Weekendvy: What it means:That niggling feeling that everybody else is having a wild weekend of fun and frolics, while your weekend consists of watching X Factor, mowing the lawn or mooching around Mothercare in search of baby bibs.
You’re so ashamed of your boring life that when colleagues ask you what you did over the weekend, you decide to embellish the truth: “Well, Friday night we checked out that new fetish club in town, then on Saturday we helicoptered down to Electric Picnic and hung out backstage with Arcade Fire all day, then we had a nice, romantic dinner at Ashford Castle, and on Sunday we headed down to the K Club just in time to cheer on our good friend Padraig Harrington at the tee-off.”
A recent survey by Travelodge found that 27 per cent of Britons lied to work colleagues about what they did on the weekends, pretending they went out to dinner parties, had romantic meals or took mini-breaks when all they did was clean the house and catch up on their sleep. So next time your workmate boasts about their dirty weekend in Paris or pampering day in Monart, ask to see the receipts.
How to say it:"You posted a fake photo of yourself with Lady Gaga on Facebook? Wow, you've got a bad dose of weekendvy.
A night to remember
Here’s Faye Dinsmore, student, model and fashion blogger extraordinaire, and the organiser behind Ireland’s Most Influential in Fashion awards night. This evening of high jinks and fashion – at Dublin’s Mansion House on March 31st – will celebrate talent and energy in the Irish fashion world, from the work of up-and-coming designers to that of photographers, stylists, editors, models, PRs and retailers. Ms Dinsmore will lead a panel of judges including Karen Millen for the awards and there will be a lot of pzazz on show, with drinks and canapes at 7pm, followed by a catwalk show.
To get in on the act, The Irish Times and fashion correspondent Deirdre McQuillan have asked some of our favourite boutiques around the country to showcase Irish style. A limited number of tickets are available at €38 for Irish Times readers – to register, go to irishtimes.com/style-extra.
Bright ideas for Dublin
THERE REALLY IS SOMETHINGgoing on out there. Just when we thought we had hit rock bottom – or rather because we actually have hit it – suddenly there's a bubbling of ideas about what we could and should be doing to make Dublin a better place. At the recent Urban Party in Smithfield diverse "Dublin Voices" got up on a stage in the Complex, with just three minutes each to give their visions of the city to a few hundred enthusiastic urbanists.
They were all Facebook friends and Twitter followers of the Irish Architecture Foundation, famous for its Open House weekends and originator of a series of online opinion polls inspired by Paul Kearns and Motti Ruimy’s book, Redrawing Dublin.
The best idea came from Cllr Dermot Lacey, and putative nominee for mayor of Dublin. He wants the Bank of Ireland on College Green to be the headquarters of the Dublin Regional Authority, in part return for the €3.5 billion the taxpayer has sunk in the bank. Historian and columnist Elaine Byrne would tear down the trees in College Green to turn it into a vast pedestrian zone – as it was years ago. The former Parliament would house the mayor, and its forecourt would be a speakers’ corner.
Architect Alan Mee cautioned, however, that there was no mention in the Fine Gael-Labour programme of having a directly-elected mayor. His own “big idea” was to have an International Nama Building Exhibition to show what we could do with all the assets we now control. Indigo and Cloth retailer Garrett Pitcher said empty premises were “killing everyone’s heart and soul”, so he wanted to see all the vacant properties controlled by Nama put on a website so that people could rent them, even on a short-term basis.
Senior Dublin City Council planner Kieran Rose pushed the idea of a new City Library for the 21st century on a high-profile site at Church Street, a hole-in-the-ground owned by the State. Musician Gerry Godley expressed delight that “grandiose gestures” such as “putting Anthony Gormley’s torso in the Liffey” had been killed off – but was even more enthusiastic about the arrival of a new French bakery on Moore Street, where you can get fresh croissants, even on a Sunday.
Other “metaphors for what recovery will look like” were reeled off by Michael McDermott, of Le Cool Dublin: butchers opening after 6pm, more water fonts and public seating, all-weather football pitches, swings and water slides, and paying buskers “who actually entertain”. Skills bartering, staggered pub and club opening hours, reclaiming unfinished sites as community gardens, a free city-wide wifi system, permission to drink in parks on sunny days, and open-air ping pong and chess tables were further suggestions.
Sandra O’Connell, editor of Architecture Ireland, said what a city “blighted by unfinished business” really needed to lift everyone’s spirits was “poets to roam our streets” – and even a “city poet” to go with Dublin’s designation by Unesco as World City of Literature. Community activist Ken McCue, who grew up in Smithfield, called for an “inquest” into the boom-and-bust, with people in the dock wearing sackcloth and ashes.
Vanessa Fielding, artistic director of the Complex, noted that all of its events take place in a “Nama-owned building” and the developer now wants to turn the cavernous double-height space into another outlet for Tesco Express, if he can. “If we don’t have a soul to the city, it’s just a barren landscape,” she said, to a big round of applause from the standing-room-only audience. It was like a return of the stirring days of the Dublin Crisis Conference in 1986, when the city was last on its knees
