You don’t have to go to a foreign country to be lost in translation.
Sile and I worked in a restaurant in Kent for two years in the seventies and we had quite a few problems of translation while there.

The most obvious one was the moment we asked in the village shop for a sliced pan, this was greeted with total hilarity ;- “He wants me to slice a frying pan!”
Others were more subtle, on Sunday to discuss meeting people on the following Thursday it was disastrous to propose “Next Thursday” as the designated rendezvous.
That would involve one hanging about for a week.
The correct term for that day was “This Thursday” and they called “Next Thursday” what we called “Thursday Week”

Some Irish friends lost a good bottle of wine in this way, opening it a week early for guests who never arrived.

Other differences were less likely to lead to disaster.

For “Bold” , as in a bold child, they used “naughty” bold to them meant brave.
We also had a problem with bring and take, to us fairly well interchangeable whereas to them to bring something away with you was a contradiction in terms.

Sick, which to us is unwell, to them was vomiting, instead they used ill, a word alien to us except in compounds like ill-will.
But strangely it was the restraints of their language that we found most bizarre.
Kitchens in Ireland were not places of clean language, here they were (in this restaurant anyway) far more careful.
I had to bite my tongue on many occasions after seeing the shock on faces when I effed and blinded having cut my finger or dropped something.

This was brought home to me dramatically when the head chef in the restaurant in which we worked spilled a pot of boiling water on his lap.
Oh Fuck! He said- and then immediately (and while still obviously suffering) he apologised for his language.

Imagine my dismay when I went out of doors a few mornings ago only to discover that the wholesale warehouse at the end of our road had been transformed overnight into a Techno Dance Emporium.

This is tonight’s variation of a soup I always make at this time of the year, ( and variations of which I have blogged before)

It is loosely based on the Italian Minestrone, the French Potage Paysanne
and every other variation of chunky vegetable soup around.
I always make it, without a recipe, with whatever I have in the cupboard and it turns out so delicious that I resolve to write down the recipe immediately after because this is the best, the definitive one.

It is intended to be a full meal in a bowl (or two) so don’t serve anything after it.

As I said this is tonight’s variation, the definitive one….until the next time.

This will make about 12 bowlfuls, enough for 6 hungry people for supper (or 4 complete savages.)

Ingredients:

225g (8 oz.) Streaky Rashers
4 large carrots
1 head Celeriac
4 med Onions
4 Medium Potatoes
1x 400g tin Chick peas
225g (8 oz.) Frozen Peas
1 ltr. Tomato Juice
2 ltrs Home Made Chicken stock
(with its fat on top)
A sprig of Thyme and a Bay leaf
Salt and pepper

Lots of good brown bread
175g (6 oz.) Freshly and Coarsely grated Parmesan

You will need a Large Pot.

First get everything ready.
Chop the rashers into slivers, peel and chop the carrot, celeriac, onion and potatoes into small dice ( ½ inch to ¼ inch depending on your patience)

Scrape the fat off the top of the stock and use this fat to cook the bacon in. (or use some olive oil)
Fry the bacon in a large pot in this fat until crisp.
Add the diced vegetables to the pan and put down the heat and cook these gently for about 10 minutes.
Now put in the chick peas (complete with their liquid), the frozen peas, the stock and the tomato juice and the herbs (these you can discard as you pour it out).
Simmer these together until the vegetables are soft (about 20 minutes, no longer or they will loose freshness)
Season to taste and it is ready to serve.

Toast a slice of bread for each bowl and then sprinkle over some parmesan and then grill again until brown and melted.

Pour the soup into bowls and float the parmesan toast on top.
Serve the rest of the cheese and the bread on the side.

His Grandmother has decided to start Fionn on early singing lessons.

A mixed blessing, as he now is keeping the house awake at nights by practicing his Puccini Arias in his crib.

In just two weeks time, thanks to the munificent hospitality of my friends Isabel and Paul, we are going to be their guests in their apartment in Berlin, Sile and my first visit to that city.
It is a scource of infinite satisfaction to me that one of my first memories of that city was watching, live on television, a moment when the President of the United States became lost in translation.

In 1963 ,shortly after he made his historic visit to Ireland, John Fitzgerald Kennedy went to West Berlin and made a speech there to show his solidarity with the citizens .
He finished his speech by declaiming that he too was a citizen of Berlin, then he translated this into German and announced “Ich bin ein Berliner”.

Now unfortunately the German people have a habit of calling their favourite foods after their place of origin so what the president was telling the German nation was that he was a sort of jam doughnut.
One can only be grateful that he wasn’t making the same speech in Frankfurt.

Mind you, according to Bill Bryson in Mother Tongue , he had rather less jam on his face than President Carter who employed a Polish translator on his trip to that country in 1977.

His first gaffe was when Mr President said that he had left America that morning he translated “left ” as abandoned- to the consternation of his listeners- but his piece de resistance was his translation of the President’s remark that he wished to know the Polish people’s desires for the future.
This he translated (to gasps I have no doubt) as Mr Carter desire to have carnal knowledge with the people of Poland in the future.

One of my firm desires on my holiday in Berlin will be to eat a Berliner, and hopefully, unlike JFK, I won’t get any jam on my face while I do.

I think (if my sums are right) that was the Christmas of 1966, 43 years ago ,I would have been 17 years old and was in first year Arts in University College in Cork.
I was involved in “The Dramat” (which was what the cognescenti called the University Dramatic Society)and it was decided to put on a Revue.

The whole concept of a revue was very fashionable at the time. Beyond The Fringe was storming Broadway and Cambridge Footlights revue had even made it to Cork to play in the Group Theatre in South Main Street.

We were lucky with a few things. Tom Murphy , Ger Fitzgibbon and Emily Miles had done a revue previously and agreed to provide some scripts. The rest we more or less agreed to make up as we went on.
(Tom, who became a talented director in the Abbey Theatre has since passed on, Ger runs the Drama Department in UCC and Emily, now Emily Fitzgibbon, runs Graffiti Theatre in Cork)

The best thing was undoubtably a satire on UCC provided by Tom which was a pastiche of West Side Story
Unfortunately only a couple of lines stay with me.

Based on Officer Krupke an ode to the college Registrar had the lines

I’ve filled all my forms in triplicate
I’ve paid my fees in full
And to top that
I’ve got lots of pull

The title song which I think came from the Fitzgibbon pen went something like this

A students life is full of strife
Mummy wouldn’t like it
The rooms too full the lectures bull
Mummy wouldn’t like it
The policy at UCC
Leaves you and me so absolutely free
That we all shirk
And do no work
Mummy wouldn’t like it

I suppose that even being able to remember that much 43 years later is a little sad.

The programme, which amazingly I still have, was designed by Tadhgh Courtney our producers brother and had cartoons (and extremely unflattering ones) done by Peter Sanquest- Peter also played in a band at that time called Taste which also starred one Rory Gallagher.

This was the cover by Tadhgh.

John Fahey, who died about twenty years ago, was the funniest man I have ever met.
His speciality was versions of John Mc Cormack arias as they were played on Radio Eireann at that time before digital remastering.
He used to manage the thin high notes of the Count while providing the ubiquitous surface noise from the side of his mouth.
I give anything to hear him do it again.

Helen O Kelly was the pianist, as the Henry Hutchinson Stewart scholar of the year she went on to greater things and is now Doctor Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly the Fellow and Tutor in German at Exeter College, Oxford.

Sean was our director and our star and a natural comedian, his Dave the Rave monologue always brought the house down.
He moved to America and when I last heard of him was head of Education in a University in Nebraska

Maggie Loughnan was a great friend and we still keep sporadic contact.
She is now a Granny and teaches the deaf in London.

Isabel Healy, now Isabel Healy-Kelly-Duggan is still one of my greatest friends, in fact we will be staying with her in Berlin next month.
Isabel was responsible for the title as, as each suggested title was suggested she said “Mummy wouldn’t like that” eventually we defaulted on that.

Myself (yes I used to be that thin.)

The revue, if my memory holds, was a great success and we had to run for several extra nights.
I cannot now remember who it was suggested that we should give a charity show for the inmates of Skiddy’s Almshouse.
Skiddy’s was an old folks home in the city.
It was of course a disasterous idea.
The jokes which had been recieved with hilarity by our student audience went down like lead balloons with the old folks.

Our confidence eventually finally left us when at the end of a particularly energetic sketch, which was greeted in complete silence, a plaintive voice from the back said ” I want to go back to SKiddy’s”

Our friend Donal O Sullivan , an ex boy soprano with the voice of an angel, stepped in.
He went on stage and sang the Ave Maria by Gounod.
This was a great success.
We abandoned the rest of the show and once Donal had run out of Hymns gathered around Helen on the piano and sang carols.
The day was saved.

Charles Rennis Macintosh

This is one of a pair of gesso panels made for the Ladies’ Luncheon Room at Miss Cranston’s in Ingram Street in 1900.

I knew that Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect and a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main exponent of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom.
Until my Daughter Eileen gave me a calendar of his work this year I had no idea that he also painted watercolours.
Neither did I know that he spent several years living in Port Vendres, just down the road from us in France.

His paintings are very appealing, in the art noveau style but still realistic enough to be recognisable.

Below is his painting of the Little Bay in Port Vendres.
I look forward to seeing how much it has changed when we next go there.

Okay just one more.
Daughter Deirdre just mailed this to us.

Fionn you will probably recognise at this stage, but what about his absurdly young Grandmamma !
(It must be the wonderful easy life I let her lead)

Just when you feel that you haven’t room to hold anyone else in your heart along comes a person to prove you wrong.
He sleeps trustingly in the crook of your elbow, his entire hand can just encompass your ring finger, you discover that you could happily spend the whole day watching him breathe.

You then suddenly realise that you have shockingly underutilized your heart and that, like your brain, there is another 90% of capacity there waiting to be captured.

You have a grandchild.