Deciding where in the country to go for a few days of rest and relaxation between Christmas and new year was tricky. An achingly cool boutique hotel sounded good. A pampering spa with treatments involving lots of warm mud was tempting. Then we remembered the old rhyme: 30 days hath September, April, June and November; all the rest have 31, except for January, which lasts for at least three months and by the time it is over you will have spent your overdraft and be living on kidney beans.
How, we wondered, could we save money and still have a little bit of a break? The answer, it turns out, is to house-sit for someone with a home in one of the leafiest Dublin suburbs, postcodes 4, 6 or anywhere by the sea.
I grew up in Dublin 4, but nobody I know well enough has made it back there yet, so Dublin 6 was the only option. Having spent Christmas with them, we knew the owners were planning to go away for a few days to England. All we had to do was inquire whether they thought they might need a house-sitter. It hadn't occurred to the homeowners that they might have such a need, but once we explained the risks inherent in leaving your house unoccupied for four consecutive days - "think of how bleak and unlived in it will be when you come back" - they jumped at the chance.
It's not as though we don't enjoy where we live, in Dublin's north inner city. We have neighbours who mind your keys, we have three Chinese takeaways within walking distance and we get a Christmas card and sometimes even home visits from Bertie. On the downside, we feel out of place if we're not dressed in our pyjamas while ordering our chicken chow mein. The other day I saw a girl walking down the road wearing her pyjamas and holding a pillow. Word on the street is that a well-sprung mattress is going to be the must-have accessory for the fashion-forward proponents of nightwear-as-daywear in 2008.
We didn't spot anyone wearing pyjamas in Dublin 6, even though local legend has it that Miriam O'Callaghan thinks nothing of popping out for a pint of milk in her silk dressing gown. "That I'd like to see," said my co-house-sitter wistfully.
The other difference is that it's all about Thai food in Dublin 6 as opposed to Chinese, and when in Ranelagh you might as well do what the Ranelanians do. It arrives in cardboard boxes with chopsticks and everything, like in American movies. For a few blissful days we treated the house like a hotel, substituting Thai food for room service. Best of all we discovered Bord na Móna firelogs.
For someone who grew up in a house where making the fire was a laborious process involving tightly twisted bits of newspaper, kindling, firelighters and plenty of matches, these firelogs are a revelation. We don't have a fireplace in our terraced house, on account of the fact that we blocked it up with plasterboard because we figured lighting fires was too messy. Pah.
You probably already know, but, in case you don't, these firelogs are genius solid-fuel-based products wrapped in paper that you just light to create an instant fire. We went through a whole basket of the things while eating Thai food and plundering the extensive DVD collection. We also invited people over to "our house" to play Scrabble in front of the firelog.
Inevitably the transition back to our own house was difficult. Our bed wasn't as cosy as the one in their spare room, the general atmosphere wasn't as rarefied and instead of flickering flames we were faced with a bare wall. We cheered ourselves up by searching for house-sitting gigs on the internet, but it turns out all those people with villas in Italy and ranches in the Australian outback just want you as glorified pet-sitters. Must love cats, they say, must adore dogs. Nothing about firelogs.
Dublin 6 was perfect. Only a couple of miles from our front door, it turned out to be the mini-break to end them all, so naturally we tried to ensure it wouldn't be our last trip to the region. We left the place spotless, did all the post-Christmas recycling for the real homeowners and put up a shelf in the children's bedroom. We even replaced the firelogs we'd used.
"You can stay again," they said approvingly on their return, at which point we inquired about their upcoming holiday plans. Four weeks in the US in August, they said. A month in Ranelagh. We cannot wait.