Madam, - I was watching the six o' clock news the other night with my teenage daughter in the room. The headlines were once again about budgetary cuts, the recession, doom and gloom.
My daughter, sporting her American-branded hoodie, Australian-branded boots, beautifully straightened hair and perfectly applied make-up, lifted her head briefly from texting on her mobile phone and (staring at Bryan Dobson, if memory serves me correctly) said: "Oh my God! I am sick of hearing about the recession. Why can't they just all get over it?" She continued texting.
I sighed in desperation. "You've no idea", I thought to myself. Rather than start explaining at that very moment that it was not easy for people who are losing their jobs to "just get over it", I ambled in next door to my (almost) 92-year-old grandmother to see if I could help her complete the Irish TimesSimplex crossword, which is a simple daily pleasure for her.
Inevitably, the conversation turned to matters of the day - the Budget cuts, recession, etc. My grandmother is a keen radio listener and TV viewer and is up to date on all current affairs.
Our conversation drifted, somehow, to when she was going to school - back in the 1920s in rural Co Waterford. She sat next to several children who did not have shoes on their feet. This was nothing unusual, she added. After all, many came from families with eight and nine children and there was no expectation of shoes. Many families, she said, had literally nothing.
"Now, they were hard times," she mused. adding "And they call this a recession?" - Yours, etc,