There was an interesting map published in this paper the other day showing the proportion of people in the two top social classes in the State's electoral divisions and wards.
The map was mostly coloured a lovely shade of blue, with bits of darker blue, white and pink. The pink bits are the classiest areas: over 40 per cent of the people living there are in the top two social categories. Blue and dark blue areas aren't too bad, but if you are unfortunate enough to live in one of the white bits, you have very few top-class people for neighbours: basically, you are surrounded by riff-raff.
This is going to cause a lot of envy and gloating, heart-searching, joy, misery and jealousy around the country. Worse, it may upset the property market, still the spiritual focal point of our proud nation.
The map was produced for business customers for marketing purposes. If, for example, you were flogging £10,000 Villeroy Bosch bathrooms, you wouldn't want to waste your money sending glossy sales literature to "whiteys": social welfare recipients, the poor, the inadequate, the work-shy and the down-and-out. This kind of map helps the big firms to more accurately target "pinkies": people with class, jobs, manners and money living in proper houses appreciating by at least 30 per cent per annum.
There is more to the map. You might be happy enough with the number of top-class people in your area, and think you live on a perfectly good estate or road, but are you on the "corridor of affluence"? Not unless you live in the west. This cash-lined passageway, as shown on Tuesday's map, runs from Ennis up to north Clare/ south Galway. By all accounts it is rotten with money. Not for nothing is Doolin known as the "Dalkey of the West", and Ennistymon as "Little Zurich". The races at Ballybrit, where it is expected that £10 million will be spent on betting this year, probably have something to do with it. But basically it proves that not all top-class people live in Dublin. That needed to be demonstrated. Naturally enough, most of the affluent areas are scattered around the cities and big towns. There's not much doing in the west or north-west apart from Sligo and Letterkenny. But it will surprise nobody that Kerry has a number of "pockets of affluence" in an area bounded by Killarney, Cahirciveen and Kenmare. That's in so far as Kerry is bounded at all, metaphysically speaking. The other pockets of affluence in Kerry missed by the map creators are vaguely bounded by Ballybunion, Tralee, Castlegregory, the Maharees, Killorglin, Glenveigh, Ballylongford, Listowel, and of course, classiest of all, affluent beyond imagining, the Dingle peninsula, a pink empire unto itself.
Moving northwards, the map indicates that in terms of class, power, overall marketing relevance and the all-important pockets of affluence, all of Leitrim, Roscommon and the western half of Longford might as well be submerged in Lough Ree.
Meanwhile Mayo (God help us) doesn't appear to have any pockets at all. Once west of a line stretching from Ballycastle in the north to Newport in the south, the county is just one vast pale whitish blob, merging seamlessly into the Atlantic. It seems to be a county entirely without class, except of the lowest variety.
However, if the traveller manages to survive the terrifying class wilderness of the midlands, and arrive safely in Sligo, he or she will be thrilled with this gorgeous little pink pocket of affluence. Everything is on the up and up in Sligo - art, poetry, wine appreciation and property. It is the coming place for pinkies. If tempted to head further northwards, however, the traveller must endure long miles of arid, threatening classlessness before arriving at the unlikely pink oasis of Letterkenny, the "Sligo of Tomorrow", where there are enough top-class people in residence to let one breathe easily and rest for a while before undertaking the dangerous lower-class journey back south, or through the treacherous backwoodsman-infested swamps of the midlands. What we all want to know of course is, when pockets of affluence are identified, to whose particular coats and jackets they belong. We would like to see better, more detailed maps, showing exactly where the Grade I people live their beautiful lives. And we want directions on how to get there. We want to be on the right road, even if the journey takes some time. It will be no use if, with our affluent pockets properly sewn up, we find ourselves mixed in with the wrong crowd, or colour: pink is where it's at.
Times Square will resume on Thursday, August 27th.
