Finally, a place to live

In terms of living space, my goal has been simple: a short-term let for my three-month stay. In reality, this has proved to be more elusive than I had hoped. My original place in Trim was great for my entry into Ireland, with a terrific landlord who even met me on the road on my first day here and guided me to the town. The place, though, was too small; I needed a regular apartment with a sitting room, a kitchen and a place to work. The goal was a place in Trim, but Trim is one of Ireland’s more elegant spots, an upscale heritage town on the River Boyne, a sort of Ashland without the Shakespeare, and short lets were difficult to come by. From a flier I phoned a number that turned out to be a butcher on Emmett Street. He showed me two places. The first one, a filthy place above his shop, would have made crack addicts happy. The second, directly across from a very popular pub called Lenihan’s, had three bedrooms, way more than I needed. The butcher’s solution was to lock one of them up so that he could use it for storage, promising not to come in ‘too often’.

            An entrepreneurial woman named Mary with a Hat Hire business was my next stop. She rents holiday cottages on her farmland. These cottages are a widely varied set of buildings dotted across the farm, which was about five miles out of town. The one she had for me was just being vacated by another American who, Mary says, lived there for three years.  This cottage, which Mary called a chalet, turned out to be a trailer that was parked at the edge of a sheep field; it was straight out of a Thomas Hardy novel but with TV reception. I felt bad about not taking it because Mary would have been a good landlady. She grew up a few miles from Trim in Rathcairn, an Irish-language village where even the signage isn’t translated into English. I liked her immediately, but the sheep were a bit daunting.

            Sheep entered into quite a few potential rentals, as it turned out. My favorite was a small place on a sheep farm in the country above Mullingar. The farm was owned by Tom, a rotund and genial man who lives alone in the family house, a two-hundred-year-old stone farmhouse that he has fixed up beautifully. The place is guarded over by a stone gargoyle dating from about the 10^th century that was found on the land. Aside from the marginal concern about living in close proximity to a lonely sheep farmer, the place was charming but the drive, on increasingly narrow roads, was daunting in the daylight and would have been nearly impossible at night. Still, living in a cozy place off the courtyard of the farm with a sheepdog on hand for color was very tempting, but my cousin pointed out the impracticalities and in the end I had to agree with him.

            Now beginning to feel a bit desperate of ever finding a place that was close to Ballinderry House, had light and a good kitchen, was reasonably clean and offered at least the promise of broadband, I began phoning auctioneers, as real estate agents are called here. One name that came up again and again was that of Donal Byrne, based in Edenderry, an undistinguished town about ten minutes from Ballinderry. Edenderry is not Trim. The town itself has many shuttered businesses, is a bit rough, and is far from the images of the picturesque villages in the guide books. It has a sense of the real to it, as if I am living in what contemporary Ireland is like for most people here.

 But it does have a great café with nice food and homemade breads and pastries, decent Indian, Chinese and Italian restaurants and what I hear is a great place for fry-ups, An Cuan Cistin. There is a Tesco, the huge UK supermarket chain, and Dunnes Stores, the only Irish supermarket left in this country. The library has internet access, and there is a place to buy newspapers. The population is diverse, with non-nationals of mainly Eastern European descent, as is true all over Ireland. My neighborhood, Clonmullen Hall, is a small block of apartments and townhouses situated just behind the High Street. You can walk to Tesco through a break in the fence if you don’t mind wading through the trash. The place is full of children; I have already made friends with several of the girls. My upstairs neighbor Liz has given me advice about the services here, and Natalie, who lives in the next block of apartments, invited me into her place to demonstrate her internet connection and tell me how to get started. Her computer screen had Cyrillic characters on it.

The apartment itself has an entryway, a sitting room, a dining area, and two bedrooms. I’m using one for an office but it will be available for Claire when she comes over in June. The kitchen has lots of counter space, and there is a tiny back yard with a garden shed and a dwarf-size electric lawn mower; mostly the yard is great for hanging out laundry.

After a good ten or twelve hours of cleaning and a couple of dinners made in the kitchen it’s beginning to feel like home.