Neglected or Completely Random Round-Up

This blog has been a bit ignored recently. I’ve been busy, what can I say?

The cat has been killing small animals to beat the band. One weekend we had an injured pigeon (one wing down) and a small mouse fleeing around the garden to the cat’s endless delight. We went out hoping that matters would have resolved themselves on our return. When we came back the mouse had gone to his reward but the pigeon was still hopping round the garden. The cat had lost interest and fallen asleep in the flower bed. Mr. Waffle had to usher the injured pigeon to safety in the lane through the shed. You haven’t lived etc.

Herself went off on a three week residential course. I missed her. She had a great time. When she came back, I overheard her saying to her brothers, as the three of them cleaned up in the kitchen, “You guys have really missed your union rep.” Oh yes she is returned.

While she was away I made the boys go to gallery. They can now recognise St. Jerome at 20 paces. A summer afternoon well spent.

They also went to a tennis camp which was somewhat successful. Inspired by this and Wimbledon, Dan and I went out to play a match one evening and I practically expired from the heat. Irish people are just not made for hot summers.

My sister came to visit and too the boys to Taytopark which they quite enjoyed notwithstanding some reservations that they might be too old and sophisticated for it. My poor sister lost her car exhaust while staying with us and fell and hurt her knee in Taytopark so not a total win for her.

My Parisian friend’s family came to Ireland for a fortnight. She was stuck in Paris and in the first week we were on holidays in Cork (much, much more of this anon) but we saw a bit of them last week. We went out for a drink on Monday night and they came around to us for a barbecue on Wednesday evening. Unfortunate that the cat chose to catch a mouse under the table in the garden and decapitate in front of the horrified yet fascinated gazes of the French children. The eldest who has stayed with us a few times on exchange pointed out that the house was full of spiders (a bit I suppose) and coupled with the mouse, it was just too much. I scoffed at her fears and kept from her the fact that when I went to put the burgers on the barbecue there was an enormous charred spider sitting on the grill. Alas. Look, nobody dead yet, eh? My friend came to join her family today and we had lunch together and then went to see the children perform in the drama emerging from the drama camp they had been in all week. It was pleasant, I have to say. And Daniel is going to stay in Paris for a couple of weeks next summer and they’ll take him to see Paris Saint Germain.

It’s all been a bit exhausting though. In previous years, we have tended to do a week in Ireland followed by a fortnight abroad for our summer holidays. This year we did a week in Cork in July and then a fortnight back in work and then we’re off to Denmark. The week in Cork meant Mr. Waffle and I were frantic in the week leading up to it and equally frantic this week after (with added French entertaining duties – it was worth it, but it was hard). Next year we will do three consecutive weeks again.

On the plus side, met a friend for lunch and in our regular, “how are your children?” update told her that herself was going into transition year and she said that they had a work experience programme and might our firstborn be interested. Since finding herself work experience is a problem that has been gnawing at me since the start of the summer (herself seemed relatively unphased) with the school sending me unwelcome text reminders that it had to be sorted before she went back to school in September, I was very pleased. I could have taken her in to my office, I suppose, but neither of us were particularly keen. I feel, however, the life lesson she is getting in how to get a job may not be exactly the one we would want.

Finally, and only tenuously related, while I am on the theme of neglected, the html or css or whatever on this blog seems to have given up the ghost. The twitter links don’t work, the feedly link doesn’t work and the pictures are bizarrely stretched. Not to mention the weird wide margins. And now WordPress is torturing me about General Data Protection Regulation. Frankly, if this website is harvesting personal data, it’s news to me. I had to add a privacy page filled with suggested WordPress text and I feel it is overkill. I cannot believe that this blog is the kind of thing they were thinking about when the GDPR was drafted. Deep sigh. Maybe I can pay someone to fix it all.