Digger bucket teeth in stock, said the hand-scrawled sign on a shop outside Castlebar, Co Mayo. Digger bucket teeth? Ah yes, it suddenly dawned on us, what the shop had in stock were steel dentures for the buckets of overworked JCBs, to replace the teeth worn out excavating sites for ostentatious bungalows, unsustainable clusters of holiday homes, homogenised Eurotrash shopping malls or whatever else the Celtic Tiger requires in the way of "development".
Our environment, built and natural, is taking a frightful mauling from that same ravenous beast. Plaintive cries can be heard from concerned citizens all over the Republic as landscapes and streetscapes are irrevocably altered by rapacious developers out to make a quick buck. At Blackwater Head, in Co Wexford, to take just one example, no fewer than four quarries are excavating the tallest, most majestic sand dune system on the east coast, and the roads all around are spattered with sand from the endless procession of trucks making off with their booty.
Last month the Kilkenny People creditably devoted a full page to what can only be called a cri de coeur by Dr John Bradley, professor of archaeology at Maynooth. Condemning the wanton destruction of Kilkenny, he blamed a combination of greed and ignorance "much more powerful than Cromwell ever was" for the rash of insensitive schemes which had "obliterated" its fabric in recent years. "How is it," he asked, "that the medieval townspeople could create a city famed for its beauty and all that we seem able to do in the 1990s is to destroy it?"
In June I wrote that Courtown in Co Wexford was being turned into a visual and environmental slum by the wretched tax-incentive scheme for seaside resorts. All those new holiday homes were bound to put pressure on water and sewerage, both already in short supply. And so it came to pass on the August bank holiday weekend. One could go on and on, county by county, unearthing other environmental horror stories, eventually compiling a schedule of dilapidations for the entire State. But there aren't enough hours in the day, or days in the week.
That's the problem - the soi-disant Celtic Tiger has most of us run ragged. With growth rates of 7.5 per cent in 1997, 9.5 per cent in 1998 and something similar projected for this year, the Irish economy has become almost obscenely engorged.
And while we're all glad to have the extra money, few can deny that it's costing us dear in other ways. It's taking a toll on our health, our families, our friendships and, most of all, on the time we have to think and to reflect. There is far too much going on and a gnawing realisation that nobody has a handle on it.
The pursuit of "lifestyle" - big houses, flashy cars, designer labels, posh schools, expensive restaurants and exotic holidays - has become a very stressful and time-consuming business. Those in the front line must leave home for work at the crack of dawn to steal a march on others driving into town. Their cars have become travelling offices, with mobile phones in constant use making calls to clients and associates. One architect friend who took a foreign holiday recently was on the phone to his office every day, with drawings being faxed to and fro.
Last month I flew back from Barcelona via Heathrow. It was a late-night British Midland flight, already delayed by half-an-hour, and as soon as we were on board the captain announced that there was a problem with the brakes which would have to be fixed. Across the aisle from me was a Celtic Tiger-type, aged about 30, who spent the entire time poring over a draft agreement on the importation into Ireland of something very basic - let's call them thumb tacks - and when he was asked what he would like to drink, he said: "I know what I'd like, but I'll just have a cup of tea, thanks."
I thought: "We're really losing it, aren't we?", if young Irish businessmen can't put their work away at that hour of the night (it was after 11 p.m.); at least I was reading one of Colm Toibin's novels and ordering Bloody Marys.
In our workplaces, we are inundated by a flood-tide of post, phone calls, voice-mail messages and reams and reams of e-mail with all those indecipherable headers and tailers. Some people are so busy that they only have time to wolf down a sandwich for lunch even as the latest "message pending" note blinks insistently on their computer screens. But then, as the Michael Douglas character in Wall Street used to say, "Lunch is for wimps". Merciless junk bond king Gordon Gekko's motto was "Greed is good", and that seems to be our governing thesis, too.
Successful people, in the materialistic sense, care less and less about those being left behind. The Simon Community, for example, is having trouble these days finding volunteers for its soup runs in Dublin's homeless netherworld and may have to recruit idealistic young people from overseas.
The Observer recently ran a piece describing Dublin as "the richest, happiest city in Europe", though this was an admittedly superficial judgment based on one fun-filled weekend. There was no mention of the downsides of prosperity, such as inflated property prices, traffic congestion that's worse than ever and, of course, the terrible treadmill we must step on every day to keep pace.
I am not suggesting that we should revert to the culture of failure, or swap the Celtic Tiger for the Celtic Twilight. But John McGahern is surely right in suggesting that people should set aside some time to be idle and complaining about the moral cowardice of people who were busy all the time. Ireland's tragedy is that we have acquired money before we have acquired sensibilities. Unless we stop and think now, we are going to be consumed by regret in years to come about what we have done to the place, to our culture and to ourselves.