From xkcd
Overheard
Princess: Mummy is very nice to us today.
Michael: Yes, she is.
Princess: Normally she doesn’t give us this many meals.
Just us and 300 Belgians
Mr. Waffle decided to check whether there were any activities planned in Dublin for Belgian national day. Don’t laugh, Mr. Waffle and the children got free sweets and some rousing songs in the park on Norwegian national day and they’re not even Norwegian.
Of course, technically, we’re not Belgian either but, since all the children were born there, he thought that it would be nice to stay in touch. He rang the Embassy and the secretary (Flemish sounding) puzzled for a time over his query. Then, having discussed matters with the Ambassador, she came back and said that there would be activities with lots of fun for children also. A couple of days later this arrived in the post:
No it doesn’t say fun for children to me either but I was touched all the same and this evening we dressed ourselves up in our best clothes and pushed off to the Belgian Embassy. All of the excitement was in the back garden of the embassy which was huge and was, prudently, covered in army tents. After some initial unfortunate incidents (I saw the boys running wild on the grass and they nearly knocked over an eminent judge who didn’t look as though he enjoyed indulging young children – in marked contrast to all the other punters who were extraordinarily relaxed and kind) we headed down to the far end of the garden where there were some other families with young children. This was quite pleasant, the sun shone and, finally, after many years of effort, we met some Belgians.
There was beer and cheese but, alas, there were no chips. There were Leonidas chocolates. The children found out where they were coming from and attacked the caterers at source:
I suppose we’ll be back next year. Lucky old Belgians.
Films
Push
Oh dear, come on lads, you can do better than that. Not recommended.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I liked this. If you like science fiction (surely my sister and I can’t be the only women who do), you will like this.
In the Loop
Very funny. West Wing meets BBC thingy. Full of clever one liners and a cast of thousands; all of them very good.
Syecdoche
I quite enjoyed this. It was a bit long but very clever. Honesty compels me to add that my husband thought that it was utter rubbish as did my friend L who commented that the experience was made worse by pretentious idiots pointing out that it was very clever.
Ice Age 3D
I took the children and the childminder along to see this. They all enjoyed it (seriously beginning to wonder whether F is really 25). I found it a bit dull myself but I had the unalloyed pleasure of taking each of the children on a toilet break during the screening. Daniel was first. He announced “I want to do a wee” and then had to be dragged away from the screen. He had a touch of diarrhoea and when I took him to the bathroom he had done a poo in his underpants. I stripped them off and cleaned him up with toilet paper and water and put on his trousers with no underpants. I then washed the underpants. I tossed out some cinema sweets from their bag and put the underpants in the sweet bag and popped it back into my handbag. There was a time when I might have jettisoned the underpants but there’s a recession on, you know. Michael was next. Due to some poor planning on my part, he had been in the pouring rain with F for some time before the film started. This necessitated a quick dash into Penny’s for new trousers and socks (€4 for the trousers, €2 for 6 pairs of socks – fear child labour – extraordinary contrast with the cinema trip which cost €40 in tickets and €15 (!) in popcorn and ill-fated sweets). He too was anxious to get to the toilet but equally anxious not to miss a minute of screen time: a love divided which led to damp trousers. I noted gloomily in the bathroom that the trousers were wet before we had got all the labels off – surely some kind of record. The Princess’s bathroom trip was only remarkable in that no sooner had she left the auditorium than she hauled out her book (Daisy) and started reading it as she walked. Today at work, I found the sweets which had been tossed into the base of my bag to make room for the pooey underpants. They were a bit fuzzy and I had a mild worry about poo contamination but, reader, I ate them.
The Hangover
I appreciate that I am not the target audience of this film about three men on a stag night in Las Vegas (what can I say, everything else was full) but I did find it anti-woman. The female parts were small but they were: uptight bride to be; harridan girlfriend and hooker. Funny in parts all the same.
Pointed
Reminiscing
My favourite aunt turned 80 recently and we had dinner to celebrate. We considered a bit what the world was like in 1929 when she was born. Obviously, she was able to contribute little to this conversation from personal experience but my father, who was 4 at the time had some further contributions to make. My aunt was born in South Pasadena where her parents had emigrated a couple of years earlier (some unhappiness for my grandfather at home in the wake of the civil war, I understand).
My father remembers that they had to turn off the lights for 5 minutes after Edison died (1931) to see what it was like without electricity (dark, he reports). There were talkies and cars (but also horses) . There was an ice man. My father remembers nothing of the Wall Street Crash and both of them felt that my grandfather had not frequented speakeasies despite my brother’s hopeful assertions that he surely had. They did remember, though, small bottles of whiskey being sent from home wrapped in newspapers and my grandfather brewing his own stout (terrifying thought). My father remembers that when my aunt was about 2 she was rescued from drowning by a Californian lifeguard (turned upside down and patted on the back while howling). If you knew my father and my aunt and how entirely from Cork they are, you would find this startling.
