I’ll believe it when I see it.

Cap Horn

Absentee Boyfriend is back on the radar with a long held promise of a trip to the snow. It’s supposed to be tomorrow, Saturday, apparently the tickets are booked. And just in case, I’ve re-arranged the same clothes in my ski bag that have been sitting in it for two years. They smell fine.

As soon as he told me, I vowed to go on one of those fasting diets. And to do some core strength exercise every day. Vows, vows, vows are for nuns.

He said bring a swimsuit in case the weather’s bad. Not enough to slip and slide all over the slopes but to bear milky white limbs in a spa too. My friends are more excited than I am, so I garner some of their enthusiasm and try to visualise the fun. Even though I’ve been on ski trips with ABF a few times before, we’ve never actually skied together. He of the heli-skiing, off piste, pure bravura style, me of the ‘want to keep life and limb together’ and get down that hill in one piece style.

In fairness, I met him on my first ski trip when he was on crutches, so he had time to give me a bit of guidance in getting on and off chair lifts, me, like an ungainly frog, legs and arms akimbo and falling at his feet, ho ho. I only took up skiing 5 years ago so I could bring the cost centres on fun family holidays. The R word happened quite soon after the first holiday, plus they were still too adolescent to see the benefit of an activity trip with mother and soon found more interesting teenage girls to hang with instead.

Thinking it might be something I could mix with business and research, I obviously invested in all the gear so I’d be ready to go at a moment’s notice on clients PJ’s. That whole R thing scuppered the PJ’s as well. Anyway, it will be good to escape Dublinlandlady.com for a few days, it’s not even for a week, but I think home is in fairly good hands; until I just mentioned it to Lodger #1.

‘What? A free house? You do know there’s a Leinster match tomorrow, so you won’t mind half the team back here?’

‘I’m locking my bedroom door.’ I say

‘Ah, I’m a bit past all that,’ he smiles wryly.

While it's still pelting down outside after three days, getting out of the country to anywhere right now would be a thrill. Suddenly the thought of four party residents in the house colours my enthusiasm just a tiny bit. While I’m partaking of après ski it’s going to be après match in the burbs.

So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu!

This is the last morning I will awake to the rancid smell of boiled rice and oats, we hope. I met wonderful Adam in the kitchen on Friday morning, he is lodger #1 and his ski bag lay leeringly in the hallway. 'I see you've a new lodger,' he whispers, 'Yes, but not for much longer,' I confide, 'yes he told me,' he re-whispers. I mumbled something about all the cooking. 'I know, he was cooking something foul in the kitchen this morning,' says he, faux gagging. Now, I'm thankfully vindicated, if the well mannered Adam is offended, it's not just me who can't bear the smell of coddle first thing. 'If I could only find another one like you,' I say. 'There are no more like me,' says he, not whispering.

Cost Centre #2's girlfriend told him he smelled weird recently, it was the boil-up smell from his clothes. My mother has been on the phone, worried that I haven't resolved the situation. She wanted to deliver some of her bargain food finds recently and I had to decline as the fridge-freezer was full of lodger #2's ingredients. Cost centre #1 (who is nearly 23 and has a part-time job, sleeps through the smell and doesn't know what the rest of us are going on about) tells me I'll just have to accept this issue with any tenant. But I had it on good advice that single men like to eat out and when they're not eating out they're at the gym or having pints with their mates. That would be Irish single men, not Latvians.

So, we'll say farewell to Kovac who leaves today and wish him well. I am exhausted from going out to escape the prolonged boiling. You might well ask, why didn't I ban it?  I did ask about cooking in the interview, but I think something got lost in translation, and well, you can't stop someone eating, can you? I'll be banning it the next time.

As a means of escape, I even went to a lecture in a library on, well, historic libraries. The speaker could have been talking about equine DNA, I only went to meet my other library enthusiasts. There are a lot of them. The room in the RDS was packed and they'd only laid on 20 glasses of wine, glad I was sitting at the back with my friend just arrived from  Virginia (the one in the States, not Cavan). We were near enough to the bar to get one of the 20 glasses, where I met the lovely flame-haired architect with whom I'd been in college. I asked how her baby was, 'she's ten' she replied. Are we that old? (We were already well-mature students when we were doing our post-grad). She remembered me telling her ten years ago that my eldest boy had met the Mexican ambassador's daughter at a dreary party I'd brought them along to and had arranged a first 'date' at The Shell. At the time, she said she was blown away by the height of sophistication of my fourteen-year old. Until I disabused her; it was the Shell garage around the corner. Not The Shelbourne Hotel.  I wonder how many such malaprops have gone unnoticed over the years.

After our few sips in the library, nothing for it but to go next door to the Ice Bar for a farewell drink with my friend who's heading to Japan. Now there's a place (not Japan) that's changed since I last visited three years ago. Not a developer in sight. Not anyone in sight except the decidedly idle barmen.

By Friday, I'd already got the acupuncturist booked to view the impending vacant room this week and I'm on my third night escape from the kitchen. With change on the horizon and a certain feeling of order restored, I am even in dancing mood and join some friends in the heated garden of a city club which used to be tight-standing room only and now seats are instantly procured. My jet-lagged friend is just back from New York and tells me he’s checked into a hotel that morning to sleep all day. He'll be in Dublin for a few months and has rented out his own apartment in the city centre. Emboldened by the VAT (vodka and tonic), I offer him a deal that obviously beats the hotel rate. Only catch is I'm in outer Surburbia. And we are friends. 'Ten dollars into town in a Hailo,' I encourage. Mutual friend, Blonde Racquel is also with us and thinks it's a great idea. We decide to sleep on it. Deals done in night clubs after a weary week and a few drinks can have a very different complexion the following day. Especially as next day I was attending a Humanist funeral, a sobering, but as it turned out a joyful event to mark a very distinguished life. It felt odd to be dressing so respectably on a Saturday morning and as I approached Ballsbridge, so too were many others making their way in sober attire towards the funeral venue.  The only other time you see similarly dressed groups walking in this direction, it is in blue or green to watch Leinster or Ireland play.

While hundreds attended the celebration of this fine man's life, I was impressed at the volume of motor bikers that also came to pay their respects. Even the celebrant made a joke about it. I knew John Reihill had a great breadth of interests and pursuits, but hadn’t been aware he liked a Harley. As I walked back to my car, I saw the sign, 'Motorcycle Show 2013', I think he would have been amused.

This evening I have been pleased to sit and write in the relative cool of my home, I quite like the heating off on a sunny day. Kovac (obviously not his real name) and I shook hands and bade farewell,  I asked him to contact me if he needed anything and hoped his wife and daughter would get to see him soon. I'm glad to say he thanked me for his warm introduction to Dublin and I apologised our house just wasn't ready for  a full-on tenant. All is quiet again.