Father of friend (to Princess): Why do children like television so much? It’s not real is it? It’s not got real people like here (gestures expansively round bar).
Further father of friend (listening in): But real people are booorrring.
Princess: And television has programmes specially devised for children.
Me: Do you always do what C (our childminder) says?
Her: Yes.
Me: Do you always do what Mummy and Daddy say?
Her (laughing): No.
Me: Then why do you always do what C says?
Her: Because C is strict. Â You should be strict too like C and J&P [the heart surgeon and her husband who operate an impressively tight ship].
Me: Would you really like us to be stricter?
Her: Yes!
Me: But you always cry when we’re strict.
Her: Those are tears of joy, Mummy.
I went to see Horton with the children some time ago. I recognised the voice of Horton as being Dany Boon from Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis. A film which I understood almost in its entirety (not an achievement to be sneezed at – though I was somewhat helped by the fact that the Ch’tis are essentially Belgian). And further, I recognised that Horton was Dany Boon based on his accent in French. This was a proud moment, I can tell you. Then, I realised that I am probably speaking the best French I ever will and it’s downhill all the way from the end of the month. I suppose I can pepper my conversation with French words thereby annoying my friends and embarrassing my children.
As part of our preparation to leave Belgium, I am also sorting through our mountain of medical and dental bills.  Before I had children, I never went to the doctor and now I seem to spend all my time going from surgery to surgery with my travelling circus. It’s all surprisingly complex and, of course, it wouldn’t be, had I done it as I went along. I wrote a letter to my insurer in my best French and got Mr. Waffle to check it. The maestro sat down at the computer and made it perfect. He corrected the French and reorganised the letter so that my various rambling questions were concisely stated and clearly presented. I was awed:my husband the genius.  “Yes,” he said “I have spent the past number of years perfecting the art of writing in administrative French, I have probably reached the pinnacle of my potential in this field.” Hélas indeed.
A while ago, Dooce had a post about her decision to write about her daughter Leta on the internet.  Then, the Game Theorist had one too. And he referred to a Slate article about this very same topic. I have a feeling that Beth is going to do something similar.
Like most people, I am ambiguous about this. Unlike Dooce, I don’t make money from my blog; does this make matters better or worse? I’m putting my children in just as much danger as she is and/or exploiting them just as much and I can’t even make money out of it? On balance, I think it makes no difference. Dooce isn’t writing about Leta for the money, she’s writing because she loves her and that’s true for all of us. I started this blog to let my family know what the children were up to. So now that I am moving back to Ireland I will give it up, you observe. Not at all. I love it. I am keeper of the family archive. At the end of every month I print down a selection of the 100s of photos we take and put them in an album and carefully label them (don’t hate me). I write about my children because, I know, if I don’t, I will forget.  I write about them on the internet because I am a show-off and I love the attention. If I didn’t have a blog, I would intend to write all these things down, but I wouldn’t. I like being part of a community (no scoffing) and I like that people read what I write (kind, good, generous nice people, unlike, say, my brother who can’t understand why anyone on earth should be interested).  I suppose I could wait until the children are old enough to read it themselves but at the rate the Princess’s reading is progressing, it could be years before we get any progress on this front.
I spoke to my mother about this the other day. This is the woman who does not use her credit card on the internet for safety’s sake and who, for many years was very reluctant to use the internet at all on the basis that she might accidentally download something illicit or dangerous or both: this despite constant reassurances from her children that you usually have to pay for that kind of material. In response to my concerns, my mother said briskly “Nonsense, they are very lucky children and they will be delighted to read all about themselves when they are bigger.”  You know, maybe she’s right.
I am on my last work trip for this job. Frankly, this is a mercy.
This morning I left my husband to drop the car into the garage for repairs, meet movers who are coming to decide how much money they will charge us to get our belongings back to Ireland, let in more random people who may want to rent our flat and generally mind everything. I also left the country with Mr. Waffle’s mobile phone and our camera nestling in the dim recesses of my handbag. He was not pleased when I told him.
I got back to my hotel this evening to find that I had left Mr. Waffle’s mobile phone on the desk (why always keep it in a handbag, why not strive for new and different ways of making things difficult?). This was a pity because there was a message from the Princess’s summer course saying that it was nearly 7 and was anyone coming to collect her. I then remembered that I had told the childminder, C, that we would collect the Princess on Monday because it was too difficult for C to travel by public transport with the boys and the Princess (the course being some distance from our house). This is information I may not have relayed to my husband. I have just rung C who tells me that Mr. Waffle had arrived home, realised that the Princess was not there and turned around to go and get her taking the boys with him as C’s working day was over and he did not want to impose. I would have imposed myself but I have much lower standards than he does.
Any minute now, I am going to phone home and see how things are going and, gentle reader, I am very afraid. I think that I will plug the line that I have specifically asked not to travel in my new job and that I do not intend to leave him alone again until the children are in their teens.
“If only you knew” by Alice Jolly
This was written by a friend of a friend in Brussels, so it’s a bit difficult to be objective even though I don’t know the author from Adam. I found it a bit unsatisfactory. It’s set in Moscow and it’s all high drama and swooning from the heroine who has “father issues”. I don’t think it was bad but I won’t be rushing back for more.
“Too Close to the Falls” by Catherine Gildner
Again, this was something that I wouldn’t have read by myself. It was recommended to me by a friend. It’s a memoir which is not a genre that I particularly like. It is, however, a cheerful memoir which is well-written and largely unsentimental (with some lapses). I enjoyed it very much. It’s about a little girl growing up near Niagara Falls in the 1950s and it’s lovely: warm and funny. Apparently it was a huge bestseller, I’m not a bit surprised.
“The Lady and the Unicorn” by Tracey Chevalier
This is a dreadful book which I did not like.  The writing is pedestrian at best. It is very didactic. If I want to know about weaving techniques, I can go and read up on them. If the characters in a book are supposed to be French speaking, I do not recommend inserting French words every so often in the dialogue. Vraiment, this does nothing to encourage the suspension of disbelief. On the plus side, part of it is set in Brussels and the plot skips along.  Also, the print is large. I have read another Tracy Chevalier book (“Falling Angels”) which I thought was only alright but it was much better than this offering which I note was published a year later. They made me do it for bookclub.  I tried to stop them.
“A Good Man in Africa” by William Boyd
I have never read a bad William Boyd book and this book is good. It is his first, though, and quite different in style from some of his later work. It is narrated by a hapless British diplomat in Africa and is, in parts, utterly hilarious. It owes a debt to Evelyn Waugh’s “Scoop” I think and also Kingsley Amis’s “Lucky Jim”. It is a very well written book and enjoyable but not as well plotted as some of his later stuff. There is lots of plot, the book has plot coming out its ears but it doesn’t hang together particularly well. The way he managed the book: starting in the middle, working backwards to that point and then working forwards again was confusing and, for me, didn’t really add a great deal. All very clever though. For a first book, absolutely superb. For a William Boyd book, fine.
“The Sorrows of an American†by Siri Hustvedt
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I think Siri Hustvedt is a brilliant, brilliant author.  She combines beautiful writing with interesting plot and, best of all, interesting ideas.
This book is narrated by an American psychiatrist, Erik Davidsen, whose father has just died.  It covers many many themes including immigration and loss. It also reflects Hustvedt’s fascination with the mind and how it works.  It was this fascination (which I knew about from her previous work) that propelled me towards “Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present”.
Almost every paragraph of this book makes you think in new and unusual ways. The problem with books that make you think is, in my experience, that they are generally not very readable. This is a very readable book.  For example, as an Irish person, I used to be very sceptical about Americans who described themselves as Irish. I would smile and nod and ask where their great-grandma was from but my inner dialogue would run “no, you’re not, you’re American.† One of the many achievements of  this book is to articulate the sense of loss of the American immigrant community over several generations.  Maybe they are Irish too, just a different kind of Irish from me.
Hustvedt seems to put a lot of herself in her books; this book contains excerpts from her own father’s memoirs.  They are used as Erik’s father’s memoir. You feel that there is a very thin layer of fiction between the characters in the book and those in Hustvedt’s life.  Inga, Erik’s sister, is the widow of a famous author and the book describes living with him and it is clear that Hustvedt is talking about her own experience of living with Paul Auster.  Erik’s father and mother in the book are very clearly versions of Hustvedt’s own father and mother and, Sonia, Inga’s daughter, a version of her own daughter. I wonder whether this makes for a better book? I do feel that it is a risky strategy for an author: she puts a lot of herself in her books and, given what we know about her, I wonder how well she bears up under the weight of that exposure for she strikes me as a very private person. That though is her problem, not mine.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough as they say.  I give it the ultimate accolade, it is almost as good as “What I Lovedâ€.