The old Columbian marching powder

DURING this year’s rainy season, temperatures have been soaring to 12 degrees at midnight in west Cork.

In Celtic Tiger spring-times I used to say, “I don’t mind the heat but will those damn rock-breakers never stop!” Now, an eerie silence hangs over unfinished housing estates in far-flung villages. All changed, changed utterly since last summer, and a profound slow-down is born.

The thing is, we were never a fast nation until recently — change in Ireland was snail’s pace, sometimes dangerously so. And then, lo, the rush into it! The nation on a rush! And, if the economic blast off wasn’t enough for upwardly mobile 20-somethings and 30-somethings, there was cocaine.