i never let on that i was on a sinking ship

I was on the bus home from work today when I started to get all excited about the fact that College Green is becoming a bus-only zone during rush hour from Monday onwards.

"What crazy capers might I get up to with the extra five minutes or so this should afford me in work?" I wondered, largely quietly.

Then I remembered that, come Monday, I won't be going to work. I've been teaching English to foreign kids for the last four weeks. but tomorrow (Friday) is my last day. Spanish and Italian kids are, understandably enough, not coming over here in anything like the quantities they once were. You'll have noticed that you haven't had to step off the pavement quite so often to get around them. Finding out whether there may be sufficient amounts of them to get me work for August has proven an impossible task.

"We'll give you a buzz if any work comes up" is the standard line my colleagues and I are hearing. There was a time when the only people in Ireland who received such vague promises were the Lithuanians they hired to rub muck onto free-range eggs to make them more expensive. Now it's probably par for the course, whatever industry you're in.

And that's the thing about a recession, it's one hell of a leveller. So many people here got it into their heads that they were special, that they deserved everything they had and that good jobs would always be around. It's perhaps no harm for everyone to get a massive reality check. Because, judging by the national debt figures the government are mentioning, this mess has been a long time coming.

This life and then the next

Circumstances and geography have found me shopping in ALDI (do you need to capitalise it, like LIDL, or is it just Aldi?) quite a lot recently. I'm generally accompanied by the lady, who knows exactly what is what in there and guides me through the process ever so smoothly, subtly steering me clear of the 29 cent custard creams in the process.

But yesterday found me there alone, getting stuff for dinner. This task accomplished, I began looking for the pink lemonade that we got there the other week. Having no success in this quest, I was about to go up to a manager type who was busying himself in the booze section to ask where I might find this most satisfying of liquids. But then I stopped short, remembering that the reason these places are about 20 times cheaper than Tesco or Supervalu is because, like Ryanair, they save money by not doing customer service. I had this vision of the manager suddenly pulling out a loudhailer and shouting

"ATTENTION CUSTOMERS, PARTY TIME IS OVER! THOSE PORK CHOPS FOR 1.99 ARE NOW GOING TO COST YOU 5.87 AND WE WON'T BE DOING THOSE 2GB MEMORY STICKS FOR 12 CENTS ANY MORE. ANDREW COULDN'T FIND HIS WAY AROUND AND NOW HE'S FUCKED IT UP FOR EVERYONE."

So, I leave, sans delicious lemonade, but vowing to return on Thursday with a GPS to help me find the memory foam pillows for 12.99.

I relay my fears to the lady later on.

"Nah," she laughs, "they're really nice in there."

Seriously, then, what's the catch?