SIGNING ON:Our columnist's efforts to make the best of unemployment are misunderstood by an angry online community
HE GREW UP IN a house where it was made plain, and often, that to live in a democracy was a privilege, to squander the opportunity of a vote tantamount to a crime. He has, therefore, always been politically aware, partly because his work demanded it, partly out of an extended sense of duty to his father. But, for a period prior to the general election, his interest in politics reached a zenith.
He listened carefully to every current affairs or politics programme, often taping them to go back over what had been said or promised. Examined in detail the manifestoes, tuned in to every one of the leaders’ debates. He felt the possibility of real reform, a chance to create the kind of republic he and his father had often talked about.
Now he feels a fool. Feels he invested too much hope in empty rhetoric, vague promises: Where are the bloody jobs Enda?
***
A leaflet from Fás arrives offering him a potential place on a course in a regional college, two hours from his house. In fact, it offers several choices: hairdressing; a certificate in mediation and counselling skills; a diploma in transport management.
So the numbers game has been initiated. Get them onto some Mickey Mouse course. Who cares if there are no jobs at the end of it, or if the jobs don’t pay enough to raise or educate a family in a country where services are being cut to the bone? Dick about with the figures, pretend people are coming off the live register.
“Is féidir linn . . .”
***
He receives scores of letters, mostly from women whose husbands are unemployed. The letters are searingly honest. One woman buys the paper every Tuesday, turns to the column and hopes with all her heart he has found work, that his new business is taking off, his wife’s health improved. Sometimes the kindness of compatriots means the difference between being able to rise in the morning with a sense of involvement in a larger community. And drifting through the day, rudderless.
But he becomes aware also of a different kind of commentary on Twitter. Vituperative and petty, it castigates his choices, questions his right to drive a Ducati, to be in a gym. He is accused of cashing in at the height of the boom (note – he also bought back in), of renting out a villa (eh, not quite) in Italy for a year (note – he did it to give his wife and his marriage a chance to heal) and setting an extortionate rent for the tenants in his inner-city house (note – €900 per month, €400 less than the mortgage).
These presumptions and inaccuracies should be the source of hilarity, and normally they would be, but he feels dark (note – there is a difference between being depressed, which he isn’t, and justifiably outraged at recent Government u-turns, which he is). In any event he doesn’t find it funny.
So for the record twits and Tweeters: he sold everything he had and swapped what remained; a friend who was emigrating gifted him the motorbike; it is cheaper to run than a car, and significantly cheaper than public transport. Without it, there’d be days he could not afford to attend interviews, or to visit his folks. As for the gym, he works as a swimming coach part-time in exchange for membership.
Keep your myopic, right-wing politics, if you must. But these are the facts.
***
He meets his Romanian friend, the professor (Is he allowed to have a social life? Would it be preferable if he stayed in and drew the curtains?). The professor has “had enough’’, hates being a security guard, wants to go back to teaching. Despite being in the country seven years – always gainfully employed, always paying tax, often working two jobs – he cannot get a mortgage. The professor believes he might give Australia a shot.
“Come with me.”
(Long silence).
***
He takes the Dart home (Should he cycle
40 miles?) happy for his friend, but aware that he too will be rechecking the websites of the Canadian and Australian governments. Because he may have spent too much time thinking about the crowd in Leinster House, but they haven’t been doing much thinking about him. Not since the election mics were switched off.
The writer of this column wishes to remain anonymous. His identity is known to the editor