I read an article recently by an Irish journalist. I can’t remember his name and I can’t be bothered referencing him anyway. This is blogland after all and if I’m not being paid for this, I’m buggered if I’m going to follow journalistic ethics. But he was about my age and said that our generation was cursed by having to emigrate twice in our lifetime.
I have of course lived up to this prediction, as I’m now experiencing my second emigration. However, describing it as a curse is slightly over the top. I left Ireland for the first time in 1988 as a callow youth desperate for the bright lights of London. We were smothering in the dank stench of depression at the time, but I have to say that the economy was low on my list of departure reasons. I had a need for adventure burning within and a desire to escape from my Mum’s cooking.
Besides, 1988 was a year when everyone seemed to be getting out. Apart from being poor, Ireland was a place of puritan Priests, corrupt politicians and awful weather. The Government imposed a departure tax to suck some final revenue from its fleeing population. This was the last straw for me and like some Vietnam draft dodger; I slipped across the border into Northern Ireland and left for London from there.
My parents saw me off at Belfast Airport. My mother had been stoic until then but she cracked when my flight was called. Throwing her arms around me, she made one final plea. “Why are you going to that God forsaken nation of Child Molesters”?
I had no answer. I couldn’t tell her that I hoped that English girls put it out a bit more than their Irish counterparts, or that I had the possibility of eating food that hadn’t been boiled for four hours. Of course I should have said that she had little right to question the morality of England when our puritan Priests were topping the world charts on molestation. But that was 21 years before the Ryan Report on Child Abuse in Ireland was published and we were largely oblivious to the degenerate cess pool in which we lived.
I stayed away for eight years that time and came back in 1996 as Ireland seemed finally to be catching up with the world. We had figured out a great wheeze for making money by selling the whole country to the Americans who used it as a vast assembly plant for the import of goods into the European Union. We then hitched a ride on the great Euro bandwagon and realised that we could live on credit provided by German and French pensioners to buy hacienda styled mansions and bouncy castles.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can now say that I always knew it was a charade. A bubble of South Sea proportions that would eventually come crashing down. If I’m honest of course, I have to admit that I enjoyed some of the fruits of the Irish boom. I bought my first house for example and watched giddily as it leaped in value. I migrated from a ten year old VW Golf to a slick two litre fuel injected monster and I developed a chicken curry fetish that expanded my waistline and left me addicted to MSG.
In my defence, I did see the crash coming from a long way out. I put my house on the market and noticed that no one was camping in the driveway to snap it up, as they had been two years earlier. Much as I wanted to come to Australia for the sun and relaxed lifestyle, I was also aware that my homeland was about to crash, even without the help of Lehman Brothers.
The rest of the country seemed to be in denial. One of my final outings before coming to Australia was to attend the General Election count in Dublin. I had hoped that my countrymen would come to their senses and elect a Government which cared about ordinary people. The ruling party however, created a mirage whereby everything seemed dandy and changing horses in mid stream would be disastrous. The long procession of victorious government candidates being chaired from the election centre sent a chill down my spine and was as good an incentive as any to get out.
Through the wonders of the Internet, I can now watch Ireland’s descent into doom and gloom on a daily basis. I didn’t have that luxury back in 1988. Occasionally, I’d pick up a copy of “The Sunday Press” if I happened to wake up in an Irish suburb of London (which happened a lot in those beer soaked days) and read about the latest factory closure in Limerick or Galway and how interest rates had rocketed to 25%. My only other source of economic news came through my weekly phone call to my mother. She measured all progress by the price of petrol and whether people were heading North or South to shop. Ironically, she was a lot more accurate than “The Sunday Press”.
But the Internet isn’t the only change to back then. The recession of the 1980’s came on the back of a pretty miserable 1970’s and the 60’s weren’t very clever either. So when the recession hit, it came on top of a very low base. People didn’t have two pennies to rub together and certainly no property to fall back on.
The current recession feels worse because we are falling from a much higher point. The reality is that most people have something to fall back on this time. The ones who bought several properties in places like Bulgaria and the Ukraine will suffer. But it’s hard to feel sorry for them. If you only own the house you live in, then you’re probably sitting on a nice piece of equity from previous houses, even if your current home is worth less than you paid for it.
If you manage to keep your job, then you can probably hold onto the car and the big TV. If that’s not enough, then there is always your internet connection which will allow you access to as much gossip and pornography as you want and the chance to email me. The poor boy who had to emigrate twice.
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