Operation Cabaiste

A relatively (very relatively) serious post to finish off the year now.

In the closing months of 2010, I felt this almost magnetic pull dragging me home to Dublin. I couldn't really explain the rationale behind this feeling, any more than I knew why I came to London in the first place. Most people thought that it was an insane idea, given all the crazy shit that's been kicking off in Ireland lately: a wallabie died of an overdose in a Dublin nightclub; a radio DJ unconsciously pleasured himself on a Ryanair flight. And then there was the bizarre matter of the Irish Government giving away free cheese to placate the masses, lactose-intolerant bedamned.

I didn't let the press coverage of Ireland's financial woes put me off. If I had believed everything I read, I would have expected to step off the plane to find Ireland reduced to a barren countryside of half-exposed thatched cottages, with whole families huddled together in rags and scrabbling for potatoes in the turf.

But then disaster struck on 22 November 2010. Whilst away on holiday, a friend was perusing the day's news on her iPhone and read out one headline in particular: "Ireland Officially Bankrupt."

Then I began to rethink things. And the move home was ultimately cancelled.

The financial situation couldn't be argued with: the papers couldn't really sensationalise the already sensational, namely €7.5b of spending cuts swelling to €15b, through a teeny tiny miscalculation by the Government. Who knows how that happened? Well, as long as there is polictics, there will be fiscal mischief. It's a sad fact.

But more than the economic situation, I realised that I had seriously rose-tinted Ireland. The Ireland of my mind was more associated with a time, rather than an actual place. It was the place I left as a fresh-faced 23-year old, when things like 'careers' were distant concepts that I didn't have to think about yet and the housing ladder was something I hadn't yet even pondered climbing.

I don't feel incredibly unpatriotic about reneging on my decision to move back. After all, I left Ireland in the Summer of 2004, during the good times. In fact, it was possibly because things were going so well that I left. Back in those days, it had become no longer good enough to own your own property, you had to also own an investment property. It was simply the done thing, darling. In my neighbourhood, people even started building houses literally in their own backgardens. The combination of non-stop property development programmes on television with Ireland's new found wealth was a deadly one. Everybody had become a speculative developer overnight.

And it wasn't just the property market; there were other ripples throughout the culture also. Breakfast baps were slowly replaced with breakfast paninis, humble coffees were slowly replaced with skinny decaf mochas with wings. If you walked into any restaurant in post-nineties Ireland, alien foods such as sun ripened tomatoes and fennel suddenly had crept onto the menu. And soy milk- where the feck did that come from? And don't get me started on the sudden nationwide necessity for bottled water.

I'm not saying we should be ignorant of other cultures and other foods, but I can't remember a point when we unanimously decided 'hey, this normal bread's getting a bit boring...I think we should jazz it up a bit. What do they eat in Italy? Focaccia? Right, bring it on so.'

And so I came to realise that the constant discussions of mortgage rates and Keeping Up With The Joneses, coupled with my own hurtle towards adulthood, may have been a contributing factor in driving me abroad. I incidentally now call London Never-never land, for it is a place where I never seem to grow up. And to quote Thomas Wolfe, it sadly seems that I can't go home again. Not for a while, anyway.

But that is not to say I have turned my back on Ireland. On the contrary: since the financial crisis worsened, I have kept a constant eye on Irish affairs, where before I might have only delved in periodically. I feel confident that the country will survive the current mess; we have historically proved ourselves to be one of the most resilient peoples in the world. And I think it's safe to say that we have all become more conscious of the factors driving the national economy than we were about ten years ago with a pile of cash that we didn't know how to spend. For example, a mate of mine remarked that he recently saw a junkie on Henry Street banging on about the International Monetary Fund and its various shortcomings. Hey, power to the people.

So I guess there's nothing else to say except that what doesn't financially kill you, will hopefully make you financially stronger. As a great Irishman once said about the 1916 Rising, "all changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born." Let's just hope Mr Yeats' words can apply to the recession too.