Herself likes to spread salt on her rice cakes (don’t judge). One day she brought some sea salt into school in a bit of cling film. One of her best friends asked her, “Why are you putting crystal meth on your rice cakes?”
Fáilte
I met a nice American couple from Colorado on the train recently. They were finishing a week’s visit to Ireland. They had been to Dublin (where, they revealed, in passing, that his father had happened upon some junkies shooting up in the city centre near where they were staying, alas), Clare, Cork and Kerry. They seemed to have picked up a number of misconceptions during their stay.
Them: We’re from just outside Colorado, where they brew Coor’s beer.
Me: Oh right.
Them: We knew that would help to place it for an Irish person.
[Not so much, actually]
Them: Why does everyone in Ireland love Wales so much?
Me: Ah, Wales who beat England in the rugby world cup match recently?
Them: Yes, everyone in the bar was shouting ‘Come on Wales!’
Me: That’s a complicated one.
Them: We took a tour bus in Dublin and saw the Protestant church that used to be separate from a Catholic church by a wall to keep the Protestants and Catholics apart.
[I’m pretty sure the tour company made that up.]
Them: So we went into a bar and this man at the bar just looked at us and said, “F*** off!” I guess that’s Irish pub humour for you [they laughed good-naturedly while I was just appalled].
Them: So the one thing we knew we had to see, if we came to Ireland, was the Blarney stone [possibly one of Ireland’s dullest attractions as they eventually found out – up the road from Cork, readily accessible from my parents’ house, I have visited it once – that was plenty].
The detail on their trip to Blarney, however, was enough to put off the most enthusiastic. They were staying in Killarney. Killarney is in Kerry and about 80 long kilometres from Blarney which is just outside Cork city. 80kms may not be as far in Colorado as it is on the Cork-Kerry road. Possibly for this reason, they decided to get a taxi to Blarney. That was €160 worth of taxi. Due to, admittedly, poor planning on their part and having arrived on October 1 when, as any Irish person would tell you, all Irish monuments change their opening hours, Blarney Castle had closed eight minutes before they arrived. However, undaunted, our heroes went back to Killarney (where they were staying) and paid a further €120 (reduced rate) to go Blarney and back in the morning. They enjoyed the added bonus of a near miss on the narrow road where their taxi driver risked all their lives passing out a turf lorry – authentic in so many ways. With difficulty, I managed to restrain myself from sharing with them how many more economical and effective ways there were to achieve their objective. Still, they seemed happy and, as they pointed out to me, it would be a lot more expensive to get to Blarney from Colorado. This was undoubtedly true and I could only admire their youthful optimism.
I have decided that the next time we are in Cork, I will take the children to Blarney Castle, maybe there is something in it after all.
The Dark Side of Cat Ownership
This morning, Mr. Waffle disposed of two partially disembowelled mice, one from the utility room and one from the kitchen. Then he whooshed the indignant cat away from the pile of her vomit by the back door. It contained visible mouse entrails and her previous night’s dinner and she was busy re-consuming it.
I will leave you with that image. You’re welcome.
Culture
We come back from holidays in late August and it is heritage week, then there is the fringe theatre festival, then the theatre festival, then culture night, then open house, now there’s the Dublin festival of history and something called gallery weekend as well and by mid-October we are so exhausted that we can face no cultural events for the following twelve months.
I got all the brochures from the Dublin tourist office. They handed me out the brochure for culture night surreptitiously from under the counter. Apparently, if they were out, they would all be gone. Baffling.
So we took part in a limited selection of events. Foolishly, I had already booked myself and the Princess into “The Importance of Being Earnest” at the start of the season; our stamina was compromised early. It was long – I had completely forgotten, but she enjoyed it, notwithstanding the extremely uncomfortable seats and the slightly mediocre production.
Then, I sent her to a music workshop in the Chester Beatty library because I wanted to use up her cultural stamina and her friend was going. She did not like it.
The children and I went to the “Secret” exhibition in the Science Gallery which was really excellent. Michael learnt to pick a lock. What’s not to love?
Unrelated. But, we saw people swimming in the Liffey. The horror.
Culture night began well. We had booked an acting session which the children found mildly enjoyable. They were taught by a talented, enthusiastic and energetic young woman. There was a group of about ten children of various ages. Among other things she had them freeze as various professions. “Doctors and nurses!” she said. Then to each of the girls, she asked “What are you doing nurse?” to some she would add “Or are you a doctor?” and to all of the boys in turn, she said “What are you doing doctor?” It was obviously unconscious. I agonised, should I say something or not. I went up at the end and thanked her for a terrific session then I said about the unconscious gender bias. I felt like a heel. The Princess was utterly mortified.
By the end of the evening, the boys were beginning to wilt. The visit to the Quaker meeting house was, frankly, a mistake. Herself was really interested but the boys most emphatically were not. She listened in fascination to the nice Quaker lady telling her how they wouldn’t dream of imposing their beliefs on others or judging others for their beliefs. So different from the religion she knows best. If she converts is that a win or a lose? Look, it’s not Catholicism but, you know, it’s religion.
Mr. Waffle and I went to “The Man and Le Mans” at the Irish Film Institute’s documentary film festival. If you like motor racing, boy, was this the film for you. I do not like motor racing. As a bonus, there was an interview with the director. He explained that they had set the sound to extra loud before playing the film that evening. That was obvious to the meanest intelligence
In the fringe theatre festival we copped out and went to see two comedians. They were mildly amusing. Moment of the night was banter with the audience as follows:
Comedian: I hate audience interaction, see you [pointing to man in front row] what do you do?
Man: I work in retail.
Comedian: See, that’s not funny, how can you make that funny? [He continues with this theme and then turns back to man in the front row]. So Mr. “I work in retail, where do you work?”
Man: In Knobs and Knockers on Nassau Street.
Got the biggest laugh of the night.
We went to a thing called “By Heart” in the theatre festival. It was recommended to us. A Portuguese man teaches 10 people in the audience one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. It was a lot more entertaining than you might think. I forced Mr. Waffle to be a volunteer and I was too. It was sonnet 30 which goes as follows:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
It doesn’t look too bad but it is quite hard when a) you can’t see the poem, b) the actor/director/writer/main man is Portuguese and although he speaks excellent English is a little hard to understand at times, just like Shakespeare c) the woman sitting beside you on stage is from Belgium and speaks little English and is getting you to translate the sonnet that you barely understand yourself, on the hoof, into French for her d) the audience is shouting out your line at you which you have forgotten in the stress of trying to translate into French the line “And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,” while the Portuguese man assures you that there is no need to worry as the audience always loves failure [this appears to be true] and e) you are trying to follow the action [talk of Fahrenheit 451 and Mandelstam and the author’s grandmother] rather than repeat your line constantly in your head.
When I described it to my sister, she said that it sounded exactly like the kind of thing that happens in a nightmare and I see where she’s coming from but I did quite enjoy it. The next night’s volunteers were featured in a photo in the review of the play for the paper and it sums up the difference between Mr. Waffle and me that I was quite sorry we weren’t in the paper and he felt, strongly, that we had dodged a bullet. It was unfortunate, then, that shortly after the performance, it transpired that a colleague of Mr. Waffle’s had been in the audience. This man glided up to him at work and said, without preamble, “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought…”
I didn’t book anything for the children in the theatre festival, but happily, the boys got taken to something they really enjoyed with school and herself had been to “The Importance of Being Earnest” so honour was saved.
Between this cultural onslaught and the boys’ birthday and the return to work and school this is always an exciting time of year but you may look forward to more regular posting now that this year’s cultural work is done.
10
Daniel and Michael were ten at the weekend. We’ve come a long way.
Posts describing them fully at this great age will follow but first I have to tell you about the weekend which nearly sent me to an early grave. My sister came up which was lovely and filled the children’s hearts with joy and left them swimming in presents. So far so good.
At 10 on Saturday, I dropped herself to a friend’s house as she was too sophisticated to party with her brothers. Then I dropped around to another house and picked up one of the boys’ guests. Then we all went to the boys’ party (lots of quasar, which they enjoyed very much). As I said bitterly to my sister, “I have been so rushed this morning, I haven’t even had breakfast; I’ll have to have breakfast in the Starbuck’s in the shopping centre.” “I think that’s called a first world problem,” said she. Which was true but still didn’t mean that I could eat the unutterably vile pain au chocolat which was available in Starbuck’s.
Then the father of one of the guests rang and said he was going to be late as he had been clamped. So we waited around for a bit until he was declamped. It was nearly 2 by the time we were heading back. I had to drop one of the guests home but his mother rang to say she was going out and could I drop him to his father’s workshop. I could. He knows the way, I was told. He did not know the way. However, after some floundering he was safely delivered. Then I went to pick up herself. I was home by 2.30 to eat my much deferred lunch. Then I went into town with the birthday boys and their aunt so that she could indulge their passion for small bits of plastic that require assembly. Meanwhile Mr. Waffle dropped herself to tennis, then picked her up and dropped her into town with her aunt while collecting the boys and me. I later drove into town to collect herself and her aunt.
In the background, I was arranging a long deferred piano removal. A man was going to Limerick to rescue my grandmother’s piano from my aunt and uncle’s house. He was going to be there between 3 and 4. He was not there between 3 and 4. My elderly (though spry) aunt had assembled relations to help move the piano. They waited. With the inevitability which one associates with these things, they were not there when the man arrived at 5.15. Did you know that a piano weighs about 200kgs? All was well eventually. There were many phone calls.
The piano turned up in Dublin at 9.30. I thought the van driver (two degrees in forensic science, van driving is more profitable, draw your own conclusions) and Mr. Waffle would be able to move it, but no. Our lovely neighbour across the road came out to help, he stopped a further neighbour who was innocently walking down the road and we knocked on the door of a further misfortunate neighbour to help as well. The five of them just about got it in.
Sunday was the boys’ actual birthday but we were far too exhausted to do anything other than hand over further presents and pick out “Doe, a dear” on the piano. We had to go to mass, of course. Michael was very bitter, wasn’t it bad enough to have to go to mass on Christmas day, did I have to ruin all of his celebrations? It was an especially long mass too, celebrating the silver jubilee of the ordination of a local priest with extra singing. Though that could hardly be heard over Michael’s pointed and prolonged sighs.
For added excitement, Sunday was my parents’ 48th wedding anniversary.
Dublin Victorious in Sporting Endeavour
Sunday was the All-Ireland football final. Dublin beat Kerry. Knock on benefits included no homework for the boys yesterday. Cork and Dublin often win all-Ireland finals, Longford and Roscommon never do. I was talking to two colleagues from these counties today and saying how the Dublin team (or representatives thereof) were going to visit the Dublin primary schools and possibly “give” the children a half day. They were outraged. “But that always happens when your county wins the All-Ireland,” I said. Awkward silence.
Anyhow, we were at mass on Sunday and it was all about humility. We had, from the second reading: “Where do these wars and battles between yourselves start? Isn’t it precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves?” From the Gospel:“‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’†And then our parish priest devoted his sermon to humility and not arguing over who was the greatest and so.
After the prayers of the faithful, the priest added his own prayer to the ones on the leaflet. “Let us pray,” said he “for those in the All-Ireland final and all of those watching from communities around the country.” Herself lent across to me and whispered, “Isn’t the All-Ireland just a big ‘who is the greatest’ competition?”
