Mr. Waffle

They didn’t need me on the champagne and strawberry stall after all so we all got to wander around in the drizzle together.

It was very English and very organised. You were given a time to go and queue for the various entertainments and marshalling was done by girl guides of varying degrees of ferocity. My English friend F asked whether I thought any other nation would be so horribly organised.  I pointed out that I had already seen a German lady leaving in a huff pulling her two children along behind her muttering under her breath “Hier ist alles sehr disorganasiert”.  These events tend to reinforce national stereotypes.

We took the Princess for a ride on a shetland pony and while waiting for our turn we saw a 10 year old girl guide saying sternly to a small child “don’t climb on the pony – hop on”. Since he was only about three we felt that this might be a challenge for him, but she was adamant and eventually there were tears and a parent had to lift him on.  This boded ill for our adventure. As we waited, a five year old said loudly to his parents “What a big willy that horse has”. Everyone chatted nervously about the weather. Finally it was our turn. The Princess took one look at the pony and refused to go next or near it. As we tried to put her in the saddle she clung to us in a most affecting manner and shot evil glances at the girl guide. Eventually she consented to be photographed pulling the pony’s mane. Our photographic archive is complete.

We also took her to dig for buried treasure. This involved digging up sand from a small basin with a spoon. Eventually you would come across a worthless small object perfect for babies to chew and choke on. To be fair she didn’t come across any small object because on being given a spoon and a basin she, not unnaturally, assumed that the contents were for eating and began spooning sand into her mouth enthusiastically. We managed to stop her before she got to the treasure.

After winning a small prize in the raffle (every ticket wins a prize) and chewing on the plastic tape securing the three legged race area (I leave you to determine which member of our party decided that this was a good idea) we decided to head home. “Well” I said perkily to Mr. Waffle “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”  He hissed in an undervoice as we made our way through the phalanx of range rovers parked in the grounds “if you ever make me go to something like this again, I’ll divorce you.”  Not so good either then.

I was just about to finish a really excellent entry, no truly, when I lost it all by going to check on Google whether the Czech foreign minister really is Polish or whether they were just laughing at me at the party on Saturday night.  I’m not sure whether I have the heart to start again. And I still don’t know whether the Czech foreign minister is Polish.

To summarise. Went out Friday night to Glam Potter’s where she had foregathered a selection of her glam friends and me. Prize for glamness goes to the girl who’s just managed to get herself seconded to Miami for work. On full pay. To do research. Plus a per diem allowance. She wants us to know that she also applied for Pittsburgh. Second prize for glamness goes to the GP herself who launched into an anecdote as follows, “when I lived in Miami, I had this convertible…”

Saturday saw myself and the Princess loyally supporting Mr. Waffle and his team in their attempt to win a work tournament. They lost. They must continue losing for a number of weekends before they can stop. Let’s hope the weather stays fine.

Saturday night myself and Mr. Waffle went to a party upstairs. The Anglo-Czech couple on the top floor sent everyone in the building notes inviting us to come and asking us to let them know, if they made too much noise. Since they are the only people in the building who make no noise, this was particularly endearing. We got an oral invitation as well, because I feed their cats when they are away. I thought the cats were named after a flying beast and a fast train respectively but my sister-in-law the publishing exec tells me that they are in fact called after 16th century English choral composers (and a small prize is available if you can tell me their names based on these hints alone). Despite the undoubted pretension of their cat naming policy, they are very pleasant, so we were happy to trip along on Saturday night. It also gave us a chance to see what they had done with that awkard space behind the sofa (bookshelves, since you ask, but, you know, I feel, behind the sofa is a bit unsatisfactory for bookshelves).

Everyone at the party was either English or Czech. There was also a three week old baby who was both. There are a lot more Anglo-Czech couples out there than you might think. I now know a lot more about the Czech republic than I did last week. I offer you the following:

Women from Prague are very pretty;

The same cannot be said for the men;

Czech women get a year’s maternity leave on 70% pay and up to three years in total. During that time, they do not leave their children. At all. I was an object of wonder because my baby was downstairs with a babysitter – Fluid Pudding, there is a nation out there that relates to you;

Ostrova is the third city and good for mining and clubbing. People from Prague do not go to Ostrova and laugh uproariously at the suggestion that they might. I tested this theory on the sample available to me and it seems to be true. Comparisons between Cork and Ostrova are unhelpful and unworthy, now obviously, if someone were to compare Limerick to Ostrova, we might be getting somewhere;

John Kerry is Czech.

Their foreign minister may be Polish.

They’re a friendly bunch the Czechs.

On Sunday we finally tried to book something for next weekend. It’s a four day weekend (if you’re American, you should know that in May, Europeans hardly bother working at all) and the thought of spending all of it in Brussels was unappealing. Obviously, we are not the only people who think this because everywhere is fully booked. We finally got a room in a chateau near Lille for Thursday night. That’s it. I have determined that to prolong the holiday spirit through the w/end we will get a babysitter on Saturday night and go to see Troy. If you feel that this is a terribly bad idea, please tell me and make a better recommendation. Note, however, that you are speaking to a woman who intends to watch “Noi Albinoi” on DVD tonight. Yes, that’s right an Icelandic film. Hmm.

1. The other day, I parked in an underground car park. I extracted her highness, I locked the car and opened the boot. I took out her pushchair, strapped her in, attached the string bag, grabbed the rucksack and double checked that I had my keys in my pocket before closing the boot. You see, I am cunning, I have often worried that it is easy to lock my keys in the boot and that, frankly, would be disastrous. My keys were not in my pocket. I checked the string bag. No. I checked under the car. No. I double checked my handbag. No. Not in any of my four pockets. I took the Princess out of her pushchair and checked whether she was sitting on the keys. No. I put her sitting in the boot and checked around her. I took out everything in the boot. No. I double checked my pockets. No. I emptied out the nappy bag. No. This was ridiculous. I had used the keys minutes ago (about 15 minutes ago at this stage) to lock the car door. Could I have left them in the door? Could somebody have come and taken them while I was getting the pushchair out of the boot? That was the only explanation. You know, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” or words to that effect. I decided that I had better ring my loving spouse to get him to come and rescue us, bringing his car keys. I went to the car park entrance to get a signal, carefully keeping the car in view lest the scam artist should come up and try to drive it away. There was, of course, no one in the reception area which boasted a number of cameras. A pity, if there had been, I would have asked them to replay so that I could see the person who had stolen our car keys. I rang my husband and started to explain what had happened. “Um” he said “the keys wouldn’t be in the lock of the boot, you know, it would be up in the air and you wouldn’t see them.” Yes, that’s where they were.

2. On Monday morning, a friend of Mr. Waffle’s was in Brussels and, since I’m not working, I invited her round for coffee. While she was here, a friend of mine telephoned. Conversation was as follows:

Me: Hi, I can’t actually talk, there’s a person here, sorry not a person, a friend, well, not a friend of mine, a friend of Mr. Waffle’s, well, sorry a friend of mine too, but not as good a friend of mine as of his.

(Friend person – Um, I’ll just go to the bathroom).

Me: Oh well, she’s going to the bathroom so we can chat for hours, well, not hours, obviously, but minutes, well, a while, anyway.

Friend person sidles out of the room nervously.

3. Yesterday afternoon, I dried all my liquits with a teatowel. Liquits are these little plastic sacs of washing liquid that dissolve in water. You shove them in with your washing and hey presto the plasticky stuff dissolves away in the wash and your wash comes out clean. I suspect, they are almost certainly as damaging to the environment as SUVs. I don’t care. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a design flaw, like superheros, their greatest strength contains the seeds of their destruction, they dissolve in water. I keep them under the sink. So some water dropped in on them. And they started to dissolve. So I took them all out and dried them lovingly with a teatowel to preserve them. Even as I was doing this, I wondered “should I be safely in an institution?”

Completely unrelated point, if you are Irish and haven’t heard it, have a listen to this http://www.rte.ie/radio1/morning/morningireland/. Click on audio for today Wednesday (don’t know if they archive, so hurry) and listen at about 8.30. Cathal Mac Coille (who I normally loath) does an outstanding job interviewing Beverly Flynn.

If you consult the pictures of our infant daughter on my photoblog, you will see that she is a messy eater. We have wooden floors which really should be revarnished so the constant addition of water and random food to the floor surface is not ideal. I suppose it wouldn’t be ideal under any circumstances but with the floors needing revarnishing, things do tend to leave marks (we have a trail of vaseline handprints on our bedroom floor from when the Princess managed to get hold of a tub of the stuff and smear it all over herself).

I thought that I would go to IKEA and get a cheap, tasteful, washable floor covering which we could put on the dining room floor. I got to IKEA and, you know what, tasteful and washable don’t really go together. So I thought that I would get a cheapish rug which we could dispose of when the Princess learned to eat without scattering debris. IKEA is not as cheap as all that. The rugs in the size I wanted were about 600 euros. Imagine then my delight when I found one for 80 euros. True, it looked a bit like underlay, but it looked robust also. I snapped it up.

I brought it home. I explained my reasoning to Mr. Waffle over the phone.

“Hmm,” he said, “I don’t know if a rug is what we need, but for 8 euros, I suppose you can’t go wrong”.
“Umm, no, not 8 euros, 80.”

Horrified silence.  “You shouldn’t have told me that. I mean all we really needed was a square of lino for under her high chair”.

“Actually, it’s called vinyl flooring these days”

When he came home, he took one look at the rectangular, dark green rug and said “Ah, the 80 euro putting green”

And, inevitably, it’s a bit of a disaster, whereas before debris could be swept up or mopped up, now we have to get out the hoover after every meal.  Also, given that it has the texture of underlay, it is a little rough on the royal knees.  I may have to take it up, I suppose what I really need is a square of lino.