Harbourne Hall revisited!!

Alfred: And would you believe it, he brought ME!! OMG, so much to tell, life is SO exciting at the moment. Will try and find time but am flying to see Alphonsine in Edinburgh on Saturday and I am SO EXCITED!!!!! Hope she will forgive all the Alfred groupies I met in Harbourne but can it be my fault that I am so popular???

Ursine greetings from wintry Ireland!!!

(Alfred: And greetings to you all from your ursine correspondent here in windy wintry Ireland. Just as well the Rathdown School girls designed me with a nice thick furry outer coat to keep out the chill, given that my lord and master will only turn on the central heating if he can see his breath in front of his face indoors. Maybe he thinks I am a polar bear?

And what have I been up to, I hear you cry, you legion of my followers who have been no doubt grief-stricken at my long silence? Well, it turns out that from my point of view, life in Ireland and life in Rwanda are remarkably similar. Sitting in Ruairí’s bedroom in Gisagara for weeks on end staring at the back of the closed bedroom door wasn’t the most thrill-a-minute experience in the world but there was always the distraction of occasional visitors – Gustav the mouse, Jeremy the bat, various anonymous flying and crawling things that never introduced themselves properly, Alexandré to make the bed and collect and return laundry and, at night, the festive sounds of all-night partying from the wildlife in the attic. I still find it hard to sleep at night without the soothing chittering of bats just above my head.

Whereas sitting on the kitchen table does offer a wider range of things to look at during the day and more activity in the evening, once his nibs eventually decides he has had enough of the office. During the day I can gaze at the cooker and wonder at Ruairí’s continuing belief that dragging a slightly damp cloth across an oily and greasy surface somehow constitutes an act of ‘cleaning’. Glancing to my right I behold the grandeur of the ‘garden’ whose unchecked growth has only been restrained by the wintry weather as opposed to any action on Ruairí’s part. Occasionally, the fat long-haired white tomcat will walk through, wandering slowly through the grass as if in an LSD-induced trance and leaving an erratic wake, rather like a warship frantically zigzagging to avoid a U-boat. If I am very lucky indeed, I may get to see him empty his bowels, producing a dropping so immense that for a long time they were blamed on some errant dog that had somehow managed to enter the garden and leave again.

The fun begins in the evening when he gets home. First, there is the ‘what are we going to eat tonight?’ flurry of activity as fridge, freezer and cupboards are thrown open and the choice made more often on the basis of what needs to be eaten soon as opposed to what one might actually FEEL like eating. Then (out of my eye line but easily deduced by the sound) is the watching of whatever Star Trek episodes that have been downloaded in the past few days. And then to bed (that’s a quote from someone, isn’t it?)

The newest wrinkle is doing housework in the morning. One thing that has definitely persisted since Rwanda is his habit of getting up at ridiculously early hours of the morning when there is no need to. I mean, what was the point of buying a house so near the school if you still get up at 0600? Well, the answer seems to be, to do housework!! Dishwashing, laundry, sweeping, tidying, recycling, everything except hoovering (too noisy). No cooking, at least not so far. I swear, if he starts getting up at five-thirty to peel carrots, make soup, chop onions or the likes, I am heading back to Gisagara.

But I think he is gradually settling back in to life here. He does find the national mood here difficult to take – not that things aren’t desperately bad (they are, even if it hard to convince all those Rwandans sending emails looking for scholarships/funding/donations etc of this fact). It’s that Rwanda was so POSITIVE, even unreasonably so. This is a country with little or no national resources, recovering from one of the most gigantic (if, admittedly, self-inflicted) disasters any country has ever experienced, with a demographic avalanche hovering over its head ... and everyone is upbeat, positive, working for the country’s future (on the surface anyway). Here, the country is also trying to recover from an (again, admittedly, self-inflicted) disaster but no-one seems to have any confidence or hope or esprit left in them. Contrast Rwanda’s determination – rightly or wrongly – not to allow itself to be dictated to by outside forces, countries or organisations with the situation in Ireland where (and I don’t think this is an exaggeration) most people seem to feel that the IMF or the EU or whoever would be preferable to letting the gang of incompetents and self-serving chancers in Dáíl Éireann do it. Listening to the radio the other night, I thought Ruairí was going to put his fist through the wall listening to either Lenihan or Cowen explaining why it was important not to get a bail-out at the moment because we had enough money for the next 6-12 months. And then what? Well, THEN we can go to the IMF because it’ll be the other shower who will be in power and we can maintain it is all their fault!!! Of course, by then the country will be even deeper in what our long-haired tomcat is so liberal with in the back garden but, hey, as long as FF are off the hook!

Hard to imagine that happening in Rwanda. Admittedly, there is no opposition and only one person who can make any kind of decisions but you did at least feel that some people, some politicians did care about the country as a whole and about its future. Very little sign of that here. If he does head back to Rwanda in the near future, that’ll probably be the main reason.

Hmmm, must be getting at least some of this right, he’s interrupting me with any sarcastic comments like he usually does.

As for me, I will of course go where my master goes. Though I must admit I would prefer a little while longer to get more settled back here (like, a few years) before heading off again. Though a little trip to Edinburgh to see the beautiful Alphonsine wouldn’t go amiss, must get working on that. Hope the cold, bleak Edinburgh weather hasn’t paled the golden lustre of her skin (What? You don’t know who Alphonsine is? Well, you are going to have to trawl back through the blog then, aren’t you!!!)

Thought I might get a word in here. Life has been good recently – work is much, much more under control, went to the UCD Symphony Orchestra the other night with three former pupils participating (good Shostakovitch apart from the first bit where the brass was a bit woeful, nice Elgar ‘Sea Changes’ with a wonderful singer, and a very very dodgy Brahms 2^nd Symphony), off to Birmingham tomorrow morning for a Returned Volunteers’ Weekend, will catch the new Harry Potter en route, Lidl’s are stocking ostrich and springbok steaks, had a sort of day off today – brought six students into the Four Courts for the day – impeccably behaved, looked after by a parent while I made myself unpopular by taking the only table in the Four Courts canteen that has a socket by it, plugging in my laptop and working there for five hours flat!