Daniel sent a message into the family group chat the other morning after going through the back garden to get his bike from the shed. It read: Hodge vom garden
Mr. Waffle took a look and said, “Ah the well-known German count.” Honestly, I thought it was hilarious. This is the kind of content I married him for. Also, he cleaned up the cat vomit.
I have been to the Lavinia Fontana exhibition in the National Gallery and to a talk on her by an interesting English art historian.
Lavinia Fontana is not really a name to conjure with. She’s not particularly well known but the art historian argues that she should be. She’s a mannerist artist from Bologna and the first woman to do a lot of things. The exhibition is terrific and worth your time should you be in Dublin. Sadly, it does not include this picture which I would really like to see in the flesh. Fontana is brilliant at painting children. The art historian said that part of the reason Fontana is not better known is that museums leave her work in storage instead of displaying it and that this is a fate which befalls many female artists which is a depressing thought.
Speaking of unjustly neglected female artists, I also went to a talk by the novelist Mary Morrissy on Una Watters. I had never heard of Watters and her work is lovely. Mary Morrissy has been working to resurrect her from obscurity and has a website championing her work. Apparently one of Watters’s paintings – The People’s Gardens – is in storage in the Hugh Lane gallery and I, for one, will be heading in to see if I can get them to dig it out and let me have a look. You should too.
Mr. Waffle and I did another walking tour with Dublin decoded. These tours are so good – it is pretty unusual to get a tour in the city where you live and learn lots of new things. Did you know that for a while Heuston Station had the largest span of railway sheds in the world? That the crowns were taken off King’s Bridge when it was renamed Heuston bridge but you can still see the cast iron cushions where they used to sit? The tour is full of quirky layers of detail after detail and the guide full of ebullient enthusiasm for his subject. A delight.
I’ve found the missing jigsaw piece:
Too late, alas:
I’ve put the missing piece back in the box, but I’m honestly not sure that I’ll ever have the strength to make it again.
Michael tested negative for Covid about 11 this morning and was let out of captivity. I was surprised to see him turn up in his school uniform in the kitchen at 11.30. “I’m going in,” said he. Only 8 days of school left including today so, I suppose he felt it might be a good idea with the Leaving Cert coming up. I drove him in. “Can you give me a late note?” he asked. “I don’t think you’ll need it, we’ve already told them you’ll be out sick today,” I said. “Oh right, I didn’t know because I’ve never been late,” he said. “Never?” I asked. “Not since I’ve started secondary school and been in charge of getting in myself,” he clarified. That’s an impressive record, unfortunately, he appears to have fallen at almost the last possible hurdle. This didn’t come from my side.
My sister is a big fan of the Olio app. It is designed for food but now you can give away stuff as well. She has a lot of material to get rid of. It seems to work perfectly for her but I have found it a bit hit and miss. I got rid of a spare new car jack (don’t ask) in no time; the slightly wonky pedal bin took a bit longer and literally no one is interested in a perfectly good paddling pool (5,000 views and counting but still not a nibble). Mostly the people collecting seem to be young people and immigrants.
I was giving away an IKEA Malm chest of drawers and this man contacted me. He asked could he carry it on his bike (no, are you kidding me?) would he be able to take it on a trolley (maybe but not very far). Anyway, as is the way with Olio, he missed a number of pick ups. His tone in messages was terse but he was clearly not a native English speaker so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Finally, he asked would I drive him and the Malm to his place. Because I am a complete sap I said yes. My whole family laughed at me. Did he come when he said he would? No. When he eventually came, we put the Malm in the car and drove to his place. He was lovely and his wife was too, they’d just moved to Ireland and were settling in. I felt a warm glow and that even if I am a sap, it all came good in the end.
I wonder will anyone ever take my paddling pool?
Back in April, when my blog was technologically challenged, we celebrated ten years in our new house. God, I love this house and I almost daily give thanks that we were lucky enough to get it. We bought when the property market was at a low point (not through cunning but because we were desperate to get out of our tiny house with three small children) and we could not have afforded to buy it at any other time before or since. I remember the day we saw it. We had seen so many houses. We had a spread sheet and everything. I remember standing in the utility room (sadly largely unchanged – needs work) with Mr. Waffle and the two of us just beaming at each other because we knew it was the perfect house for us.
As I am shallow – or maybe human? – my house has always been really important to me. Thorough readers with very long memories will recall that at the age of 11, I had to leave the house I most loved – a very large square four floor house with a large garden with half a dozen apple trees – think of it as the pre-lapsarian years. I have had some good houses since then, I loved all the places I lived in Brussels and I eventually grew to love the Edwardian semi-detatched house my parents moved us into when we left paradise but this is undoubtedly the best place I have lived in my adult life. I feel so pleased that my children grew up in such a nice place. I will NEVER move out. It is perfect in every way. Even though it doesn’t have a side passage.
