The Celtic Tiger years saw food turn from fuel into art. Before the boom people were judged by how much mash they served to visitors. Afterwards they were judged by the coffee they served and their views on olives.
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.
They’re building a new housing estate at the back of my place. It’s 2010 in case you’re wondering. The builder called to my house nine months ago and explained the whole thing. Nice guy, but as we stood in the back garden talking about his plans I could only assume that one of us must be on acid. There are 300,000 homes lying empty across Ireland. This didn’t even make sense under the ‘so crazy it just might work’ rule.
Dublin stands at a cross-roads. The Mercer Quality of Living report out this week found the capital is now a more attractive place to live than Paris, London and Brisbane. Amazing what a bit of recession will do for a place. And look, we could do with a bit of gloating, so in your face Boston, Milan and Madrid who figured further down the list. But there was another, more interesting fact hidden in the numbers.
Summer 2010 in Ireland will be a tricky business for a lot of us. Forget about the economic mantra ‘doing more with less’; the majority of people will be glad to ‘do the same with almost nothing’.
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.
I have an undiagnosed medical condition. Let’s call it Tidy Table Syndrome. The symptoms are that while I might be blind to clutter and filth in certain parts of the house, I am borderline obsessed with keeping other parts spotless. There is no borderline when it comes to keeping clutter off the dining-room table. I’m what you might call focussed on that.
