Lighten Up with Denis Lehane: Valentine boost for the card industry
Last week, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker received a mighty lump of a greeting card from Ireland.
It was a thank you card. Thanking him for what? Well, I’m not entirely sure.
With his Brexit work far from complete, the card was more than a little premature.
But that didn’t stop Jean-Claude from showing it off.
A bit like giving a man a pat on the back and he only after beginning the task of mucking out a calf house.
I’d hold tough with the thank you, at least until the crust of the dung heap was opened up.
For there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip, and there’s only six inches between a pat on the back and a kick up the arse.
No, I think we need to see a bit more action from Jean-Claude before heaping praise on the lad.
Anyhow, clearly the man receives little by way of appreciation, for he seemed to be very taken with the massive card from Ireland, and he did little more from then on than showing the card to the world.
Even a busy man like our own Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, on a trip to Brussels during the week, had to entertain Jean-Claude by looking at it, and he not even having the time to look after the hospitals and nurses back home.
So there they were, Jean-Claude and our Taoiseach, staring into this big yoke of a greeting card, as if it were the Book Of Kells.
And fair play to the Taoiseach, he didn’t snigger or make fun of Jean-Claude.
He kept a straight face, when you or I might well have told the commissioner to “cop on” to himself and act like a man. For, at the end of the day, ’twas only an old card, for a job half done.
Anyhow, as I mentioned at the beginning, Jean-Claude’s card was massive in size, the likes of which I had never seen before.
The humongous thing was like something plucked from Gulliver’s Travels.
The card was almost bigger than Jean-Claude, ’twas about the size of a giant box of cornflakes, and possibly weighed as much as well.
I dare say a fine lump of a tree had to be felled in order to manufacture Jean-Claude’s card. It was a magnificent thing in ways, and got the whole world talking about large cards.
Tongues were wagging from Kathmandu to Kilgarvan.
But the thing that worries me most of all now is that the delight Jean-Claude displayed on receiving his card might trigger a world wide demand for humongous cards for all occasions.
With nobody any longer having time for a normal sized card.
Today, as you well know, is Valentines Day, one of the greatest greeting card buying days of the year, and I needn’t tell you, even the smallest fart of a card these days can cost an arm and a leg.
So, the mind boggles as to what a card like Jean-Claude’s might cost, both in financial and environmental terms. If these Juncker cards become the norm, whole jungles of forest may have to be cleared, and whole bank accounts drained, in order to fund the fad.
Worse again, for me, today also happens to be my wife’s birthday, so if I had to present her with two Juncker- sized cards, I dare say a bullock would need to get the road to fund the exercise.
Jean-Claude Juncker’s card, far from a pleasant surprise, could in the long term be one of the worst things to come from Brexit.
