He wasn’t in politics, and he didn’t work in foreign affairs, but he never missed a trick on our road. If a car pulled up, a window opened or a new flowerpot appeared on someone’s sill, he knew. Long before WhatsApp groups and Ring doorbells, he was our surveillance system.
We called him the Ambassador because he had presence. He stood just outside his front door, hands behind his back, nodding at passersby and greeting old neighbours like dignitaries returning from exile. Whether it was a welcome or a warning was hard to tell. His expression didn’t give much away, a little like a politician who knows something you don’t.
On match days in Croke Park he was in full diplomatic mode and no one parked on our little street in Phibsborough without going through him first.
“Who might you be?” he’d ask, one eyebrow raised.
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“Up from Tipperary, we’re just ...”
“There’s no justs living here. Residents only.”
If you were from the street, you got the nod, sometimes even a parking spot saved near your door. If not, you were politely but firmly redirected toward Drumcondra.
His house was easy to spot: net curtains, a virgin Mary in the window, and a front room filled with Irish tchotchkes and Tricolour trinkets, rosary beads, match programmes and souvenir coins. He lived alone, as far as we knew, but this man never seemed lonely. He was always watching, always vigilant, always up for neighbourly conversations.
He went to every open viewing on the street, not because he had any intention of moving, but because he needed to know what was going on, who might be coming and what wallpaper they had.
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We lived there for a decade, three young Cork “blow-ins” learning to keep pace with the street’s unhurried rhythm. And when I think of those years, it’s not the nightlife I remember but the figure at his doorstep, hands clasped behind his back, keeping watch over his small republic.
My partner and I recently bought a home together, a semi on a quiet street in Beaumont. During the viewing, the estate agent gestured towards a heavy fruit bowl filled with bunches of keys, mismatched, unlabeled and many starting to rust. We tried them in every lock, door and cupboard – some turned cleanly, most did not. At the time it felt like a riddle to solve or the plot set-up of the latest airport novel: the House with the Secret Keys.
But as we peeled away old wallpaper and began the slow work of reclaiming the place, there came a knock at the door. A neighbour stood outside holding another set of keys. “These are for you,” he said. “We used to check the place while he was away.”
The next day, another knock. Then another. It seemed half the street had a key to our new home. They watched his house, collected his newspaper, checked his post: they minded him.
We started clearing out what was left. A single armchair, its fabric worn smooth at the arms. A stack of newspapers from months ago, folded but never read. In the fridge, a few gone-off ready meals for one, their sell-by dates lined up like missed appointments. And in the back of a kitchen cabinet, taped carefully to the wood, a small newspaper clipping with a list of helpline numbers: the Samaritans, Pieta House, Aware. Neatly taped and left there deliberately, as if to remind himself that someone, somewhere, would pick up the phone.
It made me pause.
I’d spent weeks thinking of the Handyman (that’s what we decided to call him after discovering his treasure trove of tools) as a figure of certainty, the man with the keys, the tools, the quiet presence at the front door. But that little scrap of newsprint made me wonder. Maybe his routines weren’t just about minding the street. Perhaps they were a way to feel less lonely.
Either way, it reminded me how easily loneliness hides inside ordinary lives, like a curtain drawn early or a television glowing late into the night.
Neighbours told stories of doors unstuck, bulbs replaced and walls painted “just to freshen them up”. The Handyman didn’t just live on the street; he kept it stitched together, one small repair at a time. And yet, behind the steady order, there were those helpline clippings.
He’s gone now, the Ambassador who kept our old street, and so is the Handyman, the man who kept this house before us, but I like to think that somewhere, in the way neighbours nod to each other on morning walks, or how the flowers they planted return each spring, a little of them remains.
Sometimes, in the evenings, I catch my partner standing in the front garden, hands behind his back, listening to the low hum of the street. He never knew the Ambassador, but somehow he’s taken up the post. Last week I found him outside raking the neighbour’s leaves. Not because anyone had asked but just because they were there. And in that small, almost invisible exchange, something endures.
The Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.ie
