Devouring the Young. Send in the Refugees.

                                               ' ALL I WANT IS A ROOM SOMEWHERE"
                                                                                                                                                                So I'm just not getting excited about the next viewing" the beautiful one says, resolute. Good.  She is on the up from being down in the dumps then. Depressed, reproachful really.  Disappointed in the universe for making it so damn bloody hard to find a flat, student accommodation, a house to share with her mates which is not so far from the campus that you have to spend a lot of money from a paired to the bone budget on buses, taxis even, if you're late.  Disappointed in me too I guess,  for not getting it for her. At nineteen you segue between able young woman and frustrated adolescent.., you're a child again when the chips are down.

                                                WHEN YOU'RE IN A HOLE KEEP DIGGING.... 
                                                                                                                                                                At first,  I try to stay out of it.  Still the helicopter wheels, and let her at it.  I seethe on the sideline as she reports back on rents going up by the day now,  poor offerings for students, sloppy seconds.  The trickery in demanding deposits without a lease, the basic obscenity in charging you €700 for a room in a house, or €350 to share a bed in a room in a house with a stranger. "Digs" I say frantically,  "you could get digs! Digs are back!" "Digs???."  I explain. "Yeah" she says, "I know.  They want you out on the weekend, and it costs just as much as a room in a house that isn't digs.  Not cheaper.  And  no independence.
                                                  JUST GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY.........

So I get involved. My propeller moves gently, just coasting at first. I make phone calls for her. "So when can she come look?" I ask. "Open viewing" I'm told.   "It's first come first served " they say.  "Students?"  distastefully, oh we'd want references."   "Oh, so, how would that work?" I say, "references from who?"   "From the bank.  The last landlord. (Duh!)."  "Oh. but they're....(students)... well, right, I'm sure we can do eh that". So she goes to the open viewing, hands over the references carefully got together,  and phones you in a panic to say he wants the deposit, today  "or we'll lose it. And we really really want it."  "So,  you're getting the lease then, the key, today?."  We have discussed these matters, you see.  "Um no. The weekend he says, the landlord will come over then he says, he's not um the landlord, he's his agent he says. But we can have it, if we pay now. He promised."  "So, did you actually ask him darling girl, about the lease?" "Um yes. But he got really really rude, said he had like at least ten more people ready to move in. And it's really really nice, the flat.  Oh Mum, should I pay him!!!!"  (Really, really) No.

I actually phoned that one myself, listened to his sleezy shifty spiel, before threatening him with the police (hah), the law,  and the wrath of God. My wheels are spinning now and I slam down the phone. I mean this guy has an attractive flat at his disposal to lure them in. He advertises on Rent.ie. Easy peasy. He can defraud the young with impunity. Pigeons for plucking.

                                                   HOW TO GET RICH QUICK AND EASY PEASY 

The beautiful one did not want Digs. She hoped for independence, a very basic space to rent with her mates. After a few more creeps demanding money up front with no lease,  she took herself off to look at Digs anyway. No joy. Basically the people making cash out of the spare room are reluctant, coy. Unwilling to give the details she seeks, like the full name of the landlord,  a sight of the nine month lease in writing that was referred to vaguely on the phone. "They don't like it when I ask " she says. "Am I not  I supposed to ask?". Yes.  You are. But I guess when you're upping your price by the day as you listen to media dispatches about desperate students, and keeping it all carefully below the radar of  the Revenue Commissioners, you don't want to answer. You've figured you can make  a killing here.  With a compliant, grateful young person begging to rent.

Last year, she stayed in student accommodation on campus. But thats just for First Years, you see. Why would the college provide for them thereafter?  Let them eat cake. Let them be a source of profit for rapacious landlords, householders, the shifty calculating  grownups that await. Or destroy themselves traveling to college every day over long distances.. Zombie students on the wheel between home and the campus. What harm sure..

The thing about it all is that its so commonplace. Not just a dishonest minority stealing deposits, but ordinary people too, determine to make a buck, screw a student. And there  is no impediment to this free for all, no will to provide campus accommodation that is adequate, to regulate this market. It's the Irish for you. An Irish answer to an Irish question. Screw them over, and let them eat cake.

                                                               O  ICELAND

Later on I saw the newsbite in my facebook feed about the Icelanders, shaming their government, offering to take refugees into their own homes. Good for the Icelanders. We wouldn't be doing it here. There's no money in it. Well maybe, if Europe pay us, we might see. I wonder would the Icelanders take students.   And what's the university like up there,  to where where I swear I am moving.  If they would let me in. We are offering now to take in more dispossessed people, in desperate flight from their own ground. I think the EU should  be careful here. Consider our Direct Provision. Look at how we accommodate our tender young. Think what we might do to them when we get them here.

                                                    WE CAN EAT THEIR LEGS CANT WE....                                     

The beautiful one thinks she may have found something at last. Something basic, without silly things like smoke alarms, a functioning oven, a gas alarm for the gas boiler located in the bedroom.  But it's theirs, they can have it. No games. I can live with the unease, can't I?  Orcs. That's what I think of now when I think about the Landlording Irish .  Orcs.  And particularly that scene in Lord of the Rings where one of the Orcs plaintively asks the head Orc if they can't eat the Hobbits.  And when he bellows no! they have to bring them back alive,  the first Orc more plaintively still asks if they can't eat their legs...anyway....to a great chorus of approval from the army of Orcs. "Cos they don't need their legs do they?"  Quite.

                                                   AH SURE IT'S NOTHING....... MUCH......  
                                                                                                                                                               On Wednesday, I get a call from the school about the Boss's Junior Certificate results. Yeah, twelve straight A1s, among only six students in the Country. he says. So can he release her name to the press, can we come down for photographers??? Silence from my end. "It's a great achievement" he says, excitedly. "Congratulations". "Ah sure, she got the same in the mock exams" I say. "Well yes. But it's a great achievement anyway. Even so". And there you have it, more twisty Irish neurosis. Can't take a compliment. Not even a vicarious compliment. I slap myself mentally. Hard. "It's...it's fabulous" I roar, and go off to tell the fabulous one.

The boss takes all compliments, exclamations and congratulations in her stride. A little storm of newspaper calls, and snappers. She is serene and gracious.  Maybe we're breeding the barbed, self conscious humility out of us.  Maybe her and her sister's children will be allowed to pay a manageable price to live on college campuses one day, and we'll breed out the greedy, panic stricken grabbiness in us too. 

Exams, Holiday, All the Married Lesbian Priests.

                                                     Finally Definitely Over at Last.

We are getting closer now to the beginning of the end. The Leaving Certificate, the Junior Certificate  begins. "I'm glad" the boy tells me.  "At last. Soon it will be over."  "Yes" I say  "but are you ready?" "Yeah" he says, "Kind of.  In a way. You can be lucky."  Oh.  "But anyway, I'm so sick of it, everyone,  teachers, you, everybody,  talk,  talk,  talking about it, asking about it,  telling me what to do about it,  I just want it to be over."  Me too,  dear boy. Quite as much as you I'd say.
                                           
                                            Just tie my arms behind my back and let me at it.
                                        
The boss on the other hand is absolutely totally ready for it, going to chew it up and spit it out. Why she'd even have a go at the Leaving Certificate if she could. She has a study plan. She has exam timetables taped to the wall in her bedroom, to the fridge door in the kitchen.  ("You can google it, if you want it, and eh print it" the boy told me) She watches disapprovingly as he slinks out to play xbox with his friends, goes fishing for an hour (or eight).  " Back in an hour"  he sings over his shoulder on his way out the door. She arranges her pens and calculater in a transparent pencil case and asks you to up the fruit and fish oil quota in the weekly shop, oh and dark chocolate! Brainfood!  You find yourself wondering if it will all be an Egregious Anticlimax for her in the end. She wants to be challenged is all.  "Do you think she should be handicapped, maybe"?  her Aunt offers  "like a, you know, horse in a race? Make it interesting for her?"  Hmm.

                                         Everybody needs to get away sometimes (though not with you)

We'll go away after I say. A week in the sun.  To recover. "Not me" the boy says. " Not with you. No offense, but I'd rather have the money. For like a week in Magaluf,  or Camping, or  Norway. Or whatever.  With like my friends. No offense".  None taken.  And never mind, the Boss and the Beautiful One are in. "So, did you go away with your friends and not your family to Spain after your leaving certificate" the Boss asks.  "Me?  Nope. We went to Wexford. The seaside. Like every other year, and had a hoot. And that was the first week. We had two weeks of carnival in the summer. My father, your grandfather you know,  went to the races in Galway in July and we, back at the ranch,  had a party! Picnics, films, trips to exotic places (the Japanese Gardens, the National Stud) to do exotic stuff.  My mother put on her "on vacation" hat,  tossed aside the everyday grind, and really,  home wasn't humdrum home that week. It was America, it was Italy!
                                                   
                                                 
"The only bum note ( I was on a roll now) was the Cattle Count every evening. Had to be done and reported back to your man in Galway, as he shaved in a Salthill BnB before the evening session. There was always one of 'em  missing. Or two.  Keep counting she'd say.  Keep at it.  I always wondered why she wouldn't  just tell him they were all there,  yeah, yeah all present and correct,  yeah all there dear,  just say they were,  maybe even OMG not bother counting at all,  because they always turned up, in the end, always,  and let us get of to the cinema or whatever jolly awaited.  But she wouldn't. She had too much character. Always.

                                                    Resistance being Totally Futile.

The day before the Exams start the Boss takes an hour out from book-learning and hangs out with me, idly watching the Nuns Story on television. "So, right,  how do you like become a nun,  I mean get to be one," she asks me. "Do you know?" "Vocation" I say "You heard all about it from the Nuns at school. The Lord calling you when you hit puberty? And girls resisting maybe? But the nuns said he, the Lord,  always got you in the end. So you used to think about that. I mean I had like a lot of other things calling me at the time, as you do. So was I like resisting? Did the fact that I really didn't want to mean I had to? I mean I lost a whole year of adolescence to that actual dilemma. Positively Hagridden.

The Boss had that expression on her face now.  That interested certainty that she would never ever  have been that soldier. She would never ever have been that dumb. "So, anyway, (I was really on a roll)  when I got past that, I lost the whole of the  next year to Lesbianism?  being preoccupied about being a Lesbian? I mean how could you be sure you weren't. Like the vocation, how could you know you  weren't in denial? I mean I just wanted to be bog standard normal, commonplace, nothing to see here move on.  I mean I figured I could hack being a Lesbian if I was one, but not the not knowing.  "Oh I know!"  the beautiful one walked in on this, "I  used to worry about that too.  But the thing is, no one ever is. Normal I mean. You just have to, sort of,  learn to be yourself, that's all" So she had that expression on her face now, the interested certainty that she would have cracked it, had cracked it. Easy peasy.  "Hmm, maybe so" I said. "But, its quite the burden being really truly you,  Miss Oh So Young and Certain. And you have to carry it on your own"
                             
                                         No Dinosaurs were hurt in the writing of this Blog.

"Well anyway," the Boss moves things along,  "Anyway, I mean Priests and Nuns, aren't they like dying out. So what will happen to the Church then?"  "The church dies too" I say firmly.  "But" her broad creamy  forehead creased, " that's not good. People need like spirituality? And Priests to do stuff?"   "Yeah,  they do. They do need stuff.  But that's just be too bad.  I mean why not Married Priests,  Women Priests?  What a shot in the arm, what a forgiving sunburst of energy blasting into the limp, shamed Church Body. So how about it?  The remedy in the Church's own hands. But they won't.  The Catholic Church is a Dinosaur, and will go the away of all the other Dinosaurs. And stuff the people, they don't rate in all that blinkered male hubris.  No sir,  let them eat cake, basically.  Now go to bed and let your great brain sleep the sleep of the totally prepared, angel girl. Tomorrow, it all kicks off."

                                                               Once we were Dinosaurs

So maybe back then if I thought that one day I could become a Married Lesbian Priest, I would have been less tormented by it all. Or tormented about something more useful to me. But guess what, I still can't. Dinosaurs.