A DAD'S LIFE:The country is crumbling, but, in reality, little will change
TRY EXPLAINING that the country is crumbling to a nine and a five year old. Their incomprehension and disbelief serves as a reminder to how we all should feel about the state we’re in.
First off we told them we had bought a house. We took them to the house, showed them around. They picked rooms, decided where they’d land the trampoline in the garden and claimed the attic for a club room. Shortly afterwards, we informed them we would not be buying the house.
“Why not?”
“Because the bank won’t lend us any money.”
“Why not?”
“Even though they say they don’t think we could pay them back, it’s really because they don’t have any.”
“How can the bank not have any money?” she looks at me skew ways.
Next up recession, bailouts and the loss of sovereignty. Even though my own understanding of these topics is tenuous and emotive, I do my best to explain, to the older child anyway, what’s going on. Blank expressions all around. Eventually it comes back to Christmas; a lot of kids won’t be getting presents this year. This gets a response: “Well, can’t you buy them something?”
While this wasn’t the path I had planned on treading, it seems to be working out. At any suggestion that I spend more than I’m obliged to, my natural miserly instinct is to curl into a ball like a curmudgeonly hedgehog, which I do, cowering on the kitchen floor to confused glances. But the missus steps in and suggests the girls take some money from their post office accounts and buy presents to bring to Vincent de Paul. Fantastic. We teach them a lesson and I bodyswerve guilt.
The elder still has no grasp of bailout however. She translates €75 billion into ponies and wonders how we could need so much, there isn’t enough hay in the world to feed that many ponies. Surely, I’ve made a mistake. No, I assure her, that’s what it’s going to cost. “But why?” the mantra of the child keeps coming back.
“Because we don’t have enough money . . . because there aren’t enough jobs . . . because it costs way more to run the country than the country earns . . . because the people we trusted to ensure this didn’t happen got distracted and forgot what they were supposed to be doing.”
“But why?”
I don’t know, but things are going to be a little different from now on, I tell her. She shrugs her shoulders and wanders off. She’ll still have to get up in the morning and go to school. Her parents are still around, her buddies too. Her riding school hasn’t shut. Yet. In other words, everything required to make what’s important in her world function remains the same, so why so much gnashing of teeth? What exactly is going to be different?
That, of course, is what everyone is waiting to see. We are assured this money is not a gift, that, unlike past loans, this one will have to be paid back. As a result, our taxation policies will, for the foreseeable future, be dictated by those foreigners with their serious eyewear and crisply pressed shirts. Therefore, in order to service their demands we will suffer. Our pockets will be emptied at the altar of IMF before we begin to think about buying a round on a Friday night. The ignominy of it.
But isn’t this exactly what we demanded: that something be done? For years now we’ve shouted that the dishevelled bar room singer posing as our leader should get his finger out and do something useful, until the decision was made for him, and the big boys took the reins. Something is being done. The huge majority of us will still get up in the mornings and do what we’ve always done, probably with less cash in our pockets, but we’re hardly in Haiti fighting a cholera outbreak following an earthquake.
Yes, we’re in a shocking mess. Yes, the mess will take a long time to clean up and probably leave a terrible stain. But the nine year old’s confusion at why anyone would consciously put themselves in this situation is crucial, as, unfortunately, is her recognition that, in reality, little will change.
It’s hard to continue with the party line to your children that if you try your best and play fair you’ll be okay, when the truth, as it is being served to us now, is that if you cheat and lie you’ll be looked after in the end by the dumb asses who play straight.