You are out of coffee, so you nip down to the local shop and buy a new jar, right?
Perhaps, but life is not so simple for Gertie Deacon, a widow living in a two-bedroom terraced house in a quiet, secluded square off Stephen Street in Kilkenny.
Last week Gertie did run out of coffee, but when you're living on a widow's pension of £81.10 a week you have to be cautious about every item of expenditure. So Gertie, who broke her leg earlier this year, set out on crutches for Dunnes Stores, on the other side of the city.
"I don't drink tea. So I just took a chance, to see if I could get a jar cheap enough in Dunnes. I got one for 63p," she says.
The incident is mentioned in passing during Gertie's interview with The Irish Times. A woman of cheerful disposition who "loves" the house allocated to her by Kilkenny Corporation three years ago, she is not one for exaggerating her plight.
Much of the discussion is taken up with her hobbies, including gardening, arts and crafts and photography. When she's fit enough she goes ballroom dancing and she's a sports fanatic, as the living-room poster of this year's All-Ireland winning Kilkenny hurling team demonstrates.
Introduce the subject of the politicians whose decisions shape the quality of her life, however, and her demeanour changes. "You feel like getting them and ripping them apart half the time, and that's the truth," she says.
She laughs at the ferocity of the remark, but knows her circumstances are no laughing matter. Raised in an orphanage in Dublin, she has no children, so when her husband died 17 years ago she was left without relatives.
Unlike others on social welfare who might be able to call on family support, Gertie must make do on her weekly pension from the State. This means she usually has no money from Monday to Friday. Treatment of her leg requires frequent hospital visits, so if she hasn't got the £4 each-way taxi fare, she borrows it.
Of the £81.10 she receives, £20.28 is deducted at source, through an arrangement with the post office. This comprises payments of £5, £8 and £7.20 towards her electricity, gas and telephone bills respectively. That leaves her with just over £60. Out of that she spends £11 on food, £10 on the rent of her house, £10 on milk and £10 on the hire purchase of her television. The only payment she gets in addition to the £81.10 is a £5 winter fuel allowance, paid from October for six months each year. In contrast to food prices which, Gertie notes, are rising by the week, the fuel allowance has not gone up since 1984.
She regards the £8 increase received in the Budget as "a disgrace to the nation", given the continuing discrimination between widows under 66 and old-age pensioners, who are on higher pensions and are now to get an extra £12. "The £8 might make a bit of difference, but by the time it comes through in April everything will be gone up in the shops," she says.
Although Gertie will soon qualify for the old-age pension, her current plight is not unusual, according to Ms Teresa Mullen, an independent county councillor and founder of the Kilkenny-based Prevent Poverty Action Group.
There may be fewer people living in poverty than before, she says, but those trapped on low levels of social welfare are worse off now than they were. "A widow with four children six years ago would not be as poor as she is today. People literally have to beg to survive."
"Irish Lives" will appear in The Irish Times each Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday until Christmas
