Happy Birthday, Mum!
I miss my Mum. It’s all very well this exciting, moving to a foreign country lark, but the sacrifices are many, and one of the biggest for me was leaving behind my family and my lovely friends.
So Mum, this is for you; the best friend, nicest Mum in Law, kindest Mum and the funniest, maddest Grandma ever. I’ll be lifting a glass of Pinot Grigio to you tonight and wishing the time away until we see you again. We love you.
Ooh I’ve gone all political
The Political Editor of the Sunday Express, Julia Hartley-Brewer, has earned a place on my top ten admirable women list (when I can be bothered to write it) for her piece on political correctness this week, for the following comment:
‘I’m bored with Muslims. Bored with being told what I can and cannot say about Islam. Bored with Muslims moaning about how they are victims of racism and religious intolerance because someone dares to disagree with them.’?
Firstly, I’d like to say that I’m not a political being AT ALL, and I don’t particularly practice any religion (believing that generally it causes nothing but trouble) but I’ve brought my children up to respect the religions and beliefs of others, whatever they may be. It just struck a chord with me in a kind of ‘you go girl’ way. The thing is that she’s got a valid point (a scary one, and not one I’m sure I’d make in a national newspaper, but there you go). She goes on to say that she would defend the right of anyone to practice their religion (fair enough), but in return she wishes to defend our western values and beliefs, for example, free speech and respect for others. Now the R word is something my kids are probably heartily sick of, but she has a point about that as well, saying ‘I would not dream of walking in the streets of Riyadh in a bikini out of respect for the values of Saudi society’. Well put.
You see, the point I’m trying to make (in a very rambly, roundabout way) is that I’m an outsider now myself, and I realise, for example, that Catholicism is a big issue here, and that there are also North/South issues that I know not nearly enough about, and I wouldn’t dare comment. Neither would I wander about with a big Union Jack on my t-shirt. I’m quietly respectful of my new country.
I have to say, there’s not much of that kind of rubbish here in Ireland. Yes, being the sheltered little stay-at-home Mum I am, I probably don’t get the grass-roots view on things ‘on the street’ as it were, but you certainly don’t get people with placards protesting because someone said that their mate had a big nose or whatever. Irish people are so down to earth, they’d probably just laugh to be honest. Everyone – Irish, Latvian (‘you wan wettis?’), Chinese (‘you wan wipe?’) – whoever they are, seem to get along just fine. In fact, I for one have nothing but respect for people that uproot themselves from their homeland, move to a different country and attempt to grasp a new language (my Latvian being pretty nonexistent).
There you are, then. Go Julia! She’ll probably have to go into hiding now, poor cow.
Cake a la Lemon
Blimey, Sunday again already. We’ve all decided we’re bored of roasts, so I’m going for a good old fashioned shepherd’s pie today, then by special request of son #2 I’m going to make a lemon cake. Now, seeing as this child doesn’t eat anything, and I worry constantly (as mothers do) about the state of his insides, I reckon that a lemon cake must at least get some vitamin C into him so it can’t be bad. The inclusion of some cooked and pureed carrots (cue evil laugh: mwa ha ha) into the shepherd’s pie and the forcible ingestion of at least one piece of broccoli and a forkful of peas is as healthy as this child is likely to get without sitting on his chest and ramming it in his mouth, so I don’t think I’ve done too badly.
Anyhoo…the lemon cake recipe:
This is so easy, it’s not really even a recipe, but our lovely neighbour Evelyn used to make it for us and I loved it so much, I’ve attempted to recreate it.
4 oz butter
4oz caster sugar
4 oz self raising flour
2 large eggs
1 lemon
2 tbsp icing sugar
Cream the butter and the sugar until it’s really pale (preferably with an electric whisk – this should be really light), then beat in the eggs one at a time and add the flour just like you would a normal sponge cake (folding with a metal spoon). Finely (and I mean finely, it’s ghastly when you get ‘bits’ in your mouth and can’t help but wonder what they are – especially when cooking with small children) grate the zest of the lemon (unwaxed please unless you want some hideous extras in your cake) and add it to the mixture.
Pour into a buttered cake tin and bake at 180, gas mark er..no idea, for about 20 mins (you know I’m always a bit random about this bit, but I just cook it til it’s done..duh).
Bring it out of the oven and, as this is a pudding, I’m serving it warm, so put it to one side. Meanwhile, squeeze the lemon (you can do another one if you like it really lemony) into a bowl and whisk in your sieved icing sugar.
Carefully take the cake out of the tin (easy if you’re a smarty pants like me and use a springform one), then spoon your gorgeous lemony liquid all over the top of the cake. Serve at once with lots of cream (or custard if you’re #1 son). Smack lips a lot.
New friends!
Well, this morning it’s a case of ‘the cows are dead, long live the cows’! We have a whole new batch of furry buddies in the field this morning, and #2 son, B and I wandered down to take a look. They are adorable! There are sixteen of them, very young and wide eyed, and they jumped a mile when we went near them. Most were a boring creamy colour, but we noticed two gingers (one with a ginger body and a white face), one that was a funny muddy colour and one that was splodged with black, but looked like he might once have been white, as though he’d been spray painted by someone in a hurry – he was much smaller than the others and very cute. I really must try to take a picture.
The main priority here today though is firewood. It’s getting very cold and the big old oil burner thing can hardly make the radiators more than luke warm, so it’ll be off to Primark (sorry, J C Penney) for me on Monday to stock up on fleeces and socks (goodbye style, hello warmth), and for the rest of the time we’re all snuggled in front of the fire. The dog doesn’t seem to have seen a fire before, and has alarmed us on several occasions when we’ve thrown things like tissues or cardboard in and she’s looked like she was going to retrieve them. So far we’ve managed to warn her off, but I’m sure if she actually did put her nose in she’d only do it once. That’s it, it’s freezing out here – I’m off back to the fire.
Golfers eh?
Ah, the weekend at last, thank God for that. I’m suffering from clutch-ankle, if there’s such a thing. Two whole days without driving anywhere, sitting on my backside eating and quaffing the occasional vino, or maybe a mad cocktail or two will no doubt make my recuperation very fast. To break up the monotony of the drive, I decided to take the dog with me today. This proved to be entertaining but also rather distracting, so maybe not something to be done every day if I want to live through next week.
I took the parcel shelf out and put her bed in the hatchback (it’s a big boot, I’m not cruel y’know), where she could lie completely stretched out, and also stand up and see all around her, which I thought she’d enjoy. Sadly, five minutes after we set off, B had other plans and decided to climb over onto the back seat. The only trouble was that she could only get her front legs over, so was then stuck with her front paws on the back seat and her bum and back legs in the boot. She struck this pose for quite a while, smiling cheerily at me in the rear view mirror and only occasionally pausing to have a quick look out of the window. It does make me laugh when she has her head out of the window…big cheery smile and red tongue waving jauntily in the breeze. I did wonder if she really was stuck and during a lull in the traffic, hopped out and pulled her back into the boot, nearly braining her with the hatchback in my hurry to shut it again (much to the amusement of the three builders in the van behind me), but as soon as I got back in she was back over the seats with her front paws, so I left her to it.
For some reason, B also seems to have taken an unhinged dislike to golfers. Now as you might know there are more golf courses per capita in Ireland than anywhere else in the world, most of them seemingly on my school run, so my journey was broken up by severe bouts of barking every time we spotted anyone pulling a golf trolley. Mind you, I’m with B on this one, I mean, flat caps, Rupert the Bear checked trousers and sleeveless pullovers over bizarrely coloured shirts…why?? And the shoes? Don’t get me started. My God, some of these clubs charge 50,000 Euro for membership and then let people wear spiked, korma-coloured shoes with little tassels and holes punched out of them. Just shows that money doesn’t buy you style, eh? As I was sitting in the traffic watching them play, being sprayed with dog spittle as she made her feelings known, it occurred to me that it’s not as though golf is a sport really, is it. I mean, you never see a golfer working up a sweat, and maybe they feel inadequate because they don’t need to wear ‘techno-breathable’ shirts or ‘pro-support anti-friction shorts ‘ etc , and they hide it by dressing in the most ridiculous way they possibly can. Like overcompensation or whatever. Just a thought.
Furthermore, golfers have absolutely NO spatial awareness whatsoever. I mean, what hope have you got of judging how far away a hole is so that you can land your birdie or eagle or buzzard or whatever it is, when you can dart out in front of cars with your stupid trolley like some mad lemming within a gnat’s whisker of being splattered across the carriageway? And why make them walk such a long way, and cross roads when the poor loves are patently not equipped for that sort of stuff in the first place? Maybe we should start campaigning for little golfer tunnels so that they can get across the road safely, you know, like they do with hedgehogs. If I had a cent for every golfer I’d nearly murdered, I’d be very rich (and probably a lot less bitter). Right, that’s it, I’m definitely finished now.
Burgers
God, it’s horrible here today, it’s cold, raining and there’s nasty, sideways rain that nearly knocks you off your feet. B and I took a trip down the lane, her in her coat which for some reason makes her walk round and round in circles, which made it a rather frustrating walk. Sadly, it looks like we’re also saying goodbye to our lovely friends the cows today. I’ve seen two big transporters trundling down the lane so it looks as though they’re ‘off to be burgers’ as my insensitive Hubby told the children last time it happened.
The upside to this is that B and I can now have our little walks without being watched (and on occasions followed). I’ll miss them though – we even had our little favourites: there was Chris Evans (the one with ginger, curly hair), and there was also Paris (blonde and a bit stupid-looking – wrong gender, I know, but it’s my game) and there was another vaguely yellow looking one with a very wide, flat face and a couple of whisps of hair that I called Homer (‘I think you’ll find it’s pronounced ‘nu-cu-lar”?) Simpson. Every time I’m in McDonalds now, I’ll be worrying that I’m eating Chris Evans.
God, listen to me. I really must get out more.
Madness
It’s so sunny and lovely here again I can hardly believe that it’s October. The cows were sunbathing in the field, and the bunnies were lazing on the grass verges with their white tummies showing. I keep meaning to take my camera on our lovely walk to give you an idea what it’s like. I’ll try and remember tomorrow.
Meanwhile, chez moi, it’s the usual madness. Bloody, bloody dog decided to nick ALL the treats out of the cupboard, which somebody anonymous left open. This somebody is the same somebody that doesn’t flush the toilet, leaves the fridge door open, leaves the cereal open so it goes all chewy and forgets to turn lights and taps off. An Irish leprechaun maybe? Anyway, B took full advantage of the open door of the treat press and managed to scoff an impressive half a pack of chewy meat strips, an entire bag of doggy chocolate buttons and three large hide strips. Press, by the way, is what we here in Ireland call a cupboard, doncherknow, unless you’re referring to the airing cupboard which is, in fact, the hot press. Oh, and if you’re talking about those little bedside tables, they’re called lockers. There, a little Irish lesson for you, and another example of speaking the same language but not speaking the same language.
Anyway, with our sudden lack of doggy treats in mind, (this dog needs plenty of bribery, believe me) I popped into Dunnes on my way back from the unfeasibly long school run. As usual, I was halfway round and with a half-full trolley before I realised that I hadn’t brought any bags with me. In Ireland, if you don’t have any bags with you, that’s tough – there’s no packs of plastic carrier bags at the end of the checkout, oooh no, we’re more environmentally aware here, so unless I wanted to pay 2 euro and BUY a bag, I had to do what I usually end up doing, which is repacking everything back into the trolley, then unpacking it into the car, then transferring it again in handfuls into the house. This made for a pretty frustrating morning all in all. And when I got home, I turned the tap on to make myself a nice cup of tea only to find that yes, you guessed, it, the water’s gone off again. I then let the dog (who was very happy to see me) out into the garden where she did three completely mental laps of the garden, at breakneck speed with ears plastered to her head and tongue lolling, crashing into the bushes because she can’t stop in time, and treading in a poo which I hadn’t picked up this morning so I had to wash her feet before she could come in. Grrr.
Gross
My God, dogs are gross. I hope you’ve finished your breakfast. It never ceases to amaze me how the lazy, cuddly lump that hogs the sofa all day without moving is the same springy arrow-shaped blur that is currently terrorising our rabbit population.
Now, usually I choose not to bore you with the rabbit stories, well this is a blog not the Discovery channel, and it generally goes: dog catches rabbit, dog is then not sure what exactly she should do with rabbit, rabbit plays dead, dog drops rabbit, rabbit buggers off sharpish, dog gets the hump, and although the first couple of times it was horrible, it’s dawned on us that she can only ever catch the ones that are on their last legs anyway.
And so it was that Hubby and I took B for a Sunday afternoon stroll down the lane. A small squeak later and lo and behold the stupid animal is bounding towards us with a very small and very ill rabbit in her chops. The fact that it had been lying on the grass verge and didn’t try to run away apparently not inhibiting the thrill of the capture. Hubby and I backed away (we’ve learned that B always really, really wants us to have the present) as we could smell this one coming and as she got closer, Hubby went ‘ugh, look at her face’. B’s face had suddenly become a darker shade and closer inspection revealed that all the rabbit fleas, deciding that their current host was about to check out had decided on B as their new ‘condo in Palm Springs’ as it were. They were pinging merrily about her face and hubby and I could almost hear the little shrieks of joy as they checked out her new pad.
Anyhoo, after we’d tentatively brushed off the excess, and with me screaming like a girl when she came near me, Madam was marched (on a very long lead) straight back home and into the shower, where Hubby got in with her (ha ha) and shampooed her with the special doggy tea-tree shampoo. Fleas aren’t like headlice, so they can’t hold on and just get washed away with the water, thankfully. Amazingly because she’s not that hairy, it was a relatively easy process. We threw a towel around her as soon as she got out, and when she shook, there was just a very fine spray – unlike my Mum’s dog’s mammoth efforts at redecorating the whole bathroom with black hairs when you bath her.
Later, after her blow dry (which she absolutely loved) and a bit of talc under the armpits, I gave B a cuddle (she smelt yummy) and was telling her what a beautiful girl she was when hubby walked past and muttered ‘well, what do you expect, she’s had a bath and a flea facepack’. Hmm.
Mad Sunday
I wonder if we’re the only family that has developed bizarre rituals over the years or if I’ve just inherited the madness from my own, distinctly eccentric, family. Various things when I was younger just HAD to be done. I remember when I was a teenager, we’d all be sitting round the table playing with our cutlery watching for a glimpse of Grandad Jack’s bald head over the hedge as he made slow progress down the road for lunch every Sunday (we lived in a small stony lane and he walked with two sticks so it took him ages). Being a rather male orientated household, this would be either before cricket or after Sunday football (in which case the mood would be dictated by whether there were winners or losers round the table), depending on the season, but turning up for Sunday lunch would be a given, hangovers or not. My Mum would have made the lunch listening to the radio blasted through the whole house at a terrifying volume, and a big roast complete with proper pudding would be devoured while several loud discussions took place at once.
Later, I remember my two sisters in law comparing notes on how terrifying it was to come to lunch at our house: keeping track of various simultaneous conversations as well as worrying when a particular disagreement would crank up the volume, whilst dodging various flying food particles emitted by the wonderful and much missed Grandma Maudie. Once, a particularly large piece of..er..emission landed on the hand of my brothers then fiancé, L. The conversation temporarily ebbed as everyone, including the hand’s owner, looked at it in horror (apart from the culprit who was blissfully unaware that she spat food), until my brother saved the day by feigning a loving stroke of her hand, thereby removing the offending object. A collective sigh of relief later and the volume once again rose to its normal level.
Our own Sundays begin with the ‘bun run’. Hubby and one or both of the children make the trip to the local service station, which has a fantastic bakery section (service stations are awesome here – they sell hot foot, real coffee and..er..petrol). There they pick up loads of croissants, muffins, fresh coffee and newspapers. Once breakfast is over, the weekly grand tidy up commences. This started as a way of getting the children to earn their pocket money, but has evolved into a mad trolley-dash type event where the children steam through the house rescuing everything that they’ve deposited during the week. Odd socks are retrieved from behind the sofa, beds are made, rooms tidied and the resulting neatness is then judged by Hubby while the children stand breathlessly to attention by their beds. Points are deducted for misdemeanours such as missed toys and discarded clothing and their efforts are rewarded with euro. This is usually dependent on what Hubby has in his pocket at the end of the week, but the boys are lead to believe that it’s a reflection of how well they did. I won’t tell if you don’t.
A bit of lazy dog walking and a massive mid-afternoon roast dinner (complete with proper pudding of course) leaves us all stuffed and exhausted and then we all retire to laze in front of the fire and argue over the crossword, which, unless my Mum’s visiting, we never finish. Creatures of habit, us. Now, I’m off to make the Yorkshire puddings.
