I KNEW things were bad, but I was still shocked to read that story in the business supplement last week about economic activity "literally falling off a cliff in September", writes Frank McNally
The writer did not go into details of this tragedy, no doubt with good reason. We must always be sensitive to grieving relatives. Even so, I can't help wondering what sort of business was involved in the cliff accident, and how exactly it happened.
Could it have been a chip van, I wonder, parked precariously somewhere at the back of the Hill of Howth - the poor, distracted owner doing his accounts after a bad day and not realising he'd left the handbrake off, until it was too late? I certainly hope it wasn't one of those unfortunate buskers at the Cliffs of Moher interpretative centre.
Come to think of it, a year or so ago in Dublin, I saw a street entertainer simultaneously riding a unicycle while playing guitar and also - if memory serves - blowing on a harmonica. I knew then that hard times were coming. But I haven't seen the man since.
I hope it wasn't him who went over the cliff: he would have been in a high-risk category if it were any way windy. And I see now that the business supplement writer blamed the incident on the "pervasive weakness in cyclical stock market sectors". Oh dear. That sounds like him, all right.
God forgive me, but I'd prefer to think the victim was a stock-market trader - perhaps short-selling banks on his mobile while walking on Bray Head, when he was hit by a perfect storm and swept over the edge (experiencing a record one-day fall).
Failing that, it could have been a management consultant with a fondness for buzz words, driving around Dingle Peninsula in fog, when his car - one of the new super-intelligent models - experienced a sudden paradigm shift and lurched off the road.
Perhaps the driver tried to throw the car into reverse at the last moment. But the on-board computer was thinking outside the (gear) box, and overruled him. Instead of going back, they ended up - in the consultant's favourite phrase - going forward, leaving him time only for a short act of contrition during which he begged forgiveness for inflicting so many appalling clichés on the world.
But maybe, as the business writer decided, it's better we don't know the details. It must have been a sad case, whatever the circumstances. The only moral we can draw from it is to stay well away from cliffs, at least until the economic climate improves.
I KNOW one can overdo the searching for signs of the slowdown. And yet, attending Croke Park on Wednesday night, I was struck by the absence of something that was a compulsory feature of Irish soccer internationals during the boom years. I refer to the Mexican wave.
It was the sort of occasion that would normally produce at least one outbreak. Not that the game was boring. On the contrary, the Irish defending was a little too entertaining at times. But a crowd cannot sustain edge-of-the-seat nervousness over a full 90 minutes.
There were moments when you sensed giddiness setting in; and this is usually where the wave starts. Whatever the reason on Wednesday, it never happened.
The Mexican wave is not, by the way, Mexican. Although its origins are obscure, most accounts agree that, like the credit crunch, it started in the US. Probably it was a result of sub-prime concentration levels among fans attending college football or baseball games in the early 1980s. But it got its name from the event at which it came to global attention, the 1986 World Cup, from where the wave swept around the world.
Apart from its popularity, the remarkable thing about the phenomenon is that, behind the casual appearance, it seems to conform everywhere to the same rules. Wave mechanic experts who have studied it say it almost invariably runs clockwise, proceeding at about 40 feet per second, and involving a "crest" of around 15 people deep at any given time.
From my own observations, I would add that it is universally ignored by VIP sections and press boxes, causing the rest of the crowd to stop cheering briefly and boo. This must also be why, in Croke Park, the wave always seems to start in the Cusack Stand, to get a good run going before it hits the (old) buffers, in the middle of the Hogan.
If the wave's absence on Wednesday night was indeed another symptom of the economic crisis, this would be worrying. One might have expected a slowdown - to 30 feet a second perhaps, with increased levels of non-participation, and some outright failures among wave start-ups. But a complete lack of activity looks ominous.
Not that I'm complaining. As readers may recall, I was an early adopter of the wave, my participation in one causing me to miss Ronnie Whelan's spectacular goal in Hannover in 1988. I participated in waves only sporadically thereafter, until around 1993, when I joined the 12-step programme and became a recovering waver.
I haven't touched one since. But you never know when the temptation will get you again. So if the credit crunch has finally killed off the phenomenon, then I say: so be it. Unlike the guitar-playing unicyclist, it will not be missed.