Today the Waffle family decided to go to mass together. The journey was fraught with difficulty. Firstly, getting out of the house in time for 12.15 mass is, frankly, a struggle. 12.20 saw us circling the church looking for parking. Mr. Waffle noticed an ominous smell emanating from the back seat. Sure enough, the Princess had produced her statutory dirty nappy at difficult moment. Mr. Waffle nobly volunteered to drive her home and change her (this can be done in the car, but it’s quite nasty) and left me off to commune with my maker.
I realised, shortly after hopping out of the car, that I had left my wallet behind. The church is approached via a gauntlet of optimists wishing you a “bon dimanche” and holding out an array of styrofoam cups. I had no change. There was some unhappy muttering in the ranks but I reached the church unscathed. There was a special collection. It was for deprived children. The director of the charity was there to tell us about its founder (he saved Jewish children from the concentration camps during the war, was captured and tortured by the Gestapo but survived) and his legacy (children’s homes all over Belgium, good works etc.) and to ask for our support. The congregation opened their wallets. The air was full of the sound of crinkling notes (rather than the more normal clinking sounds that accompany the regular collection for church maintenance). I put my head in my handbag. There wasn’t even any change rolling round the bottom. I looked at the floor as the altar boy shoved the plate under my nose and my neighbours retrieved large denomination notes from their Gucci and Prada wallets (this is a very posh church…). All very dreadful. And I still had to face the styrofoam army on the way out.? Felt very bad.
Spent the afternoon wandering around the center trying to find a soft toy for the Princess. Not any old soft toy, you understand. As you know, our baby does not sleep through the night. However, on the plus side she goes to bed at 7.30 without a whimper. This is marvellous. We have dinner in peace, we read the papers and our books, we watch University Challenge. The reason for this bliss is the (imaginatively named) Doggy. We give her Doggy, she grabs his ear and closes her eyes. It’s a small miracle. But recently, we have begun to be haunted by the worry that she might lose Doggy (he travels with us when we go away). What would we do? You have no idea how sad you become when you have a small baby. We contacted the friends who had given us Doggy and asked where they got him. They were surprised and, I think, mildly gratified to discover that their gift had played such an important role in maintaining our sanity but, alas, had no very clear recollection of where they had bought Doggy. We followed their imprecise directions and found nothing except a large and, somewhat expensive, wooden dragon which the Princess enjoyed banging loudly on a cafe table. Not conducive to sleep then. The search for Doggy 2 continues.
on 26 January 2004 at 22:21
Nicola Doherty
on 28 January 2004 at 14:42
on 28 January 2004 at 15:16
