Trading insults on the Titanic as the iceberg comes into view

Date Published: {J}

This is the story of a couple who go into their bank manager to seek a top-up to their mortgage; they won’t tell him the real reason they need the money, but it’s because of the big extension they built when times were good.

Now our friends – let’s call them Brian and Ina – are in deep financial trouble and worst of all they’re bickering over everything, blaming each other for their financial woes and squabbling to the point that they may well break-up anyway.

But even though they can’t agree on anything they do know that they can’t afford to lose the house, because they have a flock of kids who did nothing to contribute to the financial crisis – they didn’t even want the extension – but they do need to have somewhere to lay their tired heads.

So our sparring duo show up at the bank with a cock-and-bull story about how they’ll tighten their collective belt if they can only get the few bob that will stop them losing face and their home.

The fact that they can’t agree on a single one of these austerity measures is irrelevant – once they get the money they can sort out the small print because it’s only a matter of time before the housing market takes off again and their mock-Georgian home is worth millions once again.

So they agree to cut the children’s pocket money by a euro a week instead of cutting back on the wine which might have shaved €50 off the domestic bill.

They’ll charge the kids for using water and put a small rent on their rooms; they’ll try and attract more foreign students and stick them in the attic and they will only use the family car when it’s for official business.

What they didn’t know before going to the bank however was that old Mr Sweeney had been forced into early retirement to be replaced by Herr Fritzel, who had been appointed by head office in Germany to sort out the mess.

Apparently Sweeney, who played golf with our sparring couple and was a fellow member of the local Rotary Club, had been lending money like he’d won the Euromillions jackpot. Which in a way, he had.But when the Germans had a look at the books, they decided that Sweeney would be better off pursuing a full-time career in golf and Rotarian lunches – so they moved in a whizz kid anxious to make a name for himself on an international stage.

Thus our cash-strapped couple, who’d spent the morning fighting over who’d be in charge of the household budget once the kids had a vote on it after Christmas, now found themselves seated in front of a man who never played golf, never took lunch and in actual fact didn’t believe that either of them was capable of running a bath, let alone a domestic economy.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.