The Spaniards in San Sebastian have a tapas approach to getting wasted. Why fill up on main courses of booze when you can tip away with little mini-bites of drunk all day long. Myself and the wife arrived at around lunch time and headed for the old town at the top of the town. Every bar has a selection of tapas (known locally as pintxos) up on the counter so there’s no awkwardness around ordering. Just eat what you like and pay on the way out. We grabbed a couple of sophisticated ham sandwiches and looked around to learn how to drink like a local.

A lot of people were drinking small beers, less than half a pint, so we had three of them a bit too rapido. Things started to look up. A lot of people were ordering cider so we followed suit. The waitress made a big deal of pouring a shot-sized cider each from a freshly opened bottle. We thought she was a bit silly and knocked it back. It tasted very strong. Who’s silly now? Us. Foolish in fact. We paid up and headed for the fresh air.

The wife got a fit of the giggles and sat down on some church steps. I thought I was going to keel over with the euphoria. A gaggle of Japanese tourists looked on like we were street entertainers. And then a funny thing happened. Nothing. We didn’t go straight into another bar and double-up our bets with more cider. The wife tried to suggest it but couldn’t get it out through the giggles. Ten minutes later, we’d sobered up.

It was one of the best piss-ups we ever had. And here we were at half two in the afternoon, with just tiniest hangover and the day stretching before us. We went into the next bar (the old town in San Sebastian is one long line of next bars). They liked their wine in this bar. So did we. We had two each and some more classy ham sandwiches. Here we go again.

This kind of afternoon drinking went horribly wrong in Amsterdam last year. We darted into a Belgian bar to get out of the rain and were lucky not to be taken out on a stretcher. The place had an amazing selection of strong beers brewed to help monks believe there’s more to life than sex and gossip. The guy behind the bar tried to warn us to take it easy, but Dutch people have a way of making a warning sound like a challenge. Like I say, a stretcher.

It’s different in Spain. I noticed a few people drinking extra small beers. These are no more than shots of beer in a small glass. Wash down your mini ham sandwich and still drive home. Or put a little pep in your beer buzz. This is when I realised the road to better boozing. Drink just enough.

You see, the Spaniards aren’t just the best soccer team in the world. They’re also world class drinkers. Their range of finely calibrated drinks means there’s always something just right to keep them on the sweet spot.

Everybody has their own alcoholic sweet spot. Mine is somewhere on the third pint when I realise why I got into drinking in the first place. You didn’t feel this good ten minutes ago and you’ll feel worse in ten minutes time. A lot of hungover time is wasted re-discovering that the next pint after the sweet spot is when the night starts to go a bit squidgy.

The Spaniards don’t do pints. They’ll serve you a shot of beer to keep you at the sweet spot, so you’ll keep digging into their mini-dinners. Everyone’s a winner. We had a second glass of wine followed by some world-class espresso and went for a walk by the beach.

This set the tone for the holiday. We’d have three or four mini piss-ups every day, each with its own tiny hangover. I asked for a glass of white wine at lunch one day in awful Spanish which might have translated as can I have a bag of badgers please. The waiter came back with a bottle. We drank it. It turned out the €20 set menu included a bottle of wine each. We were tempted. Why not, we’re on holidays was rolled out. Then Amsterdam got a mention. We asked for the bill. There’s plenty more life in this day.

I learned two things. One, there’s no need to do the dog on it. Two, I’m getting old.

The fury came during the sermon. The priest’s message was stop worrying, God will look after you. This church is full of people thinking about mortgages, jobs and whether their children will have to emigrate and Fr. Bob Marley was up there telling them Don’t Worry About a Thing. He went on to say forget about insurance companies and pension funds, only the Big Man can bring us real peace of mind. He then announced there would be two collections this Sunday. And next Sunday. Nice work if you can get it.

It felt like a shakedown. This is when the red mist descended. It didn’t help that my seat would have felt small for a jockey and I’m over six feet tall. Come on Father, if you’re going to treat this like a commercial enterprise (two collections!) then you need to compete. The cinemas only made a comeback when they put in super comfy seats and started serving nachos. How about a recliner and some place to put my Diet Coke.

Then the guy in front of me started to cough uncontrollably and his small daughter laughed so hard at him she nearly fell out into the aisle. He then started laughing at her laughing at him, which made his coughing worse. I started laughing with the two of them and felt like a plonker for losing the rag.

This is when I decided to open my heart to the Lord. Come on, give me a sign. My wife – a great believer in guardian angels – did something similar recently when she was in bed and asked her winged protector to give her a sign. Our cat Maisie walked into the room put her paw under the duvet and tapped the wife’s leg. We still don’t know what to make of it, but let’s just say I’ve stopped pulling Maisie’s tail for the laugh.

Meanwhile back at church, I stood still waiting for my sign. I pictured bright lights followed by a blast of the Hallelujah Chorus. Nothing happened.

The first collection was on at this stage so I gave God all my change. Still nothing. It was a relief really because I’m not sure how I would have reacted. Do you say hello in these circumstances? For some reason, I thought you’d look more like Mel Gibson.

I’m not sure if I ever really believed. I lapped up the story of Adam and Eve like everybody else, particularly after myself and my sister coloured it in. But then, at the age of seven my teacher announced that Adam and Eve didn’t really exist. Steady on, Sir. Our tiny minds were blown away by the news. Sir then tried to fix matters by saying the Adam and Eve story was an allegory. The poor man spent the rest of the day trying to explain allegory to a bunch of seven year olds.

It was downhill on the God front after that. Next up was venial sin. Lying until your pants went on fire was no more than a yellow card; miss confession during Easter week and you’re off to hell. Come off it. I made a hundred quid for my confirmation and walked away.

The funny thing is I still expect to rediscover the Big Man. I don’t expect to go back to the boy scouts or apply to become a Warlord Secret Agent ever again, but it looks like the barrage of religious instruction at an early age has left me waiting for God. So I was expecting to hear something from him, that day in the church.

Instead the priest raced through the rest of the mass, pausing only for the second collection. As we stood for the final hymn, I looked around the church and wondered if this racket can last beyond another generation. And then I had my moment. The church lit up with the sound of women singing Flower of the May. I was a five year old again, at early morning summer mass with my father in Kinsale. It was better than Mel Gibson.

I took another look around the congregation. It was mainly older people, towards the end of their lives. There will come a time when I might be glad to pay into two collections to put a new roof on the church, so I’ll have somewhere to listen to a guy in a dress telling me that the Big Man has my back.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll just ask Him to help Man United win the premiership next year.  I’ll ask Maisie the Cat too. You might as well hedge your bets.

The biggest problem with working from home isn’t the lack of human contact. It’s the amount of comfort eating you do to replace it.

I’ve always been a bit of a snacker. When I started work in Dublin, my 10am breakfast was two coffee slices and a Danish from the Kylemore shop at the top of Camden Street, washed down with two cups of coffee. I’d go sugar crazy for the next couple of hours. There’s nothing like it when you’re 22.

Then one day I stood up on the desk and started shouting at my English friend Gordon that the Brits were incredibly lucky in the Falklands War, I’d seen a documentary on how the whole fleet was nearly sunk by the Argie air force and then I noticed that everybody in the place was staring up at me. Not all the managers were laughing.  It was cornflakes and tea for breakfast after that.

My snacking now turned towards the vending machine.  A Snickers/King Crisps combo did the trick as long as I remembered to eat the Snickers first (otherwise the crisps coat your teeth and ruin the Snickers experience.  It sounds obvious but you’d be surprised the number of people who get it wrong).

But this was snacking in a controlled environment. The very act of having to go down three floors to the machine kept a lid on it.  And you didn’t want to look like a savage in front of the others.

There’s none of that at home. I’m four seconds from the kitchen. There’s nobody to worry about my greed or productivity. And I’m fairly bored.

I never thought I’d say this; I miss Dirk. Every office has a Dirk, the guy from some place like Denmark who traps you near the coffee-machine with the same chat every day about the people at the roundabout who wait until the last minute to change lanes and it’s funny because if everybody actually queued up oh Jesus shoot me.

We’ve all stood listening to our Dirk thinking this wouldn’t happen if I worked from home. I could be there now catching a few minutes of Tom Dunne or Ryan Tubridy in peace while the kettle boils.

Trust me, you’ll miss Dirk when he’s gone. Morning radio is mainly people reminiscing about the 1980s and a child expert warning that too much telly will make your toddler stupid. I think it might be aimed at 35 year old stay at home moms. That’s not me. So I head back to my lonesome desk with a packet of consolation Hobnobs.

My wife complains that it’s impossible to keep any food in the house, but then she doesn’t spend all day missing Dirk. As far as I know.

Day 1, 11:54 am: I’ve just finished the fruit and nut mix I opened earlier. 590 calories it says here on the pack. Jesus, I try restricting my comfort eating to health food only to learn I’d have been better off with a double cheeseburger. It’s coming up to lunch.

Day 1, 3:14 pm: I had a great bowl of pasta for lunch at the Farmers Market in Mahon Point, where I also bought myself a Rice Krispie cake. I’ve just eaten that. I’m starting to feel full. At least I’ll be able to run this off at my weekly game of 5-a-side soccer tonight.

Day 2, 8:55 am: I ended up hobbling away from soccer after half an hour. I’ve a gammy ankle and it’s starting to feel like it might never be right again for soccer. I weighed myself this morning. I’ve put on four pounds in one week. My man-boobs could do with a training bra.

This is a problem. My weekly games of squash and soccer kept my weight in check. The last time I piled on the pounds at this rate, I ended up looking 43 years of age. Which is actually my age but I’d like to look a bit younger.

If my duff ankle keeps me at home scoffing Hobnobs, then I might be better off going back on the fags. A nice cigarette is like a good friend who keeps your mind off the grub. In the meantime I’ll open that packet of cheddar in the fridge.

These dreams follow pretty much the same script. They start out with me running late for my flight in a hot strange city. I’m almost out of money. Things go downhill from there. I get on the right bus but it is going away from the airport. I hop off and go into a shop to buy a salami sandwich and lemonade. The queue never moves.

I run out onto the street and get in a taxi but can’t explain where I want to go. I try everything from aeropuerto to flughafen but the driver just shouts at me as we drive through a suburb that could be in Mexico City although I’ve never been there. At this point I notice that I’m naked from the waist down. I realise nobody has noticed this yet and start to wonder if can get away with it at the airport.

I’m no psychiatrist, but it’s clear that I have a fear of flying. Not crashing. Flying. I’m terrified of missing my flight next week.

This is why Airline is one of my favourite TV shows of all time. It’s the reality show about Easyjet ground staff in Liverpool and Luton with a voiceover by Baldrick from Blackadder. They’re forever re-running it on Sky.

The show isn’t about the staff. It’s about passengers who mess up.  There’s Rozzer and his stag-party mates who arrive at 8am for the 8:20 to Barcelona and aren’t allowed check in. Rozzer, who has clearly had two cans of Carlsberg Special Brew for his breakfast, is ‘avin none of it. He roars at the Easyjet rep who then pretends to make a phone call to the gate where he says “alright mate, said I’d ask anyway” and tells Rozzer that the answer is still no. This seems to calm Rozzer down. They all book on the evening flight and head to the airport bar. I’d hate to be Rozzer.

Then there’s the small flushed looking woman who looks like she’s going to cry because she arrived for a flight to Italy without her passport. Ok, her brother manages to get it to her just in time despite bad traffic on the M25, but the woman should be ashamed of herself.

Finally, no episode is complete without a small livid French businessman who arrived late off the flight from Nice and now wants Easyjet to pay for his taxi to Aberdeen. He holds up the whole queue for an hour before storming off to the taxi rank without a penny, muttering merde merde merde to himself as he goes. There’s no dignity in that.

Airline is my driller-killer movie. It’s how I confront my fears of messing up at an airport. Well, that and driving my wife crazy.

It’s now six days before we head away. I’ve already taken to checking the passports are in their usual place in the drawer. At least once between now and next Wednesday, I will become convinced that one of them is out of date.

I’ve already started to think about how and when I’m going to pack. It’s a late enough flight, so my wife is going to work that day and come home in time to go to the airport. I think she’s crazy. I’m going to take the day off and hang around the house worrying.

She’ll want to arrive at the airport 90 minutes before take off. That leaves no time for her brother to get to our house and hare up to departures with one of our forgotten passports. She should watch more Airline.

I’ll be like a wreck in the airport. If you see a guy in departures having what looks like a fit as he taps his pockets in turn repeating wallet-passport-keys, wallet-passport-keys, then that’s me. I’ll have my passport and ticket out the minute we join the queue. At some point I’ll sub-consciously put them back in my bag.  Now they’re lost. That’s breakdown territory. My wife will laugh at me. That won’t help.

If we get through the check-in process (that’s a big if) then I can start to worry about forgetting my passport at the security scanner or losing it in the duty free. It’s a Ryanair flight, so next up is a mini-anxiety attack over whether I should stand in the queue for twenty minutes and get a seat or sit down until the queue had moved and then get a seat. I’ll stand. It’s better to be doing something that sitting there expecting the worst. My wife will wait until the queue is gone to board the plane. She’ll sit next to me. I’ll have a quick check that I’m wearing pants and then we’re off on our nice relaxing break.

GAA Anger

Those who wonder why we don’t get as angry as the Greeks have obviously never been at a GAA match. There’s nothing off limits. While the soccer crowd chant and the rugby crowd sing together, a GAA crowd is nothing more than a collection of individuals going ape-shit in public.

We love our national games because they turn us into world beaters at the one thing that matters to every true Irish person. Cursing.

All over the ground, timid little men are on their feet going purple and screaming at the poor referee or their own centre back or the other crowd’s kit-man or at the sky. It’s the only sport in the world where the St John’s Ambulance people watch the crowd rather than the match.

One dodgy call from an umpire and they’re off into the stands to help some fan who has gone mental. You’ll see them asking the people around what happened. “That bollocks of a linesman flagged for a free, that’s what happened. Our friend here got up and screamed ‘Jesus Ref’ seventeen times in a row and then collapsed.” “Anyone know the person’s name?” “Sister Regina.”

Forget about therapy. There’s no amount of post Celtic Tiger anger that can’t be released at a championship match this summer. Pick a Saturday evening match in one of those provincial towns that can’t handle the crowds; the queue to get into An Carr Chlos – a mucky field two miles from the ground – will build the fury nicely.

It’s perfectly acceptable to have a shit-fit when you see the prices the GAA are charging to get into a playoff match in the middle of the largest recession to ever hit this country. Don’t blow your top at the turnstile. The kind of stuff you’re allowed to say and do inside the ground will get you arrested out here.

Be careful though. A GAA championship match can’t start before a minutes silence in appreciation of the secretary of Wolfe Tone Davitts, who passed away after eighty years of service to Clare hurling. You don’t want to be in the middle of your freak out while that’s going on, unless of course you’re screaming at the referee. It’s never too early to start on him; or too late. If you still feel livid at the final whistle, it’s quite du jour to ‘escort’ the effin ref off the pitch.

Cork were Brillunt

If there is one thing you can be sure of this summer it’s that a Kerry player will give a post-match interview saying “Fair play, to Cork, they were brillunt out there today. I’m sure the people back in Kiree won’t mind me saying that wan bit. They were due a big performance against us in Croke Park, and crysht they delivered it today. Some times you have to hold your hands up and say Cork were brillunt.” And then he turns away to join the celebrations after beating Cork in another All-Ireland final at Croke Park.

Nothing hurts more than being buttered up by a Kerryman. That is why a lot of Cork fans don’t follow their footballers to Croke Park when Kerry is the opposition. If a Rebel really wants to leave off steam, he watches the match at home so that when Tadhg Sean Maidhc from the West Kerry Gaeltacht says ye were brillunt, he can throw his can of Murphy’s at the television screaming “shut up ya smug Kerry langer.”

He’d miss that if he went to the game.  If Tadhg Sean Maidhc doesn’t make him angry enough, he can fall back on his natural Cork paranoia and remind himself that everyone else in the country is delighted when the rebels lose. It’s not remotely true but try and tell that to a Cork man.

Kerry aren’t the only team to brillunt the other crowd to death. The GAA post-match interview is all about false modesty and humility. It sets them apart from the soccer and rugby wide-boys, who have to be paid to get out of bed.

Or at least it used to.  GAA players have already claimed a bigger piece of the pie through the Gaelic Players Association. How long before we see the launch of an aftershave called The Gooch Pour l’Homme?

The GAA Bandwagon

If the recession doesn’t get you, then the ash cloud will. A lot of foreign holiday families will be staying at home this summer. This means a whole new audience looking to the GAA for a bit of fun, Irish style.

You might be worried that the kids will be exposed to a lot of colourful language, but come on, it’s nothing the little feckers don’t hear at home. In fact, it’s cruel to shelter your kids from the cut and thrust of Irish cursing. It will only leave them at a disadvantage in later life.

There are some things worth knowing before you hop on board the bandwagon.

You will need a view on the new hand-pass rule in football. Forget about constitutional issues and the economy. Nothing divides Irish people more than whether a fella should be allowed to pass the ball with an open palm. It’s as well to be against the new rules for now; the smart money in Ireland these days is against everything.

Everybody likes to get on television. The easiest way to do this is for you and the kids to wear the colours of one county and let your partner dress up in the other. The Sunday Game loves this bit of family rivalry. Who cares that you’re all from the same county and don’t forget to wave.

Remember, your county chooses you. Never ever admit that you decided to follow a team because you like their style of football or hurling. If a fan can change county, then so can a player and where would we be then. In England, playing soccer, that’s where.

It’s very important to hate at least one player on your own team. This is just in case you’re hammering the opposition and there’s nothing to freak out about. Every time he makes a mistake, you can pour all your self-loathing and guilt into fit of screaming at the  whipping boy.  If he plays well, you can freak out even more with: “Typical! The bollicks can do it when he wants to.”

The Dubs

The Dubs are the Tiger Woods of Gaelic Football. The fact is that the championship couldn’t do without them. Who else would pack out Croke Park year after year in early June convinced this must be their year.

Somehow though, the Dubs have become the romantic underdogs, the crowd that other counties adopt as their second team. This is because they feel sorry for them. After watching them try and preserve their heritage on match day, Meath natives actually pity the Dublin exiles that have moved to their county.

It’s sad to see the whole family decked out in blue in the pub, with the wife saying to her husband: “I’m losin’ the will to live Deco. I’ve tried to get dem to speak normally but every one of me kids are starting to sound like Hector.” It’s enough to melt any heart.

Culchies on the TV

If it wasn’t for the GAA, you’d hardly ever see culchies on the TV. You’ll get the odd glimpse on Ear to the Ground and Nationwide, but that’s mainly for sensible culchies who have their own artisan cheese business. Things are different from June to September.

This is where you get to see the true culchie; cute, cranky and up for a fight. And that’s just the football panel on the Sunday Game. Pat Spillane, Joe Brolly and Colm O’Rourke have the classic culchie dynamic. Slagging the crap out of each other for laughs until somebody gets the hump over nothing and suddenly there’s a chance Spillane will break a chair over Brolly’s head while telling him he’s brillunt at d’aul analysis, but it doesn’t happen because Michael Lyster has the look of a Guard.

It’s never like that with the hurling panel. Men who grew up playing a sport that involves hitting and being hit with a lump of ash are very good at keeping their cool. This is why the Sunday Game hurling panel has the polite feel of a staff room meeting at a minor boarding school.

World Cup

First, the weather. You know that New Zealand guy who effectively controls the national mood now with his long-range weather forecasts? He has spoken.  That spell of good weather we got in late May/early June? That was our summer.

You’re going to need the World Cup to get you through the warm, bright, drenched evenings. The first round is nearly finished now, so it’s a perfect time to latch on to some likely winners. We’re the world champions at band-wagon-jumping, so make sure you get it right.

The good news is that South Africa is in our time zone. It’s one thing to become a fanatical supporter of Cameroon but are you really going to get up at three in the morning to watch them? No.

Not that it’s all going to be a blast. After the Paris hand-ball, watching the World Cup this year is going to be like watching everybody else having sex with our ex-wife. That should be us. So pick a team or two or three.

If they’re still in the tournament, you could always support England like a proper grown up human being. We know all the players and Wayne Rooney is more Irish than the Irish themselves, with the big Mayo head up on him, you keep telling yourself.

And then you go and watch England in the pub and end up almost joining the IRA. It goes to penalties and you realise you’d gladly hand over both kidneys to see Rooney miss. When he does and the English fans set the stadium on fire, you hug the person in the Celtic jersey next to you with a tattoo saying 26+6=1 and agree with her that the Irish fans would never behave like that.

When Clive, the quiet English man at the end of the bar says he always supports ‘you Irish’, the whole pub laughs at him and says “Penal Laws, Clive. Catholics weren’t allowed own a horse. So shut up.”

Then you wake up the next day and realise your World cup dream is over (where England are two up on Germany with a minute to play in the final and still lose, so you turn over to the analysis on BBC and enjoy an hour of pleasure to match anything you went through in Italia ’90.)

If you want to attach yourself to the eventual winner of the world cup, then keep an eye on Eamon Dunphy. At some point early in the tournament Dunphy will say of some team in his sad things-were-better-in-the-seventies voice: “There’s something wrong in that camp Bill, the manager is a deeply flawed individual and the lad X isn’t right in the head. It’s sad to see it come to this for a former giant of the international game.”

This country will probably win the tournament. Put a bet on them and leave it at that. Whatever you do though don’t become a World Cup Wannabe. This is the Irish man who identifies, say, Spain as the likely winners and starts stalking Spaniards who live here.

Let’s call him Mickito. He’s the Irish guy in the pub full of Spaniards in Temple Bar, wearing their away jersey and saying ola in a ridiculous accent as Spain take on Brazil in the final. He’ll learn enough Spanish to complain to his new friends that you can’t get decent tapas in an Irish pub. He’ll take a nap in the afternoon in preparation for the big match.

The only difference between Mickito and the actual Spaniards is he drinks ten pints during the final to their one. So he gets a bit busy-handed at the final whistle with the two stunners from Seville standing next to him who can’t figure out why he keeps singing Ole Ole Ole. They have one extra drink to celebrate and get out of there. Mickito jumps into a fountain. Another World Cup is over.

Something for the Ladies

It’s different for Irish men this World Cup. Four years ago, as his wife drooled over the latest collection of well-toned Johnny Foreigners on 10 million a year, our man Donal could console himself that he was a property genius worth well over a million on paper after his latest off-plan purchase in Bulgaria. There’ll be none of that this year.

Donal will have to live with the fact that his wife finally understands offside because she’d like to be stray there with Cristiano Ronaldo, who has suddenly turned into a ride. She’s looking at Thierry Henry and thinking I definitely would. The turncoat. That hurts.

There’s actually somebody for every woman this year. There’s Didier Drogba with his little pony tail and any number of long-haired Latin types for women with a Shirley Valentine complex. If she’s bothered to learn how to pronounce the name of Holland’s  Wesley Sneijder (Sshnyder), then look out. And then there’s a whole batch of guys like Brazil’s Kaka and Spain’s Casillas who look handsome in a straight back and sides Irish way. This sexy supermarket could tip a few Irish marriages over the edge.

Golf

Golf is all about Tiger Woods this summer. Once he gets over his sore neck, we’ll be waiting for him. We will watch every shot he plays in the world’s most boring sport, because he’s a well known person who had sex with a lot of bimbos. Nobody ever said we were complicated.

We reckon there’s an outside chance the world’s richest sportsman will end up chasing a saucy looking blonde around the fourth green shouting “I’ll be ok once I get to a Sex Addicts anonymous meeting, but in the meantime you’re so hot”. Who’d want to miss that?

If Tiger’s neck doesn’t stop him coming to the JP McManus Pro-Am at Adare in July, then you could go along and see him in the flesh. Might be best to wear a good pair of runners if you’re saucy and blonde, unless you’re into that kind of thing and wouldn’t mind being caught by a Tiger, ya dirty trollop. Don’t forget  you could get 25 grand for your Tiger Sex Romp Shame story and times are tough.

Of course if Tiger doesn’t play this summer, golf will go back to being about men in beige slacks high-fiving their caddies. In other words, it will be about golf. And nobody wants that.

Tennis

Nostalgia isn’t half what it used to be. Gone are the days when Wimbledon on the telly meant youngsters in the street playing tennis. In fact, it was a crucial part of growing up as an Irish curser. Who can forget the sound of a three year old shouting “I cannot fucking believe you” at his five year old sister over a double-fault while his parents look on lovingly and say “the little bollicks must have picked that up from John McEnroe. I could weep with pride.”

Not any more. When kids see tennis on TV these days, they grab your credit card and run outside to order the latest X-box game with tennis in the title. The game starts with a tennis match but then the player steals a car and drives around a post-apocalyptic urban landscape picking up hookers and dealing drugs. No wonder they find real life so disappointing.

That said, the days of buying your child a new games console every six months are gone with the days of remortgaging the house to buy yourself a new BMW because you’re worth it. The really courageous will buy two rackets and ball in Lidl for a tenner this summer and send their children outside to play on the road. If they start crying and saying they’re being punished for a recession they didn’t create, then start crying yourself and say welcome to my world. You’ll feel better for it. And the kids might lose a few kilos.

And then the money ran out. So now we have to figure out a whole new set of rules around our food habits to avoid looking like a plonker. Here’s what you need to watch out for.

The Dinner Party

Your dinner party has never mattered more. Before it was something you’d squeeze in between your five holidays. Now it might be the only day out people can afford for a month. They’re depending on you. You need to get it right.

Fifteen years ago the standard Irish dinner party involved somebody who returned from Thailand with a wok and made a stir-fry that tasted of nothing but tomato puree. It had to be eaten in a hurry before it set. Luckily this coincided with the arrival of Romanian red wine for 4 punts so we could hardly feel our tongues when the polyfilla was served.

Then Jamie Oliver happened and everybody learned the same new dish; sea bass stuffed with herbs. It became impossible to avoid on the dinner party circuit. There are two problems with this. One is that it can taste like eating a hedge. The other is most Irish people don’t like fish.

When you ask why, they’ll reply because of its fishy taste. You can’t argue with that. You’re better off with chicken. It tastes of nothing and you can always pass some breast off as tofu if somebody declares themselves a veggie.

Obviously somebody will ask you where you got the chicken. This is a trap. Don’t say “Tesco, €2.50”. Giving somebody cheap chicken these days is the kind of insult that would lead to a blood feud in Albania. Here people will talk about you behind your back, which is worse.

To avoid this, take a bite and say “you can really taste the difference with an organic free-range chicken, can’t you” Nobody has ever disagreed with this statement, even though it is complete horse shit. Then as your guests discuss a documentary on Channel 4 about the high instance of chronic depression among factory chickens you think to yourself “taste the difference my arse. I got the bird in Tesco. €2.50.”

You have to be careful with steak these days. You don’t want to rub people’s faces in it with a hunk of prime fillet for everybody at the table. They’ll wonder where you got the money.

The trick is to buy fillet and tell everybody it’s a cheaper cut. Nobody gets embarrassed by the show of wealth and they’ll think you’re Rachel Allen for making round steak taste so good. Nice one.

Avoid boozing during the preparations. One of the main reasons Irish people warmed to Celtic Tiger dinner parties was the guilt-free excuse to open a bottle of wine at six o’clock. There you were, stuffing rosemary in to the sea bass, singing along to your favourite CD, feeling like the king of the world crossed with Keith Floyd.

Next thing you know the bottle is empty. There’s a group of hungry friends in your living room trying to pretend they don’t mind you forgot to turn on the oven. There’s a Chinese man at the door with four plastics bags of take away and a bill for 140 euro. You don’t remember anything after that.

That was fine in the good times, when the cost of five ruined fish and a Chinese for everybody was the kind of money you’d lose out of your wallet on a night out. Open a bottle of Chablis at six these days and it will end in embarrassment.

Your guests will insist on paying for their own Chinese. At least one couple will say they’ve no cash and the rest will say sure pay later and they’ll say you don’t understand, we have no cash at all and she’ll turn to him and say you just had to be the big property developer like your brother and then every one will blame you for being a pisshead and the evening will be ruined.

Food Nostalgia

There’s a certain type of person – usually on mood enhancers – who thinks it’s cool to serve food from your childhood. So you arrive at their house for a starter of alphabetti spaghetti with a twist, followed by something clever with fish fingers. There’s Angel Delight for dessert. Everybody gets a Wagon Wheel on the way home.

Don’t do that. Your guests didn’t organise a baby sitter and get all dressed up so that you could treat them like kids. This is an adult night out, maybe their only one all month. Stop acting the clown.

Splitting the Bill.

The new thing in a restaurant these days is when the bill arrives at a group table and someone says “Actually, Martin and I didn’t have the soup.” This is from a person who resented splitting the bill during the boom times but had to go along with it. Now she’s hiding behind the recession. Don’t be that person. You’ll only save a few euros and poor Martin will be mortified.

What’s your favourite Supermarket?

We’re all familiar with the bargain bore by now. That’s the previously rounded individual who has become obsessed with special offers. You realise this when they start using words like bogof (buy one, get one free) in their every day conversation. They’ll also start over over-using the words unbeatable, unmissable and amazing.

Their life involves a lot of driving. Tesco have a bogof on their favourite orange juice. Next it’s across town to SuperValu who have twenty cans of Carlsberg at an unmissable price. After that it’s a quick stop at Lidl to pick up some vegetables which are just as good as anywhere else then into Dunnes for their  25% extra streak deal, Aldi have gone nuts with smoked salmon and look, Mark’s have meringues at 1990 prices.

Total saving? Who knows. Supermarkets fling their prices around these days to create three-card trick confusion. They hope you’ll be too busy chasing a bargain to stop and wonder what kind of profits they made off you during the boom. In the time you’ve been reading this the location of the cheapest carrot in Ireland has changed four times.

Don’t be the bargain bore. It’s more about being a know-all than saving money. So relax. Find a place you can live with nearby with and do your shopping there. Yes, it might mean two euros on your weekly shop, but that’s nothing like the hundreds of thousands you owe to the bank.

Healthy Eating

You’ll have heard the recent radio ads for littlesteps.eu. You know, the one where an actress with a fake Dublin accent tells her friend (who also sounds like she might break into ‘Take me up to Monto’ at any minute) that she has stopped giving pizza and crisps to her kids.  The ad – presumably subtitled “I can’t believe working class people are allowed to have children” – is so last year.

The recession means The Food Nazi has had his day. You no longer have to listen to their lectures. Just say “youse haven’t a clue what it’s like to rear two chisellers on my income, ya nosey bollix”. Then pile Jack and Sorcha into your Range Rover and drive off giving the finger. Nobody said you had to be poor. Just act poor and get those Nazis off your back.

Vegetables

Once upon a time there were five types of vegetables in Ireland (excluding the potato, which has its own category.)

Cabbage, carrots, turnips, frozen peas and mushy peas. Nobody knew better than your mother how to boil these five bad boys within an inch of their lives. Next came coleslaw, a kind of super-vegetable.

In their own quiet way (and nothing is quieter than a vegetable) they become a badge of sophistication in Celtic Tiger Ireland. It was hard to keep up with the latest variety you had to eat to show sophistication. No sooner had you mastered pak choi and fennel when you said somebody said “I just can’t believe you’ve never eaten kale.”

Kale was the warning light, a sign we’d gone too far. Why? Because kale is cabbage. Now, your veggie snob will try and convince you that kale is much nicer than cabbage. They’re wrong. A sausage is much nicer than cabbage. So are choc mallows. Kale, on the other hand, is very like cabbage.  Just more expensive.

Veg obsession is on the way out. The next time somebody approaches you with news of the next big thing in Veg World, just ask this simple question. Is it nicer than a Flake? No? Thought not.

Best Before Date

Older generations of Irish people scoffed at the notion of a best before date. We can all remember a defiant parent or grandparent digging into a piece of putrid cheese. Even later, as they started to vomit out their ears, they’d cheerfully announce that what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger.

This was famine talk, from a bygone era. Once we got wealthy, anything in the fridge for more than three days was thrown out to make room for the organic carrot cake we couldn’t resist at the Farmer’s Market. Most of this cake was thrown out three days later to make room for the beautiful fresh salmon you couldn’t resist, which was thrown out two days later because Irish people don’t like fish.

Throwing away food became the new thing, our equivalent of lighting cigarettes with a hundred dollar bills. Now that the famine almost back the new, new thing is using up everything in the fridge. We’re a nation of milk sniffers.

The key here is to stock up on sweet chilli sauce.  It’s our new gravy, ideal for covering up. Bit of a hum off your five day old chicken breasts? Not any more there isn’t. Trying to find a use for that yellowing broccoli and bag of floppy carrots? You’re just two shakes of a bottle away from vegetarian stir fry.

The best thing about sweet chilli sauce is that even though everybody knows it gives you the runs, people can’t resist the taste. Which makes it perfect on those aged pork chops at the back of the fridge. Your guests will shovel it down and gladly spend the next two days on the toilet saying “I’m telling ye lads – it’s well worth it.”

The Take Away

Celebrity chefs don’t make us want to cook. They make us want to eat. There and then.  That’s why they’re on at 8pm, just after our dinner has worn off.  Jamie or Rachel’s delicious but complicated looking homemade pizza makes us think “Let’s face it; I’m never going to cook that. But I know a man who will.”  You have Tonytoni’s on speed-dial. The 12” Mamma Mia! with extra pepperoni and no onions, two portions of garlic bread and a coke arrives in time for the 9 o’clock news.

That’s 30 euro a night pizza habit. You watch two celebrity chefs a week. That’s three grand a year plus diabetes and a giant belly. It can be easily avoided. Keep the phone out of arm’s reach. In the time you spend trying to get off the couch, you’ll have turned over to Eastenders and the moment will have passed.

Funeral Food

For years, funeral food was all about the two most terrifying words in Irish cuisine: ‘Light Refreshments.’ That’s one egg sandwich and a cup of tea in your hand. The high point was some free booze if you could get at the whiskey before the priest arrived.

However a boom-time burial wasn’t complete until a relative grabbed the microphone at the cemetery and announced a sit down meal at a nearby hotel, all welcome.

The result? A new band of professional mourners who laughed every time they heard the phrase ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ These were retired people with time on their hands, experts at reading between the lines of a death notice. If the address of the deceased included ‘and Marbella’, it was on with the sombre faces and off out to the car. You’re looking at chicken or salmon, pavlova and some cracking wine.

A four-line rhyming ditty about the deceased meant only one thing; they’re a bit common. That’s cocktail sausages and a platter of sandwiches at best. Hardly worth the petrol money.

Do you really want to be paying for these free-loaders? Times are tough. Whoever grabs the microphone for the ‘all welcome’ announcement should mention there will also be a table quiz, with questions about the life of the deceased. Add that there will be a special prize for whichever tables comes last. That will do the trick.

The Kitchen

You might want to take your kitchen off The Tour.

The Tour was when you called over to your friend’s new house for the first time and heard the dreaded words ‘C’mon, I’ll give you the tour.’ It was less fun than the Stations of the Cross. But there was no escape from a ten minute walk around the house repeating “I love what you’ve done” while thinking “Jesus, what’s with all the cushions?”

The kitchen was the high point of The Tour. While the rest of the house was about taste, this room spoke about wealth. Smeg, Miele, Aga were all good. Any sign of Tricity Bendix or Indesit and your guests were liable to ask if you were all right for cash.

It’s different now. You can’t afford to seem flashy. If you have a Rolls Royce kitchen these day, just tell your guests that you actually bought all the gear as a long term investment because class is permanent. If you can’t stomach lying, take your kitchen off the tour.

Knives

As we ran out of things to buy during the boom years, many of us started to splash out on knives. It wasn’t unusual to be told as The Tour reached the kitchen that the set of knives next to the cooker were the kind used by Tokyo’s finest sushi chefs.

“What the Jesus do you need them for?” was the obvious question we never asked.

Never be rude to somebody with a set of sharp knives. But it was odd that we changed our tune.

You see, past generations of Irish families made do with what was known as ‘the good knife.’ This was the only implement in the cutlery drawer sharper than a crayon. It would be used to cut everything; meat, vegetables, bread and maybe hair. Every other knife was for spreading butter.

Just as we couldn’t put down Rusty, the 22 year old dog, people became sentimental about the good knife. It would be kept in service for years past its sell by date. Then, one day, when the good knife brushed your thumb by accident without even drawing blood, you’d say to yourself “this is ridiculous, I need a new knife”. Which is a funny way of going about things but there you are.

Problem now is we’re packing heat. Japanese sushi heat. The good knife doesn’t slide off the thumb any more – it keeps going all the way through to your expensive granite topped counter.  So be careful. We’re still not great with knives.

Still though, I wished him well at the time. A few friends of mine have lost their jobs in construction so it was good to know that somebody in a hard hat was getting some work. Nine months later, I’m furious.

It’s not the 7am drills or the layer of dust that gets me. It’s all in the mind, this one. I’ve just learned this estate will be social housing.

I know what you’re thinking. Not in My Back Yard. I’ve no problem with accusations of Nimbyism as long they come nowhere near me. Which they won’t, because this isn’t just about my back yard.

I want to know why anybody is building social housing anywhere in Ireland right now. The government, through NAMA, will shortly own most of the empty housing estates around the country. There’s talk of demolition. Why isn’t there talk of using them for social housing? It’s starting to feel like Alice in Wonderland.

My wife isn’t helping.  She’s going around saying “just get pregnant girl, day have to give you a house” in a Cork teenage accent. She then points out in her own voice that you’re allowed five refusals before being relegated to the bottom of the housing list and reverts to the earlier accent for “Dats two buses away from me mams. I can’t live dare.”

I’m normally a gentle soul, but the phrase two buses from me mams is turning me into a right-wing zealot. This is a turnaround because I’ve spent some time on the loony left.

I hated Margaret Thatcher. Now, she never did anything to me except hand out three week’s dole and free accommodation when I arrived in London in the mid 80s. There’s gratitude for you.

I read the Communist Manifesto. That’s one boring read. They don’t tell you on the cover that a lot of the book is about conditions in the cotton mills 1850s Lancashire. About the only thing it explained is why people on Coronation Street are so dreary. It’s in their blood.

But the Communist Manifesto wasn’t enough to put me off being a leftie. I went on to learn things about farming co-operatives in Peru and the Cuban health system that just aren’t good for a man. I somehow managed to get upset by the privatisation of British Gas. I was able to talk about Amnesty International’s Prisoner of the Month campaign without bursting my arse laughing. I knew a lot of people who hardly ever washed their hair.

I’m still not sure exactly why I became a leftie. I do know that I took a look at the people who formed the Progressive Democrats branch in college and dedicated myself to being on the opposite side of everything they do. They were a joyless bunch with side-partings who sat in lectures wearing shirts under their round neck jumpers. You’d be surprised how evil that can look when everybody else is in a sweatshirt saying New York. I’m still glad I decided to steer clear of them.

Ultimately though, it was my father who made me go left. He was a quiet and pleasant man who could cope with anything life threw at him except for the phrase “Dad, I think I’m a communist.” It drove him bonkers. He would go red and try and try to speak but ended up saying hunna-wunna-wunna-wunna. Honestly, he did.  It was very funny to watch. What guy in his early twenties could pass up the opportunity to do that to his dad?

Well, would you look who’s after growing up to think like his father? I’m even starting to adopt his views on what he liked to call ‘layabouts’. Twenty years ago I would have looked at those houses with my Fintan O’Toole eyes.

You know, there are always victims of capitalism who deserve to get a new house for nothing close to the city centre and their mam. Not any more.  There are plenty more victims of capitalism who paid for houses in the arse end of Carlow and can’t get to sleep at night before getting up at 6am to drive to a job that might be gone by Christmas.

I’ve stopped hating Margaret Thatcher. She was right to point out the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. In this case, it seems like they’re building houses we don’t need with money we don’t have.

That said, I don’t want to piss off the people in city hall. The way things are going the whole place might want to live in one these houses by next year. I might go in and put my name down tomorrow.

Dublin is now regarded as an eco-city. It was ranked 14^th in Europe for its environmental friendliness. It even attracted praise for its sewage system. It’s been a long time since Dublin got a thumbs up for the way it dealt with its number twos. When you consider that we’ll never catch up with the blonde crowd who populate the north of Europe – where they probably wash their water – it’s fair to say Dublin is best of the rest. Dirty Old Dublin me arse.

Is this what we really want? The traffic congestion and stinky sewage we’ll do without, but the old bikes and shopping carts in the canal gave the place a bit of character. Move away from that and we’re only going one place. Vienna.

Vienna comes on the top of most of these Best Cities to Live In surveys. That’s fine if by ‘Live In’ you actually mean die very slowly of acute boredom. Anyone who has ever visited Vienna will tell you nothing, because that’s exactly what happened while they were there. It’s the kind of place that appeals to people who like to go to a giant waltz and imagine they are minor aristocrats from Upper Saxony.

That’s not us. Whatever the Irish are, we’re not button-down Europeans. So throw your bike in the canal today, because number one isn’t worth the effort in this beauty contest.

This won’t be easy after years of Marbella, holiday homes, champagne and non-stop bouncy castles. But then the best bit of an Irish summer is in the anticipation. So here’s looking forward to a classic with a few tips on how to keep your dignity intact in these tight times.

Summer Out the Back

We’ve already had a few tastes of summer. You know, those unexpected spring scorchers when women arrive into work in their flip-flops and a pair of knickers and we all head to the pub at 5 o’clock, even though by then it looks like it might snow.

This can mean only one thing – we’re going to have a scorcher. Forget the fact that it rained solidly through the last two summers. The Irish brain has evolved to block out everything except that four day burst last August when Evelyn Cusack came on the weather each night with her ‘ye’re going to like this’ look and sun-scorched Paddys staggered around their back garden at dusk popping open bottles of cava from Lidl while roaring ‘best country in the world if we only had the weather’.

2010 is going to be all about summer evenings out the back; your garden is about to become the centre-piece of your life. Try to look beyond the fact that five years ago you were planning to build five one-room houses out there and sell them for a million each. It was a very good idea at the time. Just be glad you didn’t go ahead.

Because now you have a place to drink cheap booze, smoke if you want and crawl into bed when you’re done. First you need to choose the right set of tables and chairs.

One of the great spring rituals during the past ten years was when Celtic Tiger man emerged from his house after a hard winter and went to take out the garden furniture. As the birds chirped their message of growth and rebirth, Paddy opened the door of his shed, realised the furniture needed a lick of Ronseal and, muttering shag that, headed off to B&Q to buy a new set.

The result is that the average Irish garden shed now has more seats than Croke Park. You need to sort this out now and not just because your shed is a disgrace.

Why? Because you don’t want to attract spongers. These are ‘friends’ of yours who filled their back garden with a weird water feature or couldn’t be bothered cutting their grass. They’ll be on the lookout for a back garden buddy, particularly one with a south-facing sun trap like yours, and the last thing want to do is encourage them with plenty seating. So pick a nice chair for every backside in your family and throw out the rest.

That won’t deter everybody. Your sun-trap will still attract a crowd of friends you will end up costing you money. Why? Because Irish people are crap at bringing booze to somebody else’s house. Fair enough, we might not arrive hands-hanging, but we never bring enough.

People you barely know will arrive at the door with 4 cans of CrapSteiner lager, a packet of sausages and a delusional ‘I’m not really drinking’.  Sure you’re not. Four hours later and they’re well into your crate of premium Krautenhoffer; six hours later you find one of them rummaging in your wardrobe looking for your secret stash. Thank Christ they didn’t look under the bed. It’s a Tuesday night in mid May; this could run and run.

So if you have that south-facing suntrap, you’ll need to make it a bit unpleasant. Vegetables are your friends here. Put down some onions, a couple rows of rhubarb and start giving tours of your patch complete with tedious grow-your-own chat. You’ll be friendless in no time.

If that doesn’t work, then you need the nuclear option. Spray the place with pig shite. It might attract flies, but it’s great for keeping spongers away.

The Holiday Home

Fake boobs and holiday homes were the two great trophies of the Celtic Tiger era. The only difference now is you’ve some chance of getting rid of the boobs.

But we shouldn’t be so hard on that place by the sea. For one thing, they’re a life support system for many an Irish marriage.

She takes the kids off down to Brittas all week while he reverts to his bachelor days. This time out, instead of sharing a semi-d in Rathgar with three mates, a pile of plates in the sink and that weird fart smell, he has the place to himself. Hear that? That’s not the sound of kids and questions about when you’re going to paint the fence. That’s the sound of silence. Oh baby.

He even gets the chance to revisit after-work summer-pint dreamland. That’s where you go for a beer garden Bulmers at half five and end up still outside at eleven o’clock offering your jacket to the young one on reception who keeps looking at your wedding ring like it’s some kind of challenge. Not that anything will ever happen – with two houses on the go, the last thing you can afford right now is a divorce. Have another pint instead. And go home by yourself.

Meanwhile, the wife gets to spend time among women by the sea. Which means a glass or five of Pinot Grigio at tea-time with a bunch of people who don’t start fidgeting and looking at the door when she starts to talk about her feelings.

He’s delighted to come down on Friday to get a break from the booze, while she’s dying to tell him what all the girls told her in confidence during a week of tea-time plonk. There’s no doubt – the Irish holiday home is a form of 5-star marriage counselling.

Now it has to start earning its keep. Those things weren’t cheap. Liam Collins pointed out in this paper as far back as 2003 that people were paying up to €250,000 for a mobile home at the exclusive Wicklow caravan park in Jack’s Hole. The less said about that the better, but you’d imagine it would have cost even more if the place was named after a different bit of Jack.

Suffice to say a lot of people are left with expensive holiday homes. And lots of friends who got used to staying there for free during the Celtic Tiger years. It’s a messy business. You need rent money these days but you can’t ask for it.

The best thing is stick a “For Rent – 450 a week” sign outside the place before they arrive and say nothing. You will then get a phone call from your friend insisting that he pays something. Resist the temptation to say “what about 450 that I put on the sign” and go for the classic Irish approach: “Would you go away out of that, with your 300 euro in cash for one week. I wouldn’t take a penny off you.”

Nobody said anything about 300 euros, but he’ll get the message. It’s important to say ‘in cash’ or someone will try and pawn that crate of fine wine they got for Christmas off on you. Fine wine is very five years ago. Cash is king these days.

The money will be left by the fireplace and your other friends will soon learn that the house now costs €300. You’ll never hear from some of them again.

Flip-Flops

For some reason, Irish people assume we need a whole new wardrobe for the summer.  Just stop wearing your thermal vest around mid-April and you’ll be grand.

There was a time we could afford to ignore this. Back in the day when our houses earned €1000 a day, it was no biggy to drop €500 in a surf-shop on two pairs of three quarter length cargos, a couple of giant t-shirts bearing the logo “Full of Shit” and four pairs of flip flops.

Ah, flip-flops. You stopped wearing them at the age of 14 because of your weird looking toes, but they re-emerged in designer format during the Tiger years as a way of saying any minute now, I might buy a yacht. They were often right. You probably have about two grand worth of them in your overflow wardrobe and before you get any ideas, nobody will pay you more than a tenner for the lot.

A word of warning on the toe-nail front. On your post-recession list of “things I can do without”, a weekly pedicure comes just below your hourly latte and it’s been a hard week, lets go to New York. Result? Your toes are back at 1995 levels and you realise why your father’s generation were never sandaled without socks.

There’s no going back to socks under sandals. That could get tip us over the edge. Yes it’s beyond disgusting, but it’s time to start clipping your toenails.

Going to the Sun

Don’t get carried away. Ireland is the most beautiful country in the world and we might have a cracking summer, but can you do without the highlight of your year?

It’s that moment when you’re sitting out on the balcony of Hotel Sangria Del Mer at seven in the evening, just into your second glass of local plonk and the “weather shite here – how are tings wit u” text arrives from your sister at home. Oh baby, tings wit u have never been better.

Nothing matches that feeling of being half pissed on a Mediterranean summer evening and hearing that things have gone dampish at home. Ole, as you might say.

Money might be tight, but the airlines are dropping fares in an almost obscene manner to get you down south. It would be no surprise to wake up in the middle the night and find Michael O’Leary sitting at the end of the bed wearing a sombrero whispering that you’d be a feckin eejit not to go at these prices.

He might be right. Just remember to cutback on the crazy holiday extras we treated ourselves to during the boom time. This isn’t just about money – you don’t want to turn your fellow holidaymakers against you with a bling blitz. There’s nothing more bitchy than a group of Irish people in a coach. They’ll have it in for you by the time you’re dropped at the hotel.

Let’s start with the beauty treatments. Booking a holiday for €199 and spending a further €500 on a series of beauty treatments is a little mad. They’ll be watching you like hawks around the pool for evidence of a pedicure or to see if you splashed out on a Brazilian. You could do without that sort of attention.

Then there is the matter of fake tan. If getting an expensive spray job so you’ll turn heads at departures was daft during the good times, it’s downright suicidal now. That lot on your flight will have a field day.

There will be a crowd around you at the baggage carousel in Malaga, waiting to check out the streaks under your arms after the sweaty flight.

You arrive at your hotel at 11pm, dump the bags and head out for a quick one which ends up as two jugs of sangria and four zombies.  You’re an Irish person on the first night of your holidays; it can’t be helped. But there’s no air-conditioning in your apartment so you wake up at 3pm the next day with €50 of tan on the pillow.

By the time you get up and go for a dip in the tan-stripper of a pool, you’re well on the road to blotchy town. The sun cream you put on after the swim will finish the job. Day one of the holiday and you’re sitting by the pool with a hangover, brown ankles and an audience of smug Paddys. Seriously, it’s not worth it.

If you still want the look for departures, get a farmer to give you a blast from his slurry tank. It will look just like false tan and smells only slightly worse. And given that there’ll be plenty farmers on the flight who made development land fortunes, a slight whiff of pig shit at departures will probably go unnoticed.

The other thing about your trip to the sun is clothes. You definitely have enough summer crap in your overflow wardrobe but it’s now more expensive to fly a bag of t-shirts to Alicante than it is a bag of bones like yourself. You need a plan.

That plan must not involve arriving for your flight in four summer outfits, one over the other. You’ll look like a gobshite.

Ryanair will probably point out the clause on page 932 of their terms and conditions titled “Extra Charges for Feckin’ Smart Asses who Wear 4 outfits.” You can’t have a drink to ease the pain because any trip to the loo is a race against time as you lash off your 4 pairs of shorts. Finally, you’ll look so suspicious on the other side that a small Spanish man with rubber gloves will ask you to step into the leetle room, por favor. The only thing worse than a strip-search is one where you have to take off and put back on four sets of clothes. It’s day one of the holiday down the tubes.

There is a way to do this and keep your dignity. Turn up at the airport in your Irish summer outfit; jeans, t-shirt, runners, jumper and coat. You’ll need to stay warm on the walk out to the plane. Bring a small rucksack for one change of underwear, a pair of shorts, flip-flops and the box of tea bags.  Change into the shorts and flip-flops when you get there and head for the nearest H&M to buy r six of everything you need.

It’s cheaper than lugging them out with you and people will think you’re both loaded and cool in brand new trendy clobber every day. Bring the whole lot out to the airport on the way home. Sell what you can to the latest batch of Paddy’s coming off the flight (€1 a shot) and stuff the rest in your rucksack. Everyone’s a winner.

Summer Camp

There’s no better time than summer time to drag your children into this recession. The little money sponges have been protected long enough. It’s not that Mom and Dad didn’t love Jack and Chloe enough during the school holidays of the Celtic Tiger years; it’s just that they could afford to send them off to all kinds of summer camps and focus their attentions on golf and manicures.

Things might be a bit slack on the golf and beauty front these days, but do you really need a camp? It turns out that if you put kids together in a group they’ll play away all day by themselves without the supervision of a nineteen year old ‘co-ordinator’ with a whistle and a hangover.

Ok, so Jack and Chloe will grow up without an appreciation for teamwork, fair-play and healthy competitiveness as promised on summer camp websites. Thank God for that. It would be like living in an episode of Glee.

It’s time to go back to the old ways. The only place for a child in the Irish summertime is on a dusty roadside selling strawberries from the sunny south east.

If the chisellers are a bit work-shy, then consider a bouncy castle. Forget about the housing boom – the Celtic Tiger was really a Bouncy Castle Boom. The country is awash with them.

It should be easy to buy or hire one on the cheap and stick it down the back of the garden. It is a law of nature that a child will never leave a bouncy castle of his own accord. So just put the kids in there in the morning and go off about your business. They’ll be bouncing away where you left them when you get back.

The only thing to be careful of is when Johnny from next door  calls over with a few bottles of KaiserSteiner, a fast acting beer that will have the two of you bouncing in no time, until Johnny gets shot out the front of the castle and head first into the fountain you got from Aldi.

The KaiserSteiner will make it seem hilarious at the time, but it won’t seem as funny when Johnny drops over a solicitor’s letter looking for compo. Follow the rich to get out of this one. Sign everything including the bouncy castle over to the missus and tell Johnny to do his worst.

It wasn’t always like this. 15 years ago I lived a life of studied scruffiness. Back then I was 28, sharing a house with two friends in Ranelagh.  They were scruffy too. It was 1995, everybody was.

The house wasn’t clean. The oven was so alive it qualified for a medical card. We had three years worth of newspapers in a pile behind the telly that we never got around to throwing out. We had four feet high grass out the back – it was like our house had long hair. That was cool back then too.

Back then, you wanted people to think you lived in a hedge. I wore a suit and drove a company car for a living so that I could spend five pounds on a second hand corduroy jacket that looked like its previous owner had been savaged by wolves. It was my way of not really working in an office, for the man.

One Wednesday night myself and the two housemates strolled down to Birchalls in Ranelagh, where the Guinness was so good we’d often drink five in one hour. Somewhere around pint three, Paul, who had a nose-stud, said “of course, in 15 years time we’ll all be cutting chicken shapes in the hedge out the back of our semi-d in the suburbs.” Boy, did we mock him.

I’m looking out at my own hedge as I write this. It needs a tidy up for the summer; I’m not ruling out a chicken.

Every Irish man goes through this transformation. We’re brought up not to notice clutter. If our mother didn’t clear up after us at home, our sisters were made do it. It was very kind of them to help out and it was funny to see smoke coming out of their ears.

Then we leave home and move in with our friends. That’s a lot of dirty plates in the sink and a new cleaning lady every four months because a woman can only take so much. You’d tidy your bedroom if there was a chance of bringing a girl back, maybe even give it a few rounds of shake n vac if she seemed the fussy type, but that was it.

Then, just when it seemed we band of brothers might live out our days together like pigs in shit, Paul starts thinking about his chicken-shaped hedge. He was married within two years. It was only when he moved out that we realised he had been doing a lot of tidying around the place, on the sly. The place went downhill quick. So we started a bit of tidying ourselves. I started to like it.

Fifteen years later and I have full-blown Tidy Table Syndrome. My wife, a perfectly normal person, will often open the post and put it back down on the kitchen table when she has read it. In an attempt to look sane myself, I’ll say nothing, but the crazy clock is already ticking.

The voices in my head want to know she intends to leave the ESB bill there forever, with the same kind of sarcasm deployed by my father when I was growing up. The poor man. I used to think he needed a chill-pill, but I now realise he suffered from Tidy Table Syndrome and passed it on to me.

The problem with Tidy Table Syndrome is that it’s selective. For instance, I seem to have no problem leaving four pairs of shoes lying around the living room; at least this is what I’ve been told when I point out that the ESB bill has been on the table for over twenty minutes.

When I try tidying away my shoes first she asks if I’m about to complain about the post on the table. This is tidy-up-argument checkmate. I say that yes I am. She says it’s funny that I can miss a layer of grime on the shower door but still get upset by a letter on a table.

I say it isn’t funny in the slightest because I have a medical condition. At least that gets a laugh. The net result is that I agree to clean the shower if she will only keep her post off the table. She picks up the bill and puts in a drawer. I spend an hour cleaning the shower. That’s one hell of a beating. All because I have a medical condition. Trust me; you’re better off suffering in silence.