‘Mutual confidence’ returns as Tiger Cub starts to prowl

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Happiness and riches don’t always go hand-in-hand but to quote an old saying I heard from my late father: “Money mightn’t be everything but it does help you to enjoy your misery.”

Over the past couple of months there have been little indications that Ireland is beginning to buzz again despite all the fears about the implications about Brexit.

Some of the old lucre is beginning to flow again and with the recent run of fine weather ‘the humour’ has returned to a lot of faces, and by now, talk of ‘the crash’ seems to be fading more and more into history.

Of course, any glance at financial history will indicate that all these things are cyclical with the boom and bust wheel always turning – the trick is not to let the bubble expand too quickly.

Old Micawber, a waffly but worldly wise character in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, had a very simple definition of happiness and misery and all based on the difference between being in the black or the red financially.

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence] – result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six – result misery.”

The only problem with money – apart from the obvious one of not having enough of it – is that it will never take a day off your age.

So, what are some of the key signs that a cub of the Celtic Tiger is beginning to start prowling again? Many of them relate to work and jobs and over recent weeks I’ve met a few agricultural contractors who’ve had to do a lot of trawling to get young lads to driver their tractors this Summer.

There are also indications that an expanding dairy sector in Ireland could be starved of essential key labour over the coming years, as school-leavers opt for a more academic route and jobs that give them time off at the weekend and a more regular working routine.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.