Nice (slightly elderly) Garda: You can’t put your bicycle there. Put it across the road instead.
Me: OK.
Him: That’s a lovely bike.
Me: Thank you. I’m really enjoying cycling in the fine weather. Usually, I’m very unlucky and my bike is stolen at the start of the spring and I don’t get around to buying a new one until autumn.
Him: I have the same bike for 32 years.
Me: Really?
Him: Yes.
Me: How come it was never stolen? What’s your secret?
Him: It’s 32 years old.
Ireland
The Múinteoir
The children and I were having tea in a cafe after school and the Princess was still resplendant in her uniform.
An elderly lady came up to us and said to the Princess “Cén fath nach bhfuil tú ag caint as Gaeilge?” She blushed and subsided into silence and it was left to me to pick up the conversation in my very threadbare Irish (before the interruption the Princess had been telling me about how she had won a prize for speaking Irish at school – obviously not something she was going to be trying out outside the school grounds). After some rather basic conversation with me, the elderly lady turned her gimlet gaze back on the Princess. “Cad is ainm duit?” Upon being met with silence from my unexpectedly shy child in the face of this very basic query, she said quite sternly “Bi dea-bheasach!”
Memories of my own primary school days came flooding back to me and I realised that I confronted that most alarming of specimens, a retired primary school teacher. She put me forcibly in mind of big Miss O’Hea (big to distinguish her from her sister small Miss O’Hea who also taught in the school) who taught me in second and third class. She was effective (I probably learnt more at ages 8 and 9 than any point subsequently) but distinctly alarming. “Were you a teacher in my daughter’s school at some point?” She was indeed. Had she overlapped with the present (very kind, good and hard working) principal? Only for a short space of time. I see. “Of course,” she said meaningfully, “his wife teaches there too.” I see. “Agus a colceathair” she said nodding significantly. And then with no more than a pat on the head for the boys, she was gone. The Princess’s current teacher is a very sweet (very trendy) young woman in her 20s, I don’t think that she quite realised that teachers came in such formidable guises and she was pretty shaken by her encounter with the old guard. There’s nothing like a múinteoir to put you in your place.
Bring on the oil crisis
The weather was spectacular this weekend. It was undoubtedly the finest June bank holiday weekend I can remember. It’s going to be a heatwave summer again. Like 1977! I certainly hope so as we will be holidaying in Ireland this year and Ireland in the rain is glum though sadly typical.
This weekend, things went our way. We went to the Dublin docklands festival. We arrived at the right time and we didn’t have to queue for anything, even ice cream. We investigated the Jeanie Johnston, the world’s most expensive replica ship for which every man, woman and child in the country will have to make a contribution ad infinitem. We also looked over the Loth Lorien (no sniggering, the owner’s other ship is called the J.R.R. Tolkien) from Amsterdam where I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in 20 years (“the man with three children and the strong Cork accent” guessed Mr. Waffle).
Me: Bernard, how are you, it’s Anne.
Princess: Can we go up here?
B: Anne, how lovely to see you.
One of his small children legs it for the rigging.
Me: Are these all your children?
Princess: Can we go up here NOW?
B: Rescues small child from rigging, admonishes another says yes.
Me: What are you doing now?
Princess: I AM climbing up here.
Him: In the bank. And you?
Me: Get down and wait one minute.
Him: Flails after small children.
Me: Well, nice to see you.
Him: Yes, lovely to see you too.
I suppose having small children does fill in those gaps in conversation that inevitably arise when you meet old acquaintances.
Following my mother’s slightly puritanical but ultimately rewarding rule, we left when we were enjoying ourselves most and were able to look back on a very successful outing.
Then on Monday, we took ourselves off to Brittas Bay for the day. The last time I went to an Irish beach, it was all Irish people. The migrant population has certainly made us look less like a nation of milk bottles. It was extraordinary. Firstly, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I don’t think I have ever seen this in Ireland before. In fact, when I went on holidays with my parents, my mother used to drive my father insane by pining for cloudy skies “Don’t you get tired of these endless blue skies,” she would lament. Secondly, the beach was heaving. You had to step around people. I have never seen an Irish beach so crowded in my life. Thirdly, everyone in Ireland seems to boast a tattoo. Fourthly, almost everyone in Ireland is overweight. All very pleasant all the same. We bought ice cream in the car park and the man in the ice cream van told me that they had run out 5 times the day before and that the following day, he would be buying himself a porsche (people need fuel to keep up their bulk, you know).
The children enjoyed themselves as did we though, despite the hot sand and cloudless blue skies, the water was absolutely perishing (some things never change).
Domestic Games
Recently, on Saturday mornings, we have been taking the children to football and hurling training. The boys love it. The Princess stays on the sidelines, solidly (and very annoyingly) refusing to take part. To their enormous delight we dress the boys up in their FC Barcelona and Lions 09 kit (a Christmas present from their uncle) to go to training. And very fetching they looked too.
I did have mild qualms about introducing kit from foreign games but all that is in the past now and I noted that the very patient man training the four year old boys in football was wearing an Irish rugby jersey. After limbering up and working on their ball skills, the four year olds started a match. I was a bit concerned about this as my children had never played a match before. “Never mind” reassured the trainer “wait until you see it, it’s like a flock of sheep milling around a ball.” So indeed, it proved.
The hurling, however, was a different matter. The trainer was from Cork and he took it all very seriously. Ah, well do I remember my primary school days when year after year the hurling team won the All-Irealnd. They would tour the schools, show us the McCarthy cup, and give us all a half day (they won three in a row between 76 and 78 – formative years, I was 7, 8 and 9 and very grateful for the half day). The trainer clearly remembered that too and he was taking no prisoners. Having equipped his 30 four year old with helmets and hurleys, he went down the line “clashing the ash” (essentially walloping their hurleys with his) and he made them all get in the ready position and roar (something that works well for the NZ rugby team). There was some confusion with his instructions. “Is the ready position holding the hurley on our heads?” roared the trainer. Some of the young men thought it was and held their hurleys over their heads. The match itself was more like a real match than I had at all anticipated following the football. Poor Daniel came trailing over to me saying that no one was giving him the ball and I explained to him that he had to go and get it. I then had to wade on to the pitch and separate him out from another little boy who had taken the ball from him. Aside from this minor off the ball incident and despite the fact that 30 little boys were given sticks and told to swing them, there were no injuries.
In encouraging the Princess to play (in vain), I picked up a hurley myself for the first time in my life. My previous experience had only been in hockey and a hurley has a much bigger head, so it is much easier to dribble the ball. I was delighted with myself as I zoomed around the little markers until I heard an English accented voice say “that looks like a back stick to me.” These migrants are clearly mingling well. After confirming that I was indeed playing a different game (with his hurley as it turned out), he encouraged me to go again. I was happily zooming round the obstacles (the Princess lolling disinterestedly by the fence) when a six year old came up and with a sweeping wallop of her hurley took the ball out from under me. This is indeed a very different game, maybe I should stick to what I know.
When relating all of this to my mother-in-law the next day, she told me that her father-in-law, my children’s great-grandfather, had played senior hurling for Tipperary. This is information which was hitherto unknown to me and very impressive indeed, trumping the information I already had that my father-in-law had played minor football for Dublin. I see a great future for my children, particularly, if I ever succeed in actually getting the Princess on the pitch.
Equality
I have a friend whose father regularly says “there’s no point in sending women to college as they always give up working”. This is an immense source of annoyance to my friend who has always been in (very gainful) employment since leaving college twenty years ago and, given the state of her company’s pension fund, looks likely to continue to do so until she is seventy. On the other hand she talked about another friend who had recently attended a twenty year school reunion. At the ten year reunion, all of her former classmates had been running the world; at this reunion, it was all “you have children and you still have to work, how dreadful for you”.
We then talked about all the women we knew who were the main breadwinners in their households (including both of us though, I’m hoping that, in my case, that is only temporary). Off the top of our heads, we came up with 10. Isn’t that interesting? Brave new world, people. Now, if only we could close that persistent salary gap.
Cultural Hegemony
Recently, the Princess asked me what “ggu..nn.ess” meant? “Where did you see it?” I asked. “Everywhere,” she said. “Ah, I think you must mean Guinness”. “Oh, the black beer with white on top?” “Well, Guinness isn’t the only black beer with white on top, its called stout and in Cork they make two kinds of stout : Murphy’s and Beamish. In fact, your great, great uncle Tommy, your Cork Grandad’s uncle worked in the Murphy’s factory in Cork”. I’m doing my best here but I feel that I’m fighting an uphill battle.
