I was at a wake last weekend. The corpse was in the front room and the food was in the kitchen. So far so conventional. However, this wake was catered. There were respectful gentlemen in waistcoats going around serving tea and sandwiches. It was odd but, you know, not a bad idea. I can really see it catching on.
Ireland
Sick of the Car
I almost never sit in traffic. Mostly I’m on the bike. And we have good public transport links. Today, I was reminded of how easy things are normally. I basically spent the day in the car. Sigh.
Daniel pulled something at GAA last night. He’s alright but I decided to drive him to his physics course this morning. Mr. Waffle suggests that we blow up this headline from the paper and stick it on the radiator. Because it is true.
Anyway, after dropping him in town at 9, I went home, had breakfast and got Michael out of bed and we both went back into town to collect Dan. The traffic was awful and we only got in at 10.30. Then the three of us drove out to a university campus where the boys were going to the open day. They could have got the bus or cycled but with Dan’s sore leg, I thought I would give them a lift and combine it with a visit to my mother’s friend who lives nearby. Huge mistake. Traffic was backed up along the dual carriageway and it took us ages to get in. The campus was designed in the 60s and 70s when the car was king. The university moved from the city to the suburbs alongside a busy dual carriageway and the brutalist architects got to do their worst. The consequence is a campus which is unlovely. However, it is a very good university and many of my friends and relations regard it with a fondness which, in my view, borders on lunacy.
After finally dropping off the boys, I went to my mother’s friend’s house and left her at 12.30. I’d arranged to pick up the boys at 3. As I slogged home through the traffic to get my lunch, it became clear that I would never make it there and back again for 3, so I stopped off in a distant suburb for lunch. I went to a restaurant which was there when Mr. Waffle and I lived there many years ago and which we rarely visited as it didn’t allow bookings and there was always a queue out the door. There was no queue out the door today which should have been a sign. The decor appeared unchanged since I last went there about 20 years ago. The food was pretty awful but, look, it met a need. I wouldn’t say I’d be rushing back now.
Google maps told me that I could get to the campus in 10 minutes from my lunch venue. What it didn’t tell me was once I gained access to the campus, which is large, it would be traffic choked and it would take me 20 minutes to drive across it to where I had arranged to pick up the boys.
I got there in the end. Michael emerged full of enthusiasm, he really enjoyed the talks. Daniel was less convinced – having been to Trinity last weekend, he liked the atmosphere there better. Sadly, Michael couldn’t go to the Trinity open day because I had hauled him off to Kilkenny. To be honest, I just didn’t think a university open day would be much use. Having basically grown up on campus on UCC where both my parents lectured and never for a second having contemplated any other university my situation was a bit different. Daniel found the Trinity event really good and both of them found today useful. Who’d have thought it? They will be going to yet another university open day next weekend but I have already alerted them that they will be travelling by bike.
Potato Content
As you will be aware, Irish people have a special relationship with the potato. Many years ago we were at a wedding where an English man was marrying a Cork woman. He went around the reception telling people in tones of awe, that there were going to be three different types of potato for dinner. How could he not have known that at least two is standard for any kind of fancy dinner.
There are a number of potato related ditties I learnt when I was growing up.
This one about the importance of ensuring your stock of potatoes:
Be ateing two/be peeling two/have two in the heel of your fist/and have your eye on two more.
Sound advice. Also this one which is a Cork special:
Are oo from Cork?/ I am are oo?/How are yer potatoes?/Big and small/How do ya ate ’em?/Skins and all/Don’t they hurt ya?/Not at all.
When I was little and we were ill, mashed potato with a little butter was often offered to the sufferer once he or she had graduated from dry toast.
My mother used to call mashed potato pandy, which I always assumed was a made up childish name never to be uttered outside the family home. Imagine my astonishment when I saw this letter in the paper (part of a long series of letters over several days on the potato).
Here’s another long letter on potatoes. In case you’re interested. And who wouldn’t be?
More of it:
I regret to say that Mr. Waffle being the child of 60s hippies prefers rice to potatoes and insofar as he likes potatoes prefers a waxy potato to a floury one. It says much for his other virtues that our relationship continues to thrive notwithstanding his poor carbohydrate choices.
Please let me have your own potato related memories.
So soon?
Lads, it’s only November 10 and I am out of content. I was in Cork for a couple of days for my sister’s birthday and it was lovely but unnewsworthy. I must say though, travelling to Cork on the train on a sunny Tuesday morning is an unbeatable way to see the country. It was delightful.
I tested two breakfast spots in my efforts to find a replacement for the much lamented Crawford Gallery cafe. The Good Day deli wasn’t bad but the Farm Gate was disappointing and drafty. The search continues.
I saw this sign in the market which shows real enterprise.
Meanwhile, the Simon Community advertising shows that it understands the Cork mentality pretty well.
Mid-Term Round Up
The boys were off school last week. I’m not sure they were totally delighted to have their mother around the house arranging activities but they bore up.
Some friends of ours from Brussels, now also resident in Dublin, had an enormous wedding anniversary party – caterers, entertainment, marquee in the garden, the works. “Bring your teenagers,” they said, “there will be lots of young people.” I was a bit dubious but we brought the boys. They had the time of their lives. I was amazed to see them out on the dance floor dancing with enthusiasm. There was a big gang of teenagers, chatting and bonding away. It was brilliant.
Mr. Waffle and I meanwhile struggled slightly. There weren’t many people there that we knew aside from the hosts who were obviously busy and a couple of people we knew a little. We spent some time speaking to a lovely man – a retired solicitor now a psychotherapist – who Mr. Waffle had known professionally. We were joined by a woman I knew thirty years ago when we were on the same course as trainee solicitors. I was able to recognise her as she has not changed at all. She was beautiful then and is beautiful now. She was always really pleasant and very, very clever. I felt that the gods smiled upon her and gave her all the gifts at birth. We talked a bit about our children and then turned to work and, to my surprise, I found that like me she was taking a year out from work. “How exciting,” I said with enthusiasm. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, very gently and pleasantly, “I don’t know if you’ve heard but my husband died last year.” I actually can’t believe that I hadn’t heard – Dublin is tiny – but it was such a shock. There’s definitely a lesson there somewhere.
We were taken to talk to our (French) hostess’s relatives who were over from France and didn’t speak a great deal of English. As French speakers we were offered up. They were very nice but I feel that I spent a lot of the evening speaking to older slightly deaf gentlemen. The culminating insult was when our hostess’s uncle said to myself and Mr. Waffle, “You are retired too, I think?” I think not.
All in all, by the end of the evening, I was a shadow of my former self. The boys had an amazing time though and we had to pry them away when we were going home. So there’s that.
The Dublin marathon was on the bank holiday weekend and I cycled all around the city with supporting banners trying to see the several people I knew who were running and failed to see any of them. I think that they’re all crazy anyhow.
We went out to Dun Laoghaire, had a walk on the pier and dinner out with the cousins which was lovely. It reminds me how one of the main reasons we wanted to come home from Belgium all those years ago was so that the children would know their relatives and I am pleased how well it has worked out.
Mr. Waffle moved office over the break and Michael and I helped unpack his boxes (Daniel was a bit sick). I will tell you this: there is a lot of stationery Mr. Waffle has acquired which he wishes his wife hadn’t been there to unpack (57 sets of file dividers anyone?). However, we finished quite speedily and Mr Waffle took us out for lunch so all’s well that ends well so long as he never brings his stationery stash home.
I took the boys to see an adaptation of an M.R. James short story in the Bewley’s Cafe theatre. I thought it would be suitably Halloweeny. “Who is this Mr. James anyway?” asked Dan. Things were a bit tense beforehand, a combination of lashing rain and a trip to the gallery failing to improve anyone’s mood. I pointed out to the boys a bunch of happy tourists enjoying the rain or at least not hating it as much as they were. Not a truly effective tactic. Mercifully, they quite enjoyed the play after so I’m going to call that a win.
For his birthday we got Michael Kilkenomics tickets. It’s a festival of comedy and economics in Kilkenny. He loves economics, I thought he’d like it. I was disabused of this idiotic notion the second he opened the envelope. We got him something else. And really, I should have found a friend to go with but I brought him anyway in the vain hope that when he got there it might be more fun than he feared.
My first mistake was bringing our bikes on the train. Kilkenny is small and everything was within five minutes of the station. There was no need for bikes and it is a pain bringing your bike on any train other than Cork-Dublin (where they are handily accommodated in the Guard’s van). You have to fit it on a rack designed for strong young men with light bikes.
My next mistake was booking three talks. What was I thinking? We were exhausted after two. The talks were ok and there were even some funny bits. The first one was the worst – it was hosted by Dylan Moran (comedian who knows a lot more about economics than you might expect) and at least one of the speakers was a bit dull. Michael commanded my admiration by asking a question at the end in a theatre filled with about 300 men in their 60s. Again, what was I thinking booking this? We had both read the book “Chums” by Simon Kuper which is an easy read – as Michael said, “gossipy” so we went to a talk by him. It was fine – and the comedian host, Rosie Holt, pretty good but almost everything he said was covered in the book so, not exactly new. He did have one funny story though. Apparently when Prince Edward was at Cambridge he was accompanied everywhere by two security officers. Edward did anthropology and was not very good and the despair of his tutors etc. but one of his security officers became fascinated and started doing the reading and hanging behind to chat to the tutors. Great story, if true, as they say.
We were really drooping at this stage but, happily the final panel was the best. A former Argentinian finance minister was really interesting and all of those on stage (a manel, I fear – honestly, economics on the evidence of this day, is overwhelmingly male) were engaging. There were two things said about Brexit which I thought interesting. One was that this was the first time in a break up that Britain was involved in that it was the smaller, less important, less influential partner. Obviously, in the outgoing tide of colonialism, Britain has had a lot of break ups but it’s arguably always been in the more powerful position. The other was that Britain was a “new state” after Brexit. I knew what the host meant, a bit like French Republics – you know the way they’re on the fifth now – this is a change so fundamental in outlook as well as economics that it is something of a new country. I have to say that the only English person on the stage profoundly disagreed with that analysis but I think there’s something in it. The final question was what was the first thing you would you do if you were a finance minister in a new country. The English man said that he would make radical changes as the country would never be as united as now after an independence movement. Everyone else leapt in to say, “Absolutely not, a civil war is often item one on the agenda of newly independent countries”. But the English man stuck to his guns and it appeared to me stoutly maintained that this is generally not the case. I think he was wrong there but it’s been awhile since they’ve had an armed revolution in England.
Michael and I got back to Dublin exhausted. We were met by other exhausted people. Mr. Waffle had had his course all day and Daniel had gone to the Trinity open day, a reunion with the people from his summer course and a rugby match with his uncle where, I am pleased to report, Ireland won. It was a lot.
On the Sunday before return to school, there was a fair amount of hanging around the house recovering although Dan had a GAA match (of course). I had to go to a removal across town (elderly father of a friend) so I abandoned the men folk to their fate and that was that.
A little tiring overall though. How was your own mid-term?
Out and About
There’s a new Turner exhibition in the National Gallery which I went to see. Genius or no, I didn’t love it. I went to a talk after my tour of the exhibition which was pretty good actually. The audience, on a Wednesday lunch time was composed entirely of elderly women. For once, I felt positively youthful.
I went to the Hugh Lane gallery – always a delight though small, sometimes that can be part of the delightfulness. My visit coincided with that of the Portuguese President who was on a State visit and at the Garden of Remembrance across the road. The members of the army band took shelter in the gallery and I must say they have quite the uniform. A little cape and a kepi – who knew?
I went swimming again with my friend who is a daily swimmer. It was a beautiful day but a bit windy. We got in on the beach side of the swimming shelter and there was a very strong undertow. We were less than two metres from the rocks when my friend said, “Start swimming for the steps.” I did and I made very little progress but eventually got back to the steps and hauled myself out but not before being pushed over the metal banister by a powerful wave. It was really surprising and I thought I was pretty lucky to be with a friend who did so much winter swimming as otherwise, I don’t think I’d have noticed how quickly I was being pulled out to sea. Two older men got in after us and one of them got into trouble. A young couple grabbed the life belt and he went down to the edge of the water (getting his trousers wet) and tossed it into the sea. I could see that the swimmer (maybe in his early 60s) was torn between a macho desire to manage without the ring and self-preservation. Eventually he grabbed the ring. Exciting times, I can tell you.
Mr. Waffle and I went on a Dublin walking tour. I was a bit worried it would be basic and, at best, I expected to learn a couple of things I didn’t know already. I was quite wrong. It was definitely the honours course. The guide took a lot for granted. For example when talking about Dublin housing stock he said in passing, ” I presume you all know about the Church Street Disaster“. There was a general murmur of assent and, indeed, I am familiar with it but I wouldn’t call it mainstream knowledge in Dublin and what on earth the four American tourists on the tour could possibly have known about it, I don’t know. However, for Dublin residents, I thought it was fantastic and I am definitely going to go on another one of his tours.
Several people I know have taken in Ukrainian refugees. I am so impressed by this but mostly they tend to, at least, mention it. I think it is stratospherically virtuous and you could at least get some well-deserved praise. I was amazed when one friend of mine sent out a message asking whether anyone wanted to come to her house for a wreath making workshop with a young designer from Odessa who is living with her. I had had no idea. On inquiry, I found that this young woman has been living with them for the past six months. In fairness, they do have a big house but they also have two primary school age children and it’s a big commitment to bring a stranger into your house with no fixed end date. I am really lost in admiration. Also my wreath? My wreath is amazing.
