Waving, Not Drowning

The pressure mounts from all sides. We’re told that the ECB wants Ireland to join the Stability Fund to ease the pressure on other countries and especially on the euro. Global hedge funds want us to default so they can cash in on their gambles. Other financial forces are using the Irish bonds as pawns in an attack on the euro from which powerful financial blocs will profit.

The internal pressure is as pervasive. Many wonder what term is appropriate – a recession is when you have negative growth over a short time frame, a depression is when you have negative growth for a long period. OK, what then? A despair? And what’s this then? The Great Despair of 2010?
And yet, and yet… just this last week, above the wailing and gnashing of teeth, a new note can just be heard. Neither vague hope nor empty promise, it’s something harder. It’s defiance. You might even call it the first faint notes of a fightback.
Not for the first time, writer Joseph O’Connor found the lost chord. For a family to yield us one national treasure is remarkable. To gift us two is incredible. But, alongside his sister Sinéad, that’s what he’s become.
On this occasion he reprised his Reasons To Be Cheerful. As he concluded he referenced the newly revealed Atlantic wave Prowlers and defiantly declaimed that the wave that would sink Ireland hasn’t been found yet.
Newspapers published a fantastic photo from Aaron Pierce of Andrew Cotton negotiating the barrel of the wave. It’s truly awesome.
True, Prowlers isn’t a regular, but great waves never are. Yes, having recognised how it might break on a reef that’s been identified 2km off the coast you can predict its likely occurrence. But it needs vast energy to happen and it got this from the huge swell generated by Hurricane Tomas.
Surfing at that level is a dice with death. You could die out there.
It’s not hard to see it as a metaphor for other things. The relentless pounding of the Atlantic we know and understand. But this giant?
It would toss a currach aside and crush it to matchsticks. But, despite being smaller and much more exposed, a surfer can ride it and return. The thing is, you have to know what you’re doing.
So, here we are, right in the thick of a perfect economic storm. Conditions are ferocious and maybe fatal. Worse, there’s an audience out there, watching from the safety and security of big ships and helicopters, shouting advice and abuse, some wanting us to wipe out and die because that’s the big story, others wanting us to wimp out and ask them to take us onto their ships… as paying guests.
We’re in the barrel, still in control of the board, but it’s getting hairier. But the faint new notes of defiance will grow. They may well be discordant and care will be needed. Expressing pride and resilience can segue into bellowed prejudice and intransigence.
If, as is suggested, the EU is putting pressure on the Government, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Maybe it’s true and if so you can probably kiss goodbye to a safe passage for any further EU treaties, a point which ought to give some pause for thought.
But of course, you have to check out the messengers – who gains from such propaganda? And if it isn’t true, why are the British media saying it and what’s their game? Is it just another bout of Euroscepticism, part of the long game to get the UK out of Europe? Or perhaps a play by the London financial services industry? As they say, truth is the first casualty of war.
But facts are facts. If the enemies of Europe and of the euro wanted a weakened pawn, we’re it.
Thing is, people are unsure about the Government riding the wave. Are they playboys of the western world in a clapped-out paint-spattered currach who’ve had nothing to eat but cheese? Or are they riders to the sea, lean mean wave-hardened surfers who’ve got what it takes?
Others are impatient for the wave. Fine Gael and Labour fancy themselves. The dudes on the beach kinda like the look of one more than the other. But they’ll have to work as a team...
Well, the wave is here. You’re there or you’re nowhere.
Time to go, dudes. Surf’s up.