The weather is terrible, the economy is in freefall, there's rubbish on the telly, everybody's depressed, and you've had your two weeks in France. But every dark, rain-soaked cloud has a silver lining (or 15), writes Shane Hegarty
New career opportunitiesWanted: repo men; people to hold those street signs that point to closing-down sales; security guards for when the rest of us turn to petty crime to survive. And just you watch the ranks of the priesthood swell. Meanwhile, those careers that were underpaid and undervalued during the boom - nurses, gardaí, teachers - are suddenly immensely attractive. Those nurse/garda relationships forged in late-night clubs are now worth their weight in gold.
Awful televisionRTÉ announced its autumn schedule this week, but ignore all these promises of great television and revel in the terrible, but compelling, television ahead. With Fáilte Towers, RTÉ has already served up a highlight of sorts - a bonkers collaboration of no-grade celebrity, manic presentation and a voting system that asks the public to decide if autistic children are more or less worthy than cancer victims. Still to come: the Rose of Tralee, Charlie Bird's Arctic Journey, the Eurovision Dance Contest and, at last, The Late Late Show. When that returns, we will once again take up our standard viewing position behind our fingers, with toes curled and teeth grinding. But we'll still watch it. Because it may be awful television, but it's our awful television.
An end to tribunalsAt one point, politicians speculated that the tribunals could last for 30 years, but it's only felt as if they've lasted that long. Finally, after 11 years, the Mahon and Moriarty tribunals might drag themselves across the line sometime in the next year.
During their epic sittings, key witnesses have risen and fallen from high office, others have died, and at least one has developed what was termed a cognitive impairment that prevented him from giving evidence. We've seen our former taoiseach put on a stand for the entertainment of office workers on a lunch break. And we've seen stretches of complex, turgid detail punctuated by fascinating and explosive revelation. For those who have been following Mahon and Moriarty, it will be a relief to get some sort of conclusion. For those who have not, it will mean no longer having to pretend to know the difference between the two.
Unlocking the universe's secretsStart Googling the Higgs boson now. At some time over the next couple of months, scientists in Geneva will spark up the particle-smashing Large Hadron Collider in an effort to reveal undiscovered fundamentals of the universe, give us signs of extra dimensions and perhaps destroy the Earth in a black hole mishap. Ignore that minor possibility (it's considered extremely remote), because the results could be momentous and will generate awe in anyone curious about the secrets of creation, even if few of us actually understand what they're talking about.
Cheaper housesYes, the crash in house prices has been calamitous for home-owners trying to sell, as well as for developers who were halfway through building vast estates when everyone stopped buying. But there are those who will sit tight and wait for the prices to come down even further before they finally buy their first property. Some forecasts predict that prices will fall by up to 45 per cent, and for those who view this is as a necessary correction rather than a panic-inducing crash, seeing "price slashed" written on estate agent signs will put a skip in their step.
School's out, college is inNext week's Leaving Cert results will bring great stress and disappointment to some, joy to others, and the annual boost to the off-licence industry. It will also propel a sizeable proportion of the population towards the defining years of their lives: college.
Having burned the school uniforms, dumped the schoolbags and said goodbye to childish things, they will face up to a new era of maturity - which they will ignore and indulge instead in three years of partying, sexual misadventure and last-minute cramming.
Meanwhile, parents can look forward to attempting to guide them as wisely and conservatively as they can - while secretly reminiscing about how they "lost" 1982 to drug experimentation and the kind of girls/boys their mothers warned them about.
Sport, lots ofThe British soccer season kicks off this weekend; golf's US PGA concludes tomorrow; the hurling championship takes on a new intensity; and last weekend's dreadful football means that the quarter finals can only be much, much, much better. There are rugby internationals in November, and the World Rally Championship will take in seven counties at the start of next year. And apparently there's some minor sporting event going on in China this month too.
Obama versus the other fellaYes, it seems to have been running for longer than The Mousetrap, but now that the primaries are done and dusted, the US presidential race proper will kick off at the end of this month when the Democratic convention is followed by its Republican equivalent. It's hard to tell from the coverage, but apparently Barack Obama hasn't already been elected; he actually has to run against some old white guy.
Zipping along the M50There has been some griping about the costs that will come with the M50's barrier-free tolling - and the fact that it took so long to happen - but the country's most maddening obstruction will finally be removed at the end of this month. Already, the widening of the motorway has alleviated the jams somewhat, and once we can nip through it like bank robbers on the run it'll make trips into, out of and around the capital that bit less infuriating. It will also inspire a new national sport in which people try to figure out just how muddy a number plate needs to be in order to avoid having to pay.
Festivals galoreEvery townland appears to have its own festival these days, very often attention-grabbing hybrids with names like the Santry Surf and Sausages Weekend or Kilfenora Kayak and Clams Festival. But several of the true biggies are still to come. The Puck Fair takes over Killorglin for three days from tomorrow. The Electric Picnic rounds off August. The Dublin Fringe and Theatre Festivals take place over the next couple of months. The Rose of Tralee is only a couple of weeks away. And the welly-wearing, dirty-fingernailed daddy of them all - the National Ploughing Championships - takes place in September. If only they could figure out a way of running that indoors . . .
Better weather.Maybe In many parts of the country the average September has less rainfall than August, making for the occasional Indian summer. And while we remember last summer as being particularly miserable, we forget that we had some glorious sunshine in October. Besides, the weather's always good the week the kids go back to school, so plan your holidays accordingly.
WInter sunThe great thing about the short, dark, wet days of winter that will follow is that you can look forward to getting the hell out of here for a week or two.
Whether it's discovering the benefits of the dry cold of the skiing resorts (in contrast to the bone-rotting cold of the Irish coastal resorts) or fleeing to the Canaries in November, the winter holiday is the bonus holiday - a top-up, a vitamin shot for the soul.
Never-ending salesLet's revel in recession, glory in the gloom, because its impact on the retail sector has been great for shoppers. The queues for Habitat's closing-down sale were a taste of things to come, and we can look forward to barging our way through the bargains as things go belly-up. Already, the sales season has been extended, and it will be interesting to see just how many days before Christmas the sales will start again.
Rip-off Republic? No more. In the new Ireland, everything must go.
Apocalypse notWe're into the second half of the year, and we haven't discovered a new bug that's destined to sweep in from Asia and kill us all. In recent years every ticklish cough was probably Sars and every dead seagull was a victim of bird flu.
While each caused some deaths and a lot of global panic, they didn't reduce nations to post-apocalyptic wastelands as had been promised - and somewhat relished - by the press. As we face a new winter, we can use this experience to ignore the inevitable scare stories, and persistent chest infections, that come our way.
Christmas
It's less than five months away.