Pest Control

There just had to be a drama between the time the Dail *rose* and the Supreme Court *sits* otherwise what else would I have to write about? The #royalbabyboy ‘GAL’ is so over. Collapse of trial for corruption in rezoning is so soul destroying and worst of all the Revenue trousering several hundred in property tax out of my bank account is sending me into a melancholic spiral, so much so, I’m doing two weeks Bean an Ti duty with an Italian student to cover it. I can’t remember the last time I served dinner seven nights in a row, never mind FOURTEEN.

Before the Rat Attack

When Cost Centre #2 sauntered in from his internship last night starving (they send him home in a taxi, but he doesn’t get time to eat all day, bless) he threw a withering look at the war zone that is now the garden.

‘Did you catch him?’

‘Not, yet.’

‘Everybody knows rats are the most evolved species, they’re smarter than humans, they outlived dinosaurs,' he proclaims.

At that moment the creature appears and struts around the garden sniffing for food, starting to climb up a table. It’s jaw-droppingly arrogant, to think I’ve been sitting out there for the last few weeks, thinking it was a leaf falling every time I heard a swoosh sound, it was the bastard scuttering down the wall.

‘He’s outsmarted you,’ CC#2 guffaws, ‘Rat 1 Mom Nil.’

Thanks David Attenborough.

He looks up the internet, most hits are for peanut butter, all the experts say that’s the thing they can’t resist. Cost Centre #1 is out, but at least he has set the traps with bacon so now it only fairly befalls the other one to improve the strategy. Fairness is something my sons have no concept of. Nor do I think they ever will have. Perhaps some wife along the way will beat it into them.

I donate my rubber gloves to the operation and we sacrifice a knife that will have to be thrown out. Attenborough ventures out with the bowl of peanut butter and complains bitterly about the placing of the traps. Everything anybody else does in landladyhouse is *shit* according to him. Indeed there was a book published a few years ago, just for boys like him I'm sure, called ‘Is Everything Shit, or is it just me?’ Sorry, I digress, this is painful to write.

The War Zone

Attenborough says he refuses to deal with any deck-kill as he expertly smears the peanut butter over the raw bacon.

McGyver (CC#1) returns and checks his traps, commenting Attenborough is a wimp and anyway he saw the rat first and did all the work, you get the picture.

We turn out the lights and wait for action. A Random Cat arrives to balance nature, this is when I’d normally bang the window to get rid of unwelcome feline. Oh, for my sheepdog now (she’s on her annual slimming holiday in Glandore with my neighbours).

Attenborough and I stand on seats inside and crane out the window, as if it's going to run up our legs. He points out the cats ears curving and turning as its sonar stealthily detects the position of the rat beneath the deck. The rat's sonar being more advanced it must be deflecting or disguising itself. Note I am trying to convince myself it’s in the singular, contrary to hardware man who says ‘if you see one, there’s more’.

The varmint seems to have outwitted the cat as well, the floor show ends without incident and Attenborough decamps to Playstation.

‘I told you they were smarter than humans, only them and sharks have outlived dinosaurs, you don't expect to win do you?’

It's always his parting shot.

So, this morning I survey the battlefield after the deluge, the apocalyptic thunder and lightning of last night. The rain set off one trap, the magpies and pigeons have been cheekily nipping at the others. No casualties yet. Would that they were just drowned in a sewer somewhere far away. In the meantime I’m trapped indoors.

And this should be a lovely morning when I’m sending two chapters of my novel to a charming-sounding agent. Only, guess what, the printer ink ran out on last two pages. It’s not the end of the world obviously, but I can’t print the cover letter either. This has never happened in the entire time I’ve worked at writing voluminous reports. Never did I run out of ink before. Well, Copy Graphics in Clonskeagh to the rescue.

Maybe it's a sign.

I'm fed up with signs. This life is full of them and we all know Ireland is the worst small country in the world in which to follow road signs (as opposed to the TBSCITWIWTDB*).

I'm not good on garage maps, too awkward to hold while driving, but I’m great on googlemaps. There should be a Destiny App, a Fate App, you could just go to their list of FAQs as every effing service *provider* suggests you do when there's a lack of er, service, and not just get the favourite options but the preferred answer based on your Facebook/Linkedin Family Album/horoscope menstrual cycle data.

Now there's a thought, anyone know a neighbourhood nerd I could call?

At least Pest control arrive tomorrow, they'll be taking the kids away first.

Speaking of whom, they both fell over when I told them the Italian student was 44, can't wait till I hear them try and pronounce her name, Tiziana. Tee hee.

*You'll just have to Google it, clue: Enda

Sugar Highs and Low Pressure

Despite the fact it’s only a three hour journey and I left Kinsale at 11am last Tuesday, I didn’t get home until six hours later. I had to make five nap/coffee stops. I’m putting it down to the #heatwave and the #aircon I’d only discovered in my car a week before, it does ice or nothing. The first stop was in Cashel and I thought I might as well have lunch instead of just coffee and read a little, the heavy seafood chowder at Cashel Palace probably precipitated the lethargy a half an hour down the road. So I took the exit for Portlaoise in dire need of a double expresso, no coffee shop in sight until I got to the other end of town and the motorway again, where there’s one of those giant hotel/shopping places for weary travellers, called Midway, to where I don't know, not Cork anyway.

Top tip for M7 or M8 travellers from Cork, it’s the second Portlaoise exit for your expresso. And pecan Danish. By now I’m having such sugar spikes and being microwaved in the car that I have to pull in for a ten minute nap before I get to Newlands Cross. Note, for a coffee supplement on the way to Cork I recommend Kildare Village, only go in with blinkers on, you’re bound to buy a frying pan or suitcase that you don’t need.

At the other end of this napping trip I was due out for my first sailing race this year and taking a novice with me, that meant speed dressing and speed driving out to Dun Laoghaire. I’m not far off being a novice myself, I only accidentally took up racing seven years ago and my favourite time is a summer’s evening with a bit of a breeze. It was bliss. There are others that prefer being sloshed about in gusts to prove their equality. I’m good with mine.

I was on winch duty, it’s a 33’ boat so that meant little space in the cockpit, and kneeling quite a bit. And that is how the torn ligament has come back to haunt me, well former absentee boyfriend didn’t help when he leaned on said knee a few weeks ago. But enough of him.

It’s no fun being physically curtailed, it makes you feel crap that you can’t run or cycle or even walk with an elegant gait. And I’m frankly furious still hobbling with a bloody great knee brace on; especially without the painkillers or anti-inflammatories they gave me the first time round. Now I’m in danger of becoming a knee bore at parties.

So there’s the tenant interviews to be getting on with. This man came last week who’s seen the room in February and didn’t really need to move in then, now he’s back again, inspecting my interiors. He’s from Southampton and has a busy, proper job nearby. He’d probably work out fine as he’ll be going home every weekend to his wife, who won’t move to Ireland. Suits me.

Then there’s another candidate who flies helicopters to an oil rig off Denmark and would only be here for two weeks each month, we shall see, neither of them want to move in until September. In the meantime, I came up with the mild brainwave of the Irish summer perennial – the foreign student. I think it must have been the shock of seeing the Revenue had pocketed the property tax straight from my bank account and quick as a light I rang the language school; she’s coming on Saturday. Shock. Evening meals and breakfast, talking and all that stuff.

It means the annual few days in west Cork has to be deferred and Calves Week will be missed for the first time in seven years; who knows, another drive down the M8 might just have sent me to sleep and I’m better off staying put.

Or am I? Cost Centre #1 (the 23 year old) hollered at me this morning, 'Mom, there's a giant rat in the garden'. Unashamedly sitting on my night club garden seating. Clearly, I screamed my head off and then took a photo, so that's what that brown thing is.

I've lived here for nearly twenty years and never saw a varmint before. We've got traps down, tasty bacon on them, I bet someone will tell me they don't eat bacon. Apparently not cheese either. H.E.L.P.

Home Economics and Hedge Funders

It’s that sunny Monday afternoon when there is nothing but #royalbaby in waiting all over Twitter. So I might as well bleat about #landladyism instead. As well as being a landlady (to one gentleman lodger who is currently barely here at weekends, bless) I’m also a redundant mother and an aspiring writer, whose business tanked with the unmentionable R word.

I’m redundant as a mother because the two cost centres have become independent in so far as making their own dinner and remembering to wash their own boxers, but not financially contributing as such. So I’ve given them charity rental invoices this summer as they’re both out of college and working. It was the younger one, cost centre #2 who requested an income and expenditure account from me when I reminded him pizza and avocado doesn’t grow on trees and I’d be setting up a summer rent. The CHEEK!!

A quick computing exercise and I broke down the Full Board Bed, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Laundry, WiFi, private rooms, TV etc to a paltry €7.14 per day if I charge them 50 per week. That shook them!

I need at least one week’s charity rent to pay for a bag of coffee I bought in Kinsale last week. I was staying with Annie Oakley in her waterside cottage, very bijou and handy for the town. I craved some real coffee for breakfast and drove to the local Eurospar to buy some for the house, by the time I’d moseyed around the pretty shops on the way back, I’d a ticket. Focking Orse as RossOck would say.

I managed to squeeze a lot into the forty or so hours I spent there, nearly had a swim only the sea was truly freezing and I’ve swam in Seapoint in January so I know what  freezing is. On Sunday night we went to a great little tapas bar called The Black Pig run by a couple who’d worked at Ely in Dublin and wanted to open their own place out of the city. The art on the walls was particularly distinctive considering it was their first place, Gavin Ryan one of the owners told me his dad, Richard, a former diplomat had lent the paintings to them. Just in case this blog gets anywhere outside of my dining room, I think it’s worth mentioning Gavin and Siobhain's restaurant is well worth a visit, quirky and clever interior style, great food.

I also discovered what the inside of a Nordhavn 62 is like, basically a luxury home on the water in the guise of a motor yacht. As I was with about seven Americans by this stage, it was stiff cocktails all round on Monday evening in the glowing sunshine. Mixing with hedgefunders after getting a parking ticket can be very depressing, but the vodka-tonic helped no end.

The Dail Dawn Chorus

Could've been in the back garden with a good book

I drove back to Dublin from the midlands on Wednesday thinking I’d never been as hot at mid-day in Italy. Having *filed my copy* to the Indo (so love saying that) I made my way into the Dail for what was to be the night of #lapgate and the #Daildawnchorus. 

When I arrived in Kildare Street the sitting was adjourned for two hours and, damn, I had nobody to meet, it was way too sunny to go inside so I found myself engrossed in watching the protesters from a safe distance. It wasn’t very comfortable to be honest, seeing these two factions being kept in line by the Gardai, shouting Father Ted slogans at each other. This is supposed to be about dignity for women, not a side show. A crowd gathered around my side of the street, the army was mobilising from the well-funded, expensively t-shirted campaign group. It was time to retreat to the dark depths of Buswells and have a *healthy* salad and chips. What on earth was I doing in the city centre on a sunny Wednesday evening alone in Buswells? There is a back garden and a good book as an option, Mad Ted. I realised I was in deep; and deeply committed to changing something if I can. Changing a man-made law that would ease the trauma on women and men of a double tragedy.

The vote on the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill was supposed to be decided by 10pm, it was extended until 2am and while I sat in the gallery, I heard a furore from the benches and a bluster from Gerry Adams. The doors opened, all and sundry piled in, most interesting was the press gallery, the narrow overhang filled to the brim, 21 journo’s jammed in a row. The doyenne, Miriam Lord, took her seat, delightful Lise Hand beside her. The silver glint of David McCullagh’s hair flashed in the harsh light. David Davin Power nestled between the smart glossy locked girls from the other papers.

The majority decided to extend the vote until 5am. There was a quick exodus, I checked my Dublin Bus App and went home. I assumed they were all having late committee meetings elsewhere, perhaps a nap on a trolley in the corridor, provided by Minister Reilly. They could hardly be drinking in the bar with such a serious issue going on? Drinking at work?

Back home, with the magic of Twitter I discovered the live link to the chamber, much to my amazement I actually watched until 5am. I looked outside, shocked, I haven’t been up ‘til that hour without revellers in my house trying to find the stash of duty free sambuca or whatever remained from the old days, me hoping they wouldn’t wake the sleeping children, who by now were revelling somewhere themselves. Plus ca change.

Well, at least I’d enough to write about for the Irish Times next day and, surprisingly, a radio interview with the lovely Matt Cooper. On Friday evening, I sat in FM104 with an ice bucket of cool beers and baskets of tortilla chips in view, times have changed since I worked in a *real office*. As I waited to go into studio I stuck my tongue in my broken tooth, chipped during the Dail Chorus by a diversionary caramel, for once, I wished I was in a dentist’s waiting room. It’s awful having to recall a very unhappy time, again and again. 

In between Druids and Dail Debates, I'm interviewing new tenants for landladyhouse. Stalwart gentleman lodger #1 is still with me, just trying to find someone to match him.