormous: as you know, it is part of every child’s upbringing to be tortured by parents in this way. I was able to consider the printed leaflet in each room, chat to the nice elderly lady volunteers guarding each room and, generally entertain myself. I was able to make a comparison with more or less contemporaneous houses in Ireland as, the previous weekend, I had visited a number of houses in Merrion Square which was enjoying an open day. The latter had been rendered hideous by the children. It’s hard to know which was worse, the screaming and running about at the Irish Architectural Archive, having to carry Daniel from the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland howling, red-faced and rigid with anger because he had not been allowed to sign the visitor book, or Michael gaining access to the water cooler on the second floor of the NUI building and promptly flooding the stairs and soaking himself and then trailing squelchily out of the building asking loudly to be allowed to take off his trousers. No such unpleasantness marred my visit to Charlotte Square and that of the genteel English people who seemed to constitute the bulk of the other visitors.

After that I walked over to the Old Town (challenging with the tram works) in a mood of increasing astonishment. Edinburgh is amazingly, jaw-droppingly beautiful. Almost every building in the centre is made with the same yellow stone and nothing much appears to have been built since 1900. The effect is extraordinary. I walked round entranced. The Royal Mile was described by the frank guidebook in my hotel as awash with tartan tat and, I suppose, that is true, but it is also full of beautiful buildings, fascinating sights and the whole thing is wonderfully harmonious. However, one cannot live on pre-20th century urban architecture and I was getting peckish.

A friend whose husband is from Edinburgh advised me to eat at the Witchery but, alas, they were too full to take me at 6.30 (where oh where is this recession of which they speak). Fortunately, I got the last seat in its sister restaurant, The Tower, which is at the top of one of the only 20th century buildings in Edinburgh: a museum which was closed but looked a bit dull based on what one is allowed to see on the way to the restaurant. The restaurant was full of locals which is always very gratifying for the tourist. I had lovely views out over the city as the sun set and I ate my sardines.

I took myself off to the airport absolutely delighted and quite astonished. How is it that I had remembered none of this loveliness from my last visit? It appears that at 17, I was as self-absorbed as my children are at 3 and 6. You would think that the genetic code might have better things to do.

Exciting neighbourhood


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Siblings, Travel

My brother, driving me home from dinner, said “I know you’re a great believer in the classless society and all that but, for the sake of the kids, would you not move somewhere more normal?”

It’s not rough here, it’s just very…urban.

Christmas round-up


Posted in: Family, Travel

Did you miss me?  I have been spending the Christmas season with my family. Christmas Day passed off peacefully; everyone was good, everyone liked the presents offered by kind benevolent Santa Claus and generous relatives.

We drove down to Cork on the 27th.  I haven’t driven that road in nearly 10 years.  It’s improved a lot.  True, the boom may be gone but they can’t take our roads away from us.  Cork was peaceful and presentful.  The children did not disgrace us in the presence of my relatives.

My father told a story of the joys of living in a small city.  When my father was a little boy, a barber used to come to the house to trim his grandfather’s beard (a man who was born during the famine, fancy that).  My father emigrated to Britain and when he came back to Cork several years later, he went to the barber on the Western Road who had trimmed his grandfather’s beard.  As he walked in the door, the barber instantly said, “Master Dan!”

As is traditional when we visit Cork at Christmas, we took the children to Fota wildlife park.  As is equally traditional the parents enjoyed it and the children did not.  Matters began inauspiciously with the Princess announcing that she hated animals.  We ignored this unhelpful intervention and tried to jolly her along.  Once we got there, Michael and Daniel joined in the revolt.  About half way around, Daniel stopped moving and stood in the path with his arms folded.  “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” “I am displeased,” he said without further explanation.  Anxious to avoid one of his spectacular temper tantrums (one night before Christmas he rampaged around the house naked – he did not wish to put on his pyjamas – and screaming for a significant length of time; he is the most empathic of my children but when he loses his temper the consequences are terrifying)  we carried him the rest of the way.  Michael was far more articulate about his concerns.  He started to cry in a nasty petulant kind of way.  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”  He ticked his grievances off on his tiny fingers, “one, I am frozen, two I am tired, three I am sick, four I want to do a wee.”  We carried him the rest of the way too.  The Princess trailed along behind whining that nobody was carrying her and NO she did not want to see the cheetahs.  At one point she leaned her head on a fence and a monkey ran over it.  This piqued her interest for a moment and she asked me belligerently whether I had got a photo.  Needless to say, I had not.  Not 43 euros worth of unalloyed pleasure then.

We drove back to Dublin on New Year’s Eve, blithely informing the aghast Cork relatives that we would be back shortly.  I went to the supermarket and bought some food and a half bottle of Tesco’s special champagne to see in the new year.  Oh yes, it’s all glamour here.

We took the children to see Fossett’s circus (founded 1888 apparently and certainly around when I was a little girl) which I enjoyed very much putting my hands over my eyes for the cage of death which Mr. Waffle and the children were very blasé about.

Tomorrow is the last day of Christmas, alas.  We have our memories and a picture of the children with Santa which we stuck on our calendar.

Me (indulgently): Look it’s you and the boys with Santa.

Her: No, it’s us with a random stranger.

Sometimes that child is too smart for her own good.

Happy new year.