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open your eyes. look up at the sun.
Jan. 30th, 2011 05:26 pmThe things you don't notice.
I live in a place that's never been the most affluent place in the county of Dublin. It's full of distressed-looking women in tracksuits pushing prams or trailing young children; fifteen-sixteen year olds who gather down by the beach in summer to knock back cans and smoke; a wee bit of drugging that you either partake in or carefully avoid knowing about; and lately, a pervasive sense of hopelessness.
It took the news that the café I sometimes get lunch in is closing down this weekend to make me actually look around me. You live in a place, often enough you walk through it while it's changing by degrees and you don't hardly notice. This town's never been a bright, happening place with a young and professional future. Or even a staid and middle-aged one. But while I was in school, and up until a couple of years ago even, it was lively and hopeful.
Now the unemployment's gone way back up, and the dole queue trails out the post office door, and To Let signs are everywhere. Retail units completed two years ago have never been occupied, and what diversity existed in a landscape of pubs and takeaways is rapidly contracting.
It's making me a slight touch gloomy.
I live in a place that's never been the most affluent place in the county of Dublin. It's full of distressed-looking women in tracksuits pushing prams or trailing young children; fifteen-sixteen year olds who gather down by the beach in summer to knock back cans and smoke; a wee bit of drugging that you either partake in or carefully avoid knowing about; and lately, a pervasive sense of hopelessness.
It took the news that the café I sometimes get lunch in is closing down this weekend to make me actually look around me. You live in a place, often enough you walk through it while it's changing by degrees and you don't hardly notice. This town's never been a bright, happening place with a young and professional future. Or even a staid and middle-aged one. But while I was in school, and up until a couple of years ago even, it was lively and hopeful.
Now the unemployment's gone way back up, and the dole queue trails out the post office door, and To Let signs are everywhere. Retail units completed two years ago have never been occupied, and what diversity existed in a landscape of pubs and takeaways is rapidly contracting.
It's making me a slight touch gloomy.
