Ground Floor:  I've been indulging in a bit of nostalgia of late, beginning with last Friday when my previous employer, NCB Stockbrokers, celebrated its 25th birthday with a bash at the Mansion House. Naturally I was horrified to realise that it was 25 years since I was first sitting at a dealing desk taking a run-through of Irish money-market deposit rates from it, because (as it always does) it seems like only yesterday. I remember its move into stockbroking which coincided, to some extent, with my own move into bond trading and, while it wasn't inevitable that I would one day end up as an employee and not a client, the possibility had always been there.

I enjoyed my time with NCB. I liked the can-do nature of the company and the determination that everyone had to beat the competition. And, because the firm hadn't always been a stockbroking company, we were continually having to prove ourselves over and over as the new kids on the block.

Twenty-five years on and NCB certainly isn't a new kid on the block any more. My old bond colleague Conor O'Kelly, now managing director of the company, made an eloquent speech in which he likened NCB to a child which had finally grown up and was making its own way in the world. The company was never big into speeches and only one other person followed O'Kelly to the podium.

That was Dermot Desmond, the founder of the firm and a man whose name has probably generated more newsprint than any other entrepreneur in Ireland. Desmond's speech was no less eloquent than O'Kelly's and very obviously from the heart. When you read about people in the newspapers, you never get a true sense of what they are really like.

In all honesty, I don't know Dermot well enough to give you the low-down on what he's "really" like, but I can tell you that he was a great employer and fiercely loyal to everyone in the company. That doesn't, of course, preclude him from being as ruthless in business as the next mogul (which is why he now owns the Sandy Lane hotel while I only write stories about people who might stay there), but ruthless doesn't always mean cold-hearted or ungenerous.

Anyway, the evening was great fun and brought me back to all the times I had been at financial industry events in the past. It was good to meet old colleagues and clients and assure each other that we hadn't changed a bit - even though some of the 25-year-old pictures flashing up on the big screen in front of us challenged that perception.

What had definitely changed, however, was the fact that I had to make like Cinderella and leave at midnight instead of partying until the bitter end. Years ago, at a business function in Kilkenny, a number of us partied through the night and had to be in the office early the following morning. The company laid on a helicopter to bring us back to Dublin. Times change. On this occasion, I got up at six to drive to Ballina!

I was attending the annual general meeting of the national governing body of badminton in Ireland.

I've been their honorary treasurer for the last few years (once in the numbers game, always in the numbers game). But it's a stark contrast wondering if you can afford to splash out € 250 for some new stationery instead of blithely splashing out € 25 million on a corporate bond.

Anyway, back from Ballina and feeling a touch weary at this stage, I collapsed in front of the TV and tuned in to realise that it was Eurovision night.

I can tell you that it is easily 25 years since I last watched a Eurovision song contest, so (despite knowing subliminally that it had turned into some kind of a parody of itself) it was mind-boggling to watch the eclectic mix of "songs". And then, of course, the Finnish group Lordi won with its 1970s style rock anthem, which made me nostalgic for Roy Wood and Wizzard and all that thumping around in platform shoes.

But with all of that personal nostalgia going on, I certainly wasn't able to ignore the avalanche of articles in the paper reminiscing about the stock market crash of 1987. Not that anyone would be nostalgic for that grim year, but every time markets have a sustained bout of bearishness (or even a sudden abrupt bearish move), 1987 comes back into view again.

Conditions now are the same as they were then, we are told. The equity markets are ready to implode. US inflation is rampant. We are all, more or less, doomed.

Like I said last week, when sentiment takes hold of the markets they can move very quickly.

And while we are all comfortable with positive sentiment, negative sentiment brings a deep chill to the soul.

The additional problem for markets is not just that there are very particular economic concerns facing them now, but that so many of the people in the dealing rooms of today were only starting college in 1987 and so coping with sustained bearishness is a new thing for them.

But eventually they do. And markets recover. There are new opportunities, new companies, new big ideas. And some day, 25 years in the future, you will look back on it all with a trace of nostalgia as other people struggle with it all. www.sheilaoflanagan.net