The Princess and I are up late watching the Late Late Toy Show, along with the nation’s twitterati: I see #LateLateToyShow is trending. Well, it beats the bailout.
Princess
Some Thoughts on Race
When I lived in Brussels, I was once walking in Matonge during the evening and a black woman spat at me. It was a bit disconcerting but I assume you could write it down to madness rather than racial tension.
In the Princess’s class in Belgium, there was a little black boy called Charles. She once said to me that she was one of the Belgians in her class but he was not Belgian. When asked where he was from she couldn’t say but she was adamant that black people couldn’t be Belgian. As she was an Irish child talking about a Belgian little boy, there was some irony there.
Once a Chinese baby looking at the Princess started to cry. “He probably wishes he had Belgian skin like me,” she commented.
I’m sure that racism is alive and well in Ireland but I am glad that it seems to have completely stopped appearing in my daughter’s conversation in the way that it did in Belgium and never appeared on the boys’ radar at all as far as I can see. It’s not all bad here, you know. Though being the centre of European attention as a bush fire that may lead to contagion is about as much fun as you would think it might be. I was at the National History Museum with the kids yesterday (near the Dáil and Government buildings) and the place was heaving with foreign camera crews. If you saw small children in grey uniforms waving behind the reporter who carried the Irish story in your country, they were mine.
Ireland’s National Sport
I think I have written before about how surprised I was to come back from 5 years abroad and discover that rugby had become Ireland’s national sport. It suffered from a number of difficulties in the past, namely, the GAA used to frown on “foreign games” and it’s dangerous – particularly for amateurs. On the plus side, it seems to be the only team sport where we do well in international competition. Now the GAA doesn’t care and my sons are coached by Daddies in rugby shirts. It’s still dangerous though.
Regular readers will recall that my children go to an Irish language school. For historical reasons, one might not expect that to be a bastion of rugby. Further, the Princess’s teacher is from Mayo. Insofar as there is national expertise in rugby, its seat is emphatically not in the West of Ireland. This has not deterred this teacher who is an avid rugby fan. During gym, my daughter’s class have been practicising the haka. She has taught her brothers. They look deeply alarming when they do this. We all sat and watched the New Zealand players doing their haka this evening before Ireland proceeded to lose to New Zealand. As I have previously mentioned, the Princess knows all the words to Ireland’s call and sang along with gusto. Where will it all end?
More Customer Service
When I first got my own car, about 15 years ago, I went to my father’s insurance broker for cover. The broker is based in Cork and I live in Dublin and, from time to time, I have considered changing to a Dublin broker but I never got around to it. Today, I called the broker to check something on my renewal quote. Our conversation went like this:
Me: Hello, I’d like to check etc.
Him: That’s Anne, is it? I’ll get your file.
I haven’t spoken to him in a year or more and he still recognised me on the phone straight away. He didn’t need my insurance number, my surname, my date of birth, my phone number or a six digit activation code to find my file. I don’t think that his brokerage will be losing my custom any time soon.
And in completely unrelated news, the Princess lost her front tooth last night (a dramatic event I completely missed since I was out winning the office pub quiz with my crack team). Now she looks like this.
The Night of the Big Wind
The Princess is doing a project on hurricanes in school. Her father and I told her about the Irish hurricane; probably the only hurricane which has been used to test pension entitlements. I read her out the entry on the “big wind” from the Oxford Companion to Irish History:
“big wind”, the storm which ravaged Ireland, particularly the west, north and midlands, on the night of Sunday, 6 January 1839. High winds uprooted trees, destroyed buildings, killed livestock and, in built-up areas, spread fires. Although one newspaper put total deaths at 300 or more, a suvey of contemporary reports has found about 90 documented fatalities, 37 of them at sea. When old-age pensions were introduced in 1909 memories of the storm were one of the tests used to identify persons over 70.
Herself was spectacularly uninterested in this piece of national memory but the “big wind” looms large in the national imagination, you know, as kick-starting a series of disasters: first the big wind, then the famine, then mass emigration, then the failed 1848 uprising, then the sacrifice of our first born children to the subordinated bond holders and so on. You too may be uninterested in the “big wind” especially if you live in a country that has had a hurricane since 1839 but today is day 9 of Nablopomo and I am finding it a bit difficult to think of anything to post. Never mind, only 21 days to go.
In other news, today my sister is celebrating her birthday in Hawaii. I am not envious. Personally, I find November rain invigorating. Particularly on a bicycle.
Correspondence
When I got home from work this evening, there was an envelope by my bed with the words “To Mummy” on it in the Princess’s handwriting. I gazed at it fondly and then I opened it, this is what it said:
“Micel is a cruel stuck-up idiotic prig and a loser but he’s ashamed to admit it. If you are going to deal with him anser here.”
Underneath there is a line for my comments. Poor Micel, he crosses his sister at his peril.
