The crash didn’t discriminate between new and old money. It blew away a simple Ireland where everybody felt rich, and left us with micro-classes of people struggling to come to terms with the new landscape.

Old Age Millionaires (OAMi)

You don’t need a million euro to be an OAMi. You just need a healthy stash, a bit of security and a grudge about the Celtic Tiger years.

You see, an OAMi never forgets. Donie and Brigid had to bite their tongues during the boom times, driving along at 40 mph in their five year old Micra while the younger crowd sped past at 140 kmph in their new BMW’s. They tried to warn us that it would all backfire – “with yere boob jobs and yere milky coffees” – but they were old so people assumed they were just bitter. Which they were, but that didn’t make them wrong.

Now is Donie and Brigid’s time to shine. Free of mortgages and negative equity, pumped up with guaranteed pensions and sensible savings, they have stood their ground as Ireland crumbled around them. They feel like millionaires.

People laughed at Donie in 2006 when he sold their investment apartment after seeing David McWilliams on the telly. “Who’s laughing now Brigid, ha? ha?” says Donie to Brigid as they tuck into a pre-dinner glass of bubbly while their second cruise of the year pulls away from Barcelona. Brigid whispers “keep your voice down Donie, the boat is full of Irish people our age who can’t afford to be seen flashing money around at home in front of the young people, because there’s a recession on don’t ya know”, and they both fall around the place laughing.

Before going up to visit their son Gary and his wife Tanya in Dublin for the week, Donie and Brigid pop home for a few days to get furious about the way the young crowd have wrecked this country. There’s talk of taking the medical card off old people who go on more than three Mediterranean cruises a year, so Brigid goes on Liveline with what Donie calls her Crackpot Auntie voice and says ‘I just don’t know what I’m going to do, Joe’. There’s a tear in her voice. Her OAMi friends put messages like “you woz gr8 Bridie girl” on her Facebook page, many of them using the Wi-Fi on their cruise liners dotted around the Med.

Meanwhile, Donie is down in the local Mercedes dealership to see what he can get for his old Micra against a new Merc. It will be priceless to arrive up in Gary’s place and put one over on that clown of a young fella. “Oh look, Gary, while ye were putting all your money into Tanya’s boobs, your old man got himself a Merc. What do ya think of that? Ha? Ha?”

Donie has to wait in line down at the Mercedes dealerships as it is wall to wall with OAMi men trading up from their modest little Japanese runabouts. He falls into conversation with two of them and they agree that the country is absolutely wrecked, before paying for their new cars with cash.

Brigid and Donie wear sunglasses and wigs on the drive up to Dublin in case anyone sees them in the new Merc and thinks they’re made of money. Donie comes off the motorway to avoid the tolls at Fermoy and Laois because he can’t stand the notion of paying money to drive on a road he paid for and anyway they could always have gone door to door for nothing with the free travel. They stop for a flask of tea in a lay-by outside Cashel. A flask is very OAMi.

Gary and Tanya spend the weekend banging on about the recession so Brigid tries to give 1,000 euro each to her  grandchildren Emma and Tommy on the sly, saying don’t tell mammy or she’ll spend it all on new boobs. Mammy overheard her. They left before lunch.

Tanya actually did spend it on her boobs. At least that’s what it looked like to Donie and Brigid when they came back from 12 days sailing through the Norwegian Fjords.

Can’t Afford Ski Trips (CASTRi)

Remember when March meant skiing? A whole slice of Irish society remains addicted to packing up the 4×4 Lexus with ski gear and driving out of their estate towards the airport in early March, silently announcing to their neighbours, hey look at us, we ski. Except now we can’t afford it.

Struggling solicitors Peter and Mairead have a solution. They are spending the week in a ghost hotel just beyond Athlone which has been re-named Hotel Val d’Isere. CASTRi couples from all over Ireland travel there in early March to keep up the spirit.

Fed up with having no bookings for February or March, the owner Liam (a CASTRi himself) decided to go after the CASTRi market. So he sent the two Latvian women on reception to TK Maxx stores to give flyers advertising his Après Celtic Tiger Ski event to awkward looking people who were obviously new to discount shopping.  This one week full-board package includes mulled wine on the night of your arrival. Liam turns the heating off during the day so it is just like being in the Alps and everybody can check in as Mr and Mrs Smith so the world remains ignorant of those who can’t make it to the real Val d’Isere. All that for €200. He was booked out in two days.

When they arrive, Peter and Mairead notice the cark park is full of 4x4s with 07 registrations, each one piled up with skiing gear so the neighbours could get an eyeful as they headed off for the airport but snuck down the M4. He heads back out to a nearby Lidl to take advantage of their 3 for 2 offer on Rosé, while Mairead goes up the room to read her book, “How to shop in TK Maxx without looking awkward.”

Just like in the real Val D’Isere, the Irish CASTRis stay in their room most of the day trying to get rid of their hangovers in time for Après Ski in the bar at 7pm. A good few CASTRis come down in their skiing gear.

Peter ends up sitting next to a guy he knew from one of his seventeen failed property syndicates, who produces two bottles of Aldi Rose out of a plastic bag from under the table and they drink a toast to 2007.

Meanwhile Mairead got chatting to a Cork woman who started referring to herself in the third person after two bottles of Tesco’s sparkling Chardonnay.  “Well of course Orla here can’t live without her designer stuff so I got my Ukrainian cleaning lady to bring me into TK Maxx and she showed me a gorgeous Italian handbag she was going to buy for herself because it was 50% off but she said maybe madam vill like it, you know the way they talk, and Orla loved it, I can tell you. I felt terrible then like firing her two days later when Trev came home and said Orla I got a call from the accountant, we’re shagged girl, you’ll have to get rid of Tatiana, so I did and just about managed to stop myself handing over the bag to cope with the guilt, because Orla is nobody’s fool.”

Mairead took a look at her bottle of 50% off cava from Dunnes and thought, if it wasn’t for you my new best friend, this whole situation would be unbearable.

Broke And In College (BRAIC)

These are tough times for Irish students like Jamie.

When his brother Cillian finished the leaving in 2004, the old man flashed him at least a grand to go to Puerto Banus and even paid for his bail when got busted for mooning a nun and then he went to UCD to study business and the old man funded an apartment for Cillian in Clonskeagh even though we live in Blackrock and like, Cillian was pissed for four years and never had to work.

The old man is lying low these days, arguing on the phone with some lawyer guy about what he meant by personal guarantee or else just going apeshit if somebody mentions Anglo Irish Bank on the radio. And Jamie is doing media studies, lives at home and works in a Spar to pay for Jagermeister at the weekend.

The Spar job is no joke. About two years ago he smoked three joints with Cillian and they went down there to buy Monster Munch. When the Chinese guy beyond the counter asked had they anything smaller than a €50 note, Cillian said “no, me so solly” and Jamie started giggling so Cillian said it again and gave a little bow.  The Chinese guy is in charge now and even though the old man got Jamie the job, the Chinese guy said “who’s solly now” with a little bow on his first night on the job and the only thing he’s said to Jamie since is clean the toilets or tidy the Yorkies.

The other guy working there is from Pakistan, and he seems nice and all, but not only does he not drink 12 Jagers and 8 pints of Heineken on Friday night, this guy doesn’t drink at all, so Jamie has nothing to say to him.

This chick – she’s either called Orla or Zoe – comes in a lot to buy cigarettes and she used be Jamie’s friend on Facebook and follow him on Twitter and they actually had sex once in the stands at a rugby club disco. She won’t even look Jamie in the eyes now when she comes up to the till, so one day he said hi Orla or Zoe and she looked up at him and said I’m so sorry and the Chinese guy misheard her from the other side of the shop, and like ya it was pretty funny, but now he’s probably going to end up with some girl from a council estate.

As if things weren’t bad enough, he’s studying politics in college so as Cillian puts it, hey man when you graduate you can be Enda Kenny. Telling people you’re interested in politics these days is like saying you’re doing Applied Cannibalism. Not that Jamie was interested in politics – he just signed up because his mate Ultan said it would be full of hot chicks, and it is but even the lefties have no interest in him when they hear he’s working his way through college. One girl in his class, Caoimhe is active in like the Socialist Party against Work or something and he tried to get off with her once at a party and she said “sorry Jamie man, but doing it with you with be a betrayal of the working class.” Her Dad owns half of London.

Mind you, at least Jamie got to go to private school. The old man couldn’t afford to send his little bro Rob to such an expensive school, something about his creditors watching him like a hawk, so he’s in this place like where you only pay 8 grand a year and they have a metalwork lab and Rob sat down next to a fellow on his first day and his house is like semi-detached. So it could be worse.

Can’t Divorce (CANTDi)

There’s a class of man in Ireland who has never loved his wife more than he does now.

Give Jerry a couple of pints and he’ll bore the pants off anyone about his wife, Lorraine.  “That woman is everything to me. I know there was that misunderstanding with the nanny Dirty Diana but I look at Lorraine now and I see my best friend, my lover, the mother of my children and ..”

“the woman who now holds the deeds to your four houses in Portugal and drives around in your Range Rover, Jerry?”

“Ya, that too. Is it your round?”

Jerry is a broke developer who saw the train coming down the tracks and managed to sign over the lot to Lorraine before it struck, which ruined his plans to run away with their German nanny, Diana. He referred to her as Dirty Diana to drive his friends nuts but she was pretty straight down the line in the bedroom stakes for a German, who Jerry always thought were a nation of mad perverts. Anyway, there’ll be no more Dirty Diana for Jerry now that Lorraine has him by the assets. He can’t divorce. He’s a CANTDi.

Poor Lorraine had to put up with a lot from Jerry when he was one of Ireland’s 100 richest men. The worst was the time he forgot about her in the Curragh on Derby Day and went home with that German slut in the helicopter. She should have left him there and then but was half way through a breast reduction programme and it would be typical Jerry to leave her high and dry with last year’s boobs.

Four weeks later he ran into the kitchen with a mad look in his eyes and got her to sign a bunch of forms. All of a sudden she was the proud owner of a patch of Portugal, four blocks in downtown Budapest, two Range Rovers and section of the Gobi desert that somebody had sold Jerry as the Mongolian Las Vegas. Better still, she was the owner of a husband on a lead.

She sent Dirty Diana back to Hamburg. Then she moved Jerry into Diana’s old room as a reminder of what he was giving up. Next she started a brazenly open affair with her Brazilian pilates instructor, Edgar. It was nice to have sex when she wanted it rather than when Jerry had more than four pints or had been watching Women’s Surfing on Sky Sports. She was going to get more involved with Edgar until he left a message on her phone to ask for loan because Anglo Irish Bank had given him 10 million to build two hotels in Roscommon and it didn’t work out.  Bye bye Edgar.

She sticks to internet dating now, where she has put “meet somebody high up in the public service“ under lifetime ambition. In fairness though, it’s hard to match Jerry these days. He’s at home most of the time,  where his new best friends are the two tabloid photographers who hang around outside the house  trying to get a picture of the man they call Dodgy Jerry. He always has her dinner ready, the house is spotless and he’ll sit and watch re-runs of Sex and the City without a whimper. There’s even talk of him taking a course in foot massage.

So whenever there is mention of the recession, Lorraine’s new favourite phrase is ‘it’s an ill wind that blows no good’. Well, that and ‘dance, monkey dance.’

Fighting Over Public Service (FOPS)

There is a war going on behind closed doors in Ireland. Take Lenny and Caitriona. They decided to get a television each. It’s cheaper than a divorce. The problem arose when a nurse came on Primetime and said I didn’t cause this recession and mild-mannered Lenny got up off the couch and threatened the telly with “Oh and I suppose I did, you smug bitch, with my 60 hour weeks as a carpenter after 30% pay cuts and glad to still have a job. I’m telling ya Caitriona, I f**king hate every single one of them public sector bastards.”

Caitriona is a teacher.  “Sit the f**k down Lenny and shut up.” She lists all the cuts, levies and nutty parents she has to deal with and Lenny slowly calms down until Blair Horan from the CPSU comes on and says ‘Croke Park Agreement’ and Lenny shouts “I’ll tell you where you can shove your agreement” so loudly that their neighbour Gerry knocks on the door to see if everything is alright. Neither of them answers because Gerry works in a bank and that drives both of them nuts.

Like many other FOPS couples these days, Caitriona remains in the living room while Lenny watches a second TV out in his man-shed. It’s good for the marriage. They can still hear him howling at the moon during The Frontline but he’s grand when he comes back in.

The radio remains a problem. Caitriona had to tell her three year old daughter “it’s a very bad word that you should never use about anybody” when Chloe asked “mammy, what’s a bollocks?” She then asked “are you a teacher, Mammy?” and when Caitriona confirmed this, Chloe said “oh, oh.” Turns out Lenny lost it over breakfast listening to Newstalk and told Chloe every single teacher is a bollocks, full stop.

Lenny is beginning to think he might a split personality. When Brian Lenihan announced the public service pay cuts he ran out to the hall doing fist pumps and shouting yes, yes, take that you smug bastards until Caitriona pointed out the cut in their pay meant there would be no Lanzarote this year. Lenny was torn between feeling bad about this and making a point about teachers’ holidays.

He’s demented about the injustice of it all, particularly since his cousin Roisin, a nurse, told him to stop bitching about it at a wedding and get himself a job in the public service.  Lenny used the c word and Roisin’s husband Ken man-handled him out to the car park. It turns out Roisin and Ken are also FOPS. So while pretending to give Lenny a dusting up, Ken said “I’m an electrician myself, I’m driven mad at home not being able speak my mind, let’s meet every Tuesday.”

Lenny and Ken became fast friends. They meet every Tuesday night for four pints where they can go apeshit over bill-paying days, privilege days, tea breaks and people in the HSE who have become very good at computer games. They are also talking about setting up a similar support group for other FOPS spouses, so they can meet up and go apeshit in a safe environment.

Lenny comes home a lot calmer after these events. He’s agreed to never again give Chloe a lecture about that the public service, because she’s only three. He’s glad that he did all this before their marriage fell apart, because let’s face it Caitriona has a job in the public service and they’re like gold-dust these days.