It’s why I came back home in a recession

Adjusting to economically gloomy Ireland has not been easy after years in New Zealand. But we laugh here more than anywhere else, says Noelle McCarthy

AN hour before midnight on Saturday, December 31, and I am in the middle of the dance floor in a pub on Sullivan’s Quay.

I’m at a New Year’s Eve party and the theme is ‘white trash’. The DJ is playing Blue Monday and the dance floor is heaving with boys in trucker caps and girls with leopardskin dresses and stick-on tattoos. I have come as a ‘slapper’ and I am doing my best to approximate redneck dancing. Up on the wall there’s a poster. Under some pints of ‘black stuff’ the legend reads ‘Settle in Cork.’ I’m trying, but it’s been a tough six months.