belgianwaffle

Summer


Posted in: Belgium, Reading etc.

The weather is beautiful here today and I have just started working slightly reduced hours meaning that I have a half day on Wednesday.  The Princess and I have just lunched and she is now napping while I idle.  It all feels very illicit.  I have been using the time to catch up on old emails. Maybe this is a little mean, but let me quote to you an email text in full:

“Hi,
Sorry, but I’m a French spoken guy. I would like to know how jou translate “Choisir c’est renoncer” in English. Hint: in Dutch it’s: Kiezen is verliezen. By the way, do you know an English spoken guy who would be happy to correct my English … and I would correct his French. The problem is that because of my job when I post a request I need an answer rather quickly (a couple of hours ).  Thanks and Congratulations about your baby.”

OK, Fabian, since you ask, I too searched the internet to find “choisir c’cest renoncer” in English.  It was not there or at least I couldn’t find it and since you are mailing me and the title of my blog post was your best bet, I presume you experienced similar difficulties.  If it’s any comfort to you, I looked up the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations in hard copy and couldn’t find it there either.  Yes, this is a quality blog.  Thanks for the tip on the Dutch translation though, if I’d known that at the time, it would have made all the difference.

Tempting though your offer to an “english spoken guy” is, I’m afraid that I can’t, just now, identify someone who would be willing to provide a free English language revision check in a couple of hours, even in exchange for your kind offer to do likewise to a French text.

Thanks for congratulations on my baby, it makes your message so personal.  Actually, I have twins and a three year old: which particular baby did you wish to congratulate me on?  No, I am not bitter.  No, really.  The sun is shining and I only have two loads of washing to do.

Sic transit..


Posted in: Reading etc.

We’re still working our way through series 2 of the Sopranos.  Uncle Junior’s doctor shows up.

Me:  God, that doctor looks really familiar, was he in something else?

Him: Yeah, he looks familiar to me too, I can’t think where I know him from.

Me: The hair…

Him: And that patrician thing. Hang on, what’s his name?  George Bush’s opponent?

Me:  Oh yes, the swift boat veterans for truth guy.

Him:  Wait, wait.

Me:  I know it, I know it.

In unison: John Kerry.

New man


Posted in: Mr. Waffle

Part I

Me: Did you have to change Daniel while the Princess and I were on the boat yesterday?

Him: Yes.

Me: What did you do?

Him: I took him to the gents in that cafe we were in.

Me: There was a changing thingamajiggy in the gents?

Him: No, I sat on the toilet and changed him on my knee.

Me: What did you do with Michael?

Him: I left him in the cafe in the care of strangers.

Part II

Me: Those boys have a lot of khaki trousers.

Him: Yes, it’s hereditary.

How we brought the bad weather from Ghent to Brussels


Posted in: Family

We went to Ghent this morning. It was a bright sunny morning at 8.00 and it is the last day of April, we dressed accordingly. Need I tell you that it bucketed down? Or that the Princess and I took a ride in an uncovered boat while Mr. Waffle strode the damp cobblestones with two chilled little boys? It was 7 degrees in Ghent this morning. Tomorrow is the first day of May. Global warming indeed.
In fact, it wasn’t as bad as that makes it sound. The Princess loved the boat trip. We heard about the 55 illegitimate children that Charles V left in Ghent. We saw a lot of ducks (always thrilling). The only difficulty was the woman in the front of the boat with the microphone “When will she stop TALKING, Mummy?” Mr. Waffle, as befits a man who took 3 small children to the doctor for injections while his wife was off on a “work trip”, was unfazed by the difficulty of trying to entertain seven month old twin boys in an unexpectedly cold and damp environment.

After the boat trip, we ran to the car in the pouring rain pushing our buggy cavalcade at speed over the cobblestones. Possibly in consequence, the double buggy appears to have expired. I’m trying to work in the phrase “I gallop’d, Mr. Waffle gallop’d, we gallop’d all three” into the text here, but it’s more difficult than you might imagine.

Oh and yes, it was fine in Brussels in the morning but the rain followed us back from Ghent and we spent the afternoon gazing dolefully out the rain battered windows.

What’s a bus like?


Posted in: Princess

When I was small, I always wanted to travel by plane (my parents preferred mode of holiday travel was by ferry, sigh).  My father flew a lot for work and I used to pester him with questions as to what it was like and he would always say: have you been on a bus?  Well, like that, only with less leg room.

The Princess has been on more flights than I can remember and she’s always saying to me “Can we go by bus Mummy?”, “Mummy, what’s it like on a bus?”. I reply “have you been on a plane?  Well, like that, only with more leg room”.

Anyhow, tomorrow, I will have the dubious pleasure of travelling by plane to a distant destination for work.  Alone.  Leaving poor Mr. Waffle holding the babies and also the toddler.  Perhaps there will be updates from the distant country, perhaps not.  It all depends whether I can crack this wifi thing.

From the Irish Times


Posted in: Reading etc.

“You have to think beyond it, otherwise it will eat you up inside.  Having got over the initial shock, you have to see beyond it.  Good things can happen.”

Please guess whether the woman quoted had

a)     Lost a close relative

b)     Lost a limb

c)     Lost a wedding dress when a “bridal shop” closed down.

You guessed it.  The man acting for the owner of the shop is quoted as saying “In my 30 years as a solicitor, this is one of the mst vitriolic and emotional meetings [the creditors’ meeting] I have ever been at.  For the last hour and a half, she [the owner] has endeavoured to answer all of the questions she has been asked.  She has received a number of abusive phone calls and quasi death-threats”.  No, I don’t know what a “quasi death threat” is either but I think that we can take it that the brides are annoyed.  I suspect that her solicitor didn’t do her any favours by telling the assembled multitude, however reasonably, that “customers needed to realise it was ‘only a wedding dress’ and wasn’t the worst thing in the world”.  Read more here.  Go on, you know you want to.