Herself went for a sleepover with her saintly aunt. It was a bit traumatic for both of them. The Princess burnt her lip by applying a scalding sausage roll to it and crushed her fingers in a heavy fire door. She still has a scab on her lip but, at least she can write again. My poor sister is exhausted from it all, her niece, however, is undaunted and keen for a rematch with the door.

Perhaps in part due to her various injuries and the fact that she had stayed up until 1 the previous night on her sleepover, the Princess was an unmerciful pain when we went to the Leinster House open day. I was mildly keen to be guided round our legislature by one of the ushers who won the lottery (a syndicate won the lottery, though I understand from one of the ushers in question, it worked at 18,200 each and his share has already gone on internal plastering work at home) but the royal mood was such that we felt that it would be unwise.

I was a bit disappointed overall, I thought that there would be more in the way of family fun and less in the way of re-enactments of the debates on the Treaty. Also, I was a little surprised to see lots of vans selling random wares on Leinster Lawn (or the car park as it now is). I suppose I hadn’t really psychologically prepared myself to beat off requests for popcorn and ice cream and I am not sure about whether the marriage of politics and commerce sends out quite the right signal. We were met on arrival by a man on stilts who assured the children that there was free candy floss. Though I assured them he was joking, it was not until we had carried out an extensive search and double checked with the apologetic stilt walker that we were able to abandon the candy floss hunt. We got the children’s faces painted and called it a day.

To my intense chagrin, the event was reported in detail on the radio as I drove to do the shopping later that day (one hour in the car, the hunt for a decent supermarket nearby that is not Tesco continues unabated and entirely unsuccessfully) and everyone other than us seems to have had a spiffing time. I like other people to share my misery.

Still no sign of doggy. Either of them. Mr. Waffle consulted the cleaner and he manfully confessed, upon being shown a picture of the missing doggy, that he had found something under the couch which was very old and very dirty and he had thrown it out. He has offered to buy a new one but we all know that is no good. I think he’s afraid to confess that he chucked two of them. On the plus side, herself pulled down the curtain rail in our room and we got home to find that the cleaner had fixed it; obviously, the guilt is getting us an impressive service.

The Princess got doggy before she turned one and he was her faithful companion every night he could be found. He and his friends gave us great concern over the years. He was practically a member of the family. Unlike travel doggy (who enjoyed trips abroad and has, whisper it, been replaced from time to time), home doggy, the original beloved doggy, never left the house. I had imagined doggy enjoying a privileged retirement on a high shelf in her room to be shown later to children and grandchildren, not thrown out like the remains of yesterday’s dinner (though, in fact due to the complex waste collection system now in operation in Dublin, he should not, under any circumstances go with organic waste; sometimes I worry that the cleaner has not got the finer distinctions of that system).

Since buying travel doggy mark II from Messrs. Zooscape, I have been inundated with junkmail from them. A small price to pay when I was going to get home doggy mark II, or so I thought. When I went to Zooscape today, this is what I found:

Luv Pets – St Pat’s Pups – Dugan / 6″ Beanbag puppies with embroidered accents, holding fabric shamrocks. 4 styles.
UNAVAILABLE. DISCONTINUED BY MANUFACTURER.

Discontinued. How could they? Mr. Waffle says that it is all for the best, but he’s wrong. I think she finds it hard to sleep without him and, in consequence, is roaming the house at midnight. I still have his shamrock that I hadn’t got round to sewing back on. It’s sitting in the drawer in the hall, the last remnant of doggy. I should put it somewhere safe, I suppose.

Mr. Waffle and I sat around the other night exchanging doggy stories: the very high attrition rate; the response of Aer Lingus to our loss; occasional travel soiling; how in surveys she consistently rated him as her favourite family member; the time he was lost in the Netherlands; and, of course, the time I fused the stuffing in his leg by trying to speed dry him in the oven.

I am heartbroken. Of course, I always knew that I would cry when we finally lost him. I guess that she wasn’t the only one with a transitional object. I’m not quite ready to let go, I have just accidentally bought three Ians.