A blast from the west, and much of Ireland was returned to the 1980s, without electricity, or telephones, and naturally without the internet, where it remains. In the 1980s, we blamed the state monopolies for our misfortunes, but that was wrong. Back then, as now, ESB always loved a challenge. My home today is a thousand feet above sea level: what is a bracing breeze in Bray can easily extract teeth where I live. Yet in the midst of the storm last weekend, I found an ESB engineer inspecting the powerlines, gallantly leaning into the sou’wester like a salty old bosun on the forecastle of a tea-clipper rounding the Cape. Meanwhile, trees hurtled by, and cackling electric cables did the dance of the seven veils around his head, just as his predecessors managed forty years ago.
Indeed, I noticed recently that my local chemists were offering free contraception, and again, rather like the 1980s. Yes, thanks to Charles Haughey, condoms were still outlawed, but enterprising young people would use empty crisp packets instead, or so the legends of those dark ages tell us.
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