'Living next door to pretty much literally Adam and Paul . . .'

The brochure was all birds with long legs drinking champagne – but it’s sounding more like the last Nitelink around here, writes…

The brochure was all birds with long legs drinking champagne – but it's sounding more like the last Nitelink around here, writes ROSS O'CARROLL-KELLY

IT’S, LIKE, no one can say that I’m prejudiced against the poorer classes. I was the first person from Foxrock ever to eat a spiceburger – always remember that. And I loved it. Or at least I held it down for over an hour.

I've used buses in the past. I said hello to Fair Citybad boy Billy Meehan coming out of the Two Euro Shop on Mary Street. I once bought a copy of Socialist Workeroutside Dún Laoghaire Shopping Centre, from a dude with a beard and a soap intolerance – though, years later, when I tearfully confessed the fact to Sorcha, she said it was probably just a teenage guilt phase I was going through, because of my own privileged upbringing.

“Like the time I bought that House of Pain CD,” she went. “Or spent that weekend working in Gorta on Capel Street.”

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Anyway, as far as tolerance for the old peasantry goes, my track record speaks for itself. But living next door to pretty much literally Adam and Paul has made even me question the whole, I don't know, multiculturalthing? It's been, like, a week and it's already pretty obvious that I can't live beside these people. Talk about anti-social behaviour. They're up and moving around in the middle of the day when I'm trying to sleep. Then, in the middle of the night, they're banging on the wall, complaining about the volume of my music or the volume of my – for want of a better word – lovemaking.

Everyone, I suppose, has a breaking point. I reached mine on Tuesday afternoon, when I suddenly snapped, got up out of bed and rang the management company to complain.

“Have you any idea how much I paid for this aportment?” was my opening line. “Well, how much my old pair paid?”

The bird on the other end was like, “Errr . . .” If I had to say she sounded like anyone, I’d say Michelle Trachtenberg – except obviously, like, an Irish version?

"Eight hundred grandingtons," I went. "Eight hundred fockinggrandingtons! Of course there was talk of all sorts then. Oh yeah – concierges, birds with long legs drinking champagne at the breakfast bor. You know what it's like now? It's like the focking Chatsworth Estate."

“Sorry Sir,” she went, “can I ask you, what is the exact nature of your complaint?”

"Are you pulling my wire? Renting out aportments in Rosa Parks to the lower order – that'sthe nature of my complaint."

“The lower order?” she went. “You know, that’s rather offensive.”

I’m there, “Of course it’s rather offensive! So is paying eight hundred Ks for a cell in some focking Alcatraz off the M50! But I thought I’d at least be living among my kind.”

“Their money is as good as anyone else’s,” she goes.

I'm like, "It's not eventheir money? It's, like, the Social Welfare or whoever."

She’s there, “Well, the fact remains, there are more than 100 vacant apartments in those blocks and, in the current economic blahdy blah, they’re unlikely to be sold in the short term. The developer has decided, in the meantime, to rent them out. And, for better or worse, the only people writing rent cheques at the moment are . . .” I’m there, “The social. I know.” There’s, like, a sudden burst of laughter through the wall – that machine-gun laughter you associate with the upper deck of the last Nightlink out of College Green.

“Can you hear that?” I go.

She says she actually can’t.

I’m there, “Well, that’s lucky for you. That’ll go on till nine, ten o’clock tonight . . .”

As it happens, roysh, I happen to have the original brochure for this place on my bedside locker. I pick it up and stare at the photo on the cover, this proud, smiling, obviously black woman – she could be Vivica Fox’s more sensible older sister.

I’m there, “What do you think actual Rosa Parks would say if she was alive today?”

“I wouldn’t hazard a guess,” the woman goes.

I’m like, “Well, I wouldn’t either – but I wouldn’t say she’d be a happy camper, let’s put it that way.”

It was at that exact point that I happened to look at the clock. It was, like, 10 past four and I remembered that it was Ronan’s first day back at school. He was under strict instructions to come straight here afterwards. I didn’t want another repeat of last year, when, after bunking off at lunchtime, he spent the afternoon in Dr Quirky’s Goodtime Emporium, kicking the coin cascades. Then I got the call to come and collect him from O’Connell Street Garda Station, where I could hear him in the background shouting, “It’s fooken magnets, man – it’s got to be what stops the money falling!” madly at the duty sergeant.

I told him that if we could get through the first week of school this year without me having to talk to a social worker, I’d buy him the new Shamrock Rovers home strip. But, like I said, it was suddenly 10 past four – school finished over an hour ago – and there was still no sign of him. I told the bird I had to go, hung up, then dialled Ro’s mobile.

He sounded a bit, I don’t know, weird when he answered? His voice was definitely deeper. I suppose he is nearly 13. I was like, “Is that Ronan?” and he was there, “Who wants to know?” “Er, it’s your actual father?” I went. “Where the hell are you?”

He was there, “Ah, Rosser, it’s you. Here, I’m in next door.” I was like, “What?” except it was more like, “WHAT?”

“Next door,” he went. “On the way into you, I decided to stick me head in, welcome Johnny and Tetty (he means Terry) to the neighbourhood and that. Ah, we’re having a right laugh here – ardent we, boys? I’m telling you, Rosser, they’ve some fooken stories, these buachaills.”

The next thing, roysh, his voice lowers to, like, a whisper? He’s goes, “They’re Westies, Rosser! You’re living next door to the fooken Westies. How did you get that lucky?”


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