belgianwaffle

Daring


Posted in: Belgium, Princess

The French Mama is coming to stay tomorrow with husband and baby.  I will be too deeply consumed with envy peering at her latest purchases to concentrate on blogging.  Also, I will have to stop the Princess roughing up her tiny baby and stealing her cuddly toys.  There was a major scene in the supermarket this morning when I attempted to remove from her steely grasp a rubber toy she had found in the “toys for pets” section of the supermarket (I was trying to choose the right freezer bag on the adjoining display and I was distracted – does this strike you as an odd juxtaposition?  Do Belgians lure their pets into the kitchen with squeezy toys and then freeze them in 1 litre bags?).

The French Mama leaves on Saturday afternoon with her entourage and Sunday sees us going to the Brussels Childbirth Trust Funday where I will be in charge of a stall.  Clearly, I didn’t want to do this but a woman rang me and asked me to do it and my complete inability to say no did not desert me.  As you can imagine, my loving spouse is even more delighted than I am at the prospect of taking his daughter on shetland pony rides while I dole out strawberries and champagne to the great unwashed.

On Monday, the Princess and I will embark on a nine hour train journey to the west of France where my parents will be awaiting our arrival with bated breath.  I am dreading the journey as not only will it be a little hard to keep herself entertained for nine hours on the train but I have to change trains and will be bringing Princess, our gear, buggy and car seat.  I hope to rely on the kindness of strangers but this can sometimes go amiss.  Anyway, we’ll be gone for the week and Mr. Waffle will be left alone and palely loitering and working, obviously. You know, sometimes, being a kept woman is not so very bad.

Comments
belgianwaffle

on 17 June 2004 at 08:17

Very funny.

Parking


Posted in: Belgium

When I drive to my local bakery, I double park on the pavement outside with my hazard lights on while I make my purchases (this does not make me Belgian).

By doing this, I am giving the bus driver who must pick up people from the bus stop from behind where I am parked a difficult but not impossible task (this does not make me Belgian).

This, clearly illegal, double parking is carried out in front of a police station (this does not make me Belgian).

The other day, when I did my usual trick, a policewoman waved at me to move on (this does not make me Belgian).

I stopped to argue with her, pointing out that I would only be in the bakery for a moment (yes, I think that this makes me Belgian).

Though perhaps a real Belgian wouldn’t have given up on the argument so easily.

Comments
belgianwaffle

on 16 June 2004 at 21:02

And may I say how appropriate your nickname is every time you step into a motorised vehicle.

Living the European Dream


Posted in: Family

We were in the car the other day listening to Umberto Tozzi (no you probably don’t want to know) and Mr. Waffle explained to the Princess that she was in Belgium  listening to an Italian man singing in Spanish on a tape which her Irish parents bought in Portugal.  “La, la, la” she said sourly.  Umberto Tozzi isn’t to everyone’s taste.

Comments
jackdalton

on 14 June 2004 at 11:38

🙂 Nice one…

jackdalton

on 16 June 2004 at 00:28

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry.”
[Remembering Shem the Penman; for the day that’s in it….]

belgianwaffle

on 16 June 2004 at 08:45

And will you be partaking in the Bloomsday/Denny big breakfast. I see in the w/end Observer that Mr. Banville somewhat sourly comments that the breakfast will include that quintessentially Irish element, the hash brown.

jackdalton

on 16 June 2004 at 23:36

Banville is more or less on the money this time, sadly. The breakfast was Saturday – unless I’m much mistaken – 50,000 Denny Sausages consumed on teh Spire Plaza. (Don’t even ask….)
And truth to tell, I’m not much of a breakfast man these days. Had a ticket for the Joyce Centre Breakfast, but couldn’t see straight enough to get out of bed at the necessarily ungodly hour, so instead I set out to go swinging by Davy Byrne’s for a lunchtime glass of burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich. Ended up in the food court of the Liffey Valley. That more or less sums things up… 😉

It’s not quite a Jaguar


Posted in: Family

This week, Mr. Waffle has needed the car to go to a training course in a distant suburb.  He comes home every night with personality tests for me.  You will, I am sure, be fascinated to hear that I am an outgoing consensus seeker who thinks inside the box.

The upshot of this (the absence of car, not the personality) is that the Princess and I have been travelling a lot by public transport this week and she adores it.  People smile, wave and chat to her.  There’s the excitement of people getting on and off at every stop. She can’t get enough of it.  It is a little tiring for me though and it takes us a lot longer to get anywhere, so I think next week it’ll be back to the car.

The car is a 1.4 litre ford focus. Nothing wrong with that really.  Though it is an American car and we should, I suppose, be supporting the sluggish European economy, although I would point out that the original Mr. Ford was a Cork man (or at least his parents were) but I’m not sure that that counts.

Really, I hanker after a Fiat. Before we got our family car we had a lovely 1.6 litre Bravo and it was full of vim and energy and used to sprint away at traffic lights.  True, it was not as full of vim and energy as D’s VW Beetle which had a 2.0 litre engine but in my heart of hearts I believed it was nippier.  When we left for Belgium we sold the Bravo to R; when we were in Ireland last week we visited him and it was a little odd to go round to our house (we lived in his house while he was away trying to bring peace to the Balkans) and see our car parked outside.  It appeared to have a dent.  Poor Bravo.

I love Fiats even though my parents always had Fiats when they were a byword for unreliability. My father had a theory that you should keep your car for as long as possible; if you sold it after a year or two then the price dropped hugely vis a vis a new car but only very slowly after that.  I think we must have had one car for 9 years.  It would never start in the cold and we had to push it down the hill to start it and, if it didn’t start, we had to phone the AA. I think everyone was grateful when the AA introduced home start and we could just leave the car in the driveway when it wouldn’t start and wait for the nice man to come round and fix it.

Once we had our ancient Fiat in France tugging round a trailor, a tent, 2 adults and 3 children and it sulked and refused to go any further as we were heading for the ferry home. Immense panic. The French sister organisation of the AA came to inspect.  No joy, the gear box was dead. The car could not do first, it could only be started in second.  My intrepid mother had them start it and she drove to the ferry stopping nowhere while the rest of us sat numb with fear with our hands over our eyes.  When we got to the ferryport she stopped at the top of a small hill. We looked at the steeply inclined ramp cars were chugging up to get on the ferry.  A first gear job.  We were foiled.  My mother is never foiled.  To our intense mortification and grudging admiration, she approached one of the men loading cars.  She explained our predicament.  They cleared the gangway and surrounding areas.  The rest of us pushed the car with the trailor attached and my mother got going and zoomed down the hill and up the ramp at 50kms an hour.
And still I hanker after a Fiat. And if we did get one, it would have to be a people mover, I suppose. And, alas, the Fiat people mover, the Multipla is the only ugly car that Fiat has ever made.  It’s all tragic really.

Comments
belgianwaffle

on 13 June 2004 at 22:51

Har di har.

LRB personals


Posted in: Reading etc.

A particularly difficult choice this time but I’ve decided on:

“Collector of albums with palindromic associations (M, 33) seeks aibohphobic F Abba fan with copies of ELO’s Ole; Black Sabbath’s Live Evil (also the album of the same name by Miles Davis); Evil Live by Misfits; Ufo Tofu by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones: Aja by Steely Dan and Aoxomoxoa the Grateful Dead. It’s a niche request, but I figured I’d find someone in here. Box no. 11/03”

I swear I am not making these up. I couldn’t.

Just finished the latest Marian Keyes. Very good but not as good as it would have been if she’d had me and the Princess in for a cup of tea to discuss the writing process.