So the thing about Irish houses is they mostly have laundry facilities in the kitchen. This is because even up until about five years ago, “all mod cons” — all modern conveniences, including, say, a washing machine (but not a tumble dryer; those are more than Modern Conveniences) — were stil fancy enough to be mentioned in house ads, and most of those Mod Cons ended up in the kitchen because it’s where the running water was. We spent the first 3 days in this house with our 6′ butcher…
We are, after a very tiring day of cleaning, out of the Dublin house. It took longer than we hoped, but it’s clean and we’re out, so that’s that. Done and dusted. The woman at the post office, the guy at the corner shop, and various others all expressed surprise and dismay that we were moving away, generally couched in terms of a horrified, “*Drogheda*?” followed by, “Oh, well, that’s not so bad,” when informed that Ted works in Swords which isn’t too bad a drive from Drogheda. So we’re…
I forgot to show you guys the place we’re moving into. It is an actual Georgian (or Georgian-style; we don’t know when it was built) manor house. Not a huge one: it’s 4 bedrooms, not, like, 38 or something. But it’s an actual manor house. It has a living room AND a sitting room. And that is, yes, a gazebo; please do not shoot it with an arrow. It has about an acre of grounds, and a brook running through them, although the brook is in the badly overgrown part…