If it's Friday, it must be Dublin again! I'm currently in a state of complete chaos since I'm on what is endearingly described as an "author tour", which really means that I'm spending my days running between train platforms in the Republic and Britain (while trying not to think of the state the railways are in over there).
When I worked in financial services people used to envy me the (occasional) long lunch and the prospect of overseas travel; these days people still envy the (even rarer) long lunch and assume the travel is better fun than sitting at home in front of the computer.
Of course, it can be fun but when you've been caught in the second downpour of the day just outside Bromley in Kent, the glamour tends to pall a little. I'm considering commissioning a special book golf umbrella, with the logo of my latest title emblazoned on top.
Clearly my interest in the market in the past 10 days was somewhat limited, although that didn't matter very much because it behaved pretty much like me - confused, paranoid and wanting to believe that the sun was about to come out but succumbing to a cold-water drenching every so often.
In fact, I did manage to read quite a bit about what was going on since I have taken to arriving at airports with time to spare since last year's debacle of missing a flight. So I usually sit around and read the papers to my heart's content while waiting for my flight to be cancelled.
It's always interesting to see the different spins that are put on the same story - papers that have wanted to be gloomy for years are revelling in the markets' misery, while those that embraced new-economy ideals are telling us that things are so bad that they can't get any worse. Can't they?
One of the greatest myths of markets and reporting on markets is that when a financial product has fallen 90 per cent from its highs it has become good value. Some of the shares of the past decade will never be good value and simply because you can pick them up for $4 (€4.4) instead of $400 doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
There are all sorts of indexes being touted to tell you that the market will rebound dramatically very, very soon. I like to think of myself as a "glass half-full" sort of person but I've found (to my cost) that whenever you think things can't get any worse they usually do. And that's despite constructing a graph that tells you things can only get better.
Because most people in financial services make money when markets are trading well, they're caught in a bind about how to read the current crop of statistics coming out of Europe and the United States.
Last Friday's payroll numbers in the US were weaker than expected, which underlined the possibility of recession once again and had the doommongers wringing their hands.
The declines were pretty widespread - unlike previous months, losses in manufacturing weren't offset by any gains in retail and services, which saw losses too. However, the analysts looked at the three month seasonally adjusted numbers for some comfort, which would mean an average jobs gain of about 60,000 rather than a loss of 86,000.
US employment numbers are always treated to a bit of rough and tumble. Different months can show unexpected gains or losses for various reasons - usually weather, which plays havoc with jobs in the construction sector, for example. As everyone already knows, statistics can prove anything you want.
But whether employment is up, down or levelling out in the US, people are feeling a lot less comfortable about their job prospects than they were a year ago. And that less comfortable feeling is extending to the Republic, as more and more information points to a slowing economy.
Of course, it's still relative as far as we're concerned since everyone knew that annual growth levels of around 9 per cent, which we've seen since 1997, were unsustainable. Economists are rushing to pare back their forecasts, with many of them trying to be as downbeat as possible.
But even 4 per cent wouldn't be a complete disaster and might allow us to catch up on improving the infrastructure that is creaking at the seams.
One of the slowing factors in the economy is that of car sales (and probably everyone except car salespeople will be happy to know that they've eased off). I used to know that a trip to my mother, who lives on the other side of the city, would take 20 minutes after 6 p.m. and double that at any other time. Now it can take anything from 30 minutes to an hour at any time of the day or night.
I don't know whether or not to travel by the M50 - a journey of 22 miles - or through the city centre - eight miles. The M50 used to be worth it for ease of journey but having to queue for 10 minutes to lob my 80p into the NTR coffers doesn't endear me to it any longer, especially when the driver in front of me has all the accuracy of an economic forecaster and lobs his or her cash wide of the basket thus increasing the delay factor exponentially.
As I've become very public transport oriented (because I can't be bothered to circle almost-full car parks for hours), I would happily take the bus across town. But that's fraught with all sorts of things, like northside buses terminating miles away from the departure zones of southside buses, leaving the unwary traveller exposed to the torrential qualities of Irish rain.
Forget Luas, we desperately need an underground system. Forget economic growth, we need to look after the economy we already have.
