Strollers along Sandymount strand this week were puzzled by the gyrations of a group of young lovelies in coloured sou'westers and wellingtons , performing an odd sort of tribal dance across sheeting spread on the beach. Was it an outdoor rehearsal for one of Samuel Beckett's more incomprehensible plays? An avant guarde dance theatre's interpretation of the Walrus and the Carpenter perhaps?

No, this diverting cameo came courtesy of those artistic folk at the First National Building Society, going au naturel to promote its upcoming arrival on the stock market and to announce to a breathless public a new corporate identity, part of which is a post-flotation name change to, wait for it, First Active. Hence all that choreographed prancing about, along with some anxious consultation of tidal charts. Fiddling with a business identity tends to invite ridicule. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Strange times!