Even 'University Challenge' this week provided an example of the downturn in our fortunes, writes ORNA MULCAHY
WHEN A colleague announces that a high-earning friend had let the window cleaner go and subsequently damaged his shoulder reaching for the tippy top bit of the floor-to-ceiling windows with the squeegee, we agreed that this was a cutback too far. After all, his friend, who works in litigation, is busier than ever and his fee income will be up rather than down this year.
So why cut out the poor window cleaner, who almost certainly does not have a regular income? Was he bowing to the new social imperative to be seen to be saving? Or is he one of the people using the recession to become a cheapskate? Either way, it is difficult to believe well-heeled friends who talk about how dreadful the situation is . . . and the body language that goes with it.
Mwah-mwah air-kissing has given way to the funeral grip as people, meeting casually in the street, clutch each other in mutual support, grabbing elbows and hands as if to stop each other from buckling under the weight of the collapsing economy.
This is followed by a lot of leaning into each other’s personal space, and worried eye-balling to the tune of “Isn’t it just awful what’s happening?” when, frankly, all one might be worried about is the fact that the other person has felt the flabbiness of one’s upper arm.
After that it is down to the exchange of gossip and the passing on of urban myths about well-known bankers being thrown out of pubs, or people who’ve managed to buy a barely used Bentley for €10,000.
By the way, these chance meetings are about the only social encounters the chattering classes can rely on this season, what with dinner parties dwindling and corporate entertaining now viewed as the work of the devil.
With hostesses in hibernation, paranoia is creeping in as friends ring each other to establish if in fact there are parties going on, but they just haven’t been asked.
“Have you seen so-and-so recently?” is shorthand for “Where is everyone, what are they doing, why am I not invited?”
Meanwhile, as mid-term ends, brace yourself for the return of the skiing brigade, particularly the ones who insist they got the deal of a lifetime on flights and accommodation when you know right well they were living it up in Val d’Isere as per usual. These people like to think of themselves as the new poor, though from the outside, one doesn’t spot any difference to their old selves. It is just such a person who last week told me I would be mad to spend a large amount on a Communion dress. Hadn’t I head that Dunnes are doing lovely ones this year, and that in fact Oxfam is also stocking them? This from a woman who dresses exclusively in Etro.
Along with the funeral grip goes a tendency to identify endless symbols of the downturn. Every pothole in the road is a reminder that once it could have been fixed, before we squandered all the money, but not any more. Every empty shopfront is a portent of coming urban decay, every hospital trolley with someone’s elderly father lying on it suggests the failure of the entire medical system and our disregard for the vulnerable in society.
Once you start seeing symbols, they’re everywhere. Even University Challenge earlier this week was a reminder that the Irish star is waning. In the semi-final of the quiz, Dolan, O’Leary and Byrne, three Irish students at St John’s College, Cambridge were no match for Corpus Christi, Oxford. This team was led by Trimble, a terrifying brainbox with her finger permanently on the buzzer.
We thumped the sofa arms in frustration as, time after time she snatched all the chances, following each correct answer with an annoying Miss Piggy-like flick of her hair.
The Irish were trounced; the fact that not one of the three could identify Oscar Wilde in the picture round was as much a blow to our international reputation as anything going on in the banks. For God’s sake, literature is our thing, how could they not recognise him with his long wavy hair?
Jeremy Paxman could barely control his impatience as they limped in 100 points behind Trimble and co. It was devastating.
The whole family had been dragged in to watch the show as I tried to recreate the evenings of our childhood when we watched Bamber Gascoigne pose the impossibly tricky questions to floppy-haired, earnest-looking undergraduates, out of which my mother would invariably pick out the dorkiest-looking male and say: “Now he is rather good-looking isn’t he, and a nuclear physicist! Why don’t you ever bring home someone like that?” We never did, with the result that of the four of us watching, our collective score was 15 points.
A friend, mired in gloom herself, wonders if we are raising children who, like Manuel from Barcelona, know nothing?
I prefer to echo Jeremy Paxman himself, who said that teams who score more than 300 points need to get out more.