May is a tricky month, and not just because the great opaque tights dilemma becomes an issue for many women, writes ORNA MULCAHY
MAY DAY. Or should that be mayday, mayday! Ireland is sinking fast, according to the ESRI, ruining the week with its Wednesday prediction that the economy would shrink by a nightmare 9.2 per cent this year.
For the 88.6 per cent of us who still have jobs, that shrinkage is nigh – we’ll see it in our next pay packet.
This week I noticed colleagues examining their April payslips closely and wistfully. They will not see their likes again. The next ones will be much reduced, after all the levies have been deducted and handed over to a spendthrift Government that doesn’t seem to be able to read the public mood right now and is carrying blithely on about its business, talking at us and not to us. So on Tuesday we had the news that Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin doesn’t want to give up the teaching position he left 20 years ago, in case he is turfed out of politics, and he a man with a young family.
It’s sickening.
We are paying this man’s salary, and come the day that he is dropped from the Cabinet, or fails at the poll, he can rely on a lump sum and a minister’s pension greater than most of us could dream of.
And he wants his teaching seat kept warm for him too?
It’s too much.
Next day, we had Paul Connors, recently appointed PR director of the HSE spinning absolute nonsense on the Pat Kenny radio show about a new campaign to raise awareness of the workings of the HSE – poor misunderstood monster that it is.
The big plan – on which a team of people is employed – is to persuade celebrities to get the message across to the great unwashed. Solicitor Gerald Kean is the first such candidate. He has been invited to meet HSE top brass (will the HSE pay his taxi expenses now his driving licence has been suspended, asked Pat); he can ask them as many questions as he likes, and then go out on to the drinks party circuit and let people know what the true situation is and, presumably, what a sterling job is being done.
The texts came flying in. We don’t want spin doctors, we just want a health service that works, was the message from scores of listeners who were clearly appalled that someone is actually being paid from the public purse to come up with this kind of tripe. Mr Connors took it all in his stride, Rody Molloy style, even the message from the 77-year old women who recently had to mop floors in the hospital where her husband was having an operation so that he wouldn’t catch a bug. Hard to put a spin on that.
On to more immediate issues though. May is a tricky month, as any woman devoted to her opaque tights will tell you. When should one give them up, is the question that most needs answering right now. The first, bare, bronzed and wind-whipped shanks have been seen at Punchestown so the days of the 40 denier are numbered.
Prime Time could do us all a favour by looking into the matter. Forget the state of the nation, park euthanasia, just tell us, Miriam, how to make that difficult transition, wardrobe wise, from spring to summer. I promise you viewing figures would soar. The country is sick of bad news and shocking statistics and all the while the weather is improving and there are weddings and other big events on the horizon. We desperately need to know what to wear. Is yellow really the new black? Yes or no to shoulder pads? Can fit-flops ever be smart, what’s the story with ruffles, and is it true that jumpsuits are back?
Seeking answers, more than 400 women showed up to the Mansion House on Wednesday evening for a fashion show and dinner staged by The Gloss magazine.
The Taoiseach missed the fun – he was in the room next door at a book launch, being stalked by RTÉ for a soundbite on the economy. His wife Mary, though, was with The Gloss crowd packed into the Round Room, sipping champagne from individual mini bottles of Moët before sitting down to a (lean) chicken supper and the business of the evening.
There was a short pep talk from Vodafone consumer director Carolann Lennon who urged women not to slump at their desks over lunch but to get out there and meet people – while Gloss publisher Jane McDonald reminded us that if we stop shopping, people lose jobs.
Then it was on with the show. Great clothes from Irish designers Aideen Bodkin and Helen McAlinden vied with essentials from MS, House of Fraser and Diffusion.
There were some great ideas – get a summer trench, buy a simple black dress and load on the pearls, turn that Marks silk shift into a T-shirt. Invest in a well-cut French tweed suit. Wear very high heels with everything.
And drink lots of Bovril.
That last bit of advice came from the lady next to me who was planning to go on a fluid only diet – it’s the only way, she says, to actually fit into summer clothes.