MONDAY

As the publication of the Commission on Taxation nears, we get the first concrete leaks, if that's possible, of the sort of money it wants from us. The new property tax could yield €1bn overall, with most home owners having to fork out €600 to €1,000 on top of income tax and prsi, depending on the value of their property. Cue dinner-party recession debates on how Dubliners are always discriminated against because everybody else lives in a mansion that can be bought for a fraction of the cost of a box in the city – and how worthless your home is now, thanks to falling property prices and the need to cut your property-tax bill... Meanwhile, those former masters of the tax-break universe, the developers and bankers, are another step closer to payback time. The cabinet is briefed, lengthily, on Nama by finance minister Brian Lenihan, but the main point is that we overpay now for property worth pretty much nothing in the hope that some time in the future it will be worth vaguely something. So while as home-owners we'll all be wishing for house prices to go down so we can pay less property tax, as taxpayers we'll also be wishing for property prices to go up so we don't have to pay even more to Nama. Some balance of payments act, but that's the trouble with being an "ordinary taxpayer" these days: it's a lose-lose situation .

TUESDAY

Turf wars of a different sort. The lorries move in to Croke Park to move out U2's claw and a pitch invasion begins as British-grown sod is laid on the hallowed ground. Meanwhile, residents hold up the lorries leaving with U2's equipment to protest about the noise, the noise of the concerts, the decibel levels, the lorries, the turf. Three of the best U2 concerts ever – they get them for free and they're still not happy?... Achtung baby. Nama is almost born and by a nicely perverse act of synchronicity developer/debtor extraordinaire Liam Carroll goes to court to plead for time to restructure and trade out of his difficulties before the nasty ACC bank, to whom he owes €136m, and can't pay back, closes in on him. High Court judge Peter Kelly sums up the problem – Carroll's spiderweb of companies set up, no doubt to maximise the tax advantages, owes a lot more than his assets are worth, employs far fewer than he claims, and needs money "poured" into them over the next three years at a time when he has sold just 39 apartments out of the thousands available in a market that's "as flat as a pancake". Never mind, soon Nama (aka Ireland inc) will own the lot.

WEDNESDAY

Brian Cowen arrives at Ballybrit for the Galway Races and appeals to everyone – rephrase that, the banks (particularly ACC) and the developers (particularly Liam Carroll) – to cooperate with Nama. Are the bookies giving odds attractive enough to gamble the future of the country on? Bertie's at Ballybrit too, maybe he has a worthwhile opinion... Headaches of another kind, and backaches, pains, nausea, diarrhoea – you name it, 1,500 of us got it last week. Swine flu takes hold, two people are in intensive care, foreign students are quarantined and deaths are likely. It's started. We won't be able to escape the hysteria, the survivors' tales – or the physical experience – unless we spend at least a year hiding under the duvet.

THURSDAY

It's here. Brian Lenihan gives a virtuoso solo rendition of Nama. The rest of the choirboys are either at Galway Races or on holiday. So much for the solidarity of the damned. The media goes into overdrive as it tries to decode the indecipherable and add certainty to the unknowable – the price of houses, land, offices and hotels in 10 years' time. The nation covers its ears and shouts 'nama nama nama' at the top of its voice. We're not listening.

FRIDAY

Nama nama nama nama… the banks and toxic debts are like white noise or supermarket muzak at this stage – everywhere, but unheard. More Brian. More Richard. More Ruairí. Maybe no more Liam Carroll and Zoe Developments as he loses his case for court protection. Will ACC move in and effectively collapse the biggest apartment builder the country has ever seen? Will he appeal to the Supreme Court? What's going to happen to the 39 people who bought apartments from him this year? What happens to the contractors to whom he owes money? Will this be a wrecking ball for Nama nama nama nama nama?

You Cannot Be Serious

"If I were the officer he [Prof Henry Louis Gates] verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him with OC [pepper spray]." Email from Boston police officer Justin Barrett to the Boston Globe in protest at the criticism of officers who arrested the Harvard academic and friend of Barack Obama as he tried to enter his own home. Barrett was suspended.