In today’s Observer, my good buds Lisa McInerney and Caitriona Lally are included among the five Irish writers asked to offer their personal reflections on Ireland today. Plenty of insightful observations, as you’d expect in the Observer, but you also get an insight into the views of the “nothing-to-see-here” brigade in the Comments section, whose well-padded and protected lives inside easily identifiable class fractions see them convinced that any negative comments are motivated by begrudgery, a lack of patriotism, bolshiness, or, worst of all, contrarian hedge-fund managers trying to make a killing from talking the economy down.

Looking for my knuckleduster

Bucket List: I have so much left to do!!! You would be surprised at the responses! Copy and paste to your status, then place an X by all the things you’ve done and an O by those you haven’t. Please share!

O Act as Santa (or equivalent) at a children’s Christmas party
X Take part in a marathon for charity
O Act as best man/maid of honor at a friend’s wedding
O Teach a child to read
O Serve as a carer for a terminally ill patient
X Have your heart broken
O Rescue and care for a stray animal
O Wade naked into the Mediterranean
X Get drunk with your father
X Have your face slapped
X Take up smoking
X Give up smoking
X Write a novel and dedicate it to your parents
O Tell a best friend your deepest, darkest secrets
O Catch, gut, cook, and eat a fish
O Make a record and publicize it, whether you can sing or not
X Go on a pilgrimage, on foot, to a shrine of your choosing
X BASE jump from a building less than 50 feet high
O Propose to someone you have no intention of marrying
O Heckle a town crier
X Swim with the Miami Dolphins
X Have sex in exchange for money
X Do a runner from an ice-cream van
X Deface, disfigure, or burn a work of religious art
O Get deported from the Isle of Man
X Drink your own urine while sober
X Take part in an illegal fight against a pit bull
O Disclose a best friend’s deepest, darkest secrets on national TV
X Defecate on stage and dedicate it to your parents
O Drive a Hummer blindfold through a pedestrian precinct
X Punch a child
X Experience a hardcore sexual encounter with a member of the same sex
X Take part in an armed robbery
X Drop acid and crucify a chimpanzee
X Spit on the Pyramids
X Shoplift in a Charity Shop
O Win “Crackpipe Smoker of the Year”
X Gatecrash a funeral while stoned
O Get your cat pierced
O Jilt a princess
X Get thrown off a plane for masturbating in the toilets
X Skip bail
O Knock Boris Johnson off his bike
X Have a gold tooth fitted but not in your mouth
X Organize a cockfight in a primary school playground
O Annex the Sudetenland
X Cheat Death at Ker-Plunk
X Taste Human Flesh
X Pityfuck a Spice Girl
X Kill another human being with your bare hands