Category: parenting

Posted on in gaa, parenting, sport

The Slippery Road To Becoming An Overly Competitive Parent

First and foremost let me make one thing clear, I know that I am a competitive person and always have been, so much so that my childhood nickname (and occasional adult one also) was “spoiler” because of my relentlessness towards every task or event which could be perceived (or even barely perceived) to have a competitive element to it. In this manner, I would wear down all and sundry and generally take the fun out of even the most trivial of pursuits, well actually in particular Trivial Pursuit, in which I remain unbeaten since before I developed the dexterity to place trickily shaped wedges in a relatively flat cylinder!

Now I’d like to think I have mellowed a bit over the years, so I have come to realise that eating my dinner at breakneck speed in order to be first, or acting like Usain Bolt to sprint to the car before everybody else, are not the most efficient uses of my energies. However there are certain occasions when my competitive streak overcomes me, in the same way that mild mannered David Banner is completely helpless to control his bouts of rage. At the lower end of the scale this can manifest itself through mutterings at the viewing area of a swimming pool while I urge one of my boys to overtake the child ahead of them as they complete another length of the local pool. Although there could be an element in this of just trying to combat mind-numbing boredom, I currently spend up to five and a half hours poolside each week so anything to liven things up is welcome. There is something surreal about watching countless youngsters attempting the breast-stroke without using their arms. Just a procession of bobbing heads in a pool.

By far the most common scene of this emergence of “competitive rage” is on the sidelines of the many fine GAA pitches on the northside of Dublin. In my mind, I am merely trying to pass down a certain level of wisdom which I have garnered over hundreds of matches, either as a participant or as a spectator, to help my offspring be the very best that they can be. Surely Aaron (10) should be informed that switching play from left to right is the best way to overcome a blanket defence in gaelic football, or that going in tight body-to-body is the best way to tackle in hurling (while also being the best way to avoid injury from a stray hurl). Well that’s what I thought until Aaron ventured over to the sideline on a cool and crisp Malahide morning and told me in quite a forthright and plain way to “shut it”. Now I was slightly taken aback by this, in my mind I was just being a supportive parent, but in hindsight I can see how the constant chatter / roaring from the sideline might become slightly irritating. So now we have an agreement that unless I am cheering on some positive play, he doesn’t want to hear my voice. I should point out there is a high level of irony here, given that the games in which my boys play are non-competitive i.e. nobody records the scorelines and there is no league at the end of it.

In fact I am always amazed at the amount of “medals” which my boys have accumulated in these non-competitive competitions. I mean the amount of single-use metal / plastic on display in their bedrooms would have Greta Thunberg on red alert in whatever bat cave she lives in. Hey I had to earn that faux-marble trophy for top player at the Dublin Millennium (1988 for those who can’t remember back that far) soft tennis tournament (Clontarf area), it wasn’t just a case of turning up! Try telling the youngsters that nowadays, “what, you actually had to win a match!”, bloody snowflakes.

So in order to find a safe release from my competitive parent syndrome I have had to turn inwards and take shelter behind the safety of the four walls I call home. Now I know the PS4 and gaming consoles of its ilk get a bad rep, but where else can a man in his mid forties compete against his children on a level playing field. You may point out that I have been playing these console type games for well over 20 years (indeed much longer if you could call the ZX Spectrum a pre-cursor for consoles) and that this gives me a slight advantage when I am zooming around some racing circuit in Japan or playing a deft one-two on the edge of the penalty box as Bohemians FC defeat Barcelona (see I am handicapping myself) once more. In my defense, I do often play collaborative games with my sons against the computer AI and will often go through detailed slow motion replays explaining where they invariably went wrong. Well they have to learn somewhere.

Those of you who are regular followers of the blog will know that last week I received a bean-to-cup coffee machine as a birthday present. Well this week Niki (who is also quite competitive by the way) struck back by purchasing a soda stream. Actually this nearly got me more excited than my own present. My childhood friend Conor had one of these amazing contraptions and it would be a veritable treat to see what wonderful concoctions we could make out of his available flavours, hmmm a lovely Canada Dry ginger ale and cherry cola melange! Niki says she bought it so she could stop buying plastic bottles of sparkling water but while the cat is away myself and Ella will be trying out some mixology!

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Posted on in birthdays, coffee, middle-age, parenting

Just Another Mid-Life Crisis

Well this week I celebrated my birthday and like so many anniversaries of this kind in my forties, it brought on another bout of existential anxiety. This time last year I was so overcome with ennui that I decided to quit my job and become a stay-at-home dad so now, instead of getting annoyed that a Dutch frozen foods manufacturer hasn’t sent in its monthly financial accounts on time, I get annoyed that my youngest son (aged 6) can walk around oblivious to the fact that his school jumper is on inside out and back to front! Of course the year before that, I decided to get a PS4, which in my view (although not my wife’s) was an equally momentous occasion. For the latest celebration of another lap around the sun, my reaction has been more in the latter category, a nod to consumerism rather than a seismic change of lifestyle. I asked for and received, through the benevolence of she who now pays the bills, a bean to cup coffee machine! Notions I hear you say and you are probably right but isn’t that what a mid-life crisis is all about!

I think I can trace my desire for regular intakes of a superior quality coffee to the frequent trips I used to make to Coffee 2 Go on Mespil Road. Now I’m not saying that I’ll be able to match that fine establishment (that was able to withstand and see off the opening of a Starbucks a couple of doors down the road) which offered a perfect combination of scones, pastries, paninis and sandwiches along with the coffee, but at least I’ll be in the same ball park. Not that Coffee 2 Go was perfect, I mean the queuing system was quirky to say the least, as you invariably had to stand outside the building twice during every visit, first while queuing to place your order and then like some soul on his way through purgatory, journey back into the elements to join the queue for picking up the coffee, in the Irish weather this can be a challenge. But perhaps this added an extra bit of charm to a thriving independent café. But back to my own topic of the day, I had been using a Nespresso machine for just over a decade (thanks to its place on our wedding list) and while its produce was miles better than the instant Nescafe that I grew up with, it just doesn’t cut it anymore. I suppose tastes change over the course of a decade (don’t mention this to my wife), besides why should I deny myself when there are relatively cheap alternatives available. So now I can ease the pain of being in my mid-forties (and closer to 90 than my birth) with a soothing and tasty caffeine brew whenever the fancy takes me.

There are however a couple of downsides to the new machine. Firstly it is a good bit larger than the old Nespresso machine which has led to a significant debate about where it should be situated within the kitchen. I have been making the argument that with a bit of re-arranging and a slight adjustment of the toaster, it can fit neatly in beside the sink and the kettle (seems logical to me). However this suggestion has not gone down well and there has been significant push-back for a number of reasons, the main one seems to be the potential that our toaster could now become a fire hazard! I’m not sure if this is because the toaster could now become so jealous as it is no longer the shiniest thing in the kitchen that it may self-combust or if there is some other more scientific explanation. Anyway my new toy / baby / coffee machine is facing potential banishment to the utility room, i.e. the room where we put the dirty nappies before onward transport to outside bins. No facilitator of Nicaragua’s / Colombia’s / Kenya’s finest deserves that! Secondly it is very loud, which sends Ella (2) running for cover whenever I turn the thing on. Now I find the whirring of the motor quite satisfying when it is grinding the coffee and I can tolerate the sound of the water being heated and pressurised but I am on Ella’s side when it comes to the milk frother which has a high pitched whine like one thousand mosquitoes coming for blood. But I guess like all things in life you must take the rough with the smooth.

Of course now that I have a bean to cup machine I need to purchase some roasted coffee beans. I could just head for the coffee aisle in the nearest supermarket but I feel that if I am to follow through on my “notions” this doesn’t cut the mustard or should I say the smashed avocado! So independent coffee roasters of Dublin watch out, my cute daughter and I will be paying you a visit soon to sample some of your fare.

Of course hitting my mid-forties means that I am likely to be more prone to senior moments. Sure enough I was reminded of this on Wednesday morning when our merry band was scooting through the early morning puddles towards school, think of an antarctic explorer driving a pack of huskies across some snowy wastelands and you roughly get the picture. Our march forwards was halted when Lochlan (8) realised that he didn’t have his school-bag on his back, a fairly standard piece of equipment I’m sure you’ll agree. Now I know I could say that Lochlan is old enough to know better and indeed he did get a blast of my displeasure, but really the blame for this one lands squarely with yours truly. Let’s hope that this doesn’t become a recurring event, at least not after I’ve had my second cup of coffee of the day!

Posted on in books, dublin, parenting

In Praise of Libraries

One of the things I have been able to do over the past year is reacquaint myself with the Dublin library system. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly I have regained my passion for reading. My job used to involve a lot of heavy reading, whether it was a due diligence report on the intricacies of the German sausage market or a multi-currency cross border loan agreement, after a day of that, the last thing I wanted to do (or was physical capable of doing) was read a book in the evening. Secondly, there is a library right across the road from the boys’ school in Drumcondra which means I have superb ease of access.

Now my previous encounters with libraries date back to my own childhood, when the most pressing thing on my mind was whether there would be any new Asterix books in the fairly small kids’ section of Raheny library. Come to think of it, why did I have to trek all the way to Raheny from my home in Clontarf to visit my nearest library? Surely Clontarf should have had a library, god knows we have enough “litterati” to justify one. And the home of Brahm Stoker deserves a library (yes I know there is one in Marino), has anybody been in contact with Joe Duffy about this?! Anyway I digress, back to my main topic of libraries. Raheny library was fine at the time but I always recall that the books seemed old and beaten down by time and circumstances, well it was Dublin in the 80s after-all.

Fast forward to the present day and I have been blown away by how good the service is. First of all I think that the Drumcondra library building itself is quite beautiful in the art deco style of the 1930s (see above). So much so that I have tried to get it featured on the Accidentally Wes Anderson web-site http://www.accidentallywesanderson.com which features buildings that look like they are from a Wes Anderson movie set (Grand Budapest Hotel, Royal Tenenbaums, etc) but so far to no avail. Secondly not only does the selection of books on show include all the usual classics e.g. Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities but it also has a very sizeable selection of modern fiction, young adult fiction and the kids’ section is really excellent and all sections are constantly renewed. There is also a truly excellent app where you can renew your books with the touch of a button and most importantly, reserve books which take your fancy. The system is pretty foolproof, although I did manage to reserve the audio-book of Joseph O’Connor’s Shadowplay instead of the actual book, so I managed to bring home a whopping 10 audio CDs.  This caused a number of problems, not least where to find a working CD player in our house and also how to find the c. 10 hours required to listen to the bloody thing. Suffice to say that I couldn’t tell you a lot about the plot, a bit like the time I tried to read Ulysses, in both cases all I can say is that I definitely finished them! On the app you can also track where you are in the queue on a real time basis which adds a small level of excitement to the process.

The library also has the advantage of being almost exactly half way between the boys’ school and the nearby playground, which means it frequently acts as both a convenient shelter from the unpredictable Irish weather and a toilet stop for unpredictable young bladders. The library has embraced this wholeheartedly and has recently replenished their stash of crayons for the young at heart. My gang instinctively turns right on entering to grab a blank picture of flowers, or stars, or unicorns, or whatever came out of the photocopier that morning and start to colour like little Rembrandts or Picassos (actually probably a lot more like Picassos). Ella (2) particularly enjoys this aspect of the library, that and playing hide and seek which she has become particularly adept at. She pretty much always knows to find me at the Food section leafing though Joe Wickes’ selection of quick and lean recipe books in a forlorn manner. I did actually borrow one when I was going through my experimenting with food phase but the boys were having none of his healthy, green, chunky ideas!

So if you haven’t been down to your local library in the last 30 years or so, I recommend you give it a try. To finish things off I thought I’d give you my top three books from the past 12 months.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. The Pulitzer Prize-winning story of Theo who as a boy loses his mother in an explosion at an art museum, but gains a priceless painting. The painting acts as an anchor for Theo as his life spirals through New York, Las Vegas and Amsterdam. A beautifully written exploration of loss and hope. Not sure I can bring myself to watch the film version though, it cannot improve things.

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Another novel which won the Pulitzer Prize. This one charts the lives of a blind french girl and a mathematically gifted German boy as they journey towards one shared crucial moment in St Malo, Brittany after the Allies have landed at the end of World War II. One of the few books that has moved me to tears in both its forensic detail of the barbarism of war and the simple beauty of perseverance. Netflix have the rights and are going to turn it into a mini-series which at least has greater scope for exploration than a 2 hour movie.

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack. This is probably my favourite book of all time, a title which was held for a long time by The Lord of the Rings (I still love you Frodo). A stream of consciousness tale (it is a single sentence) told from the point of view of middle-aged Mayo man and civil engineer Marcus on 2 November 2008. This book made me feel like I had been dropped in a vat of real “Irishness” and connected with me on many levels as a father, son and brother. It took a while to get into it but well worth the effort.

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Posted on in fashion, music, parenting

In The Comfort Zone

I can’t believe it has been a year since I took the momentous decision to leave my nine to five (more often six and quite often seven) to focus on the kids. Now that the September (or rather late August) return to school has been successfully negotiated, I have had some time to ponder what effect this change in tack has had on myself and those around me.

The first thing I have noticed about myself is that my tendency to turn towards, let’s call it indulgent (others may call it slob-like) behaviour is strong. I mean how could I have forgotten that tracksuit bottoms were so pleasant on the skin and that elasticated waistbands are so forgiving. These last 12 months have brought me back to a phase in my early teens when I totally rebelled against denim for some reason which seems hard to place now. My early morning decisions have gone from blue or white shirt to black or navy tracksuit and I don’t mean any of those lycra based efforts either, it has to be some form of natural fabric and preferably with a hood, yes I know that “convention” has it that I’m too old for a hoodie but begrudgers be damned, if I want to look like a hooligan out for a morning stroll, well that’s my prerogative. Although in my defense I haven’t gone full northsider and started doing the school run in my pyjamas or even gone full Homer and tried a mumu (not yet anyway). Shaving has become optional and at 7am in the morning with four kids running around me, the option is pretty much always no. Although in an effort to demonstrate to everyone that I haven’t gotten any hipster notions, I do tend to set aside five minutes of mid-morning shaving two or three times a week.

The ease of access to media is a constant temptation. I mean if I’m doing the ironing or folding clothes or preparing food, I might as well do it in front of the television, sure what harm am I doing (as he nearly chops off his finger while watching the second Ashes test match and dicing some carrots). I have also over indulged myself and probably traumatised my children in the process, with my dictator like control of music during the past year. The advent of wifi and the emergence of music streaming has given me so much greater access to so many more banging tunes than I could have dreamt of in my formative music loving years (teens and 20s). And in all honesty, who does not love 90’s dance classics being played 24/7 at high volume. When Ella (2) can pretty much recite the chorus of Mr Vain verbatim I know that I may have overdone it “I know what I want and I want it now!”.

I have definitely become more shouty than when I was in Bank of Ireland (open plan and loud voices were never a good match). For some reason, it seems that unless the decibel level has been increased to above 100 the boys will simply ignore what I am saying, they also seem to have developed a system where my first two requests are deemed irrelevant (like that character in the Austin Powers movie). I find that this means I have become completely immune to the effect that high volumes have on third parties around me. Quite frequently I will find myself shouting at the top of my voice “Oscar (6) be careful on that climbing frame” from 20 yards away while the whole playground turns to stare it me. Oscar will of course ignore me as he knows my powers of parenting are severely weakened when I am out in the open, but other kids generally seem to act with less abandon around me! At least I think that’s why the other parents tolerate me.

Being in control of my own food intake means that I have been able to further explore my affinity for savoury pancakes. I’m not sure exactly where this fondness began but I think it can probably be traced back to a Bank of Ireland “Enterprise week” which saw an actual farmer’s market set up outside the old head office on Baggot Street. One of the many stalls on offer was an artisan creperie which provided pancakes with ham, cheese, rocket and red pesto. Well I was hooked and now I am a regular at Drumcondra’s finest creperie, Le Petit Breton (the owner hails from Brest). Myself and Ella are always welcomed with a broad smile and while I have yet to convert her to the savoury pancake (she prefers a croissant with jam), I know that the seeds have been sown.

Not that I have constrained myself to pancake-only based fodder, I have learnt that Glasnevin, Drumcondra, Finglas, Santry and Phibsboro have many delightful places to spend time with my little lady. And that brings me to my favourite indulgence, spending time with Ella. Maybe it’s her age, maybe it’s because she is a girl or maybe it’s because I was working while the other three were in their pre-school phase, but I have to say that any moment spent with her has been the most rewarding part of the last year. So perhaps I’ll walk a bit slower on the way home so that we can chat about the ducks in the park or I’ll take a bit longer in the treat aisle of the shop so that she can tell me which are her favourites or perhaps I’ll read her another story when I know that the hoovering needs to be done (sorry Niki). The terrible twos are supposed to be hitting about now but so far we seem to have avoided it. The highlight of the week is invariably water babies class on a Friday where I get to splash / swim / play with Ella for half an hour in a lovely heated pool. This week after another excellent session I told her “Ella I love swimming with you” to which she responded “I love swimming with you Daddy”, I will forever be wrapped around her little finger!

 

Posted on in Holidays, parenting, travel

Irish Theme Parks; Compare and Contrast

As the Summer holidays headed towards their conclusion I suddenly realised that the list of “must do” items which the boys had put together at the start of July was lacking a number of “ticks” in the completed column. That’s not to say we hadn’t been busy, hey every day with four kids is busy in my book, but we just hadn’t travelled far beyond a 500 metre radius from our house as often as the kids would have liked. Well I say if you can’t find joy in the Botanic gardens and Glasnevin cemetery, then there is no hope for you! The boys didn’t exactly agree and demanded trips to Clara Lara fun park and Tayto Park within the space of a week or they would be giving me (and my first summer as a stay at home Dad) a less than favourable review when they got back to school!

For those of you not familiar with Clara Lara and /or Tayto Park, I will give you a quick initial guide to each. Clara Lara is an Irish institution and has been around for more years than I care to remember. I can even recall going there on a primary school trip and falling off one of the numerous rope swings into one of the freezing cold pools / ponds / lakes that abound the “attraction”. Tayto Park on the other hand, is a more recent arrival on the scene and has morphed from a mini challenger to Dublin Zoo into an all singing all dancing american style theme park complete with roller coasters, high wire adventure zones and queues, lots and lots of queues.

Clara Lara was first up and the initial signs weren’t promising and by signs I mean the dirty big black cloud which hung in the sky as soon as we started our drive into the Wicklow mountains on the outskirts of Dublin where the park is located. Let me say that the inhabitants of the Wicklow mountains are renowned for a certain requirement for sanctuary, whether it be the holy men of Glendalough or criminals trying to evade the Guards! Thankfully Clara Lara seems to be quite aware that it is constantly running the gauntlet of the Irish weather for they have placed wooden huts (some are even raised off the slightly sodden ground) all around the park so that the paying customers can keep their stuff and most importantly their spare clothes dry. For Clara Lara you see is primarily about water, lots and lots of healthy Wicklow mountain water, sure there are a few other bits and pieces around like the crazy golf, a zip line, etc, but it is really all about splashing about whether it be on water slides, in kayaks, in row boats or the aforementioned rope swings (did I mention that there are a lot of them).

The weather was nicer for our trip to Tayto Park although this and the fact that we chose a UK bank holiday meant that the place was mobbed. There were so many Tyrone and Armagh jerseys around that you could have been forgiven for thinking that you had just arrived in Clones on Ulster Final day. To our credit we had anticipated crowds so we had made sure to be at the gates at the very second they opened. First we headed for the big attractions, Viking Voyage, a splash water coaster which had terrified Lochlan (8) on our previous visit (to his credit he went for it again this time round) and then onto the Cu Chulainn roller coaster which were both enjoyed (although the former did leave me with a wet bum for the rest of the morning which wasn’t great), while queues were less than half an hour. But then we made the fatal mistake of stopping at a playground (goddamn those pesky kids and their need for some unscripted fun) and we never really got back on top of the queuing situation.

In comparing the two I would say that the boys enjoyed both equally but for parents (we travelled with friends on both occasions albeit with a larger group in Clara Lara), or at least from my own point of view, Clara Lara was far more user friendly. In Clara Lara it was possible to set up a base and while the kids might wander off anywhere, they would always know where they could return to, this is simply not possible in the much larger and much more crowded Tayto Park. That’s not to say that Clara Lara wasn’t busy, including a very large hurling team from Kilkenny (how did we know they were a hurling team from Kilkenny, well because they kept their hurls with them at all times as if they were surgically attached!) and Oscar (6) did become slightly disorientated at one point but I quickly found him by one of the aforementioned rope swings. For clarification’s sake and before social services are called, Ella (2) remained with me at all times and was not given license to roam like the others. Clara Lara was also considerably cheaper and had the added bonus of not being absolutely jam-packed with high in salt and / or sugar food outlets which definitely couldn’t be said for Tayto Park. Last but not least, while Clara Lara did have its fair share of wasps it didn’t have anywhere near as many as Tayto Park (see the above comment re availability of sugar).

On a side note the availability of wet suits (God bless you Lidl and /or Aldi, we can’t remember which) was also key to the boys enjoyment of Clara Lara where the water temperature wasn’t quite the same as that which we had experienced in our Brittany camp-site pool earlier in the summer. I mean if I had a wet suit when I was younger maybe I wouldn’t have dreaded those trips to multiple west Kerry beaches.

As a closing comment in my opinion the best thing about Tayto Park is usually the World of Raptors show where you can get up close with stunning birds of prey such as eagles, owls and vultures. However this time the show was cut short when the Bald Eagle on display made a run / flight for it. He must have been getting fed up with the wasps and the queues also!!

 

Posted on in parenting

Divide and Conquer

The key question of my current existence i.e. during the period after the away from home holidays but before school has returned, is how to best deal with four children under the age of ten? Well in reality, it’s really how do you deal with three boys under the age of ten because Ella (2) is always a pleasure to have around, well except when she is cranky due to lack of sleep, but hey that is something that can be said about everyone including yours truly. Actually, there is another time when she is a bit difficult and that is when she has to be strapped into her car seat. I think this stems from the fact that she can see her three older siblings in their relatively looser booster seats while she is held fast like an air fighter pilot in a contraption that would not seem out of place in Top Gun. “Daddy my straps are really hurting me” is a common refrain from the back of the car and no amount of adjusting or manoeuvering  seems to ease her pain, real or psychological! At these times, she will also use her big blue eyes and cuteness factor so I invariably have to look away as I am trying to get the hook thingy to fit in the fastener thingy (don’t look into her eyes whatever you do, don’t look into her eyes!). It almost goes without saying that I’m really looking forward to the end of car seats, it’s nearly up there with nappies as the number one thing I can’t wait to get rid of.

But back to my main topic, how to prevent my home turning into wrestlemania 24/7? A typical daytime scenario usually starts off normally enough. I’ll be enjoying a quiet moment chopping onions when suddenly there’ll be a loud crashing noise from the adjacent living room usually followed by a roar (for wrestling fans this will have a similar effect to the announcement music of a new contender entering the ring, cue objects flying through the air, macho posing and somebody feigning life threatening injury on the ground). I will rush in like some under-qualified and outgunned referee trying to bring order to proceedings, gesticulating and roaring wildly without much success. In order to prevent this, I have implemented an edict which allows me when I sense the mood of the house turning, to send each brother to his room for 20 minutes on a rolling basis enjoying some “quiet” time. When all three have done their 20 minute stints, we are magically one hour closer to the end of the day! In all seriousness, this approach has actually been quite successful, without the distractions of their siblings the “banished” boy can spend his time doing pretty wholesome stuff like reading, building lego or just simply playing with the vast array of toys which he has accumulated in his relatively short lifetime but seem to spend a lot of time gathering dust. It’s also an opportunity to catch up on some rest if he happens to have gotten up really early in order to maximise television time before daddy comes downstairs. Harking back to my own childhood, I used to really enjoy spending time alone in my room finding wholesome ways to keep myself amused. I can remember games of Risk where I was all 6 players at once (red = communists, pink = socialists, black = capitalists, blue = fascists, yellow = liberals and green = pacifists; greens had a very poor track record in the game) enabling myself to experience the full range of emotions associated with Risk (principally anger, hurt and sadness for the losers and extreme triumphalism for the winner). I also invented a rugby tournament involving Star Wars and GI Joe figures which I’m sure would have been a big hit if only I could have sorted the multiple licensing agreements. I have yet to see such flourishes of imagination from my offspring but I remain hopeful.

It’s a weird part of the dynamic between my three boys that when there are only two of them, they usually find ways of playing with each other in a civilised and sometimes constructive manner. Now I’m not saying it is perfect and there are still arguments but it never seems to descend into the “he’s coming at him from the top rope with a metal chair in his hand” phase. Maybe they realise they will never be able to claim full alpha male supremacy if there is someone absent so they just don’t bother with it.

The other way of separating the boys is to involve third parties i.e. go on play dates. Strangely enough this tends to work better when I can ship one of them outwards, as play dates chez Doyle inevitably seem to end up in some dispute over the playstation. Of course I don’t have an endless supply of outward play dates before payback is required, there is only so long that the new dad hopelessly underwater routine can be tolerated!

In an effort to solve and provide a reasonable alternative to this I have lined up some daytrips in the hope that the boys will be distracted enough not to spend their time endlessly trying to annoy each other. More on this in the next blog post.

 

Posted on in Leinster, parenting, rugby

Going Back To The Things I Learned So Well In My Youth

Last week I happily packed off my two eldest (Aaron (10) and Lochlan (8)) to the Leinster rugby summer camp. The venue was the Clontarf rugby pitches on Castle Avenue on the northside of Dublin. To give some personal context to this I grew up within a stones throw of these pitches and spent a large part of my childhood sneaking through a gap in a hedge (that formed the external boundary at the time) in order to play rugby, soccer, gaelic football, hurling, cricket, hell we even gave frisbee a try. When the rugby pitches became too muddy or waterlogged to use we would simply shift to the adjacent cricket pitch instead. This did cause some consternation for the club groundsman particularly when he discovered us playing five-a-side, using kegs for goalposts no less, on his well manicured grass. As a kid I loved going to Tarf to watch rugby matches of all types and standards with my dad. I would spend my time running up and down the touchline trying to figure out where the ball was likely to be kicked out of play so that I could catch it (or more likely chase after it) and kick it back. From what I can remember the ball would spend an awful lot of time being walloped into touch back then so it was a pretty good way to get some exercise and also develop a bit of tactical knowledge around positioning, game management, etc. Although this probably left me ill suited to the ball-in-hand strategies / keeping the ball in play tactics of the modern game!

Given my proximity to the ground (and the fact that my dad was a rugby coach) it was pretty natural for me to sign up for mini-rugby at Clontarf from an early age, probably around 7 years old. Apart from the usual benefits of playing a team sport this also had the bonus of giving me an early lesson in south Dublin geography for this was where rugby was predominantly played at the time (and still is to some extent). Every week we would pile into some coaches’ car in a non health & safety focused way (well before the era of rear seatbelts) and head to an exotic location such as Seapoint, Terenure, Churchtown or if we were going to get a hammering Blackrock! Hey the only thing exotic on the northside at the time was the opening of Artane Castle, I mean a Quinsworth and a Penneys under one roof it didn’t get much better than that! One thing that always struck me about these highly cramped journeys was that it always seemed colder on the southside which appeared positively mountainous when compared to the lowlands of the northside. Perhaps this is a throwback to a particularly cold journey to Palmerstown when I can definitely remember getting frost-bite (or at least very numb hands which was the same to an 8 year old). On another southside trip I can remember playing a team who called themselves Guinnesses (“come on Guinnesses” was a frequent refrain) which I subsequently learned is a rugby club founded by staff at the brewery but at the time I knew of no such things and was just very confused by how often the letter “s” could appear in a name. God help anybody with a lisp.

Anyway back to the rugby camp and I couldn’t help noticing how much the place had changed. The hole in the hedge has gone and while the senior pitch looks pretty much the same the second and third pitches (as we used to call them) have been transformed into an all weather pitch complete with blue run off area. When I saw it first it instantly reminded me of Last Chance U on Netflix but without all the swearing! All the memories came flooding back to me, the thrill of spotting a gap and scoring a try, the pleasure of the deft offload, the satisfaction of the well executed tackle quickly followed by the pain from the poorly executed one! Clontarf are now one of the top clubs in the country (having won the All Ireland League “AIL” twice in the last decade) while in my day they were still struggling in the Leinster league and could never quite make it to the nirvana of the AIL. The best thing the club had going for it back then was that it was close to the airport so the Irish team would train there before heading for a plane to bring them to the location of their next 5 Nations match. Of course this brought out all the local kids searching for a brief glimpse of these amateur heroes. I even remember buying a notebook for autograph hunting purposes. I have 5 squiggles on it and to this day I have no idea as to the identity of the squiggle writers, probably some reserve forwards from Ulster or Connaught who weren’t quick enough to avoid the onrushing masses, unlike Ollie Campbell who was the main target.

This is my boys’ first experience of playing rugby given they have very much been indoctrinated in the church of GAA until now. You see Glasnevin is certainly not a stones through from Castle Avenue, and while the journey by car is not an overly long one it is on a different level compared to my own childhood jaunt to those pitches of dreams. Indeed on arrival at camp on Monday I was surprised by the number of kids from the Glasnevin Drumcondra area who were in attendance at the camp. I suppose Clontarf has become a rallying point / Mecca for rugby on the northside of Dublin. To capitalise on this they probably should have thrown in a guided tour to the childhood home of BOD (Brian O’Driscoll, Ireland’s greatest rugby player and former Clontarf resident until his head was turned by a southside lass). His Dad was my doctor don’t you know!

The camp itself is very well organised with the usual plethora of multi-coloured cones and enthusiastic coaches. The appearance of the Pro14 trophy and a visitation from two members of the current Leinster squad added a bit of glamour to proceedings. Although I did have a chuckle when I asked my boys to divulge the owners of the autographs on their jerseys and they responded with the same blankness that I had experienced 35 years previously! Apologies to Scott Fardy and Joe Tomane!!

Posted on in Holidays, parenting

Summer Holidays

Ah summer holidays, longer days, slightly better weather (it is Ireland after all), lie ins (well getting up at 8.30am rather than 7am) and the constant task of trying to keep my energetic, curious and occasionally annoying kids occupied. Let me preface everything by saying that I am the eldest child of two secondary school teachers so basically I had access to both parents for the entirety of my childhood summers. This, when added to the fact that I only had to share my parents with my sister, had given me a kind of skewed, utopian expectation of July and August. Basically I got to hang out and play sports with my Dad for two months solid while my sister had my mum all to herself. In particular the tennis courts and pitch & putt course of St Anne’s park were favourite (and very enjoyable) haunts. When our “sunshine holidays”, as we used to call our trips abroad, were over I had the luxury of another 5-6 weeks of quality time with exclusive parent attention in Ireland to look forward to. At the time, little did I know how lucky I was.

This contrasts significantly with the world of “professional” parenting where annual leave days are more treasured than golden nuggets and the first thing that comes to mind as June rolls to a close is the number of summer camps which are available. Hey are the boys interested in archery? Sure it’s a two week camp in August, let’s stick their names down and give it a lash!! Also the fact that we have 4 children means that we are constantly overloaded when looking to occupy them, to use a rugby analogy we are constantly on “scramble” defense rather than “man to man”. I don’t know if you have ever tried to manage four under 10s of varying abilities on a pitch & putt course but it’s full of “watch where you’re swinging that!” rather than “get in the hole” and more time is spent searching for children than golf balls!

So now I have the situation where our “sunshine holidays” are over (Brittany seems like a distant memory despite the fact it was 10 days ago) and I am the sole source of entertainment, distraction and nourishment for my children. For some strange reason, the boys don’t seem to have been enrolled in as many Summer camps as previous years. I seem to recall (although I admit my recollections may be subject to unconscious bias) endless weeks of GAA camps, summer schools, golf camps, tennis camps, DCU camps but we only appear to have a rugby camp this time round. Now I’m not sure if this is because (a) I’m just not as organised as my wife (the traditional summer camp enroller), (b) the dates didn’t suit our other commitments, or (c) it’s part of some wife driven conspiracy to throw me in at the deep end! So the boys and Ella (2) are with me pretty much all the time with no respite in sight, suddenly that precious hour and a half of housework when Ella was asleep and the boys were in school is a paradise lost (only to be regained in September), who’d have thought I’d get so emotional about housework!

In my own mind I thought that perhaps having three boys aged within 4 years of each other would somehow mean that they could occupy one another and keep each other out of trouble! Indeed this has occasionally been the case, but only for brief periods of time before somebody has somebody else in a headlock or more commonly, somebody is rolling around on the ground exaggerating an injury and squealing as if they only have seconds left to live (only to jump up with glee once the offending party has been punished). The premier league has a lot to answer for!!

Another issue with having 3 boys who have inherited their father’s (and dare I say it their mother’s) competitive streak is that they all want to win all of the time. So first of all I have to invent a handicap system which gives Oscar (6) the same chance of winning as Lochlan (8) and Aaron (10). Now when it’s a team event like football or tennis I simply buddy up with Oscar and that normally ensures a tight contest but if it’s a singles event like golf or dare I say it a board game like Monopoly, Game of Life, Hotel, or Risk (the best way to alienate your children known to mankind) then it becomes much more difficult and complicated. Invariably one of the boys will storm out of the room when it dawns on him that he is in a metaphorical hole he can’t escape from. Sore losers, oh yes every single one of them (when I’m losing I just tend to use my greater knowledge of obscure rules to get back in the game).

So, in desperation I am bringing the gang to the Gleneagles Hotel in Killarney in order to recapture excellent holidays of past years (kids clubs!) and to meet up with cousins. The catch, Niki is only joining us for 4 of the 6 days so I will be on my lonesome for the journey down to Killarney (be kind to me Adare) and getting them settled into the holiday apartment (please let the oven work unlike last year). I foresee a lot of “go have a run about and I’ll see you for dinner-time”.

Pray for me and in any event how much screen-time is really too much?!

Posted on in France, Holidays, parenting, travel

Les Vacances part 2

Week 2 and the kids had started to call our 3 bedroom mobile home / cabin “home”! I think Ella (2) actually believed that we had permanently changed residence. When are we going home they cried as we visited another historic, well-kept and pretty Breton town. Mommy and Daddy had grown tired of sitting around by the pool and the waiting for the kids club to finish so in week 2, excursions became the norm rather than the exception.

Despite the fact that I had spent numerous holidays in this region as a kid, I have no recollection of the really picturesque towns in Morbihan such as Quiberon and Auray, although the numerous sailboats of La Trinite-sur-mer did induce a mini Proustian moment of recollection (definitely was bored there as a youth!). I do remember visiting Vannes and not being impressed by it, whereas this time around it appeared to be a nice mid sized town with an impressive pedestrianised old town, complete with medieval parade on the day we visited. We tried to convince the boys that the parade was just for us but they weren’t buying it.

I must say that Brittany seems to have really gotten behind tourism as a way to bring visitors and by extension cash into the region. Plenty of artisinale this and organic / bio that. Everything clean with tours (mostly in the form of road bound trains) and parks by the dozen. There is a great emphasis on local products and nowhere is this more visible than in the many La Trinitaine biscuiteries (fancy biscuit shops to you and me) around us. Now I had a vague idea that Breton biscuits were a thing, but not to the extent that La Trinitaine has turned into the French equivalent of Starbucks in expansion mode! Just to explain, La Trinitaine was founded in the 1950s in the aforementioned La Trinite-sur-mer. It become famous for its cigarette biscuits, you know the ones that look like a cross between a sea shell and a spliff, and commonly found stuck into the tops of ice creams. From there, it has morphed into an organisation with 46 shops that produces 11,500 tonnes of biscuit a year. Perhaps the most noticeable thing about La Trinitaine is that it has become a beacon for Breton produce so if you enter one of their stores, in addition to the multitude of biscuits, you’ll be confronted with Breton cider, Breton fish soup, Breton crepes, Breton, well you get the jist. Safe to say that it was a one stop shop for all our homecoming present needs!

On a more philosophical note, why is it that the first week of a fortnight’s holiday seems to last forever while the second week goes past in the blink of an eye? Is it because even I can become tired of going down a water slide at breakneck speeds everyday, like an aqua junkie, do I need a bigger kick, should it be longer, higher, faster? Is it because during the first week of the holiday you load up the fridge, while in the second week you become aware of the pressing and quite Irish requirement to eat everything in the fridge, hey there is nothing wrong with a Camembert and blue cheese sandwich covered in dijonnaise! Is it because you have exhausted your collection of €1 coins so the boys can only hover around other kids racing motorbikes in the camp-site arcade and look at you with downtrodden puppy dog eyes? Or is it simply because that phrase “this time next week we’ll be back in Dublin!” hangs over you like a cloud in the otherwise clear perfectly blue Breton skies.

I’m really going to miss Brittany. I did have some reservations about this trip and the prospect of the 6 of us being in such a confined space for a fortnight, but the weather has been excellent and camp-site holidaying is better than I remembered it. Even taking the boys for pony rides wasn’t the pain I had expected (I’m deeply distrustful of horses and also a bit allergic). In typical French manner, once we paid we were left to our own devices with the ponies. We were given a suggested route and told how to hold the bridle and then ushered on our way with a gallic wave. Being the dutiful sort, we followed the route to a T (well apart from the time Niki let the pony eat some grass “off track” and he quickly deduced that she was a pushover), but could have headed to Paris and enrolled in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for all the pony owner cared!! Most importantly the kids loved Brittany. Sure, they didn’t drink any milk because they didn’t like the taste and their diet consisted of more pizza and chips than it had in the previous 6 months, but they want to go back next year and suggested we book while we were on the ferry home.

I have previously written of my love for Paris but now I think that amour can be extended to France as a whole. The bread and pastries are great, the hypermarches are fantastic, the weather is for the most part a lot better than back home and the cheesy music is exceptional. Every evening the camp-site would host a mini-disco for kids which included not one, not two, not three, not four but five songs with intricate dance routines. I think I looked forward to that more than the boys did, “hurry up with your ice creams there lads or we’ll miss the start of Danse de la Pingu!”.

So it is definitely a case of merci and au revoir France.

Posted on in France, Holidays, parenting, travel

Les Vacances Part 1

Ah the big family summer holiday. So much preparation, so much expectation, so much time with mommy around to help with the kids! This year, after a break of three years we had decided to return to France. I think the boys would have kept on going to Killarney indefinitely but Niki in particular wanted to improve the odds of seeing the sun so we had decided on a two week camp-site holiday in Brittany.

Our previous trips to France had involved less kids, longer journeys south (this being related to the first point) and holiday rentals with friends. They had also involved the ferry departing from Rosslare so it was a bit discombobulating to stare at the Bull Wall and Dollymount beach from the top deck of our ferry as we began our journey south, with Dublin being Irish Ferries new starting point. The crossing itself was a calm one although I (being a very bad sea traveller) kept on imagining the ship moving up and down even before we had left the port! The best that can be said for the sleeping arrangements was that we all got some level of sleep although I would never recommend the six in a cabin approach (I think we broke the world record for the number of times saying “be quiet” in an 8 hour period). Niki woke up early the next morning to say how badly she had slept but was quickly berated by four of us for her loud snoring during the night (Ella remained strategically quiet on the matter).

The first thing we noticed when we got to France was the heat. The car thermometer immediately headed towards 30 degrees and didn’t budge for the rest of the day. This was quite a relief for yours truly as I had pushed hard for Brittany despite having first hand knowledge of how erratic the weather can be from my own childhood holidays. A fortnight listening to rain on the metal roofed mobile home would not have been fun. The 4 hour drive to Carnac went smoothly with Niki taking up her customary role as driver and me as navigator (basically confirming that the sat nav was correct and handing out sweets to those in the back). We did switch for one hour of the drive but my slightly more gung-ho approach to the numerous French roundabouts had Niki quickly suggesting that we return to our original positions.

We made it to La Grande Métairie in Carnac just as “rush hour” traffic was kicking in i.e. plenty of campervans on a narrow road. I had been to La Grande Métairie twice as a youngster so it was with a fondness that I spotted the alignements again just outside the campsite. These standing stones or menhirs for Asterix and Obelix fans are the main tourist attraction in the Carnac area. Our three bed mobile was a bit cramped but we quickly realized that the covered decking outside would in fact become our most used “room” and added significantly to our space. We had planned an early night but the noise from the soirée in the camp bar (they still love their cheesy dance songs in France) kept us all up until close to midnight which the boys loved and the adults just about tolerated.

The next morning we were faced with the cool empty shelves of our new accommodation so there was only one thing for it, L’Hypermarché!! I love hypermarkets, I remember being astounded as a child that you could buy car tyres and bread in the same shop! I still have the same sense of wonder but now it is mainly focused on the cheeses, so many cheeses and only 2 weeks to eat them!! It’s also a good place to legitimately lose the family for five minutes of quiet time, oh a free crepe sample, merci beaucoup! We loaded up on €200 of top French produce (Niki had pillow cases on top of her list, Lochlan an inflatable stingray, Ella a pain au chocolat, Aaron & Oscar icecreams and I was only allowed 5 types of cheese) and made our way back to the camp site.

La Grande Métairie has been significantly upgraded since my last visit and in particular, the addition of water slides and a lazy river has been a real bonus. There are lifeguards near the water slide but let’s just say it’s no coincidence that laissez-faire is a French word. You’d want to be trying something pretty Evel Kneivel-esque for those boys (and girls) to get involved. At one point Lochlan was about to head down backwards on his back before I grabbed him. This level of enjoyment has meant daily visits to the pool are the very least of the boys’ requirements. While this is great on many levels, I had not been prepared for the amount of sun cream this would involve. Being married to a true Irish freckled cailín means that we are extra careful with the kids and we need a good half an hour each day set aside to it. Oscar seems particularly aggrieved at this, maybe because he senses that he wouldn’t look out of place in a Swedish travel brochure. I also grumble occasionally but honestly my skin has never been so moisturised in my life as a result of the sun factor regime!

Otherwise the week has flown by with the experience being generally positive. Although there have a few standout peculiarities along the way, such as why Aaron didn’t specify the difference between feeling sick and feeling like he was about to get sick (vomit in a mobile home is not pleasant), my puzzlement at what smurf flavor ice cream tastes like (in Quiberon the kids went with all the plain and normal flavors much to my dismay) and the look of disdain and disgust the creperie waiter gave us when we asked if his chocolate crepes contained Nutella! Ah France, never stop being French! Really looking forward to another week of it!