How our moving house has rekindled the flickers of fun
But the revived marital bonhomie could have turned frosty as they waited for a fridge-freezer, writes Tom Rowley
BY LATE morning, my wife Mary was becoming a bit agitated and slowly driving me bonkers about the delay. “Something must have gone wrong with the delivery. It shouldn’t take this long,” she said. “I’ll call and see what’s happening”. She was annoyed and I was bemused, offering weak, feeble excuses.
“Calm down, I’d say things are just running late.” She fixed me with the dreaded glare: “Well then, you just sit there and do nothing. It’s now well overdue. I’ll call again.”
I was bemused because it was almost two years to the day since we had waited anxiously for news of the birth our first grandchild, Ella, to our daughter Kathleen. Now here we were, all het up over a very different delivery — a spanking new, near top-of-therange fridge-freezer.
Strange comparisons I know, and why be so excited? The answer lay embedded in how the intervening two years had taken us on a zigzag rollercoaster ride along the property market. With our children reared and scattered, we sold our biggish house in north county Dublin and rented while looking to buy a smaller house. I never say downsizing, for me it conjures up images of people shrinking in size as they get really old.
After a lot of looking and a fair few hitches, we finally moved a few weeks back into a nice bungalow in the quiet, some say quaint, seaside village of Blackrock, outside Dundalk in Co Louth. We got it at a good price, most likely because the drawback was that nobody had lived in it for three years. The smell of damp clung to every room, carpets had been removed, the grass in the garden was high enough to poke an elephant in the eye, and a hedge of 20-feet high Leylandii trees arch over the roof, allowing only slivers of sunlight to filter through.
The units in the bathroom are all turquoise so most visitors end up grasping for words of comfort, usually along the lines of “that’s very retro”.
So apart from all that, sure it’s grand. We’ve decided to live, or more survive, in it for a few months and then get builders in. We see it as the home that will, hopefully, see us out for the rest of our days. With that in mind, I’m finding some of the builders who called in to give estimates on the planned refurbishment think of every eventuality. One said the door frames needed widening as “you’d never get a wheelchair through”, and another, jokingly I hope, figured “you’d have some struggle getting a coffin out with those narrow doors”.
Seriously though, there is no doubt that moving is stressful. And yet it is also liberating, throwing up new challenges and yanking you out of life’s cosy groove as you head towards the retirement years. Mary and myself are finding taking on a house that will need a lot of work to knock into shape is rekindling flickering memories of the fun and excitement of starting out together more than 30 years ago.
We talk to each other a lot more because there is so much more to talk about and plan. The other night I was explaining to the fellow on the stool beside me in the cosy local Neptune Bar — a three-minute walk from the house — the whole thing about feeling like we are starting out all over again.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “It’s a bit like renewing your marriage vows but without dressing up and going through all the religious voodoo stuff that goes with it”. That’s not to say it’s lovey dovey all the time, there are days when we lurch between long strained silences and erupt into skittish laughter over simple things, like when yet another person advises “take your time, Rome wasn’t built in a day”. Blackrock seems to have a lot of people well versed in classical history.
Over all the years I’d never considered myself handy at DIY. I’ve left behind a fair few wobbly wardrobes and book cases assembled from flatpacks as testament to that. And yet, I’m now finding I can actually do a fair job on some tasks. The old Black & Decker drill that I had expected to continue rusting into retirement is back, grinding drill bits into walls; spade, shovel and pickaxe are digging and skimming and, reinvigorated with a new blade, the ancient bushman saw is gnawing through Leylandii branches. When I mentioned I might have a go at some electrical work, Mary’s warning was, “remember what the builder said about getting a coffin out of this house”.
Overall we’re finding we can survive without a fair few of the mod cons of modern living except, you’ve guessed it, a fridge-freezer. As we waited that morning for its arrival, for some reason my head was full of how a Padraig ‘Pee’ Flynn in full flight would have leaned back and explained this to Gay Byrne on The Late Late Show: “I live in a house, not a big house, but a nice house. It has no fridge-freezer. Now let me tell you that’s not easy, my friend. The milk turns sour overnight, the cheese hardens like a rock, the butter runs, everything goes off inside a day or two. You try it sometime. Take it from me, you won’t like it one bit, my friend.”
When we plugged in the fridge-freezer, a hissing noise started and then it let out a few gurgles, just like a baby.
‘It’s a bit like renewing your marriage vows but without dressing up’
Tom Rowley is a freelance writer. He is a former senior journalist and government media advisor