From: A friend
Sent: 04 December 2009 08:44
To: Me
Subject: Prince, anyone?
Cross-cultural confusion
Michael: Christmas is Jesus’s birthday.
Me: Yes, that’s right.
Michael begins to cry.
Me: What’s wrong?
Michael: That means Jesus gets all the presents.
Me: No, no, the baby Jesus loves us all so much that he wants all the children to have presents.
Princess: And Santa delivers the presents with help from his brother Saint Nicolas and his sister the Befana.
What it is like being married to the most organised man in the world
From: Loving Husband
To: Me (safe in the fastness of my office)
Subject: various
Have bought smiley face presents (for all three) and put in the Waterstone’s bag. Also cards (on windowsill) and paper (in dresser under stereo). Have also put car seats into Zafira – key is hanging up. Fed cat at lunch time – she may be hitting the wall as regards roast beef.
B
Pretty good, eh?
Call the tabloids
Me: Does anybody know who Barack Obama is?
Her: Yes, let me think, yes, he is the President of the United States.
Me: Very good.
Daniel: I’ve seen him.
Me: Really?
Daniel: Yes.
Me: Where?
Daniel: Outside my window.
Me: Oh yes?
Daniel: Oh yes, and he was naked.
And here’s a nice link for those who love Dr. Seuss.
And for the cat owners with children, keep the children away from the hole punch or your cat may end up like this.
Christmas Cheer
We went up to Farmleigh this afternoon. It was restored for the nation by the office of public works and is open to the public when very important guests are not staying there. It was bought from the Guinnesses for €29.2 million (ah, that property boom again) and it is a, not very attractive, piece of high Victoriana, in my view. I can’t help feeling that there are many other buildings the nation might have been better off spending its money on.
Nevertheless, as our politicians are fond of saying at the moment “we are where we are”. There are markets in the courtyard and events all year round. I have been consistently disappointed in the Farmleigh offering but the fact that so many other people regularly have a great time there keeps drawing me back. Today, wasn’t too bad. The courtyard was chilly and cheerless and the Santa unconvincing but the house was warm and manned by people in 19th century gear (I am a sucker for costume – I nearly died of happiness in Upper Canada Village). In the ballroom, there was a big Christmas tree and a choir were singing beautifully. All around were people like us with small children, spellbound. Children were sitting on their parents knees, rocking back and forth – their little faces all aglow from the cold weather outside. When the choir stopped singing, you could have heard a pin drop. Two childish voices piped up into the silence:
Childish voice 1: This is boring.
Childish voice 2: Yeah, this is boring, I want to go somewhere I can spend my money.
No prizes for guessing whose children these might be.
Thoughts on customer service
I am on leave today and occupying myself with domestic administration. Your Christmas card is in the post. I have booked pantomime tickets. We will be gracing “Aladdin” with our presence. I looked at the online booking form. It was fine and very easy to use. Yet, vaguely, I recalled having spoken to a human being when making the booking last year and being pleased by the experience. I called instead. The woman in the box office talked about our seats. I talked about the height of my little family. She gave me options. We discussed whether it would be better to sit in the middle or closer to the edge or perhaps up in the balcony. She said that the rows were not very wide and sitting at the edge gave just as good a view and maybe that might suit better so that we could go in and out to the toilet (a likely eventuality). She got my details a lot more speedily than the online site and I was able to explain that I wanted the tickets to be sent to my parents in Cork rather than my home address in Dublin, though the latter was my billing address. She was also able to pronounce my surname properly. Non-Cork people always pronounce it wrongly. Are human interactions not much, much nicer than online ones? Or am I just turning into my mother?
Thank you to those of you who read for all of NaBloPoMo and further gratitude to those who wanted me to keep writing. What stamina you have. I have been ignoring the blog all week so if your carefully thought out and charming comment has gone unanswered, or worse, been caught in the spam filter, sorry, but I will be back to you. Oh, and have a link. If you are Irish, you will recognise this way of addressing a scandal.
