Feeling redundant? Be thankful you’re not an Irish racehorse.

Shergar - One titan of the turf to escape the knacker's yard. (Or did he become the world's most expensive hamburgers? The mystery continues...)

I could have called this – They shoot horses, don’t they? But with friends going through or facing redundancy – or like myself having been made (voluntarily) redundant – I’ve gone a different direction.

I’ve been told I have a tendency – a talent or a failing – to see positive aspects to seemingly dire scenarios. Perhaps this is an example. So without wishing to minimise the pain of redundancy, it’s better than a quick trip to the donkey butcher.

Or perhaps this would work better as a metaphor for Ireland’s current economic ills. In fact, skip the metaphor, it’s a direct result of it.

If you’re an animal lover, look away now. (Though there are a couple of very cute horsies at the bottom.)

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Happy St Patrick’s Day (from an unlearned exile)

James Joyce. Writer, musician and singer, in Zurich, 1915.

And now this is another thing I’ve got in common with James Joyce… We’ve both been in Switzerland for St Patrick’s Day – which is today. Though I’m not planning to spend quite so many here as he did.

Greetings to everyone, from one who – like St Paddy – is “first of all, countrified, an exile, evidently unlearned, one who is not able to see into the future…”

I wish you strength in times of tribulation and the ability to take joy when it’s possible.

But I should really be offering something more amusing than that. Oh yes – there’s always my favourite St Patrick’s Day joke – it’s here. (Sorry, I’ve just the one.)