I got a third pair of glasses at the weekend. I now have one pair for the car, one for the television and one pair to carry around in my handbag in case I get jumped by an unexpected powerpoint presentation.
Herself when asked for an opinion said, “Scary”. Hard to argue with that. I see big lenses are back. I can’t say I love the result on my small face. Oh well. Everyone will be too intent on following the presentations to notice.
I was in Cork over the weekend a couple of weeks ago. My brother announced that he had thrown out a couple of books from my parents’ house. “You shouldn’t have done that, I might have wanted them!” I cried. “Well,” he said, “You’ll just have to manage without Common Household Insects and Pests“.
My sister and I spent hours clearing out my mother’s wardrobe; you will recall that my mother died in June 2019 so this was overdue. It took a lot out of both of us.
The clothes were ok actually though why I thought that I would fit into a size 10 jacket – which I have now donated to herself – is beyond me. We found an enormous number of kid gloves in yellowish white all of which I have given to herself in the – possibly forlorn – hope that she will find these vintage items of interest.
There were furs which had belonged to both my grandmothers. In surprisingly good nick but, I don’t know, fashion may have moved on. Mr. Waffle believes there is something distinctly disturbing about the little paws on this scarf (intertwined dead rodents is how he describes the whole), hard to disagree. These were standard issue for everyone’s granny when I was a child but not so much anymore.
Herself says her fellow students are always leaving unlikely things at nightclubs and posting distraught messages to social media saying things like “I lost my Great Aunt Edith’s pearls at Wild Nights, has anyone seen them? My parents are very cross.” I can’t help feeling that her great grandmothers’ furs are more unlikely lost items than most and she might enjoy having them.
The wardrobe also contained a mountain of papers, most of which we threw out: old theatre programmes; dinner menus; conference programmes; receipts; hand made cards; bafflingly, an entire Cork Examiner from December 1985 kept for no discernible reason; photographs; a letter from my father from London; chequebook stubs; and postcards.
I kept a description of the dying days of our cat written by my mother which was surprisingly emotional for a hard headed farmer’s daughter. I also kept her insurance book issued from when she went to Freiburg as a postgraduate student in the 50s.
There were some lovely photos of her time as an international student in Freiburg as well as some from her graduation and UCC balls. We kept all the photos, of course and also all of her out of date passports.
I wonder where the people in this photo are now? My mother is in the middle of the front row. If you know any international students who spent 1957/58 in Freiburg, get in touch!
I kept three of her old cheque books from the 60s. Many of the stubs were not filled in – I regret to say an abiding failure of hers. There was one though for £600 to a garage in Farnborough and I think that must have been for her beloved mini cooper. I kept one of my homemade cards – there were many but I remembered the pain associated with creating this particularly elaborate one. There was a German calendar for 1958 and some unused postcards from Copenhagen, I kept those too.
There was what I can only assume was an unopened wedding present from 1967. We used them for breakfast the other morning. Good to see them getting a trip out after a wait of 54 and a half years.
It’s funny how few things remain of a whole life time, a whole beloved person; and I am conscious, not necessarily the things she would have chosen to have kept or be remembered by. That’s how it goes, I guess.
The boys got Foil Arms and Hogg tickets for Christmas. They went with their father and their sister just before Easter and pronounced it satisfactory.
For Easter Sunday we had extended family round and it was lovely. Sadly my nephew was off in Germany with a friend (I mean not sadly for him but sadly for us as it would have been nice to have had all the cousins together) but otherwise we were all there. As the 11 of us sat down to lunch, herself said, “Have we any bubbles?” “Champagne? No,” I said. “Well even Prosecco or Moscato?” she asked. I would like to say that these are English notions but her paternal grandfather never met a celebration which he felt could not be made better by Prosecco so they are probably home grown notions. She did a great job in prepping the table. She’s quite arty; this did not come from me.
Dinner – cooked by Mr. Waffle – was reasonably successful although my four year old niece did not eat anything. “You’re not eating,” said Michael anxiously. “Michael, that you of all people should say that…” said her mother. Everyone laughed. Even Michael. He is like his grandmother who really enjoyed small children and was quite fascinated by them. Dinner was a triumph for the cat who after everyone had left the room, leapt up on the table, grabbed the remains of the leg of lamb and made off with it at speed.
There was a rather damp garden Easter egg hunt for my niece. The Easter eggs were small but many and I have never seen her more pleased than when she came in with her bucket of eggs. It was really great to have everyone together again.
The week after Easter, Mr. Waffle and I took ourselves for a walk to Portrane. We went there just as Covid was beginning and it was funny to be there now that it’s – apparently – all over.
I went to see “The Secrets of Dumbledore”. Absolutely no one in the family could face going with me, so I went on my own. At the start, Dumbledore outlines how to outwit Grindelwald: we need last minute plans, overlapping plans, confusing plans. My heart sank a bit as JK Rowling is a woman who likes a convoluted plot without making it an essential part of the plot if you see what I mean. It was alright actually but I do think the whole thing may be beginning to run out of steam.
Over the holidays I took herself to the dentist and then we bought her a ball dress. It took a lot out of both of us (far more than the dental visit which was benign by comparison). Part of the problem was that with her sylph like figure most things looked good on her and she tried on a lot of things. We bought this dress in the end. She is pleased. I hope she continues to be as she will have to get a lot of wear out of it.
I have discovered that she has become a coffee drinker. I suppose as addictive habits you pick up in college go, it could be worse. It’s always really sad when she goes back to England. Usually she’s quite perky but she was glum on this occasion – which made it worse – as she had upcoming exams and she had to unpack all her stuff from storage. Both of these weighed pretty heavily on her mind. She has on campus accommodation which I thought was terrific but it comes with the not inconsiderable downside that she has to pack up all her stuff in three large boxes for every holiday. She says third years have it down pat and only bring a t-shirt to college. For English students their parents can drive them up and down and help them with the packing but she has to do it by herself. Last time she grabbed some unfortunate random young man to help with her boxes. “Where are your parents?” he asked. “They’re not here,” she said (with a touch of bitterness, I’d say). He thought that her parents were dead and was both mortified and sympathetic until the boxes were moved and the matter was cleared up. I am beginning to realise that from now on holidays will be bookended by happy arrivals and gloomy departures. Oh well.
I trust your own Easter was satisfactory.
People are more or less back to the office. Not everyone all the time, but almost everyone some of the time. It’s a bit weird after two years largely alone on the fourth floor to now have a full complement of people outside my door.
I wandered out on to the floor and as I did so, the scent of Davidoff Cool Water assailed my nostrils. It brought me back in an instant to the time in the mid-90s that I spent in Bosnia – Davidoff was popular and I had a large bottle at my disposal while I was there. I was doing election monitoring just after the war. I was in Banja Luka which is an old spa town and a very Austro-Hungarian empire town. I didn’t know what to expect really when I was going but I certainly didn’t think that I would regret not bringing my tennis racquet. It turned out that there was a country club type place with, inter alia, tennis courts and all of the international election monitors spent a lot of our free time there. In the days before the internet, our ignorance was legendary and our ability to advance plan much less developed. I just didn’t expect that war torn Bosnia would be a normal place as well, if you see what I mean. I might tell you all I can remember another time but it all flooded vividly back to me as I stood on the floor sniffing.
I turned to my colleague, “Davidoff, Cool Water?” I said. “No Clinique Happy,” said he.
I had a difficult meeting before Easter where my colleagues and I had to hold the line against quite the onslaught from another organisation. One of the people on the other side of the virtual table was a former colleague from a third organisation (stay with me here, Ireland is small). It was all very civil but distinctly trying. I heard my phone bleep in the middle of the meeting but ignored it as I continued to batten down the metaphorical hatches.
When I got off, I checked my message. It was from my former colleague and it said, “You’re like the Spartans at Thermopylae, Anne”. Roll on my sabbatical.
During the week I got a blank postcard with my name and address on one side and a picture of Costa Rica on the back. I was quite baffled. Conversation with my sister revealed the following:
Not vintage content, I would concede, but there it is, this week’s postal mystery unravelled.
Separately, the census enumerator collected the census form. I had dutifully divided the time capsule bit at the back into 5 for us all to fill in a bit. It was on the hall table for herself to add her bit but, alas, she had not done so by the time the enumerator came. I wanted to take a photo of the time capsule as well for…um, not posterity, for me I suppose but it was not to be. I put in as much as I could about family history (I bitterly resent that empty fifth as I had much more to say but there you go); Mr. Waffle put in a bit about us and our cat; Michael hoped that there were people to read it; and Daniel put in a line from a song. I do hope we get to do it again next census.