belgianwaffle

Proustian


Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Siblings

I’m in Cork for the weekend for my sister’s birthday. I haven’t been down since the summer. I went to inspect my parents’ gravestone; newly inscribed. It was a bit damp and gloomy, perfect cemetery weather.

And I inspected the work my sister has done in her attic. It’s all thrills.

I went for a walk around the Honan Chapel and thought about how my family history intersected with this Celtic revival church.

Because I don’t live here or even visit very often now, Cork has become a place of memory and reminders of the past for me. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

The Boat to England


Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Princess, Travel

Mr. Waffle and I drove herself to England at the start of October. Having finished a degree in foreign parts you would think she might come home but no, she is doing a master’s as well. The whole thing was rendered a great deal more stressful than it might have been by having the car booked in for a service the day before departure. It was going to be ready, then it wasn’t, then they were waiting for a part. It was a roller coaster during which we looked up hire cars (not actually very easy to find car hire people who will let you take the car out of the jurisdiction) and investigated how to change the ferry booking. There was a great deal of trauma which is frankly being skimmed over in this paragraph.

This was the first time Mr. Waffle had done this trip and he kept commenting on how onerous it was. “It’s even worse when you have to do all the driving yourself,” I kept saying grumpily.

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Season of Mists etc.


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland

We had another bumper apple harvest this year. Falling fruit came and stripped the trees and took away 75kgs. But still, I have made enough apple jelly to sink a battle ship. I have also made apple sauce and apple tart.

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And I still have loads in the shed. And I put a box at the gate in which the children going to the school at the bottom of the road showed a rather tepid interest. They were free but they were apples. There are still loads of windfalls rolling around the back garden as well waiting to be swept up when I am feeling strong.

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This is on top of my jam production from earlier in the summer. Sadly the rhubarb and ginger was not a success. The rhubarb came from my mother’s friend’s garden in the suburbs and by the time I got my mitts on it, it was a bit past its best. I never really thought that I would be a jam and jelly maker but circumstances alter cases I guess.

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The Month of the Dead


Posted in: Family, Mr. Waffle

November is the month of the dead for Catholics and we say masses for dead people and think about them. I am not normally a big fan of Michael Harding who has a quirky column in the Irish Times but he had a lovely column the other day about visiting the cemetery which I would link to, if their paywall policy was not weaponised. I’m going to Cork at the weekend, and this article has reminded me that it might be a good opportunity to visit the cemetery where my aunt and my parents, and indeed my Cork great-grandparents and almost all their children are buried (my grandmother and grandfather were buried elsewhere with his people).

I often think of my beloved Limerick grandmother in November. Her birthday was November 25th and I can still remember how excited I felt whenever she came to visit. Limerick was a lot further away in those days and when she travelled to our house in Cork she came for long visits of (is it possible?) up to a month at a time. I loved it when she stayed. She was just a delight. I may have mentioned that the children pointed out to me that I am so old that not only do I know someone who was born in the 1800s but I am old enough to miss someone born in the 1800s. This has given me pause for thought.

My mother-in-law’s first anniversary is coming up. My father-in-law and my own parents are long gone. I mean, am I next for take off? Let’s not be morbid here, but this quote really spoke to me:

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Always lots of funerals available in Ireland. Someone emailed me about a former colleague’s father (“I knew you’d want to know” – did you? did you really?). I decided to ignore it until I got a further email from someone else about the same man so I reached into my pile of sympathy cards and wrote a nice note. I personalised it, talked about how hard it was so soon after his wife’s mother’s death; how difficult it must be for the children. I addressed it. I came very close to posting it when I suddenly realised that I was thinking of a completely different person with the same slightly unusual first name. It took a lot out of me.

I sent a whatsapp message to another former colleague who is now distinguishing himself elsewhere. It’s a bit weird on whatsapp because you see a profile picture in a personal context and if you only know someone from work, it can be a surprise. He had a profile picture of himself and his mother to whom I knew he was very close. In between congratulating him on the new role, I commented on the lovely profile picture. I think you know where this is going. She had died since I saw him last over the summer. Apparently this is a thing, if someone’s parent dies they use pictures of the parent and themselves as the whatsapp profile photo. I only tell you this so that you don’t have to suffer similar embarrassment to me.

So you know my view on the unnecessary funeral information. However, my friend in America’s father has been ill for the past 6 months but managing ok. She was over and back a fair bit and I asked her to let me know, if anything happened. Then she texted me one Sunday to say her father had died the previous Wednesday. I instantly began calculating when the funeral would be. Provided it wasn’t the next Wednesday, I felt I could move things and make it (it was in Cork). Then she added that the funeral had been the day before. I was gutted. Saturday is a very convenient day for a funeral in Cork and she is one of my oldest friends. I frequently stayed in her parents’ house in west Cork during the summers. I would have wanted to know. But what was I to do? Upbraid her for not telling me earlier? She didn’t want to inconvenience me but I really wanted to be inconvenienced. I had actually considered putting an alert on rip.ie (a thing!) but it just seemed too weird. I was sure that news would reach me through the inevitable grapevine but it did not. Alas. And now I have a card to write to her and another for her mother and I am finding it quite hard. Yes, it is all about me. Your point? I remember many years ago when I started my blog my friend mocking the “About” bit saying, it’s all about you.

And finally in funeral news, Mr. Waffle’s friend’s father died. They live right at the bottom of Wicklow. A good two hours drive away. Mr. Waffle couldn’t go to the funeral on Tuesday due to a work commitment so he went to the removal on Monday night (my friend says no one in England knows what a removal is – can this be true? – it’s a service the evening before the funeral). I knew all this. But yet, I promised my friend around the corner a lift to bookclub 10kms away and when I came out of the house at 7, I was surprised to find the car wasn’t there. We may be looking at compartmentalisation. Which, by the way, is a good way to deal with thoughts of the inevitable.

Patron of the Arts


Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Twins, Youngest Child

The autumn is a very exhausting time for those of us who are arts enthusiasts.

Kicking off the season is Heritage Week in late August. The clue is in the title and there is a brochure of activities nationwide. Since the children have grown up, I’ve largely given up on this one. My loss but time is finite.

Then it’s straight into the Dublin Fringe Festival in September. This year we went to see Killian Sundermann; a man who wrings quite a bit of humour out of being half-Irish half-German.

Sometime during September is Open House where various buildings not normally open to the public throw open their doors. Some that are already open to the public also get re-badged as open house venues. You’ve got to love architects, I saw a volunteer in front of Phibsborough shopping centre, quite possibly one of the ugliest buildings in Ireland and that is, regrettably, a competitive field. Again, I have gone into interesting buildings in the past but not this year. You have to pace yourself.

Then it’s the theatre festival. I went to three, yes three, plays this year. Exhausting. I went to see “Reunion” in the Gaiety. I generally find Mark O’Rowe plays just a bit too edgy for me. You would really want to be in the whole of your health to see, for example, “Howie the Rookie”. However, although this play was a bit edgy, it was also very funny and really well done. The Gaiety audience is a bit less sedate than the Abbey or the Gate and they gasped and laughed in ways that I found quite refreshing. Robert Sheehan was in it and pretty good I thought. Were the kids impressed or even a tiny bit interested that I saw a play with the guy from the Umbrella Academy which we watched on Netflix? You know the answer to this.

I also saw “Agreement” which is about the Good Friday Agreement and has been garlanded with laurels. I am sorry but I found it a bit dull. The playwright is from the North and it is always interesting to see a Northern take on things but I felt it was a bit unfair to Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair and positively sanctified Mo Mowlam. I was unconvinced. I went with Michael who thought it was great so maybe it was better if you hadn’t watched it all on the news in the 1990s.

We went to the latest Anu production “Starjazzer”. I generally like an Anu production; immersive and a little alarming. This one didn’t totally float my boat though. It was about two women dealing with poverty and domestic violence a century apart. In many ways it just wasn’t immersive enough or something. Suspension of disbelief was a bit of a challenge. Still I have a soft spot for Anu who gave me what I am beginning to think will be the most memorable theatre experience of my life.

Also in October is the Festival of History. It always has a fantastic programme of talks but I couldn’t face it on top of the constant plays.

Bear in mind that my programme of cinema attendance continues unabated during this difficult time for the culture maven. I saw an Iranian film, come on, an Iranian film called “My favourite Cake” which was sad and funny. I saw “Small Things Like These” at the weekend. A cousin is in it and she was fantastic, we are all very proud. She also met Ed Sheeran at the premiere so we were all thrilled for her by proxy.

Mr. Waffle and I went to a very disappointing exhibition of the bridges of Dublin in Dublin port; I would not recommend but I did enjoy exploring the new Dublin port greenway which was, the day we went full of walkers and cyclists admiring the new vistas opened up across the bay.

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Then there’s the Dublin book festival this weekend. A truly excellent line up (including Jan Carson who I nearly saw before and who is a wonderful writer) but a part of me is relieved that I will be in Cork for the weekend and can’t even book anything.

Speaking of Cork, the Crawford gallery closed on September 22 for renovation and extension and won’t reopen until 2027. I anticipate slippage and the proposed extension looks horrific. Woe. I’d say it will be grand from the inside but the outside leaves a great deal to be desired.

And in final update from the arts there is a new Sarah Purser exhibition in the Hugh Lane Gallery which is lovely. I recommend.

Is it any wonder the blog was languishing with this full cultural programme?

It’s Decorative Gourd Season


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

Every year, at Halloween I think about this article. And I am, apparently, not alone.

When I was a child, the following were standard at Halloween: Barmbrack; bobbing for apples (and pennies); trying to bite an apple hung on a string from the door frame; and getting your face covered in flour (surely you are familiar with the game where a grape is placed on top of a heap of flour and you each cut at the flour mountain in turn until the grape falls down and then get your face rubbed in the flour? No? Your loss.). As I write this list it seems bizarrely Victorian. There were, of course, plastic face masks held in place by elastic but they were barred in our house as my father was convinced that we would somehow melt them to our faces. He had a bizarre list of potential injuries to which he feared his children would succumb, these included, but were not at all limited to, fears that we would set ourselves on fire with the aid of our acrylic pyjamas; poke out each other’s eyeballs by looking through keyholes and putting pencils or screwdrivers through them; choke on chewing gum; and fall off the banisters and split our heads open on the cast iron radiator in the hall. I often think his time as a junior doctor in A&E must have been particularly formative.

Not at all standard were the American pumpkin and trick or treating and decorating your house. I thought I was above these vulgar things (what a tiresome ten year old I must have been, I blame my parents). Well, I’m not too proud to admit it, I was a fool. My objection to trick or treating was demolished by a trip to a friend’s house at Halloween in about 1980. We dressed up and went out to her neighbours and it was very exciting; I didn’t quite understand what we were doing but I liked it. I think it must have been the very beginning of trick or treating in Ireland. My father had heard of tick or treating and was appalled. He called it begging from the neighbours; little did he know that his first born and her best friend were out shaking down the wealthy of Sunday’s Well for their monkey nuts and satsumas. Sweets came later, I think. Then when I had children of my own, they had a fantastic time getting dressed and going around to the neighbours; it wasn’t just the sweets (and, honestly, 15 years ago still quite a few monkey nuts and satsumas), it was the feeling of mild danger being out in the dark with all of the decorations and other costumed children.

And the pumpkins. What fun we had decorating them (far superior to the traditional Irish turnip which is almost impossible to cut up even when you want to eat it let alone for decoration) and even though the children now have no interest, I enjoy it. Behold my selection for this year.

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I am particularly proud of the eyeball, I can tell you.

And then cycling home from work after dark at Halloween is quite a thrill. The city is alive with illegal firework displays. Dangerous, I know, and alarmingly noisy too but undeniably pretty and exciting.

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And how are you enjoying decorative gourd season yourself?