I brought a visitor from Britain on a whistle-stop tour of Dublin one morning recently. The visitor, a photographer, wanted to see things that were "essentially Dublin landmarks" which left me in a complete quandary. What are Dublin's landmarks these days? If she'd come next year she could have snapped the millennium spire, provided it actually gets erected, but I hadn't a clue what was essentially Dublin anymore.

I asked her if she had anywhere particular in mind and she suggested Trinity College. We also went to the Ha'penny Bridge (impossible to photograph because there were too many people around, despite the early hour) and Fitzwilliam Square. She liked Fitzwilliam Square because she'd heard about Georgian Dublin and so felt that these houses were intrinsically Irish. . . not quite the way I would have looked at it, but perhaps she was more right than me. As we finished taking photos, a busload of American tourists was disgorged onto the pavement and began snapping away in exactly the same place.

Anyway, she wasn't interested in the thrusting new docklands area despite my enthusiasm because it was all too reminiscent of every other "city" type development for her. I suppose that it's only Dubliners who remember how run down areas of the city once were who can appreciate how they look now. To anyone else, it's all they would expect.

Ireland and Irish bond markets were in the limelight this week as the National Treasury Management Agency began its bond exchange programme, which has been on the cards since the beginning of the year. The aim of the programme is to have a smaller number of more liquid bonds, which will keep the Republic in the frame as an investment option in the post-euro world. So far, it's met with spectacular success.

Market commentators are still having a hard time deciding on the success or failure of the euro as a concept. Actually, I suppose it's successful as a concept since it moved from the concept stage into the tradable currency stage. The problem is, of course, that it has traded at successively lower levels since its inception. From its high of 1.1837 back in January, the dollar/euro reached a low at the beginning of this month of 1.0567. If the currency has lost so much in value, does that make it a failure rather than a success? Depends on whether or not you thought it was overvalued back in January.

Wim Duisenberg, the president of the European Central Bank, had to row back sharply after some ill-advised musings about a policy of neglect regarding the euro. Following those comments, he was first out of the traps to say that by no means did the ECB neglect the exchange rate.

A variety of other luminaries came out to say the same thing, so we can conclude that, if it was overvalued in January, it's definitely not overvalued any more.

More interesting than the exchange rate for the currency itself are the designs that were submitted to a website for the new euro notes. These were not "official" designs, but ones from various artists around Europe and, naturally, were much more interesting than any "official" design can ever be. I particularly liked the one by Sid Paral, which has a map of Europe on one side along with the words "sorry error" and a microchip design on the other. It looks more like a credit card than a banknote and all the better for that! Heiki Mannik came up with a design reminiscent of old Soviet posters while Steven Dick's design is better seen than described . . . The website is: www.cryptic.demon.co.uk/chosen.html if you want to check it out yourself.

I did a little checking-out of Marks & Spencer again myself, although this consisted once again of shunning the clothes department and concentrating on the foodstore. M&S is still struggling in the market - it has denied a newspaper report that it is considering a merger with Sainsbury in Britain. Sainsbury, as you will no doubt remember, hasn't exactly been having an easy time of it either following its awful ad campaign with John Cleese.

I've been in a couple of Sainsbury stores in Britain and I don't think they're as good as M&S. The rumours had the happy effect of pushing the share prices of both companies higher, but since markets were trading better anyway that wasn't saying much.

Meantime, though, M&S is to cut 290 store-manager jobs in Britain which is a fairly sizeable shake-up following on the removal of 125 management jobs and 200 head office jobs earlier this year. Peter Salsbury, the chief executive, said that the changes were as a result of having identified "some areas of duplication, overlap and unnecessary management layers".

Sounds like too much empire carving and not enough selling and, despite the upward blip in the shares, the graph still paints an ugly sort of story. My tip for it, for what it's worth, is to stop trying to manufacture new types of feel-good fabric, and simply design clothes that people want to wear.

One industry that's on the up and up for the first time in years is the oil industry. Since OPEC's agreement to cut oil production, the price of oil has seen a surge from $12 (€11.12) a barrel at the beginning of the year to almost $19 now.

Good times ahead for the oil-producing countries - whose residents can start spending sprees again. They might not want to start buying too many gold watches and chains though. Britain recently joined with Switzerland in announcing the sale of gold reserves. So with all that gold finding its way onto the market, maybe you'd be better off buying oil-filled earrings instead.

And finally, I spent most of the weekend in far more important pursuits than wondering about bond markets, exchange rates or commodities prices. Another nephew has just joined the squad, which now leaves me one short of a five-a-side football team. I am in awe of both my sisters who manage to hold down demanding jobs and deal with young families too. Given that I was a nervous wreck and wasn't even involved, I shudder to think of what I'd be like if I had to do anything more constructive. There are more difficult things in life than deciding what the right level of the long bond should be.

Sheila O'Flanagan is a fixed-income specialist at NCB Stockbrokers