A colleague who used to be a maths teacher pressed a book upon me and I am really enjoying it. The Princess and I were out for a cup of tea and each of us was reading her book. I looked up and said to her, “I’m really enjoying this, the author says that finding something in maths is like discovery not invention. Isn’t that clever? It’s out there waiting to be found. And you can see that’s true. I mean look at pi. It’s a constant for any circle and it’s true for every circle even if we didn’t know what it was. Isn’t it fascinating?” Pause. “Do you know what pi is?” Herself, coldly, “No, I am only 9, you know.” I returned to my book, suitably chastened.
Princess
Time Marches On
I was in a bric-a-brac shop with herself and there was an old bakelite phone which she rather liked. The nice lady behind the counter said, “I have one plugged in here, do you want to try ringing your mother’s mobile?” We laughed as she poked at the cumbersome dial in amazement. Of course, she went wrong half way through and had to start again. “Push down the buttons where the receiver goes until you get a dial tone” we said. She looked at us in disbelief – really how primitive was this system? Wait until I tell her you had to wait three months to get a phone when I was a child. And that you rang the operator and gave the name of the town and asked for a number, in the case of our country cousins, this was 42. It turns out that 35 years is quite a long time.
Finite Incantatem
For the last number of weeks, the children have been waving chopsticks around and shouting “Stupefy” and “Expelliarmus”. They have printed off lists of spells from the internet which is disturbingly thorough in this regard. They are working their way through them. This game is showing no signs of palling. Daniel, who is chameleon-like in relation to accents, has decided that an English accent is best for casting spells, so we have a little boy with glasses running around, waving a chopstick and shouting out Latin(ish) words in an English accent. It’s all very odd.
Drill and Practice
Mr. Waffle: Do you know how brackets work, Miss?
Herself: Yes, you do the operation inside the brackets first. We did that last year.
Mr. Waffle: What is the Irish for brackets then?
Herself (coldly): Maths is a universal language.*
*Translation: I don’t know.
An Gorta Mór
Herself is learning about the famine in school. She had a great time doing a dramatisation where she got to play the lady from the big house increasing the rents of misfortunate tenants who had made improvements and then tossing them out. Another day, they made a coffin ship.
One night, she had a couple of questions for homework, the first of which was – “Why were the Irish so poor at the time of the Famine?” “Why were they so poor?” she asked me. “Well, lots of reasons: landholdings tended to be small as they were divided up between families; landlord and tenant law was unsatisfactory in a number of ways [insert digression on land league]; there were, of course, absentee landlords and unfair agents [digression here to cover Captain Boycott]; then remember that the Catholics had been disenfranchised for a long time and there was the legacy of the Act of Union in 1801 and the penal laws…” I began. “Does this go back to William of Orange and James II?” she asked. “Well, yes, even before that, I suppose it is the nature of history that it is informed and shaped by the past.” And so on.
I checked her homework later. In response to the question, “Why were the Irish so poor at the time of the Famine?” she had written: “Because the English were not very nice.”
Is it any wonder that her aunt has vetoed all talk of the Famine when she marries her English man in London at the weekend?
Céad Fhaoistin
The boys made their first confession this evening. Their sister sang in the school choir. They were all a mass of tension. Herself because she had a solo; the boys because they had to confess their sins and in Irish to boot. I had read them Frank O’Connor’s “First Confession” to get them in the mood.
It all passed off peacefully. The children did a drama on the altar about the lamb who had gone astray (Michael was the lamb) and then went up and made their first confession. It’s a lovely ceremony. The priest told them, quite mendaciously (one assumes), that he had been speaking to the new Pope who had said they were all good boys and girls. When he asked where the Pope was from, there was a forest of hands which did not include Michael’s. He was leaning over the edge of the pew examining the parquet flooring. Daniel, however, was a credit to us and very serious, sober and upright throughout.
At the end, Michael asked me whether he could now get the “holy bread” at mass on Sunday thus showing his, alas, utter ignorance of the nature of the sacrament of reconciliation which he had just received. He appears to have fatally confused first confession and first communion. This might be remedied, if I made known to him the likely cash bonanza that his first communion will bring but I feel that this is hardly in the spirit of the sacrament.
We all went for a drink and the children have just now been whisked off to bed. And tomorrow we’re flying to London. It’s just non-stop excitement.
