HOUSE HUNTER:Now that we're renting in Dundrum with public transport close at hand, our jalopy is being parked, writes DON MORGAN
WE HAVE a home. It’s stinky, it’s bijou, but it’s been our true home for the last three-and-a-half years: our car. And do you know what, I love it nearly as much as the person I share it with. Like a padded cell painted white, it had an incredible influence until a month ago.
Until three weeks ago, I felt like a prisoner of it. The last three weeks I’ve avoided its lure. I’m like a morbidly obese person who you might see on the Discovery channel. Sick of being winched out of the house in order to get washed down at the local car wash with a powerhose, I cut down on nachos and started to exercise.
I lost my back fat, and that size six Oscar de la Renta ball gown is more than just a dream! Donny, you’re back to being a string bean again. And thank God for that, because the missus was getting faintly embarrassed by my tubbiness.
We don’t drive much anymore at all. Nevertheless, when it was suggested that our search was being warped by our car, I felt really defensive about our jalopy. We were apparently missing the big picture about houses we were viewing. Could it be true?
I sobbed like the little girl on those anti-Lisbon posters, eyes like saucers because Declan Ganley had murdered her pet kitten in front of her at the photo shoot. You just don’t diss a brother’s car, it’s not done, even when it’s not really yours. It’s your wife’s. What’s mine is the dirt and the dent on the front wing.
Our car is part of our story. We had our big conversations there, we lived in there, laughed, slept and ate in there; our own four walls (plus six windows and four wheels).
We drive to house viewings for two reasons. One is that it’s an easy mode of transport. The other is that we can figure out fairly quickly if a house will be, ironically, a runner. On-street parking has always been a sticking point because it has to be. I’m easygoing about it, but if I’m coming home from the shops, and have the car full of crap which needs to be brought inside, then I need to know for sure that some bozo hasn’t gone and plonked their gi-normous Land Rover Panzer in front of my as yet non-existent house. Discount these options, and strike off half the city, it’s true. And in doing so, you rule out areas where all the nice, pretty houses are, with wonderful features like character. Them’s the breaks.
Without a doubt, we do drive a lot even still, but not because we like it. Public transport is still like a chain reaction of misadventure: the bus may not turn up, because the bus played chicken with a tram, after the tram got pelted with rocks by a gurrier on a rental bike he nicked from a man who stopped taking the bus, because men who think washing isn’t necessary kept sitting next to him on his morning commute.
Driving doesn’t mean you’re going to get anywhere on time, however. We’re always late, and not just because I like to claim the lady’s prerogative and keep folks waiting. When choosing to live somewhere in Dublin, the best thing therefore could be to figure out how long you need to walk before reaching public transport.
Where we’re renting now, we’re a four-minute walk to the Luas, which takes about 10 minutes to get into town.
I met a friend in town, had a few pints, was asleep early enough to be as fresh as a daisy the next morning, bounding into work as Áine Lawlor was hectoring her first guest on Morning Ireland.
The place we’ll leave the car ultimately is the knacker’s yard. It’s on its last legs, following four services, a replaced exhaust and the injection of approximately €6,000 worth of petrol.
Our mobile residence witnessed it all in three-and-a-half years: emotion, marriage, breakfast rolls. Now the catalytic converter’s gone. It’s time to bike it and scout for a three-bed semi in Dundrum I saw for under 400k.
Let’s hope I wasn’t dreaming.
