A Christmas Carol

Dublin city on the night before Christmas was a corpse preserved in formalin, glowing with the sickly phosphorescence of decay. It glittered, yes, of course it did, but like a coin in a drain, like the foil wrapper of a Kit Kat chocolate bar, like the ocular fluid of something long since scraped off the tarmac. You could stand on Dublin’s quays and let the whole spectacle wash over you: the cranes, subservient metal birds pecking at concrete edifices; the glass towers sweating cheap LED lights; the cranes again, because repetition is the only truth we have. People hold in their numb hands emails from the HR zombies insisting that everyone is like a family, queuing for buses that would take them to the distant, overpriced edifices they call home. Social media addicts hardly able to afford the privilege of their own misery.