Every Little Helps

Step away from the Rancheros

Got up super early this Monday while Gentlemen Lodgers and Cost Centres were captive to zzzzz’s. Cost Centre #2 needed a lift to his final exams and I wanted to beat the traffic, though we are only three miles away. I try to write early in the morning, like serious successful authors say they do, except I find I tackle one word of scrabble from the night before instead.

I am saddened by the death of Donal Walsh, the brave Kerry teenager, taken at sixteen after his battle with cancer. That despicable word. The good really do die young. His message to other teenagers is cool, his parents must be incredibly proud and equally devastated. It reminds me we must treasure and forgive our sons when they stray wayward. Easier said than done.

I didn’t intend to write about this, its just when you get up on Monday morning you never know WTF is ahead. And I was going to write a cheerful post about top shopping tips. Which I will anyway.

Having dropped CC#2 to the RDS and watched him with a lump in my throat, saunter, seemingly carefree, with a bottle of water and a sheet of paper, I did several u-turns to extricate myself from the excess of moms and dads taking pity on their offspring and trying to get them near the gate. The sign that says UCD Exams, still gives me a labour pain.

I carried on with hairy mutt to Tesco Merrion, apparently the most expensive Tesco in the world. I’ve researched this, not extensively, but I’ve tried Lidl and Aldi once or twice and get lost in the aisles, get frustrated trying to find the coffee or cereal we eat and give up. And find the total bill no less irksome than a Tesco one. Except they do loyalty cards and I had clocked up 22 euro of free money. So, what’s not to like?

A lot. They really squeeze the Irish suppliers, so there is hardly a margin to survive on and that's how you put people out of business, this is clearly a fact, as Philip Boucher Hayes said it in his RTE documentary, What's Ireland Eating and they don't want to be sued, you know.

It's over two weeks since I’ve done the Big Shop, pre hospital I think, so emergency Spar runs in between. But with four men in the house, there was a dearth of loo roll, I believe we were down to one sheet per bathroom, no washing powder or dishwasher tabs, it was time to do an actual shop and there’s nothing I loathe more than pushing a trolley in Tesco. Most products are now reduced to two choices, own-brand and one other cheapo they found in eastern Europe. Once you’ve got used to where to find the stuff, they switch the location or randomly place special offer alerts in front of items not on special offer and you find you bought two of something you don’t need. And to give them back you need to join the long customer service queue, every second time I find an overcharge or dupe like this.

Here’s what I re-discovered about arriving before 9am on a Monday, the carpark is empty, no four-wheel drives to scrape my slim car. The aisles are empty; nothing has moved since my last visit, the checkouts are even empty. And Top Tip for saving money, the wine section is closed, so no temptation to see what special offers they have on a merlot or a pouilly fuisse, I mean, at ten euro its £7.88 in old money. I still convert. Sadly. Wine was way dearer eleven years ago. So, big saving there, on the pocket and elsewhere.

Mutt and I have time for a walk on Sandymount strand and it’s still not ten o’clock. I phone ahead to CC#1 who is in bed and put in a request to have shopping unloaded and stored, my second biggest hate. It’s time for me to get back to writing and get ready to meet a film-maker at lunchtime. Which turns out to be a great flowing chat with his producer colleague and well, watch this space, as they say.

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.