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.

With a Little Help from my Friends

After 1,360 page views on DAFT since January and over twenty viewings, the new tenant moves in this evening. The vote was unanimous at Sunday lunch yesterday. I took a straw poll with Cruella and other girlfriends before the first bottle of wine was consumed, so there can be no accusation of bias towards Dr Kovac.

I’ve taken down my ad and also my b&b ad from Airbnb, where I was running into lengthy correspondence with new pen pals from all over the globe. I’ve written apologies to all the runners up, a golden orb appeared in the sky this morning and has stayed put all day, there is washing on the actual line. It’s approaching 8 degrees, I just need to win the Monday Million and all will be well with the world.

Which reminds me, Cruella commented yesterday that my posts appear to be written in the middle of the night, she presumed I came in from a party and got keyboard happy, every night? No, it’s the google clock, it seems to log the posts around 8 hours behind Irish time. That’s my story anyway. I can assure you I haven’t been known to write coherently at that time of day.

The five girlfriends agreed the gap since Christmas was way too long to have convened a lunch. A quorum of four is all that’s required for a thorough-going analysis of all that’s wrong with the world and the ensuing six hour debate on how it’s put right. I could only stay for five hours so I’ve missed at least a further five hours of material for the ‘girlfriend lunch’ post. It will have to be assembled some other time, they were far too sober and forbidding for me to use anything discussed up to 7pm. From whence I got myself home to go back out on the absentee boyfriend date. Is there some coincidence with the tenant uptake in my house and his frequency of visits of late? Like I said before, he isn’t known as absentee the last four years for nothing, I think he started off as invisible boyfriend, or useless boyfriend and has graduated to the more permanent title, harking back to absentee landlords, those men that had a territorial interest in Ireland, but lived and worked elsewhere.

As a dinner date I believe it went quite well, especially as I wasn’t in the least bit hungry having partaken of the finest fare assembled by our girlfriend group earlier and I wasn't in the least bit interested in prolonging the evening into dancing or any such crazy notion. 

Budding entrepreneur lunch hostess had only returned from Morocco with baby son, and deposited him with his dad that morning, ready to greet us glowing with a healthy tan. She made it all look so easy that I’m inspired to host the next one, knowing I won’t be rushing anywhere. The days of sitting seventeen women down for lunch in my home are long gone; you can only talk to four or five with any sort of comfort. So, not being hungry at dinner and only having to deal with a delicious starter, I was able to offer all the advice and perspective that AB required. Because, reader, between lunch and dinner chats yesterday, I know we are all feeling different these days, everybody needs an ear or a shoulder, don’t be fooled by appearances.

Wet Wet Wet

It’s raining all around, every day, every night, I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes. But thanks to the late Reg Presley, Love is all Around too. Yes, that song from Four Weddings and a Funeral made famous by Marty Pellow, will always remind me of the unfeasible love affair between Hugh Grant and Andie McDowell, the kind that can only happen in movies. It was penned by Reg, the lead singer of the sixties band, The Troggs. Not that I would remember that of course, I'm cheating, having just read his obituary. And, well, between Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and V-Day tomorrow it’s as good a theme as any to commemorate days we are supposed to be doing things, communing with pancakes, giving up cigarettes or making heartfelt gestures to loved ones.

I’m not a big fan of V-Day, not since an ex-boyfriend sent me flowers. A massive bouquet, truly massive. The florist, being so busy on that day, hired a courier service to deliver them. And being a courier, one had to sign for ones delivery. On signing, I noticed that the recipient before me and the one about to get a massive bouquet were the ex-wife and a platonic friend of said ex-boyfriend. I can’t put enough ex’s into that sentence! Though, being the greatest excuse maker of all time, I tried to see the kindness of what he had done to cheer up two other women.  
Even when I was married, V-Day came in for a lot of stick. In a short space of time between December and March, my ex-husband had Five gift/card/dinner occasions, xmas,V-day, our wedding anniversary, my birthday and mother's day. I don't know who suffered most! So, tomorrow, the radio will be unplugged, no word or news relating to the event will be recognised and I will go silently onto the fifteenth of February, without incident or insult. Indeed, I will concentrate on being a landlady.

In a brainwave to fill my spare room while awaiting the ideal tenant, I spent Sunday putting up a profile on Airbnb, the international informal bed and breakfast site. Just to get an idea of what to do, I looked at other Dublin offerings, they were mainly city centre trendy apartments with hosts that could show you around the city. In the back of my mind, I knew it was a waste of time, but without a global presence, who was ever going to know that there was a room out here in the burbs on offer? And, frankly, how hard can it be to put a few sausages, pudding, bacon and egg on a plate, I do it for nothing for the cost centres. I must have got a bit carried away with the description. I thought ‘sure what the hell, I’ll go one better and offer tours of the Wicklow mountains and Glendalough,’ I had four bookings for Paddy’s weekend within 24 hours.  Hmm, I wondered would my neighbours let me camp in their house, while I rented my own bedroom as well. And more bookings today, as well as four prospective lodgers coming to view. It’s just like buses. And it’s certainly going to take my mind off tomorrow.