Japanese if you please

They're just checking their balance

My ma stayed over last night and she let rip. 'What the hell are you at?' she said, holding up a jar of Greene & Blacks drinking chocolate. 'And what's this carry on?' she added holding up a half eaten pineapple, slowly dying in tinfoil. But it was the packet of fruit fusion tea bags that threw her over the edge.

' I was 17 before I ate my first banana', she announced before adding, 'we used to get an egg a month in those days and even then you had to split it 4 ways and if there was a man in the house who was lucky to have work, then he got the egg.' Steady, ma!

This is a woman who grew up during the war, not the emergency. The only butter she had enjoyed from '39-'45 was when her older sister, on the pre-text of seeing a maiden aunt in Dublin, managed to smuggle some up her jumper and get past the Belfast customs at the train station on the way home.
But guess what - she's lived a better life for it. She doesn't over-eat or over-drink. She can run up an aran jumper in a few days, bake apple pies and beef and guiness stews and can use the internet better than me at the age of 73.

And then i got to thinking how stupid our generation is. We may have, during the tiger years, earned more than our parents ever did but now that's all come to an abrupt end. And what life skills have we learned?

We're a nation of twits who twitter but who can't cook, knit, mend, darn or save.

'Time to get like the Japanese' she said, giving me a stern look in the eye. Apparently they're pulling in their collective obi and are getting very zen about their yen.

I then looked around my kitchen with fresh, post-war eyes and I now feel cleansed. There'll be no more fresh pineapples or knobby drinking chocolate lying around and tea bags will now be used twice. So, so long the good times, I don't think they really suited us anyway.