Celebs

My new tenant is due to move in today. I think I went a bit overboard with the bleach in his shower room in a bid to hasten the pristine effect. A chambermaid I’m not and I’m retiring from cleaning duties now, it’s been far too vigorous a morning for someone who’s been out late. Midnight on a Wednesday is the new late; I think some of you might agree.

At least it was a sort of cerebral-oriented evening with a modicum of drinking and a lot of thinking. My friend from Virginia, whom we’ll call Annie as in Get Your Gun, because she shoots, invited me to The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Stephen’s Green Club. Only it was cancelled last minute due to poor booking, now that’s a shame for the actors. I was in my LBD ready for town when I got the message, followed by another message from Blonde Racquel asking if I could take a spare table at a fundraising Quiz in the Four Seasons. Trivia Heaven, Annie and her husband joined me. She and I pooled our American and European trivia and managed to finish ahead of some tech companies, while the big law firms topped the polls most of the evening, until finally the bragging rights went to Racquel’s table, with a trophy and an incomprehensible smart phone each. She’d been hoping to come 2^nd for the Brown Thomas vouchers, suffice to say the modicum of wine transmuted into celebratory drinks.

Back in landladyland, I’ve just shown the bedroom to the acupuncturist/cranial sacral therapist, and I am mighty intrigued about his work. Whatever about him moving in if friend moves back to city life soon, I think I’d book in for a treatment, though I don’t think I was delivered  by forceps (you can have cranial issues if you had a traumatic birth), it’s all about getting your body back in line, your organs in balance, that sort of thing. He was very convincing.

My Queen of Hearts Cake by Clarice (not her real name!)

I need to plan a lunch for tomorrow afternoon. The sodden weather we’re having has put me right off doing any actual shopping for it today and I‘m hoping for a Nigella moment tomorrow. It’s an early birthday lunch, there are two birthdays in the house in March and then there’s Mother’s Day, we’re going to have to assess the hierarchical options. Chronologically, Mother’s Day and mine come first; cost centre #2 was due on my birthday. Gratifyingly, he did me the favour of arriving nine days late and has taken his leisure with everything since, waiting until his leaving cert before becoming remotely punctual and communicable.

I have to admit to being a birthday diva, as many of my friends will testify. It is one day when you can be cheered up unconditionally. Mine is a bit of a non-event this year, not ending in a zero or a five, but still I want to see friends for lunch and not put any of us to a restaurant expense.

I thought I might have dinner with Absentee BF on the day. The permutations of flights and effort didn’t do it for me. Instead, I’m going to go out next week with the girls who can’t get play dates for tomorrow. Yes, most of my friends have small children, while mine are like bodyguards. Thankfully, those coming only need play-dates for themselves.

So cost centre #2 will be twenty-one on the 21^st. Another cause for celebration, and being the stoic philosopher he is, wants nothing to do with it. Mother still has to celebrate the day she gave birth to him. You may have guessed by now that I live alone with my sons. And that is for the last fifteen years. Their dad has been living abroad all that time. So, better get my own out of the way and plan the big one.

Conundrums

I've been thinking about the word 'digs' lately. I used to hear my aunts and uncles using it as a term for the place they stayed when they came to work or study in Dublin. It wasn't as independent as having their own flat, but a room in a family house, which is what I thought I'd specifically advertise last week; I wanted to check its etymology first. I tried to figure it out, assuming it was hiberno-English, maybe coming from the Irish 'Tigh' the possessive for house. I must admit it was only when I studied English at university that I found out what the genetive (possessive) case was and lo, what the 'tuiseal ginideach' meant, after all those of years of complete bewilderment in Irish class - why didn't I just ask? Would you believe Google doesn't know nor does the Oxford English Dictionary? The nearest thing is 'where you dig a foundation' or I'm more likely to concede it's giving a 'dig out'. It's possibly old French, but really only used in Ireland and England, so, a dig out, or a helping hand, seems apt. Answers on a postcard...

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

The other origin I'm wondering about is Monday Washing Day, how did that come about? It's exercising my brain as I'm stripping the previous tenant’s bed and it happens to be Monday with the washing machine going at full tilt. Strangely I don't have an aversion to this, which I find very odd, I only ever deal with my own bed. The Cost Centres change their own linen when hollered at. I think I’m not grumbling about doing it because I'm being paid (very little) and it's a humble but satisfying task, with a purpose. I get it done quickly without any murmurings that I should be doing something more important, like making thousands of euros writing a report. Then it's on to Adam’s bedroom (Lodger#1) where I'm trying to guard his socks from Cost Centre #2. He left a rail of washing to dry in his room while he’s away skiing and I decide to pair the socks and stash them, seeing as he’s only been here two nights this month. The first time I did this I was taken aback to find some of my own underwear hanging amongst his. I am slightly more over this totally weird juxtaposition. But not quite.

The male sock population is breeding like rabbits and I noticed the child wearing Ralph Lauren socks the other day,

‘Where did you get them?' I enquired.

'Found them.'

'But they're not yours.'

'So?'

No sooner do I settle back to re-writing my novel when Cost Centre #1 comes in from college. When they were in school I knew I could have a working day until 5 then I'd set off to collect one or other of them from sports or after-school study. Now they could rise at noon and start cooking an Irish breakfast, just when I’m about to get that perfect sentence crafted. Now CC#1 thinks a subway in Rathmines is better and cheaper, thankfully.

He tells me he’s been making enquiries about joining the Navy. I never know where this is coming from, but he fills me in on quite a lot this morning. He's adamant he doesn't want an 'office job' after college, 'I like being on my feet' he says. Again, I don't know where this is going. There's no doubt he'd look good in uniform, a big strapping lad of 6' plus. Years ago I put him off joining the guards, and probably shouldn't have. When I discovered he was dropping out of his first college course, in the same week my father died, it was a double grief, which I’m still not over. Now, I'm prepared to listen to any of his initiatives. Approaching 23 with a very studious girlfriend for the last few years in Cork, I don't think I have much say anymore, except about ironing. Which is why I think he'd make a good officer and a gentleman.

'What do they do in the Irish Navy?' I ask.

'Catch fishermen,'

‘Oh.' I murmur. Now we know.

'But you're studying marketing, how will you use that?'

'In their marketing department.'

What do I know?

The Sabbath Covenant

On Sunday I have a well feeling, so well in fact that I came up with the plan of an ironathon. As the sleeping beauties doze, I cycle to the body torture class and, while ruminating in 'child's pose' something strikes me about the date. This happens every year in a different way. I'm convinced it's a mind trick. I remember it is twenty four years to the day that I got married and around that time I'd have been soaking in a bath in the Caledonian in Edinburgh. There, that's commemorated. 

Sunny day at the office

Back at HQ I ask if the cost centres would like to join me in ironing our own tea towels and bed linen so that we can save on the cost of sending the ironing out? Cost Centre#2 is way too into his avocado on toast, checking his phone, watching Attenborough dolphins or prepping for his finals to be bovvered. That just leaves me and Cost Centre#1 to earn major brownie points and designate another job to the child, like hoovering the car, and that unsurprisingly elicits a wha'ever.

What could be so hard I thought, they're just bits of square fabric, big and small, I encourage cost centre no. 1, Ironman himself, to watch TV while doing it. ‘No way,’ he grumbles ‘I just want to concentrate and get it done’. So unlike me. You'd wonder how the genes get divvied up. And he's through his pile in no time while I'm still there four hours later having paused and re-started the same film over and over while I ponder what to do about the friend I've suggested becoming a tenant. Will I phone, text, email, forget about it? Not a bit, I'll invite him to a long overdue dinner and take it from there. Some things can only be discussed over comforting food and more comforting wine.

By now, I've had the talk with the Absentee Boyfriend, whose guidance on sundry matters can be enlightening. We are avowedly total opposites and merely share an interest in music trivia and, tangentially, each other, though that is only because he is more often in flight than in my neighbourhood. He's taking a back seat on this one, having met all candidates, he's just going to watch and listen from his eyrie in the Alps. And back me up as is his wont.

I've spent so long writing all day that dinner is hastily prepared half an hour in advance of arrival, including a quick cycle to the off-licence for a bottle of wine. I'm resolved not to make it a late night. Tenant prospect/friend arrives well armed with two bottles, so that puts restraint on ice, so to speak. He dazzles me with his latest business ideas while the food is crustating in the oven. A new chicken recipe I made up as I chopped and peeled and found candles to light. Standards have to be met; this fellow is used to posh dining.

Suffice to say, he thinks it is good timing and could be a welcome breathing space while he entrepreneurs between Dublin, New York and all over Europe. I even offer front parlour as his office. He'll be travelling for a few days and we agree he moves in this Thursday, though for the sake of my landlady blog I'll have to be quite circumspect about my diary, as I know he reads this. Beware young man!

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.

Once upon a time..

Annaghmakerrig Lake from Tyrone Guthrie Centre

When I was growing up we never heard of ADD, children were just bold or difficult or in my case, a chatterbox. Looking back I think I had attention deficit because I was bored when I was ahead in class or more often, confused when I had missed a few lessons. I was often in trouble for talking in class and, worse, I never learned to knit, having been sent out of the classroom on lesson one.

I would divert my attention from the task in hand to start the next and the next and the next, not finishing anything in one go. Which is all fine while I work for myself and take serial diversions while writing a report or a letter; nobody can see me hopping up from my desk every 3.5 minutes and the job still gets done on time, as well as laundry washed, newspapers read, emails sent while walking the dog.

What has this got to do with my new landlady status? I think my daily on and off-line activity has multiplied by fifty since the lodgers arrived. And I wouldn't be writing now if I concentrated minutely on every task, I'd be one of those people who don't have time to imagine. Which, if you have young kids and a busy job, you wouldn't have time, I remember. I waited until the Recession was a good three years in and the cost centres were in university before I pulled out all the research from years back, sat down and wrote a book, I had no more excuses.

But for the Landlady Diary, it takes a bit of concentration and even more distraction to turn the quotidian into quasi-prose. It is my second night this week escaping lodgerland, blonde Racquel invited me for a fantastic dinner and went one better, collected me. The moonlight walk uphill home awakened me so much I couldn't resist checking to see if anyone had made their scrabble move. I begin to chat, defend, navigate and play three games of scrabble and bridge online at 2am, and ponder the laundry spread on the floor as if I'm on the banks of the Ganges. You see, keeping the house warm until Lodger No.2 departs means the stone floor in the kitchen stays hot overnight.

Since I  put the bedroom up on DAFT,  Easyroommate,  b&b sites and now a new one - Trusted House Sitter, the temptation to relate to actual people I know online has emerged. Only introduced to Words for Friends after Christmas, I've lost every game to Cruella's husband, except now, after ten games I've beaten him - at last. So, allow me to digress again, it's worth sharing. If you're under thirty-five, don't bother reading the next paragraph, you'll be so OVER it!

I thought on-line scrabble would be impossible, how could you guarantee staying put for the same hour as your opponents? Of course it doesn't work like that, one recent game took three weeks because my opponent went away for work and played one word every few days. The name, Words with Friends, is apt, you can be thousands of miles apart and chat with someone you haven't seen in fourteen years while they're on a ski trip. Not in public, like Facebook, but as if you're in the next room. Still, it's not the most satisfying of games, unlike scrabble; it allows ridiculous words that would create all-out war in the board game version. But as a concept, Words with Friends, is just that, exchanging little pieces of news, encouragement or commiseration, empathy and humour, with the delicious edge of competition and effort. So, while austerity might get the better of nights-out, there are other ways to communicate on nights-in.

Back to concentration; during the day the attention deficit  is no different, only more tasks are bundled on to the desk or into the car and ever more so with tenants, as the actual house has to be cleaned. I used to be too busy to clean, which is fair enough when you’re working hard and haven't the time, so I paid a very nice woman. But, since I built the house extension seven years ago, we haven't had anyone to help. The cost centres got big enough to hold a vacuum cleaner and used it every evening when the builders left. That was a seven month ordeal and it was a good habit to get them into.

Now, while waiting to find a publisher, I want something to do, rather, I need something to do. This requires tailoring each CV for the prosaic and poorly paid approximation of the ideal job, then diverting to shopping lists and collaborative project ideas with two entrepreneurs all the while plotting scenes for my next novel or improving the heroine in the first one. And then actually going to do the food shop.

There is somebody who gets very, very frustrated with this stop-start activity. Tess, our sheepdog, pokes my leg at least ten times a day until she gets a walk. Which only leads to another round of distracted activity and, frankly, that's because the route has been walked for seventeen years and only the changing of the seasons gives any cause for surprise.

The highlight of the dog walk can simply be the purchase of the weekly bar of chocolate in the local Spar (the only place you can find the new Lindt caramel and sea salt),reading all the headlines, scanning Hello and OK and a quick flick of Grazia, the better magazines being in sealed bags. Cost centre no. 2 bought me Vanity Fair for Christmas, such is the treat it has become; but you can easily get through Vogue or Elle in the hairdresser, which is a saving of seven euro, making a blow-dry cheaper in the long run. In fact the blow-dry is really free if you manage to get through four magazines. This diversion activity brings me completely up to date on all manner of political, catastrophical, movie, fashion and music trivia.

On Saturday I'll actually buy a  newspaper, I've moved away from the relentless Church coverage of the Irish Times, which I can read online, and buy the ridiculously irrelevant FT Weekend, if it includes How to Spend It, I think you'll find that's the best use of irony in this blog.  It has all the salient news on trends, shakers, gadgets, movers, makers, doers, in other words, another world, with lots of Attention Deficit people in it.

I justify this keeping in touch with economic and style trends in case I return to the days when I worked on large restoration projects.  I was also an interior designer back then, when there were only ten in the phone book.  I split my attention between managing building sites, buying antiques and paintings and travelled a lot for research and inspiration, many times with my children. From the distance of landladyland, It's great to have those memories now.

I brought the boys to Lake Como, Rome, London, Luxor, New York, Brittas Bay and Ballymoney, many places that would be etched in their childhood memories. Or so I thought. I remember every picnic and beach trip, every airport queue and ice cream van, every hotel, every tantrum, every hug. The boys have no recollection. So,  mothers and fathers, don't sweat. Stick to bedtime stories. And Fables. If the story of Chicken Licken and the sky falling in was a mystery to you, you haven't been distracted enough.

Reading, writing, storytelling, laughter, drama, tears, re-imagining and sometimes HEA ('happy ever after') is what it's all about. Allegedly.