Fate played an evil game with me this morning. There was a pencil on my desk. I was sure pencils were banned back in the day when we were rich and spent loads of money on Voting Machines. It was actually €55 million but, hey, we were rich. We could afford to flog them off for seventy grand when they didn’t work.

Pencils.

I was chewing on the one that was lying on my desk when I heard we all have post codes now but only if we want them. That really made my day. For the uninitiated, here’s what it’s going to do.

• Each property will be given a seven digit number – their ‘Eircode’. The new Eircodes will be posted to homes and businesses over the coming weeks.
• The new system will use a three digit area identifier – Dublin 1 will be D01, for example – and a randomised four digit number to identify the individual residence – with a specific aim of making it easier for emergency services and deliveries to find specific properties, particularly in rural areas.

You don’t actually have to wait to hear from them. This is the internet age. You can type in your ‘real’ address on the Eircode side and up will pop your code. Mine is K67 K377 so K67 is obviously county Dublin (or Swords?) but the last four randomised digits? If you think my neighbour was K67 K377 - ha! That would be far too logical. My neighbour’s code is completely different and just as random.

Are you confused?

Like I said, the codes are not compulsory. So why bother? Is it to make us look all grown-up and modern? Maybe we can get our address in google maps by just using the code..., Ah, Google isn’t accepting them.

Well, we might be able to look all grown-up when we fill in zip codes. The Yanks won’t realise how useless our codes actually are.

The quote of the day goes to Alex White, our Minister for Communications. Speaking with a straight face, he actually said ‘Well, you can’t get everything right on day one’.

For €27 million you really should.

Yes, that’s right. TWENTY SEVEN MILLION EURO

I almost swallowed my pencil.