A Home at the End of the Randomers

It's been a long time coming, but is no less sweeter for it. In about a month, myself and Megan plan to get a place together. It's going to be so special, I just cannot wait.

The list of reasons how this will improve my life is endless. No more living with strangers, no more dead phones, no more sour milk. And it will come together so easily for something so great - in jest, I've decided we will need just a blanket and two wine glasses to make our teeny place home!

But trully it will be fantastic - we already enjoy all of our free time together, and now we will have all our stuff in one place. I've had a few funny instances already of showing up to work wearing whatever's lying around where I rise and hoping no one will notice. My nice new runners with orange shoelaces don't help in this regard!

Of course me being the broody type, I'm already reminiscing about my eight years and one month of single man rentdom. Feeling distinctly upbeat about it all - it's the end of one era and the beginning of quite another that looks very rosy indeed. The move makes me feel better about being 27, proud in fact of what I've experienced and achieved since I packed my bags and left the family home in Scholarstown in September 2000.

So to mark the occasion, I've prepared a little run-down of the happy shacks, drinking dens, boltholes and shitholes that I've called my own over the years.

1. 364 Charlemont, Griffith Ave, Marino
Timeline: Sep '00 - June '01, Sep '01 - June '02
Lineup: me, Ian, Ollie, James (year one), Tim D (year two)

Soundtrack: U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind

John still says he's 'Charlemont 'till I die'! We had some legendary parties here, including the notorious 'fish face' incident (sorry AO'C if you ever see this) in which Gar shagged a classmate of mine on the windowsill of my tiny single room - in the middle of the party. I was left half a bottle of Jameson by way of compensation!

I also remember listening to David Kitt's debut 'Small Moments', consuming large cups of tea/coffee/soup/cereal in Gar's giant Homer Simpson mug and a having lots of conversations that we thought were highly intellectual but which I realise now were more about the delight of self-actualisation in the making.

2. C 29 Batiment B1 RC, Ponsan Bellevue, Cité Universitaire Paul Sabatier, 115 Route de Narbonne, 31400 Toulouse
Timeline: August '02 - December '02
Lineup: me, with Julie-Anne in the next building. And Rachid the happy-go-lucky chocolatier sleeping on the floor for an extended period

Soundtrack: Coldplay's 'A Rush of Blood To The Head'

Yes, the address is a bit of an eyesore, but so was the accomodation. I remember being tickled by what I could now call my first intercultural joke in another language - I nicknamed the residence Ponsan Mauvaisevue and got a hearty laugh from French, Irish, Polish and German people present.

Great fun though, and perfect for getting out to class and out of the house to experience southern France. My room was so tiny, with a bidet I filled with cold water to act as a fridge and a mini-kettle that proved so popular it became known as 'Le Salon du thé de Bill'. The wine from a then-alien Lidl was comically cheap with a surprisingly high hit-rate.

2. 71 Shanliss Way, Santry
Timeline: January '03 - July '03
Lineup: me, Ian, Ollie, Julie-Anne
Soundtrack: Damien Rice's 'O'

The one with all the wine! Came back from France a permanent oenophile. My room greatly improved to a back-garden facing double, but I had a hot water tank next to my pillow which gave me serious sweats. Around the time I gave up smoking for two months it was like the scene from Trainspotting, I was crawling on the ceiling! Also home to 'the poetry corner', a cosy reading spot with armchair and lamp where Ollie would read stories from the hearth!

3. 59 The Maples, Clonskeagh
Timeline: August '03 - August '04
Lineup: me, Tim, Liam
Soundtrack: Muse's 'Absolution'. And the theme tunes to 'Gladiator' and 'Lord of the Rings'

The home of drinking, DVDs and Dominos. Anybody who says students drink the most never came to this place and saw 'Moosehead Mountain'! Some great parties as well as plenty of late nights after the pub. Gin and tonic was so prevalent it may as well have been invented here!

I had a spacious double with an ensuite bathroom, happy out. Also home to the craziest hooch collection yet seen, a box of party hats and the occasional ferret. As well as the largest collection of DVDs a 'coffee table' has ever held and a host of computer game consoles and other gadgets. Just don't mention 'Top Gun'.

4. 123 Morehampton Road, Donnybrook
Timeline: August '04 - December '04
Lineup: me, Maria and some seven others
Soundtrack: Keane's 'Hopes and Fears' and The Killers' 'Hot Fuss'

Like Bono's 'The Million Dollar Hotel', but without the money. Four floors of down and outs, miscreants, Finnish booze junkies, a middle-aged alcoholic with a non-stop cough, and even the occasional homeless person in the sometimes unpadlocked laundry shed. Watched lots of Channel 4 News and left-wing movies. And lost my shirt on gourmet ready-to-go meals from Donnybrook Fair. But never let it be said that 13 people (including couples) cannot share one kitchen. It happened.

5. 45 Lr Churchtown Road, Churchtown
Timeline: December '04 - April '05
Lineup: me, Micheal the waiter, Becks the waitress, Don the sap. And an alsatian.
Soundtrack: The Arcade Fire's 'Funeral' and U2's 'How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb'

Still probably my best ever bedroom - I got the master, complete with writing desk and fireplace. The family owners had just moved out so the greenery was impressive, even if the narrow back garden was dominated by my housemate's huge dog and terminated with the Green Luas Line.

Very comfortable place and location - 14 mins to St Stephen's Green - but we had to leave after the landlord flipped over the mess the dog made and kicked us out so she could redecorate. Prior to that she issued us a four-page handwritten cleaning list under the headings 'Immediate', 'Urgent' and 'General'. Monica eat your heart out.

6. 14 Cumberland Row, Britain Place, Dublin 1
Timeline: April '05 - April '06
Lineup: me, Guillaume, Kavo, Leona

Soundtrack: Sigur Ros' 'Takk...' and my burgeoning stock of music DVDs

The one with all the Chinese students. Only six apartments in my block-within-a-block, but there must have been more than 20 different faces going in and out. This two-bed was the best-looking modern apartment I've lived in, and I benefitted from another ensuite. Great to be so central as well - I'm surprised my Cineworld Unlimited card didn't warp from overuse. Although the hobos and junkies were never too far away.

The rolling stock of flatmates was good and bad. 'Word of the Day' conversations around a dictionary and wine and cheese with Guillaume tops the list, along with music and beers with Kavo, the provider of bootlegs. On the downside, there was the first girl I can't remember the name of with her individually washed & dried petticoats that ultimately resulted in an upaid ESB bill for a whopping €450, and Leona the loud and fussy country lass who thought she was charming but definitely wasn't.

7. Apt 4, Seabury, Sydney Parade Avenue, Sandymount
Timeline: April '06 - April '07
Lineup: me and Agnes
Soundtrack: Radiohead bootlegs from '97 and '03, as well as Muse's 'Black Holes and Revelations' for jogging

My 'spoil yourself' period! €675 a month for plush Dublin 4 two-bed with house cleaner, call-to-your-door driving lessons, the King of Belgium's coffee from Sandymount village, the cheeses of Tesco Merrion and regular-ish jogs on adjacent Sandymount Strand. The DART was super-handy for getting in to town, and of course the 15 min walk to work was hard to beat.

Agnes the fortysomething French waitress was good at sharing vegetables and smoking indoors, but bad at the sight of crumbs on the table - she thought they were the end of the world, zut alors! We took delight in the size of this 1970s pad, which was built before Ireland knew what an apartment was and consequently about twice the size of the ground floor of an average house. It even had a separate sun room we used for drying clothes and a full size dining table. And where was the last place you saw that had 'visitors' parking'?!

8. 177 Moyville, Rathfarnham
Timeline: April '07 - Present
Lineup: me and Mick, and two screaming children one night a week
Soundtrack: Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' and Caedmon's Call

The bargain after the splurge! To make room in my discretionary spending for Lenny the green Ford Ka, I downsized to no-less-leafy D16, where I ended up with half a three-bed house for €450, all bills included.

Sure, my housemate's quite loud, but he also keeps to himself and generally never complains about anything. Plenty of Friday night dashes to the cinema or pub to avoid the marauding small people, but few problems otherwise. Great access to all the old spots of my childhood and adolescence, and many fun trips up the mountains for a Guinness or two with Gar and Gargan.

Most notable also for all the fun times with Megan in the last seven months and 25 days, which brings us back more or less to where we came in. Four years of friends, four years of randomers, and now a home at the end of it all. A toast to the good times of the early and mid-twenties, and roll on the late twenties!

Tasty feast with a few nice wines

It's great value when you think about it, although it would be expensive to do it that often. For €75 a pop, myself and Megan attended Meet the Winemaker with Jerome Poisson at Rhodes D7 last week. The price included a champagne reception and five-course meal, with a different glass of wine to try with each dish.

Firstly, three cheers to Gar for getting us a perfect table alongside the wall, in good reach of the waiters but with some distance from the larger groups of tasters. A mixed table would certainly have been less fun, and we got great service.

The star of the evening was definitely the food. I was once told that I would eat tomato and basil off a sock, and the very light dish we opened our feast with did not contradict this theory about my taste for the combination.

Sea bass is my new favourite fish, after trying it out recently and then greatly enjoying the crispy starter at this event. I was less enamoured with the main course, a slow-cooked beef that broke into strings as you ate it and seemed to have had most of its juices systematically removed. Like a poorly-chosen Chinese takeaway dish, you were sick of the sauce before you were full. Nice mashed potato and veg though.

The Franco-Irish cheese plate was reliably tasty, but it came way too late in the day for me to give proper justice to it. I think wine and cheese, or better wine and meat and cheese, works best as a stand alone light meal rather than something tacked on as an extra course. Finally the chunk-filled brulee-type sweet dish was neither good or bad, as I often find with dessert.

The wine itself was a mixed bag. Champagne is a great way to start anything, so no complaints there. Both the white wines were gorgeous in different ways - the Sauvignon Blanc was bright and sweet, while the Chardonnay had a delicious oak-edged and tang-free taste that probably made it the best glass of white I've ever had. (Not that I've had many, such is my taste for red.)

As for the reds, there was a big clanger - the merlot was disgusting. It made my forehead come out in a sweat and was essentially undrinkable for anyone with a brain. The second red, which cost a fortune our sources told us, was absolutely delicious, but fell short of eclipsing the memory of its mucky predecessor. Finally, the dessert wine was, well, dessert wine. They're all the same I think.

Mercifully the speeches were not overdone, and I could certainly forgive the Chile-based French-speaking winemaker for his schoolboyish English. Indeed it's kind of fun to spot an error in English that can be traced back to the way it is said in French, e.g. 'my proper vineyard' surely came from 'mon propre vignoble', meaning 'my own vineyard'.

Mr Poisson also came over and spoke to us, and seemed happy enough with Megan's two-line assessment and my polite smile. Although he did get in his excuse about the expense of the nicer wines a bit early, i.e. almost before we had finished telling him which ones we liked.

After disappearing into the night, I found no need for breakfast and had no urge to drink more wine for some days afterwards. As an experiment in attending wine tastings, I really enjoyed it, though doing the same again in another setting such as a stand-up tasting in a shop somewhere - with an actual requirement for informed opinions - would be another story altogether...

In memory of the Lighthouse

It is going to be such a shame when the Lighthouse closes down again. Yes, it's got €1.75m from the Department of Arts, Sport & Tourism as well as the Arts Council and the Irish Film Board to pay for its reopening last May. But let's face it, as a 'commercially operated cultural cinema which presents a diverse and individual programme of the best Irish, independent, foreign-language, arthouse and classic cinema,' well, it's fucked.

Set back from Smithfield Market square at a sort of sub-square in front of the underground car park, the Lighthouse's potential for attracting passing customers essentially consists of a painted pane of glass obscured by a nut stand. At 6pm on a Friday evening, this huge swell of passing trade amounted to two scumbags testing out a radio-controlled monster truck. 'Ya hear it changing gear and then it just takes off,' the one without his hand on the controller tells a passer-by who had asked for no elaboration.

But back to the cinema. You walk in and think you're in an art gallery, such is the abundant use of white paint and sharply defined corners. There's a café/wine bar on the ground floor, and then the screens are on two underground levels accessed by a nice sloping staircase. I bump into a woman I'm sure I recognise from the paper as the co-owner on a mezzanine half-way down. She directs me to Screen 2 like your average €9 an hour; it may go without saying at this point that I've seen about five customers, all for coffee upstairs.

The auditorium itself is really nice, coloured seats with longer headrests and more leg room, perfect for slouchers like yours truly. Myself and seven others enjoyed the only moderately funny but entertaining 'Hors de Prix (Priceless)'. Two trailers, no adverts. Yes, you read correctly. It's worth going for that alone.

At first glance there seemed to be no goodies around, but I did notice a small amount of popcorn, as well as wine and comfy-looking stools, on sale to no one in particular in a corner of the basement level. It struck me that this would be a great place in which to get drunk while admiring the architecture in splendid isolation.

Which is where we came in. I'm not sure what length of a business plan they've got, but 'profit in year three', as they say, for a second arthouse cinema in trashy, sport-obsessed centre-right dominated Dublin? I don't think so. There just aren't enough cultural cinephiles out there. I suspect the Taoiseach isn't the only one who won't say the word 'recession', if you know what I mean. But in the meantime, it's an unspoilt structural and cultural gem. Go, see, do.

Read more
History of Lighthouse Cinema
Feature in The Ticket by Michael Dwyer

The little green gremlin

Parnell Street, the Saturday evening before last. I gladly sidle into a loading-bay spot outside a takeaway on the street's west side. The mission: a quick bite to eat, then the securing of wine and other goodies for a dash to Megan's friend Ann Marie's house.

Shortly thereafter, the food had been enjoyed and the supplies duly collected from the shiny new Tesco (which by the way regrettably falls somewhat short of my south Dublin tastes as regards the selection of wine and cheese!).

Back we go out on the street to jump into the car. Busy talking, we almost walk by a fantastically streetwise aqua-coloured car. I make my usual gentlemanly gesture of unlocking and opening the passenger door, absent-mindedly fiddling the key left and right without noticing that the door is unlocked. (Megan never forgets to lock it on her way out.)

Megan opens my door from the inside, and we get ready to set off. I put the key in the ignition while Megan settles the shopping on the passenger seat floor. I notice a Dublin city street guide on top of the glove department, and wonder if Megan got it for her upcoming house hunt.

I turn to put on my seatbelt and notice that it has got some kind of padding sleeve on it. 'What the hell is this,' I think aloud as myself and Megan turn to each other and then toward a gleaming silver stereo adorned with a CD deck and several rows of useful buttons. My super-basic radio has three presets, buttons for tuning, volume and power and a wonky tape deck. We were in the wrong car.

Sheepishly dashing to the other 00-D green Ford Ka at the next shopfront loading bay on the street, we wonder how we made our mistake. In our defence, save for a pair of very discreetly positioned 'L' plates and a different reg number, the car had been identical from the outside. The funniest part was realising that Megan had clicked the lock on the other Ka out of habit on her way out, while I just bailed in a panic, leaving the driver's side unlocked. Perhaps the person thought on their way back to their car that they had left the passenger door unlocked, only to find it was locked and the driver's door was open! Enough to drive anyone mad.

The other funny thing is there's another aqua-coloured Ka, 01-D this time, belonging to a guy I've never met who works in Radio. I did draw level with him at the gate once, and he was wondering why I was smiling at him until I pulled away and saw his surprised expression in my rear view mirror as he realised that we were driving the exact same car! Anyhow his is parked in RTÉ every single day and I've never mistaken it for my own. Though I have once been accused by a colleague of going out drinking on a Thursday night and leaving my (i.e. his) car at work as careless evidence of same!