Jake was working in a bar in the American Midwest for the summer. He's just home now and ready to go back to university. The good news is that he had a great time, he stayed with the family who owned the bar, he fell in love with their youngest daughter Beth. Jake and Beth will probably marry, he says, in six year's time when both are established in their careers.
He earned and saved enough money to buy a proper car, tax and insure it. From reading between the lines, it seems that he didn't go out on any of the 11 Saturday nights he was there and get drunk out of his mind. His father regards this as the miracle of the century.
He learned all kinds of skills as well as bar-tending, like automobile maintenance, and how to make hot fudge sundaes. How not to smile in disbelief when the family all bent their heads for grace before every meal. He learned to wash and care for his own clothes, since everyone in the household did that. His mother thinks the entire young male population of Ireland should be sent out there for an improvement course. So what is the bad news?
Jake is obsessed by the millennium bug.
Not just a bit confused like the rest of us, but deep down anxious. You see, the part of America he was in was a kind of Silicon Valley - everyone worked in some offshoot of the computer industry and there is a real sense of panic about the place. Beth's three uncles, all men in their late-40s or early-50s are ashen-faced about it.
Computers only recognise the last two digits of the year, they say, so they have been fine so far, and will be fine until New Year's Eve 1999. But when the two zeroes come up next day, the computers will go mad. And the terrible thing is that nobody is going to do anything about it: they all think someone else will.
The neighbours say the same, they say that nobody wants to face up to the fact that it will cost six billion dollars. That's what the whole Vietnam War cost, they say. No government is going to commit that amount of money to such a project. There are no votes in it because people think it's just being afraid of the bogeyman, nobody really believes its going to be a danger. Jake learned that only ten per cent of the computer systems have been changed. With four hundred and something days to go.
He says it's really serious and it has dismayed him coming back to Ireland with everyone telling him to shut up and have a pint, and stop talking alarmist nonsense. Next thing, they say, Jake will have seen spacecraft landing and small green men with funny things on their heads. When he tells them about the measures they are taking in this small town he lived in for three months they say his brain is softening. But Jake doesn't agree.
Beth's father is selling his stocks and shares, slowly and carefully. He is buying real estate; he is particularly pleased that he has bought a farm, because if all comes to all they will be able to grow things. He has arranged a power supply for this farm and for his own premises as well.
On the farm he has ensured that there will be wells with drinking water. All the family have been asked to choose books, records and board games as if they were going to go into a bunker after a nuclear explosion. According to Beth's father the banks keep bleating that they will be fine when the millennium day arrives. Yes, indeed, they do.
But were they ever fine before when there was a crisis? Were they able to give you the money you had deposited? Like heck they were. So he has bought four diamonds, one for each of his children. They are to bury it in the garden and that's their inheritance.
Jake's mother and father find this distressing. He keeps asking them what they have done to prepare for it all. Well, not very much, they admit. It will be all sorted out, Jake, think of your studies, get your clothes ready for going back to college, buy your car, stop going on about things that will never happen . . . and whatever you do, don't mention a word of this to your grandfather who is full of cracked ideas already. Jake says this is typical. Just typical. Bury your heads, pretend that someone else is going to pull us out of the fire.
Well, Bertie Ahern did say that we should be prepared, some weeks ago. Oh yes, Jake is very scornful. And did he say what would happen when there are no social welfare cheques issued, and when supermarkets can't log into their ordering chain, and when the traffic lights and railway signals won't work.
Did he?
And of course Jake is sure that Bertie and the boys have a big plan ready for the life support machines, when they go pearshaped. Naturally Jake sneers they'll all be flying on the first of January to test how well the air traffic control is working, and going up and down in lifts for fun.
Jake has changed, say his mother and father. Oh yes, he is much more polite, he is helpful around the house, he is a joy to have back again. He is much more caring and concerned than he used to be. He sends an email every day to Beth and sometimes prints hers out to show them. Its always full of plans how they are going to live on the farm like a sort of Amish family.
Jake's parents are glad he became so gentle when he went to live with these people, but they can't take his born again millennium fears seriously. It's as if he joined a cult. They ask their friends, casually, you know, over drinks, "Surely it's all nonsense. There won't be any apocalypse. Someone has it all in hand. "Haven't they?"
Haven't they?"