Farewell Pt2 (Ireland)

The first place I lived in Ireland was the Wicklow Youth Hostel, for one awful night, then we (Lindsay, Stuart and I) quickly got a place at the Bel Air Hotel in one of their Holiday Homes they had built to accommodate more tourists than the decrepit Hotel ever could. God, that place really stank of death. They ended up giving all the houses over to archaeologists, who are not the nicest of tenants and at least one household was evicted for leaving body paint smeared all over the walls after a particularly messy fancy dress party that was filled with Spanish Transvestites...

The three of us decided to move out for some fucking reason or other, into Wicklow town. Now, I looked and I couldn't find a decent image of Wicklow with high enough resolution, which I guess, speaks volumes about Wicklow Town. You'd know what I'm talking about if you'd ever been. This is the best I could do, with an approximation of the location of the house...

After Christ's Mass we moved back to the Bel Air Housing estate with Angelos and I lived there quite comfortably for six months as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air (OK, OK, I had to say it...), even with the alcoholic presence of American John until Stuart and Lindsay both moved back to the UK and I moved up to Dublin, to Sunbury Gardens;

My God, how I lasted in that shithole for all that time, I will never know. Cheap rents go a long way when it comes to being able to put up with a lack of sunlight and oxygen. I don't think I ever saw natural light in that place and I was lucky not to have got rickets. I ended up taking a job in County Meath and moved over to Trim, to a really nice house in Hamilton Court. Made all the funnier by the fact I was housemates with the notorious Barry Hamilton (Or Harry Bamilton as he disliked to be called...). Again, it speaks volumes about Trim that the best picture I could find of it was this;

We ended up being thrown out of that house after another rather messy Fancy Dress party. I think a fifteen minute eviction is probably a record. I think the landlord had a point, I mean, it got a little out of hand what with one of the guests trying to kick his way into one of the houses over the road, Belgian Paul pissing on the corner wall of the kitchen and Sian and about ten others still partying away at ten the next morning in one of the bedrooms.

So I found myself homeless for a while, luckily Neil offered me a place to stay on his floor at Carman's Hall in Dublin City;

This place overlooked the local abattoir. We knew it was an abattoir because of the massive sign on it's roof that said 'Pig Sticking Plant, Destruction of Life on an Industrial Scale' or words to that effect. I think the Abattoir and the Developers of Neil's block of flats had had a falling out and this was how the Abattoir owner was paying them back. I wasn't sure if I should have mentioned this one, but as I was there for a couple of months then I guess it counts.

I then moved back to Sunbury Gardens, but this time next door, which turned out to be the longest relationship I've had with a house. I was there for nearly two years annoying the Hell out of Mark upstairs with my guitar playing, the Friday nights spent with a bag of a cans, a good Lesbian Vampire movie and the Bombay Pantry on speed dial. The day we discovered there was a rat living under the stairs, Neil and I opening the cupboard doors armed with broomhandle and a hurl to see the trap had gone off and the place covered in blood, but mysteriously.... No Rat! The crazy parties with Kim, Sheelagh, Sian and Gerry upstairs. The three months Aaron spent on my front room floor, after assuring me he would only be there for two weeks. The crazy layout of the place that had the bathroom (which resembled the showers at Auswitchz) joined onto my bedroom. Aaron, again, waking me at six every morning going through my bedroom for his daily crap. Those two years were a whirlwind ride on the circus train that was Sunbury Gardens. There's more to come in Part Three!!