Ten Things Developers Say (Said)

1. 'Can you take over these fuckers?'
He's put together a cheap team, 'borrowed' sub-contractors from corporate projects to do up his own house, nothing is getting done on time, nobody's listening. You were the interior designer,now you're the project engineer.

2. 'You're too shagging polite'
You don't yell and scream at project meetings, but collar the foreman afterwards and tell him you're on tranquilizers because of him. Action for 2 days solid.

3. 'Can you get on to Christies/Sothebys and buy that Art Deco suite of dining and console tables from a collector in Chile?'
Get on to Christies and agree the bidding can only be done in person in New York. First class tickets please, no problem.

4. 'I only want curtains with flowers, my mother loves them'
You source hand-made, hand-stitched, hand-painted fabric woven by fairies. 1500 euro per inch.

5. 'I want the Killarney tables with inlaid thatched cottages, shillelaghs and shamrocks'
Absolutely, done. Your phone is on silent while you're having your eyelashes dyed, the auctioneer is calling from London. You Lie. You were out of coverage. They weren't good enough anyway.

6. 'I want to show you a job my builders have done, so you get my style'
You end up on the top floor of a Georgian building after dinner viewing a cheap kitchen and repro fireplaces, then he lunges. Scarper back downstairs quick.

7. 'What would I want with bare-breasted women on my walls?'
Reply from millionaire aviation chief to offer of a significant portrait by an 18th century Irish artist. His mother also decorates.

8. 'Keep those fuckers away from me'
He won't pay the builders, the engineers, the architects, the quantity surveyors, you're next on the bad debts. But he can't sell until the Council are satisfied with compliance. Leverage. He needs you.

9. 'Eh, that's grand but he's the boss here'
He says in deference to the eminence gris of Irish architecture, when you propose a better layout to 'his modernist creation.'

10. 'That mahogany staircase is in the way, we need three apartments on the top floor. Get rid of it'
The building is still empty five years on, in NAMA, staircase is still there.

Shattered by the Bookseller of New York

I’m not one for conspiracy theories. But the copy of Alan Shatter’s book, Laura, a story you’ll never forget, was supposed to be shipped on Wednesday according to the ever efficient Amazon.com, only I got an email yesterday from the bookseller to say they were out of stock, promptly followed by a refund email. What can I say, were they being greedy and thought they’d make a hundred dollars more? It went up from 1 cent in the UK last week to thirty dollars (what I paid) as of today it’s 165 pounds and, I kid you not, three copies are 999 dollars each in USA.

I’ve found one on Donedeal with a lady on the North Side for 50 euro, but oh, dear, that is such a lot of food I could buy instead, unless of course I can read it, review it quickly (I feel that won’t be a problem) and re-sell it. I have another trick up my sleeve but saying nothing until I have it in my hand.

Enough bibliophile undercover activities, I wrote a post about the Surreal Moment in Leinster House last Thursday, not realising the effort would take the stuffing out of me when I got home. Though the stories from the group of women in Termination for Medical Reasons brought my own experience back to me and caused a flood of tears, it was the weight of emotion in the room and the compassion from all but two of the audience (the two that left rather obviously before the end, Peter Mathews and Fidelma Healy-Eames) that overcame me at home. It was the kind of evening to be wrapped in a blanket and watch trash TV with chocolate and red wine. Which is exactly why I record Revenge and enjoy my guilty pleasure all the more, can’t wait to see what Laura and her guilty pleasures are all about.

Flights of Fancy in Praise of Cabin Crew

My ideas come easier if I watch football or something equally bizarre, it's not so much the skill and pace, it's the commentary; sports commentary, especially on radio is a sublime skill. I absolutely loathe golf, but I could listen to the commentators on the Ryder Cup when it was in the K Club as if they were performing a cantata.  I just saw the equaliser in the Barcelona v Paris St Germain match, how very exciting, maybe that's inspiring me to keep this post somewhat international and about teamwork.

Cost Centre # 2 Flying by the Cliffs of Moher with
Baron Von Richter Scale

I'm  part of a crew on a racing boat, I take orders, and get wet and very cold and it's all over in two hours, then we have a pint after dusting ourselves down. If anything goes wrong we blame the equipment or the course. Luckily, I've even got to do some short cruises at the invitation of friends, in warm waters. There is something about being cut off from land that removes life's complications and scrunches them up for a few hours, I think that's why yacht racing is so popular.

I've always thought flying for a living would be a totally glamorous job, despite the fact that the crew have a slew of people in various stages of inebriation and panic attacks to deal with. But you know, on those long hauls, they get to cocktail and shop in New York, Boston, Chicago maybe even Singapore, Shanghai, Sligo-Knock. Or just to pop over to Paris for a night at the opera, London for dinner and back.

I never knew an actual stewardess personally, my ex-husband's ex-wife was one, but I never really knew her and he'd used up all his wanderlust by the time I'd met him, story of my life. Became a stay at home slippers type of man by the time we'd had our boys. Now, I have a real live senior cabin crew girlfriend, it sounds like the next best thing to being in school, with actual exotic destinations and getting paid to boot. I love the idea of Galley FM where all the gossip we don't get down on terrestrial gets scooped in the cloud. That's the real cloud not the i-Cloud.

Racquel doesn't think I write enough bad stuff about myself in this, so here is a confession, I've just cycled to her house to collect duty free cigarettes, have a chat, drink and cycle back uphill in a bit of a wobble. I'm not sure if any of that's illegal, but it felt bad. I think it's ok once it's still bright outside.

Having had years of working for myself, either in track suit at home or Armani suits in a board room, I quite fancy a uniform again, with a badge, I could be designated work hours, somebody else would even check all that for me, meaning the rest of the time was actually free, like not to having to worry about work, whether I'd got my report written and will the client pay, ever.

While it might be too late for me, I think I'll be recommending it to one of my cost centres, there's great fun and serious leadership skills required up there, not to mention diplomacy, patience, humour and all important, manners. Way more serious than you realise as you hide behind your Cara magazine and order that third quarter bottle of merlot. It's more like IMF meets Croke Park and we know what a mess they've made of that on Terrestrial. They could do with some cabin crew skills down here. And by the way, gentlemen, don't tap the stewardess's bottom with your finger when you want more coffee.

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!

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.