It's that time of the year again, with bicycles suddenly sprouting on railings, as if conceived overnight from a molecular fusion of iron and alloy. They belong to students who have migrated into the towns and cities, ready to take part in the great adventure laughingly known as further education.
Never mind they have been educating themselves in the higher academe of Benidorm or Ibiza or - more practically - in their supermarket check-out. They're back, in need of accommodation.
As surely as the migrating swallows depart for warmer climes, so the students' leaders, callow youths of their own age, will trill the airwaves with their wailing song of "exploiting landlords" and "bed-sits you wouldn't put a dog in".
Well, I have put a dog in a bed-sit, to sift through the "afters" of a previous student term, such as fossilised fried chicken and chips mouldered to a pot (not a pan). Under a giant mushroom mould is a possible takeaway pizza, circa May 2006. The dog revels in removing sculpted remnants inside a cooker whose greasy residue proves, once again, that he has an iron stomach.
Being a mongrel, he comes from a long line of scavengers, whose medieval function was to dispose of rotting meat and bones. And to give early warning of the approach of the barbarian enemy.
This week, another generation of barbarian students are knocking at the doors of landlords, or more precisely, gathering over coffees with mobile phones, working the page of classified ads in the evening papers. Or - in an age of digital house-hunting - using their laptops to bring-up " daft.ie" on-screen.
In most internet cafés this week, the majority of screens will glow with pictures of apartments and houses.
Of course, the accommodation has vastly improved, with the mushrooming of apartment blocks in every town and city. On campus, some universities have purpose-built accommodation, with bedsits or "condos" which are as good as small hotels, with decent kitchens and TV lounges.
The more recent buildings have gyms and canteens on-site and, save the mark, concierges and cleaning staff.
It's all a far cry from the dingy bed-sits of shabby houses with warped doors, landings that creaked and electric wiring that provided a near-death experience. And, of course, candlewick bedspreads, sagging mattresses, layers of old linoleum on floorboards that harboured colonies of mice and loos on landings which shook the house when the rusty chain was pulled. The contents of same, according to one tenant in Rathmines, kept the back garden permanently irrigated like a swamp.
Such nostalgia is directed at readers - how shall I put this - of a certain age who suffer mild twinges of regret for their lost youth and the imagined honey-glow time when they were students.
Non, je ne regrette rien. Some things stay the same. This week, I shall put on the gas mask and the hefty rubber gloves and bring the dog and scour out one nice modern apartment. It was let last term to three students, but bears the signs of having housed a football team, a team whose favourite diet was curry and chips.
