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.