Róisín Ingle

. . . . on pastures new

MY YOUNG FRIEND Cathy is moving out of her lodgings and looking for another place to live. They really are lodgings, even if that sounds like something out of Rising Damp. She currently lives in the house of an older woman who doesn’t like Cathy having guests of the male variety. Not that Cathy is always wanting to have blokes over or anything, but she thinks she should have the freedom to entertain male guests in her own lodgings if she wants to and I tend to agree.

While she will miss her otherwise very decent landlady, Cathy says it’s time to move on; time for a change.

She also confides that she doesn’t actually like change and that even though she has handed in her notice, and packed half her things, she hasn’t made one phone call in an attempt to secure new lodgings.

I don’t know why I volunteer to help. Oh, hang on a sec, yes I do. While not being able to fix certain things in my own life I quite fancy myself as a fixer of other people’s lives.

While I am on the room-hunting mission I can avoid dealing with my own issues and at the same time be suffused with a warm glow about the fact that I am helping Cathy find a new home. That screeching noise you heard was two birds being slaughtered by the same well-meaning stone.

The first place I find her on daft.iesounds promising. Attic room. En suite bathroom.

I’m thinking we are going to crack this finding-Cathy-a-new-place-to-live on the first attempt. And I am still thinking that when we walk into the house and my nose is assaulted by a smell I can only describe as manky carpet crossed with stale sweat mingled with something I don’t even want to think about, all smothered with top notes of Fabreze.

“I sprayed some around before you came,” said the young man with the kind eyes who showed us around. “Thank you,” I said and I meant it.

Seven people lived behind locked doors in this average-sized semi that had no dining table and a poky sitting room that only one person used because everybody else watched telly in their own rooms.

There was a fantastic view from the lone window, a skylight in the attic room, if you poked your head out and craned it a bit to the right. When you went to turn out the lights, the switches were all sticky.

“It’s a boy’s house,” apologised the kind-eyed man. We walked out the door in silence and only found words a few hundred metres down the road when Cathy, who has seen some dodgy sights in her own country in sub Saharan Africa, pointed to a cardboard box and said, “I would rather live inside that.”

After that we saw a house with a washing machine in the sitting room. After that we saw a fine house which one very nice existing tenant said was in “very secure” area helpfully pointing out the house of a well-known criminal who lived in the next street.

After that we went to a house where for a hilarious joke the owner asked Cathy if she practised voodoo and couldn’t get us out of there quick enough when in another hilarious joke Cathy looked him in the eye and replied “oh yes, every day”.

After that we saw a house split into flats where a sign on the door read, “This is not a brothel, no prostitutes please” and there was a battered pay phone in the hall and I don’t know which depressed me more the pay phone or the sign about the brothel.

Despite the inauspicious start, I became consumed with the search for the perfect double room for Cathy, developing an addiction to the search engine on daft.ie.

And then one day I found it. “This one’s different I told Cathy,” who to her credit adjusted her gait to hopeful and walked with me to the door like someone just back from a war.

And it was. Bright! Spacious! Clean! A double room that actually was a double room and not something incompatible with cat swinging. A cheery house inhabited by three gorgeous girls from the country who all seemed great craic and asked about Cathy’s background and made all the right welcoming noises.

We were barely outside the door before Cathy was ringing them to say, “I am very interested”. Job done, I cheered, but no, not really. It turned out they had more people to see. We had been unknowing participants in Tenant Search, a sort of accommodation based X Factor. Even though we’ve both seen Shallow Grave this was something which hadn’t occurred to either of us.

We didn’t know we were auditioning. Had we known we would have told them about Cathy’s beauty school qualifications (free pampering nights!) and her business acumen (free financial advice!) and her chicken, lemon and ginger dish from Africa (free multi-cultural cooking!) but we never had a chance.

The rejection email, when it came, was very nice and not at all Cowellesque and wished Cathy the best of luck with the hunt.

The next day Cathy told me another friend had agreed to help with the search from now on and on the outside I made sure to look as though I was only devastated at the news. Inside, I was spraying Fabreze and throwing myself a little party.

In other news . . . another young friend also needs a bit of help. She is researching a history project about the “Steamboat Ladies” those female students, predominately from the UK, who received degrees from Trinity College during the years 1904-07. If you think you might be able to assist, drop me a mail