Want to know how Irish people are coping with austerity. Then read on.

The Coupon Lady

Veronica’s doctor has made one thing clear. If she gets any more of those pedicures where angry little fish nibble on your toes, he can no longer guarantee she will be able to walk in ten years’ time. She replied that’s easy for him to say, he doesn’t get an email twice a week offering 72% off the price if he books in the next six minutes and takes the pedicure any time Wednesday night between 11:15 and 11:30 pm. He counters you don’t have to do everything the internet tells you to do.

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I work from home. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  Putting together the things people who work in an office have said to me recently, this is how they imagine my average day. I get up at ten o’clock, sit at the computer for an hour in my jocks (always in my jocks) and then get stuck into six hours of Oprah re-runs. My office working friends reckon this ideal. But then they haven’t seen me in my jocks.

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Apparently we all partied during the boom years. Here are 12 characters from the Celtic Tiger years – which one are you?

Lorna’s Wedding

Lorna and Kev had no intention of getting married until they asked a simple question. When will get a better chance to rub our friends’ faces in it with a display of our wealth? Never. Someone ring Weddings with Franc there and see if it’s possible to get a herd of elephants to greet a helicopter as it touches down at the back of Ashford Castle.

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My cooking is in a rut. I can remember a time when I was trying out a new kind of dish every other week; now I just churn out the same four or five dishes every week. That’s the slippery slope. I’m 44 now, an age when you start to get very sensitive about the slippery slope. Thirty more years of the same five meals, two months of being fed through a tube and that’s all folks. Yikes.

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Here are the twelve pillars of the Great Irish Christmas.

The Returned Emigrant

Dave is bitter after being ‘forced to go and live’ in Australia last year because there were no jobs for people with a Masters in Greek and Roman Civilisation. And now he’s back for Christmas to tell us all that Ireland is a backward dump with shit weather and by the way you’re all ugly.

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