As the global financial crisis sinks all boats, Westmeath sails on

DISPLACED IN MULLINGAR:MY PARANOIA IS on the increase again. It hasn't been so bad since I lived in Co Fermanagh. My doctor says it's the stock exchange that's doing it. He says lots of people are coming into him worrying about nothing.

Numbers are flashing on television screens all day; graphs that nobody can decode. There is a sense that some great tribulation is crossing the face of the Earth, and will soon strike Mullingar; the thought tightens the muscles of my heart and gives me a pain in the chest.

In the post office I had an urge to share this with a woman beside me in the queue, but she had her own worries.

"If I hear any more guff on the television about the banks," she said, "I'll throw the set out the window." I could tell she was a smoker from the smell of her short breaths.

She said: "Chorus was supposed to come to me on Thursday to change over to the digital and give me a recorder box so that I can watch EastEnders in the mornings, when the house is quiet. But did they come? No.

"If it's not one thing it's another. My husband was laid off on Friday. He's in the bed this morning and I don't know whether to call him or let him lie there all day. And I got stuck with the grandchild yesterday while me daughter was away at the match. And the child is just getting more attached to me. And I don't want to be landed with that, if you know what I mean. And then himself has that child ruined - pure spoilt." Her phone rang.

"Oh," she said, "so you're up at last." And then she looked out the window.

"Yeah," she said, "I see you. I'll come over to you now." She handed me an envelope and 50c and said: "Just put a stamp on that, like a good man." When she went I had no one to talk with for five minutes, so I texted - "Hello" - to Monica, on my new iPhone. She phoned back instantly and declared that she was in her pyjamas.

I don't know why that mattered, but apparently she'd been out to dinner with her ex on Sunday night, and had to put on a happy face to make him think that separated life was doing her good. She was exhausted the following morning so she stayed in bed; hence the pyjamas. In fact, it didn't matter to me what she was wearing, because I couldn't see her on the phone, so I don't know why she even mentioned it.

I cycled towards the bank through a heavy shower and felt consoled that on the surface Mullingar is still unchanged. It still rains on Pearse Street. Someone in the hardware store still puts the gas cylinders outside the front door each morning. Old men still walk their little mutts along the canal. People still smoke cigarettes on the streets, and in coffee shops young women from Lithuania still make excellent mochas. Oil lorries still cruise around the housing estates filling up green oil tanks for the winter. And Sky News still carries reports of strange events from far-off places.

When I came to Mullingar two years ago I bought rabbit ears for the television. Now I get high-definition digital images on my 32-inch screen; but the images only wire me to a multitude of anxieties, as the world floats on a sea of delusion.

As I queued in the bank I strained my neck to absorb breaking news from the flatscreen near the ceiling; it reminded me of dispatches from the bridge of the Titanic to the people in steerage: everything is okay, we're just getting the lifeboats ready, don't you worry.

Outside, on Dominick Street, I unlocked my bike and wondered for a moment if I ought to drop in on Monica for a coffee. A fat, purple cloud still hung in the sky. Either I was about to be drenched again in another terrible downpour, or a spaceship was going to emerge and zap Mullingar to dust. A Romanian man with an accordion positioned himself at the Ulster Bank and began to play the waltz from the opening of The Godfather. I decided to cycle straight home.

mharding@irish-times.ie