Rentonomics

We've come a long way since I rented for the first time in Dublin. The skill back then was to buy the first copy of the Evening Herald, find a working pay phone, hopefully get through to the landlord and leg it to the far flung room with shared bath in a north-side terrace, because that was the baseline for me and my school friend. I think I lasted one night. My next rental was a two-bed apartment with balconies in a suburb of Sydney. Grown-up bliss. Magnificent purple-hued sunsets from my kitchen window. Next was a one-bed in Sandymount, no balcony and an Ebenezer of a landlord, great for yellow-orange sunrises on the strand though. Then on to a charming but draughty period house in Monkstown, sharing with dear friends who were great cooks and champion socialites. I suppose that's the nearest thing to what I'm doing now, looking for the ideal house sharer. My on-line results are mostly foreign, in their twenties and looking for city centre sharing. I check comparable houses nearby, albeit in D4 rather than D4 plus 10,  which is where I am. All a good 200 euro more per month. 

CCN#2, the one who moved from the master en-suite to the linen cupboard, studies philosophy as well as economics, somewhat qualified to advise me and says I shouldn't reduce the rent. He is also the most voluble on the Co-op Board and tells me to be patient. He pushes the pre-determination theory when I get addled with anything these days, I've never been a great one for 'what will be, will be'. 

When I went to Sydney, over twenty years ago, there was truly no work in Dublin. To go out there, bask in warm winter sunshine, get a good job immediately and have an apartment was something all our young people should experience and hopefully return with that excitement and sense of success, to inject back into Ireland. I hope I feel so sanguine when one or both of my sons finds he has to leave the country out of economic rather than career necessity. One woman recently told me her son is in Sydney with twelve of his classmates from Blackrock College... Kiely's must be a quieter place.

The tenant search continues more viewing cancellations over the weekend. Tess, our dog, has figured something is up as her access to random beds has been curtailed and she has to be blockaded into CC#1's attic penthouse at night to avoid her dawn chorus barking at the postman. I've mentioned her girth before, they say if your dog is overweight; you're not getting enough exercise. By the time she gets to the first landing, she looks incredulously at me, wondering if I'm really serious that she should waddle up the second flight.

I discovered another reason behind her confusion recently. Tess is time-shared. Her other mother, my neighbour, I'll call her Lara, denies Tess access to the attic bedroom and tries to keep her on the ground floor at night. We both watch her diet and confer on when she eats. But it's Tess's ability to sniff out a chicken or steak dinner wafting from any house and ingratiate herself to the cook for a morsel or ten, that eludes us.