Quick post
In every household in Ireland the recession and the economic crisis has taken its toll. In some the effects are stark and plain for all to see:
You’re wearing cheaper running shoes when out training.
In other households the effects are more subtle – your children are walking to school without shoes and you’ve burned all the furniture.
So far, in our house, despite having to down grade the wine to Aldi’s finest and explaining to the kids that you can play with many toys over and over again and they don’t have to be replaced every week the effects haven’t been too drastic (ignoring the mountain of debt attached to my name in some bank somewhere, obviously).
Until this morning.
While brushing the kids’ hair my wife broke the brush. (I had to look up the difference between a brush and a comb for this blog post – a sign of my dedication to this blog and my stupidity in equal measure).
How you break a brush handle I don’t know but this incident will be the defining of the recession in our family. The nexus about which all of the kids’ scarred memories of childhood will be anchored.
How d’you mean? – as we’d say in Ireland.
Well, everybody has an item from their childhood that represented their parents generations’ thrift. A broken wooden spoon, a walking stick repaired with insulation tape, a re-purposed stick or brick. To our eyes they were broken and so cheap as to be easily replaced and beyond repair. To our parents they worked just as well when broken so there was no need to replace them. In fact, their broken-ness was a constant reminder to be careful and to mind what you have.
If the broken brush isn’t replaced by the end of the week you’ll next see me with a piece of string for a belt and three children with profound psychological problems.
The running is going fine and I promise to post a review of the last of my NB 1064s in the next post.
The Beirut Taxi 
Dealz have 16 tubes of superglue for €1.49. ! I thought it was for one tube until yer wan went and got the other 15 in the slab !! Nothing is broken anymore…it’s superglued instead !!!
Come to think if it they mght do brushes too !!
you can get brushes in the 2 Euro shop!
my childhood was ruined by broken pair of nana mouskouri glasses, fixed with sellotape.
Marty, I know the feeling. Like having to go to the beach in your underpants and your parents telling you that nobody else on the beach notices that they’re underpants. And there you are, the stares of a thousand strangers burning into your little brain – the boy in the underpants.
I am using a broken hairdryer for the past five years. It broke after baggage handlers molested my bag in a Portugal airport. I taped it together with duck tape and although I have enough Boots points to get myself at least three brand new hairdryers, I still prefer to hold on to my old one.
Tell the kids broken stuff is cool. My work glasses have been taped together for 6 months. Not the economy — ours is going great — my Scottish heritage.