This piece is dedicated to those few adults left in Ireland that didn’t realise that the Celtic Tiger is now a rotting carcass. Those adults who thought that the cat had maybe just lost a few pounds and perhaps was a bit run down. And that maybe the tiger was just lurking behind apartment blocks like its feral cat cousins. It’s hard to believe but yes there are a few of these adults prancing around our shores. “How do I know?” I hear ye beautiful people ask through hung-over yawns: because I was one of them up until a recent supermarket trip.
I was in the vegetable section trying to absorb all the nutritional content through osmosis when I spotted a teenage boy shopping with his mother. I had a bit of time to kill so I decided to follow them and eavesdrop on their conversation. I was hoping it was laced with awkward teenage grunts and that perhaps she was buying him his first razor. But instead my tiny ears were greeted with sadness. It wasn’t that sadness that makes you laugh nervously or even the one that makes your knees wobble. It was a sadness that puts you in your place and can somewhat embarrass you. As I was pretending to be interested in over priced raspberries I heard the mother say to her son “Put that cabbage back, we can’t afford it”.


When I first heard Mothers opening line in my eavesdropping short film I thought it strange for a teenager to want cabbage. When I was a teenager I wanted diamonds and male objects of my affection falling at my feet as if I owned said diamonds. What does a teenager want with cabbage? Then the seriousness of Mother’s dialogue hit me like a cute little bird flying into a clean window and crushing its little brain into squidgy splatters. Ireland is in the most difficult financial circumstances since the foundation of the state.


Son hesitated with the head of cabbage so his mother took it into her hands and had a look at it. She then went to the rest of the cabbages and searched through them. I didn’t write this short film so I am just assuming she was looking for a cheaper one. She then returned to the trolley empty handed and she proceeded with the rest of her script. “Do we really need it, what will we eat with it, would we not be better off getting some more spuds?”


Son shrugged his shoulders and as his face lit up with a Barbara Cartland shade of pink I wondered was Son embarrassed because they couldn’t afford the cabbage or was he like me and simply hated any confrontation whatsoever. Son wandered off from Mother and headed towards the frozen food section, probably thinking of a better life where cabbage prices wouldn’t be analysed. I wanted to give him a big hug and tell him that everything was going to be ok, but I couldn’t lie to the boy. I wanted to throw him some money and tell him buy all the cabbages he wanted but who was I kidding? I was no better off than my film cast. I put the blue berries that I was clutching back in with the bananas where they didn’t belong and made my way to the self service tills. I finished swiping my food essentials through and then nervously put my anorexic credit card into the machine. Transaction complete, I ran out of the store clutching my goods like a mother clinging to her baby running from a burning building.


I walked the footpaths of Dublin and thought of the mess this country is in. I then painted some thoughts for those adults who are now getting their wake up call reading this. At the moment Ireland is like one of those desperate waitresses you find at those truck stops on highways in America and our government is like a horny lonely truck driver. He promises to take her out of this two bit restaurant but instead just fills her head with sweet fuck alls. Oh yes she fell for the fancy chat about far away places, she fell for the gifts of bumper stickers and key rings. But Chuck the government was full of shit. Chuck was looking out for his own needs, he didn’t care that Sandy had dreams and a functioning heart. So Chuck screwed Sandy. He screwed her a lot. But because Chuck didn’t really care about Sandy, he was reckless and he didn’t use protection. And now Sandy is in a lot of trouble and has left all by herself to pick up the pieces. Chuck isn’t taking her calls. He sees her number coming up on his mobile but he presses REJECT.


And if that little tale isn’t absorbed into your mind and haunting you now as you read, well you deserve to have contracted poverty………

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