It all starts on the honeymoon. The couple look at each other in panic. They unconsciously decide to have children in order to hide from each other. Children will distract them for the fifty-three years it will take them to leave home. Desperate sex follows and nothing happens. But it is easier to keep trying than to get a divorce when they get home.
Women control the business end of having babies. If a couple are having difficulty conceiving, the first step is to eliminate the possibility that it might be the man’s fault. The woman should have sex with someone at work who agrees to a sex-only relationship on the desk every evening after work for six weeks. The woman should pick someone from the willing candidates who has the same hair colour and a passing resemblance to her husband. If, after six weeks, she fails to become pregnant, she should inform her husband that she is having herself checked out.
I spoke with a woman who had been trying for a baby for ten years. Her obsession started by accident when she had an unplanned ectopic pregnancy that ended in her recovering in a maternity hospital. After having a fallopian tube removed, she was wandering around the hospital in a depression when she came across a pregnant seventeen-year-old in a pink nylon dressing gown, smoking a fag outside the front door. She said to my informant: ‘We all heard about you, luv. You’re the one with the baby trapped in the tube. You poor thing.’ Putting out the cigarette with her foot, she continued: ‘I have to go drop this one. It’s kicking the shit out of me. See ya!’ Enraged by the biological injustice of the world, there and then my informant resolved that, no matter what it took, she was going to have a baby. After a lot of prodding and poking by the doctors, she started on a course of IVF.
IVF consists of two things: years of tracking cycles, hormonal nasal sprays, injections and egg implants, and advice that you get from your well-meaning friends and family. The opinions of others are almost as painful as the medical procedures. The most common advice is for the couple to just relax. My informant was not impressed: ‘How can you relax when your mother-in-law tells you about the couple who just relaxed and had five sprogs in a row?’ Acupuncture, Chinese herbs, damp heat, enemas and pineapples11 also supposedly work wonders. When not giving advice, mothers-in-law ask if there is ‘any news’? The standard reply is to shout ‘No. No fucking news’, to which the standard response is ‘You have to learn to relax. Julie-down-the-road’s cousin’s girlfriend was trying for five years and then she just relaxed. Maybe ye are allergic to each other.’
During IVF treatments, men have fun and women suffer. My informant told me that she became addicted to IVF after twelve cycles, each lasting eight weeks, where you get to inject yourself like a junkie, snort hormones to stimulate your ovaries, and take your eggs out, fertilise them, put them back in and wait two weeks. This is the famous TWW.12 You find out it didn’t work but that means you can start all over again. You meet fellow addicts in the IVF waiting rooms. You exchange stories of near misses, egg counts and how you were nearly busted for having a carload of syringes. You have taken up crime to support your egg habit. You break into houses to pay for the treatments. You hold up all-night petrol stations. Your fella drives the getaway car because it is better than listening to your insane mutterings about natural births at home when he is trying to watch the football on the telly.
After the stress of ten years trying for a baby, the couple are usually so exhausted and so poor that they couldn’t be bothered separating. They agree that the easiest thing to do is to adopt a baby.
The Rules of Adoption
No ordinary Irish family would qualify for adoption. To qualify, you have to be extraordinary because you don’t want some poor orphan ending up with a typical Irish family. To be eligible to adopt, you have to wait on a list for three years. Then your application is activated after you are subjected to garda clearance. Next, you have to do a course in parenting and you have to get married to your partner. You can adopt in a cohabiting relationship, but if a couple splits up the child goes with the person whose name is on the adoption papers; it’s like a joint account – best to have two signatories in case of a fight. Then the social worker calls to your house to check that you are normal. You should think long and hard about your answers to their questions. Remember, you have to appear normal by the standards of Irish social workers. Have your wedding photo album on display on the sideboard. Be prepared to address such questions as ‘Did you get married for love or to have a baby?’, ‘How is your sex life?’, ‘Is there a history of alcoholism or depression in your family?’ The answer to all such questions is ‘No. We are actually from Belgium.’
When you get through this, you get a declaration of eligibility. You can now get a catalogue to see what kind of baby you might like. Since there are practically no Irish babies available, someone will suggest for you to go abroad. You are advised to choose a country about which you have no negative preconceptions whatsoever. For example, you are advised that if you don’t like the food of a particular country, don’t adopt a child from there. My informant’s efforts were set back two years when she suggested to her social worker that she would like a brown one to match her sofa.
Pity the poor orphan who has to live up to the expectations of fourteen years of manic effort to acquire him or her.
* * *
Dr A brings me to his Monday morning clinic at the Homeless Hostel. It is cold and raining, and not a morning to be without a nice warm bed. Feeling like I am experimenting on patients like an inept Dr Frankenstein, I decide to make myself useful. I give myself the task of making tea in the large kitchen that also functions as an improvised waiting room. Dr A sets himself up in a corridor off the kitchen and places large posters on the window to give his patients some privacy. I soon have a large pot of tea brewing.
First in is M, who tells me right away, when I ask, that she is depressed. I would also have depression if I were homeless. I handed her a cup of tea. She says, ‘Tanks, luv.’
Next in is B, who is very grumpy. He tells me to fuck off. So I do. I go back to pottering around my teapots, but B comes over to investigate. He asks, ‘What are you here for? You must be here for something. I don’t know what you are here for but you must be here for something.’ I am not yet awake enough to explain anthropological methods to him.
The room quickly fills up as I hand round the mugs of hot tea. After a weekend living on the streets, the homeless need something for depression or new dressings for wounds acquired in the battles to survive outside.
A young man in a white tracksuit tells me that Doctor S is ‘a prick’: ‘They send all the trainee doctors up to P_____ St because no one up there seems to have a clue what they are doing. I have been in and out of hospital and none of them know what they are doing. The fuckers threw me out. They are just experimenting on us. Monday morning is fierce busy because we are all here for the scripts.’13
M comes back into the kitchen from the improvised surgery. She tells me that Doctor A is a saint.
B gathers an audience for a lecture on his leg. He could be using a PowerPoint projector. ‘That’s what’s killing me,’ he says, pointing to a grisly infected knife wound running up his shin. ‘One time I had feet that could walk to Kerry on their own. Now ten feet is like climbing Mount Everest. I can’t put me foot on the floor. I sat on me bed all day yesterday crying.’ He wipes a tear from his grizzled cheek with tattooed fingers that spell H-A-T-E. ‘The doctors aren’t worried about it, but I am.’
A young girl comes in. I asked her name and she tells me it is Sue. She tells me she is sixteen. I don’t believe her because she looks much younger. I ask why she is here. ‘I am here for the script. You can’t just come down off the methadone suddenly. It is worse than heroin. You can die if you stop. Did you know that? Die!’
‘Will you have a cup of tea?’ I ask.
‘Tanks, pet.’
‘Milk?’
‘Tanks, just a drop.’
‘Sugar?’
‘Ten!’ She stands, silently mouthing the numbers,
as we both count the spoons of sugar going into her tea.
6
Business: Enough Cheek for Two Arses
Doing nothing is very hard to do…you never know when you’re finished.
(Leslie Nielsen)
Dating back to our earliest historical records, there is evidence that humans, unlike other animals, have engaged in commerce. Work is not unique to us: beavers and ants, amongst others, have reputations for relentless exertion. Commerce is not simply the production of excess to guard against lean times, something which bees do. Our commerce is highly complex and has become a social end in itself. Unlike other animals that work to live, we have developed the live-to-work principle. Our work involves congregating at photocopying machines – which had to be invented for that purpose – and gathering in the pub after a hard day of work avoidance to expend even more energy complaining about the boss.
Different cultures produce variations on business. If you want to be Irish, you should learn how to get into and ultimately succeed in the Irish workplace. After all, this is where the majority of us spend most of our waking hours. An important means of accessing any culture is to get a job in that culture.
If you can’t get a job, try being unemployed because you can learn from that as well. Being unemployed is not a passive state. There are rules governing being on the dole. You have to watch Jeremy Kyle on the telly in the mornings, from bed. Unemployment derives its meaning from work, and vice versa. To maintain this dialectical relationship between the two, you must sustain a connection with work if on the dole. This is usually achieved by applying for jobs. Keep one set of clothes clean in case you get called for interview. When you are not actually wearing these clothes, hang out in the local park in a stained overcoat or lie on the canal bank with your new friends, drinking beer and feeding the ducks and swans.
Attractive as unemployment seems, the shared misery of the workplace also has its attractions for many.
When it comes to researching doing business in Ireland, I don’t have to go undercover or engage in traditional participation or observation exercises. I don’t even have to persuade an unfortunate captain of industry to give me a job for the sake of social science. Happily, I have a lot of experience in Irish business to draw on. But I have never had a proper job so my experience is not perfect.
* * *
A Proper Job
If you want to be Irish, get yourself what we call a proper job. When you get a proper job, you might even have a career. Next to being fired, having a career is the most important thing you can aspire to in the Irish workplace. A career is a proper job with a set rank progression. These ranks should be graded with numbers so that you can easily work out where you are relative to your starting point and your colleagues. To have a successful career, you should concentrate on moving up the numbers and letters, as appropriate. At parties you can tell your fellow revellers that you are a Grade VIIa, Senior P2. Some careers have the happy knack of giving people the title of senior. When you are senior, you are entitled to perks: you get to blame the juniors; you also get to say ‘I told you so’ at management meetings, especially to other seniors.
A proper job is one in which you hope to remain for at least forty years. During those years, you may become an elected politician, complete a prison sentence or be forced to emigrate. But with a proper job, there will always be a desk for you when you are eventually thrown out of office, released early from jail or allowed to return from exile. Your eventual retirement will not be marked by any change in effort. You will simply no longer be required to turn up at the office.
The consoling thing about business is that, even if you don’t know what you are doing, it is relatively hard to kill anyone by working in the Sales Department. However, there are barriers to entry to some careers. But remember, you are Irish. Aspire to do what you love rather than what you are good at. For example, if you love singing in the shower and in front of usually polite people, become a popular singer. If you love talking about yourself and your ideas to a captive audience, become a teacher. Your passion should see you through. Sometimes you are required to be qualified, but you will always be asked to send in a CV and, if you are lucky, attend a job interview.
CV Rules
The Curriculum Vitae (CV) purports to document strictly factual information. In Ireland, we are more comfortable with fiction, so you should stick with that genre. Like everyone else, write a fictional CV because it will be more gripping than an account of your actual accomplishments. Furthermore, a CV provides a context in which you are encouraged to write about your positive attributes and achievements. Being Irish, you will naturally find this task difficult because generations of teachers and mammies will have made it impossible for you to write or think anything good about yourself without turning bright red and collapsing into a sweating heap of stammering incoherence. However, to help you achieve this seemingly impossible task, you should use imported business-speak. That was why it was invented.
When using business-speak, remember that you don’t have a life, you have experience. The first rule of CV writing is to make everything experiential. All previous tasks can be portrayed as experience, which, in turn, should always be described as valuable. Despite what you think or have been told by your mammy, you haven’t done anything that is a complete waste of time. In business, all experience is counted as positive. All normal human failings must be edited out. Your experience is always invaluable or unique; your communication is exceptional; your leadership is inspiring or innate; and your dedication to potential employers unnatural.
In business-speak there are conventions for describing your miserable life experientially. For example, using a photocopying machine should be described as managing documents, which is a valuable skill; making the tea is catering, also valuable (who doesn’t like a cuppa at work?); answering the phone is being a communications expert (where would we be without communications and experts?); and stapling the Christmas party menu together is making presentations. Don’t be hard on yourself. Drug dealing is imports and exports or sales executive experience, depending on your position in the gang – which should be described as a disparate team presenting diverse human resource challenges, which of course you successfully overcame. Safely crossing the road involves analysing complex vectors and future trajectories and implementing appropriate solutions for positive deliverables. Knowing how to cross the road is a valuable skill. Knowing how to walk and talk at the same time, while crossing the road and looking left and right, is a set of high value add-on complementary skills designed to produce optimum outcomes. You weren’t a toilet cleaner; you have supervisory experience of managing small teams under challenging olfactory conditions, where you were able to implement dedicated aromatic solutions by leveraging available paper-based resources for productive outcomes.
The second rule of CV writing is that gaps in your experience, typically caused by incarceration or years of failed college examinations, should be accounted for by a number of conventional devices. You may write, ‘left work for four years for personal reasons.’ No one in the context of an Irish interview will ask you about your personal reasons. The panel will be dying to, but they won’t ask because nothing is more embarrassing to us than personal information. Claiming to have been in a coma for four years is also acceptable and not at all embarrassing. A surprisingly high number of us have fallen victim to comatose conditions. You should not specify if the coma was drug-induced. Describe your jail time abroad as voluntary work in a non-specified overseas location, which covers a great deal. Claiming to have been travelling around Australia is an acceptable CV filler. However, remember that, while one year lost in the outback is de rigueur, four years shows a dangerous amount of individualism.
The third rule of CV writing is that you should not list your own interests, which are drinking, avoiding work, eating, staying in bed as long as possible, going home from work as early as possible, daydreaming, staying out late, composing a pocket encyclopaedia
of excuses for all occasions or assuming authority without responsibility. Ideally, your interests should be both someone else’s and be team-based, with you as the captain. While solitary activities such as reading, cinema, wine tasting, painting, hill walking, cycling, listening to music and writing gothic poetry are all evidence of an unsocial introspection, you might include them because if you do get the job you will be offered a management position.
The fourth rule is that you should nominate eminent people who have only just died as your referees. If no one famous has died recently, current unhappy employers are ideal because they will be delighted to move you on. They will usually agree to write glowingly about your experience and achievements if you promise that you will leave immediately if you get the job. In business this is what is called a win-win situation. In any case, if an employer says anything remotely accurate about your general failings, you will be able to prosecute them for defamation on the basis that being ‘completely fucking useless’ is impossible to prove in court.
Finally, write what you like in your CV, but at the interview, as they say in acting school, be that person. Many writers of Irish CVs will simply copy and paste the appropriate jargon on being a self-starting entrepreneur, a motivational leader and speaker, a genius at communications and a management innovator without taking it on board at an existential level – without doing the method training, in other words. It is not uncommon for ‘charismatic leaders’ to sit in front of interview panels in a catatonic paralysis. As one of my more successful informants told me, ‘To make a good impression at an interview, you need enough neck for two heads or enough cheek for a couple of arses.’
How to Be Irish Page 11