Daniel: Do we have any raspberry jam?
Me: No but there’s some plum jam in a jar marked tumeric in the fridge.
NaBloPoMo
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.
“Life is made up of meetings and partings; that is the way of it”*
The weekend before last, Mr. Waffle’s side of the family went away to Wicklow overnight; it was partly because his father’s anniversary was coming up and partly because his sister and her husband and daughter were going back to live in London after a year living in Ireland.
We stayed in Ballyknocken where we have been before. There were 12 of us in total and we had dinner and breakfast (a triumph) and a walk around Mount Usher gardens. There was some talk about October which I generally regard as a gloomy month but is apparently very popular with others. Who knew? It’s so wet and miserable and getting darker but they were all “oh no crisp autumn days” etc. I blame the Americans.
Notwithstanding some debate on October and its merits, it was all very pleasant. It made me a bit sad though because I couldn’t help remembering the last time we were there when Mr. Waffle’s parents had been with us and in much better nick although going downhill. I was also sad because his sister and her family were going back to London and this was a farewell weekend for them. It has been lovely having them in Dublin for the past year – they went back to London last weekend. Their daughter was 2 in June and she has, just about, got used to us and is willing to wander around the house without a parent to chaperone her and I feel all that work will be wasted and we will have to start from scratch next time we see her. I am hoping to Skype her with the cat to keep us fresh in her mind; the cat is very much her favourite member of this family. Ironically, the cat is the only member of the family who is not a big fan of hers. Isn’t it always the way?
My sister-in-law is keen to book something for us all in Kerry next summer and London isn’t so far, I suppose, so could be worse.
*From that classic “A Muppet Christmas Carol” not actually said by Dickens. His loss.
Funeral Season
My father’s first cousin died a couple of weeks ago. She was always very beautiful and quite exotic boasting a tan when everyone else in Ireland was ghostly white. She married a rich man and they seemed to lead extraordinarily glamorous lives even though they lived in Kerry which does not lend itself to glamour. My brother and sister dutifully went to the funeral and met lots of my father’s cousins and reminisced and brought back useful quantities of family gossip. It wasn’t a shock (in fact about a year ago, I had firmly and definitively told my aunt that this woman was dead despite her distinct – and, as it turns out, correct – doubts on that point, so, you know, definitely not a shock) but I do feel that I am certainly edging closer to the front of the church.
#Andshecycles
The other morning I was cycling in to work and I saw a schoolgirl cycling in front of me. I was delighted as you so rarely see schoolgirls cycling. The Princess’s friend E from primary school is one of the only girls, aside from herself, I know who cycles to school. I peered more closely at the child ahead of me and when I arrived at the lights, I confirmed that it was indeed E on the bike. She’s in her last year of secondary school now and while waiting for the lights to change we covered a variety of topics including how her parents and sisters were; what subjects she was studying for the Leaving Certificate and what she was hoping to study in college. I felt it was poor form of me to put off one of the few girls who cycle by introducing the additional danger of being interrogated by her friend’s mother to the already considerable dangers for cyclists on Dublin streets but what can I do, I am a middle aged mother of three and I live to torture teenagers with hard questions about their lives.
Upbeat
Michael wanted to read “1984”. Could I find it on our bookshelves? I could not. Not to worry, I took myself off to the library online to reserve a copy. The only one to hand in Dublin was a large print edition. I ordered it. It arrived. Do you think the people who designed the cover had ever read the book? I’m not sure whether it’s the comic sans font or the hot pink cover but probably not, I would say.
