My favourite aunt is 87 and lives next door to my parents. She is well in pretty much every way and is still driving around and going out for lunch and looks fantastic. But she fell today. She just tripped when going from the pavement on to the road. Even as I write she is being x-rayed but it looks like a broken hip. Sadly. Oh dear. I spoke to her on the phone and she sounded cheerful but it is not very cheerful. She said that people were very kind; they helped her up and when it became apparent that she wasn’t going to be able to get up, fetched a seat from a nearby pub, got her a cup of tea and sat with her until my saintly sister and the ambulance arrived, in that order. Send cheerful thoughts towards Cork, please.
It’s Earlier It’s Getting
I have just completed the shopping online and bought all of the ingredients to make Christmas pudding (including brandy, my God, the cost of brandy). These will be delivered on Thursday. Now, I will begin the annual hunt for pudding bowls and lids which always fails and sees me scurrying round the shops trying to find lids/bowls to match our orphans.
Despite feeling that I am well ahead of the game here – next Sunday being the first Sunday of Advent – I note, to my chagrin, that I should have begun the Sunday before the first Sunday of Advent. Next year, perhaps.
Let me give thanks that I am not from the US because I think, if we had this whole Thanksgiving thing, it would utterly tip me over the edge.
Thought for the Day
Herself: I have a problem with baby centaurs.
Me: How so?
Her: Well, think about it – horses can walk around a few hours after being born and babies can’t even hold up their heads for months.
Me: Mmm.
Her: Think about it.
Burn
Herself (who has been elected to a national student body and is talking about a workshop): One of the boys in my group was a bit mean about Irish.
Mr. Waffle: How?
Her: He said that it was a dead language and why did we bother learning through it.
Mr. Waffle: What did you say?
Her: I said that they studied Latin at his school and it was a lot more dead and he didn’t seem to have a problem with that.
Mr. Waffle: Incendiat.
Farewell Thou Good and Faithful Servant
We sold our car. We bought it in Belgium in 2005 just before the boys were born.
It suffered for us, taking three small children on holidays.
It allowed the Princess to have her own private domain in the boot for many years until she got too tall for it last summer.
We agreed to sell it just before we left Belgium, and when we went to deliver it to the purchaser the day before we left, he wanted an extra €1,000 off what we had agreed and Mr. Waffle walked away. It was a gesture I think he subsequently regretted. We brought the car back to Ireland and decided to drive it into the ground as we would never be able to sell it as the steering wheel was on the wrong side. In fact, that wasn’t half as awkward as you would have thought, except for car parks.
And on the plus side, the car served as a cat shelter in the year of the snow.
And the cat liked to sit on the dashboard as well.
It was spacious.
It took many, many journeys on ferries.
But it was made in 2004 and 12 years is very old for a car. We decided to sell it before the annual car test. We picked up the new car yesterday. Our heartless neighbour’s child with whom we have a car pooling arrangement for GAA got a lift in the new car this afternoon and pronounced it far superior to the old one.
If we hold on to the new one for as long as we kept the last one, all the children will be grown up when we get our next car which is a sobering thought.
Identity Theft
All this 1916 centenary commemoration has got me thinking a bit about identity. Recently, I realised that all my grandparents were born British citizens. At least three of them vigourously did not want to be, but they were all the same until well into adulthood. If you had asked me six months ago what nationality my grandparents were, I would have answered “Irish” unhesitatingly. I now realise that would have been only partly true and that is very strange to me.
I said it to my aunt and she said, “Ah no, they weren’t really British”. National identity is quite the complex thing, isn’t it?
