Dublin airport is a unique institution, because it is THE airport for most of the country. The huge majority of the country have used it at some time, and it is a wonderful place to observe the state of the nation. Five years ago, it was where one would see Polish builders (Is there any Polish man under 40 with hair?) departing home for the weekend as this seasons Lithuanian au-pair clacked by in high heels and sprayed on 1980s blue jeans. Today, you see that scene we thought we had banished, as a tearful mammy has to be pulled off a young departing engineer as he reminds her “Mammy, it’s only Vancouver! It’s not the moon!”

You still see the holiday crowd of course, second-degree burn lobster red and shivering as they come through arrivals like they’ve been released from an alien abduction, blinking in disbelief as if knowledge of Irish weather and the power of sunrays was wiped by a Venusian probe from their minds.

Everyone always does the same thing at arrivals, has that milli-second hope that someone came to meet them at the airport. They rarely do.

The ads, normally for mobile phone services, always have a coy tone, hinting at illicit sexual encounters. It would be fun if they took it to the logical conclusion. “Try our new Morning After Pill app!”

Then there are the airline staff, walking with that swagger that says “Yes, we were once impressed by AirportLand too, but now it’s so yesterday.” You can’t help thinking that in every gay nightclub east of Berlin there must be a respected photo of Michael O’Leary, the Great F**king Liberator who gave them all jobs.

Security is always a saga, especially if you, like me, have the ability to always stand behind the person who gets to the X-Ray machine and then decides to see if they have anything in their pockets, liquids on their person, or just realise that they are at an airport. Could we not have an instant “F**king Eejit” queue where they are immediately made stand with all the other dopes? Let them all hold each other up away from us.

Passport Control needs work. You just know that whilst every other border force in the world spends a lot of time working on cultural sensitivity policies and seminars, our lads have been handed a torn corner from The Racing Post with “Keep an eye out for black fellas!” scribbled on it in biro.

Finally, as we board, there’s the always entertaining last scuffle with the fella trying to defy the laws of physics fitting his bag into the metal frame measuring thing, and giving himself a blood clot in the effort, as Helga from Latvia looks on coldly.

We’re all going to IKEA!

It’s still, for the Irish, an event. You don’t just “pop in” to IKEA, but put aside a half day, usually with a “Sure, we can get a bite to eat out there” thrown in. Sitting in the restaurant, you can see the spectrum. The young still-in-love couple, debating, in between nuzzling, what will fit where in their new home together. An inordinate amount of time and coy looks goes into the tour of the bedroom section. Their Polish or Lithuanian counterparts are much less tactile, their relationship almost formal. He looks built to strangle a Soviet infantryman (often the truth) and she looks like a perfume model, striking and bet (yes, bet) into 1980s style jeans that would look ridiculous on anyone else, but with cold, dead eyes that would chill a happy-go-lucky Irishman. He can look, he can want, but he would not want to keep.

Then there’s the couple with kids. Both automatons, dealing with the ever rotating cycle of child needs and demands, barely looking at each other. She gazes off into the distance, morosely recognising that this is her actual life. He uses the opportunity to steal a glance at the gorgeous Pole strutting by in boots normally reserved for a Waffen SS commander.

The journey through the store has two effects. It gives ideas to one group about how to better manage their homes: “I didn’t even know you could buy those hanging things! See! We could hang your mother from the stairs with that!” and reminds the other group of how grotty their home actually is.

When in doubt, some form of  DVD rack-slash-bookshelf is bought. After all, they’ve come all this way and sure they’re practically giving them away and anyway we can always use more shelves. She rolls her eyes at his DIY aspirations. At the food section, a browse ends up with a bar of chocolate for the drive home and a box of what looks like cookies. He’s not sure, but they look like cookies. In IKEA headquarters in the Netherlands (yes is the answer to your question), accountants scratch their heads and wonder just what is the obsession with dog biscuits in the Irish market?

A moment of panic ensues in the car park, as to whether the long cardboard thing will fit in, even with that great solution of Irish men across the world to any spacial problem: “We’ll fold the seat down!”

It eventually fits, as long as she doesn’t mind twisting her body in the passenger seat with the suppleness of the average Phuket lapdancer. The kids are stacked into the back seat like illegal immigrants in a container truck.

Finally home, he goes at it with gusto, thinking that he really should have bought that mini-toolkit they were selling at the cashpoints (“Practically giving them away!”). Nearly taking the finger off twice with the butterknife he uses to turn the screws, he loses his temper and beats the last screw in with the butt of the knife, sucking his other finger to stop the blood. Fortunately, she’s in the garden stopping one child trying to feed the younger one to the dog. He admires his handiwork. She’ll never see the coerced screw, and it’ll be grand as long as nothing too heavy is put on it. Like DVDs. Or books.

She’s beautiful. Her life has to be perfect, right?

To look at her, you’d think she has it all. She is very beautiful, and there is not a single day that goes by that her image doesn’t appear in VIP or The Star or in an ad campaign. So why is she sitting at home alone on a Friday night with an M&S meal for one and a Downton Abbey marathon on the SkyPlus? She has no shortage of friends, and certainly no shortage of male admirers, indeed all she has to do is walk into any pub or nightclub in Ireland and they’re flocking. But that’s it. They do come flocking, and she can see it in their eyes. The look that recognises her as that girl from that poster/magazine/thing on TV3 and how I’d love to bang her and tell my mates about it. They see a commodity, a mobile bragging right, and she sees they see it too. Last time she gave into a moment of weakness, and woke up in bed with a guy who was pretty fit and seemed pretty grounded, until he tried to take a picture of her whilst she slept. What was even more disturbing was that he couldn’t even see what the problem was, and turned nasty. She’s had boyfriends as famous as her too, and with that came her lovelife as public property and discovering their casual attitude to infidelity on the front of a tabloid as she went shopping with her mother. Her older sister, who didn’t quite inherit the same beautiful gene, loves when she visits, and wants to talk about her glamorous life whilst she, the sister, only has this, pointing at her two kids thrashing the house in front of the telly whilst her boring but loving husband snores loudly in front of the fire after his steak and kidney pie. Her younger niece, approaching ten, is fascinated by her cool auntie and her beautiful photos in ALL the magazines which  she cuts out and keeps in a scrapbook. The niece wants to be just like her when she grows up, which is funny, because she increasingly envies her sister and family and yes, even her boring but loving husband.

They can be both women and men, and you see them at big family events or social gatherings like christenings or communions, and they stand out. Yes, the parents with young kids do make an effort, but it can only be that, with the huge time-devouring monster that is raising children eating up what used to be gym time or getting one’s hair done. But the overly interested, being single, don’t have that pressure. They’re in the gym everyday, and still wear designer labels that are always dry cleaned and look immaculate and most of all don’t have patches of dried baby sick on any of their clothes, or those double rings under the eyes that only a sick child up all night can endow.

Curiously, they’re not really drawn to each other, but to other people’s husbands or wives. Maybe it’s the position of strength they enjoy, a handsome and well turned out man giving a tired and feeling under appreciated young mother that flirtatious look that her husband hasn’t given her in years. Or the attractive, elegant but age appropriate woman with the playful hand on someone else’s husband’s arm, laughing at his jokes, or wearing those health and safety defying heels that his wife gave up after the arrival of their eldest.

They circle the room, like sharks looking for the faintest hint of blood in the water, ready to move in on the former rugby star who still charms but groans at the jowly reflection staring back at him in the mirror, or the previous shiny haired Alex Girl who takes out the former Little Black Dress of choice to look at when she wants to feel really bad about herself.

You can almost hear the Jaws theme in the background.

By all accounts, he’s a lovely fella. He’s good looking, slim, tall, well spoken, intelligent. On paper he should be a huge success. Except…what is it? He just doesn’t have it. In short, he’s the Mitt Romney of Irish television. His shows boast “chat”, and “familiar faces” and “much, much more” and are very well produced professionally, and he really works hard at being the cheeky chappy. His gurus are Conan O’Brien and the young David Letterman and maybe Jonathan Ross, and he spends hours watching DVDs of them, trying to find his eureka moment, and distill what they have into something useful, but God love him, it just isn’t happening. When he attempts to develop a “nice to see you…” style catchphrase, it bombs painfully: “I’m good tonight, how are you?” hoping for a “good tonight!” roarback, instead he gets silence and a mutter that sounds like “clucking mildo”.

For a laugh, he went with a few mates to a tarot card reader. She ran from the tent wailing, seeing him in twenty years time putting a revolver in his mouth during a Late Late tribute to B*witched special, and splashing his brains all over the iPad 7 that now presents the show. Everyone in the audience gets a toaster as compensation.