Daytime TV

In 1945, after a period of social and economic instability, the UN was set up, ostensibly to establish and protect the rights of man. These include the right to food, shelter and a lifetime of being forced to watch Angelina Jolie wear a beatific smile in Namibia as she continues on yet another child collecting... sorry, goodwill mission.

As the UN continued to grow and diversify, so too did the expectations of man. Now we expect the right to food, shelter, and a Sky Plus box, preferably in HD. Unfortunately for me, my idea of high definition includes watching stuttering videos online and my surround sound system is made up almost exclusively of the blaring sounds of snoring coming through the walls from the man next door.

I moved into my current abode because of the low cost of rent. "It's a beautiful house", the landlord told me. "However, there are a few things..." I waited to hear some sort of horror story; maybe the house was a crime scene, perhaps it was made entirely out of asbestos and matchstick heads. It was possible that a deformed ghoul lived in the attic, subsisting entirely on fish heads, the administration of which would be part of the rent agreement.

As it turns out, the house has no parking space, microwave, or television. All are workable obstacles, or so I thought. Being a garden variety type of dole scum, I have the time to walk places and thus have no car. I have the time to cook my own food, what with not having a go-getting lifestyle that would necessitate my porridge to be made in three minutes in the microwave as opposed to fifteen on the stove. All this free time works to my economic advantage.

Not so with the television. My daytime tv withdrawal symptoms are such that I almost cried because I had only managed to see the last thirty seconds of the Ellen Degeneres Show at a friend's house. The lights... the colours... the incessant dancing... I had to prop my head on the kitchen counter to prevent it from rolling off in shock. It was as if I was watching real life, but with more spot prizes and jabs at reality television starlets. It was life as the UN might have imagined it. If they spent all of their spare time on the couch with only daytime television for company.

Celebutards, Tanorexics and everything in between

The noughties era was a bad decade for many things. Its was a terrible decade for the world in terms of economy and natural disasters (Lindsay Lohan being a prime example). On the flip side, it was a great decade for reality television and Heat Magazine - lest we forget that every cloud has a silver lining. The period 2000-2009 was, above all, a generator for new and exciting buzzwords.

While people of the Roaring Twenties could be the Big Cheese or the Bee's Knees, we of the past decade are confined to being Tanorexics, Celebutards or Recessionistas (we should thank every lucky star in the solar system that the Singleton decade has long passed us by).

Having been defined by friends, family and co-workers as a textbook example of an Irish Recessionista, I really should know what one is. However, the common view of a recessionista usually involves profligate spending repacked in a much more palatable way. Women still spend a hundred euro in one go on tops, but now instead of buying one, they buy twenty at a fiver a pop and congratulate themselves for being such expert bargainers by getting an expensive blow dry at the hottest salon. I don't even own a hairbrush.

The real recessionistas are elusive creatures. They don't hang out in packs discussing the newest shipments of designers lookalikes in Penneys. Nor do they haunt the €12.50 Meal Deal aisle in Marks and Sparks, rifling through piles of over-fondled sauteed potatoes in search of the last elusive roast duck main course.

In an ideal world the Recessionista isn't a type of person but rather a state of mind. The recessionista isn't you but the person who sits on your shoulder and calculates just how much tinned Scotch Broth you will have to eat and for how long in order to buy a new pair of shoes. It's the voice in your head that reminds you which bills are due and when, which bars have the best cut-price cocktails and table quiz prizes and which of your friends is the same dress size as you. It knows that new things are always worth trying and that deals are there to be taken advantage of. In truth, every woman regardless of her hairdo is a recessionista - the recession has shown us that. No blowdry required.

Culture Shock

I've been in Cairo on the ultimate recessionistas holiday (paid in full by the Bank of Mom and Dad) and the phrase 'culture shock' would be a mild understatement when describing a place where six year olds make a living selling postcards by the Sphinx and, as the family tour guide Manal enlightens me, Pizza Hut is considered a chi-chi dining establishment for a young, hip crowd. I'm not quite sure how gullible Manal thinks I am, but the fact is evident that Cairo is Poor with a capital P. Driving in from the airport I could count on one hand the amount of apartment blocks that had actually finished construction. Tenants were evidently so assured that the buildings might never be completed that satellite dishes peppered the flat makeshift roofs amongst ancient tarpaulins and creaky girders. On the way to the hotel a car crashed on the motorway and cars stopped across eight lanes of traffic as men swarmed over the accident to check the damage. It was chaos. My father leaned over to me and said in an unnecessarily confidential tone for a minivan occupant, "This is what Ireland was forty years ago". It made me wonder where in the home country Daddy Dearest had seen a satellite dish circa 1970, but I presume he must have been driving down a now lost Irish Autobahn as he did so. However, I get his point. Ireland was capital P Poor until the mid nineties. Our country became affluent in the course of half a generation. It only took fifteen years or so to beget a whole new cadre of young adults who were incapable of remembering the poverty of a thousand years past. My parents often remind me that, while I may be cruising down the Nile now on a boat worthy of an Agatha Christie novel, twenty years ago we were living in a damp three room apartment with suspicious-looking (and sadly, inedible) mushrooms growing on the bathroom walls. I wouldn't be the first person to suggest that a recession is merely a return to normality for the land of saints and scholars, and I certainly won't be the last. But what is normal? The new generation of Celtic Cubs adjust their idea of normality every day. We were rich yesterday - now we're not. Today a cruise ship, tomorrow a chilly house share on Barrack Street. It's best just to enjoy the good things - no matter how small or how fleeting.

Time For Change

Regular readers of this column may have gathered now that when it comes to holidays, I'm a devotee of the 'Bah, Humbug' Christmas tradition. Every year I get sucked into a whirling vortex of panicking people at a shopping centre at 5.55pm on Christmas Eve and emerge with a twelve pack of socks and last April's Easter Eggs to be shared out between visibly deflated family members.

Every year I decide that resolutions are useless for a variety of reasons, then halfheartedly try for a size 8 on the basis that I can't afford to go to Tesco anyway.

Not so this year. This year my loosely-termed resolution is to rearrange my boundaries. By the time you read this, I will be dead. Actually no, I won't, I'll be in Egypt on the first family holiday I've been on since I was sixteen (in Italy - all I remember is my father's face going puce outside the Duomo trying to control three teenage girls amongst all the swarthy Florentine brawn on Vespas and the unfortunate spaghetti-throwing incident that followed).

So, in the interest of family togetherness, breaking old boundaries and, er, gawking at disinterred mummies, I'll be eschewing January Sales for trips down the Nile, a monumental change in not only location but attitude. I'm set in my ways. I don't do sun. I don't do sightseeing. I get frustrated when I'm with my family in a confined space for an extended period of time. Especially if spaghetti is involved.

Sometimes a full and frank appraisal of the year is needed. Fully and frankly, if my 2009 was graded, I'd just about scrape a C. It started promisingly, with a job, a degree and a great boyfriend. 1 January was rung in with a bubble bath and a White Russian (the cocktail, not the man). Then it lost momentum and gradually petered out, eventually turning me into a hermit-like Howard Hughes figure with Kleenex boxes for shoes who constantly made excuses for herself and her woes.

I can't change my circumstances. However, my attitude could do with a bit of a tune-up. I needed reminding that agonising over an all-expenses paid sun holiday in January was a very foolish move when one considered that the alternative was shivering at home under twelve duvets without a sympathetic mommy on call.

There is never a good time for questioning your life choices, but if there was, surely the end of a year would be the most opportune. The most prevalent question at the moment for myself and many other people is a hard one: Was 2009 bad because of the recession, or because of me?

Not so Happy New Year

I'm not a big fan of New Years Eve. Two reasons - one practical, one totally illogical. In another life, I was a bar supervisor at a large nightclub in a one horse town. Without the vital protection of beer goggles I saw (albeit through a cynical lens) that New Years Eve is just your typical Saturday night, magnified a hundred times. The queues are a hundred times longer, entrance fees are multiplied by a hundred percent. Girls weep a hundred tears because their hope for a New Years kiss is currently pawing a seventeen year old who resembles nothing so much as a Barbie that's spent too much time in the sun. And then there's the vomit. A hundred times the normal amount of human effluvium, all waiting to be swept up in preparation for the brand new (and sparking clean) year ahead.

If you think about it, New Years Celebrations are a microcosm of the year itself. It's all about bingeing and purging, literally and metaphorically. 'Out with the Old, in with the New' is the new maxim. Everyone shakes off the hangover and tries to find a new sense of equilibrium, only to fling themselves off the rickety see-saw with one too many Cosmos at next years shindig.

Which brings me to my nonsensical reason for abhorring the New Year. The endless cycle of self-improvement, failure and staring again leads me to think that humans are willfully repeating itself. What was so wrong with the Old? I liked 2009! I finished my degree. I was published. I moved into a house on my own and became independent (of my parents but woefully not the State).

What if 2010 is the year that I catch Swine Flu or lose out at the Topshop January Sale? Or worse still, what if, by December 31st 2010, I still don't have my first proper big girl job and am still on the dole?

For many people, NYE is an opportunity to celebrate. For a minority of people in a transition period (translation - me), it's a precipice. My fear of change and failure are making me drag my heels. Unfortunately for me, there's only one way to go, and that's forward. The only option is to jump off the edge and hope to fly instead of fall.

A huge thanks

I'd just like to say the most massive thanks ever to all the nice people who have complimented me on the columns (all in the past week - very odd). I really appreciate everyone's feedback. It's nice to know that there are people out there reading it. I've disabled comments for obvious spamming reasons but if anyone want to get in contact or give Graduate feedback you can get in touch via the Cork Independent website here or email my own sweet self at sarah.a.waldron(at)gmail.com.

No (wo)man is an island

If no man is an island then I am most definitely a peninsula. I like to think that I am a law unto myself, but then the flood tides rise and I whine about a lack of resources while the waters swirl insidiously above my neck. Nothing has taught me this in such a hard hitting fashion as a trip back to the hometown. Due to the lack of drinking water I followed the example of the ultimate recessionistas (college students) and found myself on a bus headed straight for the land of milk and honey. It had been a few months since I had returned home. Surely I would get off the bus and be welcomed back in the manner of the prodigal son, with concubines and a banquet and gold galore?
I alighted the bus on a freezing Friday evening, whith the sun setting in a huge red blaze behind me and nary a parent to be seen. I'm used to my mother waiting for me by the family sedan with a friendly smile and an intricately planned menu for the days ahead. Instead I faced an icy trudge home solo.
I navigated my way across a busy main road, an essential shortcut to the homestead, and hoped that someone would be at home since I had foolishly left my keys at a house party the previous day. No such luck. The house looked intimidatingly empty.
I was stranded in my own hometown. I was an island - and I hated it. My parents had forgotten about me. I have never felt so utterly isolated in my entire life.
Stuck on the frozen granite step outside my house, I couldn't help but think that this was all my fault. Only I could lose my keys in a regrettable blackjack game. Only I could come home at the drop of a hat and still expect a degree of fanfare akin to a biblical parable and only I could sit on the ground, cold seeping into my behind, and think about what a sorry sight I made while waiting for my mother to get home from work.
My mother came home after a half hour. With frostbite setting into my posterior, I toddled inside and waited for her to light the fire. She told me to sit down and passed me a cup of piping hot, sugary tea. I was no longer an island. My mother had made the connection to dry land, and I was all the better for it.

Little girl in a big city

For many people teetering back and forth over the poverty line like a tightrope artist attempting to cross the Hoover Dam, all it takes is a little push to land face first in some very deep water. In the case of many of my fellow Corkonian recessionistas, our Hoover Dam is a similarly large body of water seeping into our houses and cars, but unfortunately not out of our taps.
Never before has the phrase 'water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink' had quite as much personal resonance as it has over the past week.

One friend has seen his car swept away by a deluge on Western Road. Many more are facing tough decisions on what to do with the little remaining water they have. A pattern emerges. Men pour little reserves into toilet cisterns for admirably practical reasons. Women use their kettle dregs to wash their hair - a no less practical use.

One of the toughest things about being the proverbial little girl in the big city is the sense of helplessness that can attack like an unfriendly doberman pinscher at the most inconvenient of moments. I was reminded of this unfortunate fact of life this week. My house has no water and it is structured as such that I also cannot put on the the heating. I'm freezing, I'm thirsty and I'm very, very dirty. I can avail of the free water at various points dotted around the city, but the only available transport I can think of has yet to recover from it's brisk dip in the Lee. Coming home from a heavily subsidised session at the local pub, I was beset with a particularly distressing dilemma. Should I drink my last pint of water to avoid the fast approaching hangover, or should I use it to prevent five days of continuous make up application from setting on my face like a crumbling Renaissance fresco? I awoke the next day wish a sparkling clean visage and a tongue that had apparently been replaced with a damp sheepskin rug in the middle of the night. Milk can be such a poor substitute. In retrospect I should have done a Cleopatra instead and hydrated myself properly while bathing in the milk. I always thought that I had a problem with money running through my fingers. Now it's just an effort to get water to run through them.

What Would Carrie Do?

When the first Sex and the City film came out, I was in the second year of my degree at UCC. I was young(er), I was dumb, I was broke. So broke, in fact, that I could not afford to go see the film all the way through it's months-long run. Hopped up on pilfered vokda and orange in the college bar, I would pump female friends for costume information. They would smile enigmatically like a crowd of Topshop-clad sphinxes. "you'll see' they would smirk, which was code for "if you don't shut up about this film very soon you'll be wearing your drink instead of sipping it".


Now, a few years on, I am old(er), relatively wiser and no less broke. With a second film on the horizon, (I'm going to break into a real Carrie-ism here) I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to the girls when the big R set in. That's R for Recession, not for Rodarte.

I had always thought that the laissez-faire attitude to spending money in the show was cool. When Carrie explained that while penniless, she would buy Vogue instead of food because it fed her more, it lent her the romantic nous of James Dean. There was something suicidally cavalier about dropping over forty grand on shoes alone. I too wanted to be sartorially nourished. The whippet thin body of La Bradshaw would also be a welcome side-effect.

Like many but definitely not all women, I would sometimes ask 'What would Carrie do?' as if she was some kind of mid-level deity like Ganesh or Oprah. It took watching the first film to realise that Carrie Bradshaw is a female role model ranking alongside Imelda Marcos in terms of both shoe ownership and rampant self-obsession.

From time to time I will buy magazines instead of food. I currently have four euros to my name. I also have two huge wardrobes bursting with nice clothes. Now that I think about it, the only thing I learned from Sex and the City (apart from 'Men are crap') was the relative merit of a life of fiscal irresponsibility. I became a Carrie clone faster than a trolley dash with Usain Bolt. So take it from someone who knows - next time you wonder what Carrie would have done, go do the complete opposite, Your life will be all the richer.

Save the KINO!

This was ostensibly supposed to be a Graduate column, but it probably fits better on the blog. My beloved Kino is set to be closed very soon if sufficient funds are not raised. Sad times for all. I fondly remember the Kino as the place where I could go on many a hungover afternoon with my flatmate Nicola and watch good films in peace. I also remember less fondly one hungover afternoon where we went to watch Rachel Getting Married. It was an amazing film, but the shaky camerawork made us very queasy indeed.

Consider the following a b-side column if you will.

The recession is over. Yes, you heard it here first. Unfortunately it's not over for us in the Emerald Isle but rather in the UK, where the economy has decided, much like a crash dieter, that all this economy shrinking is bad for it's health and will quickly pick up inflationary sticky buns in no time at all (well, until 2011, but who's counting?).

Not so for us in Ireland. The Celtic Hangover seems interminable. The December budget looming over us like a fiscal Freddie Krueger will adversely affect what the press ominously refers to as EVERYONE. Everyone, including children under three, will have to file tax returns. We will return to the Oirish Ireland of Angela's Ashes, where the only forms of recreation (for a woman) is to smoke and tut, (for a man) to drink the money earned on a casual basis as a hod carrier and (for children) retrieve a drunken Da from the pub after too many sups of porter.

Thankfully we in Cork have other, less ultimately depressing modes of distraction. As least we have the Kino, Ireland's only independent art-house cinema; the only place to watch hard-to-get films with a steaming cup of coffee in hand. Oh wait, actually we don't, because it's due to close at the end of the month.

The closure would be conceivable if it was badly managed, but it is not. The movie selections are uniformly good, the prices are reasonable and the coffee is piping hot. The cinema itself seems to be run on a shoestring of duct tape, Hersheys chocolate bars and a bottomless well of love and loyalty from it's staff and many patrons. At the time of writing, a Save the Kino Facebook page has almost eight thousand members, and counting. A fundraising website (www.savethekino.com) provides details on how to donate.

There is a lesson to be learned here. The budget that affects EVERYONE is no doubt affected in part by huge bailouts to our banks, yet the Kino is due to close for want of tens of thousands of euros, a fraction of government funding that was promised but never materialised. If everyone on that Facebook page donated eight euros, then the Kino could be saved. One of Corks most valuable cultural institutions could be rescued from oblivion for the price of a cinema ticket. Unfortunately, by the end of November there may not be any art-house films for Corkonians to watch.