The difficulty is that I may not have time to read all of these before I die. And the library just called to say that the two books I reserved have come in. Sigh.
Bedside Table
Pease porridge cold
The only foods Michael will eat are as follows:
Crisps
Tuc crackers
Cream crackers
Rice cakes
Cold porridge
Cornflakes
Cold pasta with pesto, olive oil and parmesan
Pizza
Yorkshire pudding
Pears
Some kinds of chocolate, sometimes
Cheddar
Juice (apple)
Liga (spotty only not the one with the teddy bears)
Milk
Baguette
Fried fish
If his food is warm, he cries. Is this normal?
Also he must now be accompanied to bed by doudou, nounours, Ingeborg, Rabbit and Elephant. It’s getting very crowded in there.
Unrealised potential
The other morning the Princess arrived into our room at 7.30 fully dressed asking whether there was anything she could do to help us. She got her brothers up and got them dressed. We were all ready to go out the door at 8.30. This exceptional behaviour has not been repeated. Sometimes, I think that she likes to taunt us.
Yoof
I met some young people the other day. I don’t really meet many teenagers. They were pleasant but slightly alarming. I don’t think I was at all as confident and articulate at 16.
R (16) told me about his motorbike and showed me a picture on his phone. Someone on his estate died in a motorbike accident last week: “he wasn’t wearing a helmet, it happens”.
R is the product of a brief union. He has five step-brothers and sisters from his mother’s second marriage and several more from his father’s first marriage. He also has a baby sister from his father’s third marriage to a woman from Cameroon. Modern Ireland in microcosm. When he leaves school he wants to join the British army. Not the Irish army because they only go on peacekeeping missions.
R’s friend H asked me what I was going to do about teenage pregnancy rates. “Nothing” I said and then ventured “actually, I think that Ireland has a quite a low rate for teenage pregnancy“. “Not in my school” she said whipping out her mobile phone to show me her 15 year old friend’s scan.
I feel very middle aged now, I can tell you.
So Much for Paris in the Spring Time
Colleague: Nah, I didn’t like Paris.
Me: Eh?
Her: No, it was just boring.
Me: But..
Her: Maybe we just stayed there too long.
Me: How long did you stay?
Her: Five days.
Me: Speechless.
I was young and foolish then, I’m old and foolish now
Many years ago, a colleague said to me, “women’s lives have three phases: horses, hormones and horticulture”. I laughed but I never thought that I would be interested in gardening. Well, my time has come. We have a small triangle of garden and I have been very busy cutting back foliage and depositing it in a mini-skip. What I didn’t at all anticipate was how much satisfaction it would give me. The children are a bit mournful about the radical tree elimination programme and the Princess said to me, “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees” but I am just blithely going on with my Thneed creation programme. I can see grass in patches now.
