A Different View
Pocket money should have been a good lesson for life
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Whatever happened to the notion of pocket money – the fifty pence you got on a Thursday evening that had to do you for the next week?
You could splurge it all on Shoot! magazine and make the best of it until the next edition came around, or you could space it out and spend it on penny bars or liquorice pipes to dip in sherbet – the choice was entire yours.
Incidentally, if you saw someone eating white sherbet powder on the end of a black liquorice pipe now, you’d assume it they were doing serious drugs – how times have changed.
But the bottom line on pocket money was, once it was gone, it was gone – and there was no point pleading for more because you needed to but sweets of a Saturday.
The odd time, during summer, a wafer of vanilla ice cream might come your way but outside of exceptional circumstances, you budgeted for your week better than any Minister for Finance has ever managed.
Now it’s cash on demand – ‘I need money for books/football boots/a soccer match/a disco/drinks for the bus going to the soccer match/a new Playstation game’ – and the notion of saving or delaying this instant gratification is as alien as Fingers Fingleton without a fat cat pension.
Or maybe that’s just me living in a parallel universe, because recent research in the UK showed that the amount of pocket money children receive there is actually on the up – to an average of just over twelve quid, but peaking at £22 during the school holidays.
Unless they’ve started smoking at an age where it can still stunt their growth, you’d wonder what kids need £22 for – particularly when they will still tap you up for everything they need as they need it.
Of course as teenage years give way to the acne era, the money probably goes on cheap beer or Buckfast which is a horse of a whole different colour – but it might explain why the same survey showed children claiming that, on average, they need twice as much as they’re getting to meet their weekly needs.
There used to be the option of supplementing your pocket money with a part-time job – filling petrol or a few hours in a shop; if you lived in a city you might take on a paper round, or if you lived where I did in Oughterard you looked forward to May when you could catch those little Mayflys with a cheap net and flog a shoebox full of them to visiting anglers.
These days, actual jobs are hard to come by, never mind part-time posts for bored teenagers – and anyway, how will you ever progress to the next level in Call of Duty if you cannot spend the entire summer on the Playstation?
Maybe it’s the onset of middle age, but there is no notion of waiting for something to happen anymore – back in the day the anticipation of Christmas morning began sometime in November; now you can go to a toy store on December 22 and you’ll see kids getting toys three days before Santa arrives down their chimney with another full delivery.
If you were unlucky enough to be born in December, you’d find that Christmas and birthday presents eventually rolled into one – because you couldn’t expect double gratification within two weeks of each other. Now they’d be ringing Childline if you came up with that excuse.
And yet I remember the joys of pocket money because I was one of those who spent it before it burned a hole in my pocket.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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