FACING A TOUGH NEW YEAR IN IRELAND
AGAIN
The start of a New Year is always
an optimistic time for me. I’m one of nature’s well-intentioned list makers.
“Lose 10lbs by end March!” “Give up smoking!”
“Go to the gym twice a week!” “Colour co-ordinate wardrobe!” Most of my
New Year Resolutions don’t come to fruition but despite this, I keep making the
lists believing that this will be the year it all comes right. That is what
makes me an optimist. I like that about myself – the innocent drive to believe
that everything will be great. You get out what you put into life, and a
positive attitude has always reaped its rewards for me.
This year, however, we Irish are
facing into 2014 with a feeling of dread knowing that it isn’t over yet – we
have another year of fiscal pain. 2012 was the year it started – when we Irish
knew we were going to be taxed out of it as punishment for having the temerity
to think that we’d finally “made it”. Two years later – we’re back there. Slash and
burn the middle classes – make us pay until we’re poor .
Yes we all went mad during the
Celtic Tiger years. Yes, house prices were inflated, no family needs a
flat-screen TV in every room and far too many of us had swanky second houses in
golf-resorts in Portugal. Did I enjoy the time of plenty? Yes I did but you
know what? Like most people, I think I earned it. I am not a banker or a
hedge-fund gambler or a property developer.
My last novel – City of Hope - is
set during The Great Depression in America. It’s an uplifting story of community
and how human resourcefulness can help people overcome terrible
circumstances. I am all too aware of the
idea that in being plunged into dire economic circumstances it can be construed
that we are going back in time to the way things were “before”.
Those good old days when we had
nothing, but we were neighbourly and kind - we brought in the hay for each
other and we had “values”. There was no such thing as Versace or golf or BMW’s
or panini’s; we had our meat and spuds in the middle of the day, at home, and
hitched lifts into town for late pints with those of our neighbours who were
lucky enough to have cars.
When many bemoaned the financial
decline – some of us tried to put a positive spin on it. We used higher fuel
prices as motivation to become more eco-friendly – retro insulating our houses,
and growing our own vegetables. We cheered at the fall of the designer handbag
and talked about a return to some of the more traditional values of the past
like community and dignity.
This year though feels different.
Those of us who are lucky enough to
have paid employment find we are working twice as hard for less money. “I am
working like a twenty-five year old intern who has something to prove,” a
friend of mine complained to me. We are both successful women in our forties,
who had our last babies late in life. I am lucky because I can work from
home – but she leaves the house at six
thirty for her commute each day, and doesn’t get back until seven most
evenings. At pushing fifty, we are both exhausted. Where she works in the corporate sector there
are hungry graduates snapping at her heels; in the hand-to-mouth life of a
writer there is no security. I cannot imagine what it must be like facing into
Christmas unemployed.
Our forefathers worked the land to
eat and survived on very little. Sheepswool insulation in the attic and a few
organic vegetables in the back garden is not the same thing. We are not our
forefathers. We are a pampered generation – convenience foods and two cars and
hand-held entertainment are the staples of our life. We can’t afford them any
more – and choosing to divest oneself of the trappings to be middle-class “eco”
and the reality of not being able to afford
to fill the tank twice this season or replace the ten year olds beloved
Nintendo DS are two very different things.
However, even in the face of such
misery, there really is no point in being negative. If there is one thing worth
taking from our forefathers it is the stoic belief that we must keep ploughing
on regardless. So I am going to come up
with one resolution and that is to make as much room for family and friends as
I can in 2012. Time is money, and instead of spending it I am going to book
myself in for some cheap treats. Saturday
nights in each other’s houses with good friends playing board games and
drinking cheap wine; family sleepovers in each other’s houses.
It’s not a spa-weekend or the week
in the sun I was hoping for – but in these difficult days, it’s imperative we
all make sure we have something to look forward to in 2014.
