Following the recent news that a two-bedroom terraced house in Rialto in very bad repair, with the two adjoining houses derelict and boarded up, can be had for just £55,000, An Irishman's Diary is abandoning its usual preoccupations with naked women and the first World War and opening a property consultancy instead.
Ah. Here's our first client now come to view the ideal home for the first-time buyer. No, you're right, it has no door, but don't you find the fresh air wonderfully invigorating? Careful there! Watch where you put your feet. Don't want you falling through the floor and suing me, ha ha ha. Yes, it does look a bit like rot, doesn't it? That's because it is rot.
You know, there's a lot of tommy-rot talked about rot. Rot means potential. Rot challenges. Necessity is the mother of invention. Should we not make a virtue out of necessity? Turn adversity to advantage? We need rot. Rot turns tiny organisms into oil, vegetation into coal. Civilisation is built on r. . . DON'T LEAN AGAINST THAT WALL.
Skylight
Ah. I see you looking up at the sky. When it is properly framed within a roof - and a roof can be fitted at minimal expense - one calls it a skylight, and it adds enormously to the value of a property. The unhindered ability to see the sky from inside is one of the many desirable features of this property. You will also note the ease of access into the area at the back, although in time you might wish to limit this access with a wall of some kind.
You what? You find the yard small? Please. Permit me. It is not a yard. It is a delightfully sheltered patio, north-facing in order to avoid the worst excesses caused by the thinning ozone layer. And there you have the WC - draughty in winter, I grant you, but the perfect perch from which to enjoy the stars above and the northern lights slightly above the toilet-roll holder. As you see, the terrasse is perhaps a little too cramped to open a deckchair with ease, but you can put a small kitchen stool by where the door would be if there were one, and if the backyard wall weren't there you could see all the way to the Mournes.
You could but for the Dunsink tiphead, you say? Quite. You are a shrewd observer, sir, and no mistake. I do admire a shrewd observer, indeed I do, sir. As you correctly say, the Dunsink tiphead lies between here and the Mountains of Mourne. Indeed, it lies between here and everywhere. It is the reason why the back wall to la terrasse is 20 feet high.
But just think! Soon you'll have your own methane gas supply - indeed, I have the franchise on equipment which can extract methane gas from the ground for domestic use! Here's my card, any time, day or night. In the meantime, many hours of entertainment await you sifting through the tiphead looking for bric-a-brac. Lord love us sir, the things you find in people's rubbish! Why you could open your own antique shop with your many serendipitous discoveries, and it'll be so convenient to the new motorway interchange.
Compulsory purchase
You didn't hear about the interchange, no? Of course, the compulsory purchase order will reduce the size of your front room by the merest smidgeon - but you'll still be able to hang a shirt in it. Still, you won't mind that, will you, sir, because this is quite the coming area! The new Dublin airport runway being built at this very moment will end just 50 yards from this little jewel of a property. Heavens above, what would I give to have such excitement going on at my very doorstep! Hourly Concorde flights in the daytime, and holiday charters taking off and landing on the runway through the night in summertime. You won't know yourself here, you mark my words.
Tell me sir - do you admire brains? You do? Excellent! Because right next door Fineperson Meat Packers Inc are building an offal plant to retexture the brains and spinal columns of sheep and cattle which have died of BSE for EU-subsidised export to Bangladesh and Tanzania, where they will be sold as prime Irish fillet. And on the other side of the property, Sizewell Meltdown Inc is opening the sweetest bijou plutonium-processing plant imaginable, with lashings and lashings of hot water to spare.
Outline permission
Those are the pluses. On the negative side, there is, as you see, no bathroom - but there is, however, outline planning permission for a facecloth. The WC is not, as such, connected to the sewerage, as such; but a small man with a cart collects the contents every second month, except in summer, when he's in Mosney. No electricity either - but the glow from the plutonium plant will probably shed enough light for most purposes. Upstairs is not yet available for examination. Perhaps sir would care to bring a ladder the next time you view?
You'll what? You'll take it? Let me be the first to congratulate your sir! A shrewd buy, if I might be so bold. Thank you, sir. Ignore that rumbling - that's just the old mining tunnels settling. Make it cash, if you please, sir. Thank you, sir.