Never apologise for your ridiculous spending during the Celtic Tiger. You’re worth it
Weren’t we awful Celtic eejits all the same? Imagine! Who did we think we were? Earning money and spending it on ourselves! The cheek of us. How dare we be so self-indulgent? No respect for the value of money. The devil put the Celtic dollar there to tempt us and we spent it. Like Icarus, we flew too close to the sun and now look at us, in freefall, with no clue of how far we have to go before the unknowable happens.
I never bought a house during the Celtic Tiger...but I did buy a wheelchair. It wasn’t that I had given up on the idea of walking, but I was working hard and I deserved a little time off my feet, didn’t I? Of course not. I bought it for a joke.
I was in the creative fog of preparing a standup show. In that fog, every idea that the comedian gets must be tested. One idea was to play a practical joke on the audience: I would make my entrance onto the stage in a wheelchair, making much of the difficulty of taking the microphone out of the stand to elicit sympathy from the audience, and then simply step out of the chair and perform the show. It doesn’t sound very funny now, but last summer I was eager to try it out.
Would the audience laugh? Would they be angry at my self-indulgence? Would they see the punchline coming a mile off? Would they think me childish or pity me? Was it an act of defiance that only my mates and I could laugh at, that would leave strangers confused? I had to try it to find out. I didn’t know anyone who could lend me a wheelchair, and no enfant terrible has ever let a paltry thing like money stand between them and artistic greatness, so I decided to purchase. With all the ruthlessness of Veruca Salt, I connected to the Internet.
On eBay, I snapped one up for £50 sterling (+£20 P&P). However, in the period between puchase and arrival, I shared my enthusiasm about the idea with a rather know-it-all friend of mine, who took pleasure in revealing that my idea was not original – Kurt Cobain had pulled a similar stunt at the Reading Festival in 1992. Now, I enjoy Nirvana’s music, but Kurt Cobain? I always found him to be a misanthropic snob who condescended to write good music for us to listen to. Dear God – no! I couldn’t be identifed with the likes of him. Disdainfully, I discarded the idea and moved on. So when the wheelchair arrived, I had already lost interest.
That was the last summer we were rich. Now, in the flourescent light of the recession, I still have the wheelchair in my house. I confess that there are times when I think it might have been a frivolous purchase. The €100 it cost would go a long way towards next month’s ESB bill. And in ecological terms, it’s possible that there might be someone else who would get more use out if it. One such person might be the other eBay user I outbid. Rickets23 must be exhausted by now.
I vaguely remember the last recession, but I have never had to support myself through one until now. I am familiar with its mood, but not the practicalities of survival.
During my final year of college, 1997, the most prestigious engineering firms in the country held interviews for students who were about to graduate and the best candidates would be offered jobs. It was a bit like The Apprentice, without cameras. But something strange happened when we did graduate the following June. Everyone got jobs! Not just the elite who had the aptitude and applied themselves to their craft – everyone.
Even the slow lad who couldn’t design a rope bridge got a car and a laptop from some half-arsed outfit planning broadband for the Midlands. The situation jarred with our thinking. Something fundamental had changed. Instead of there being some or little, there was enough. It happened that quickly.
The first generation of Celtic cubs, we took the jobs and we took the money. I had never left this island before I was 21. Let me list for you the places I have seen since: Germany, Denmark, Spain, Greece, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Mexico, Croatia, Andorra, Italy, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Prague, Brussels. I have had deep tissue massages from burly Swedish masseuses and eaten in restaurants with Bono at the next table. My friend recently had her boobs done and she looks fantastic.
Were we so vain and self-obsessed? Is the recession a punishment for our lack of humility? Are we tragic figures? Shakespearean heroes, undone by our own moral weakness? Not at all. We Irish need to stop thinking that the world revolves around us. We overstate the consequences of our actions and forget the global context we are in. Now that is narcissism. We are a small country in difficulty, but life is often difficult. Ask the people of New Orleans.
So what am I going to do with this wheelchair? I am well aware that there are those who would see me struck down with an affliction that confined me to one for having the bad grace to be flippant about disability. An apologist might vote that I give it away to a person who would use it more conventionally.
But conventional is not the kind of thinking that gets us out of a recession.
To retract the way we Celtic cubs spent our money would be to deny our own worth. And worthy we are. No generation of Irish people has been better prepared to face these difficult times than we. We look gorgeous and we can talk the talk. I’m not affiliated with any political party, but for the moment, Mr Cowen, I await your instruction.
Thus I’m keeping the wheelchair. I don’t care if I have to stay up nights – I’m going to work long and hard to come up with new ways to take the piss out of disability. I might even have a go at non-nationals in wheelchairs. That’s the kind of innovation this country needs.
Eleanor is at the International from March 26th-28th and at Vicar Street for the Just for Laughs Montreal Showcase on the 29th. lisarichards.ie
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