Dear Lord. For those of you living in Ireland count your lucky stars that there is a distinct lack of cockroaches there. The nightmare with these bugs is neverending. I got my new apartment this week and have to stay that I was rather pleased with it. It looked clean, had nice warm wall paper, ( as opposed to the blue freezer like number in my former hovel)and overall appealed to my senses. However, the school went against my wishes and moved everything from my old place to my new place. My original intention had been to disinfect everything before I moved anything to my new place so roaches would not travel with me, but apparently prevention is an alien concept to these people as the movers hauled every last item to the new apartment. Today was the first day I had free to sort out everything in my new place and was very pleased to have the help of Ian and our new teacher Maryanne. However in the cleaning process I discovered that there are ants in the apartment, the sink is attached to the drain pipe with duck tape and there were roaches in the tv unit brought from my old apartment. Ants are easily gotten rid of here, the school can sort the sink ( although I am completely lost for words as to how remedial owners of property are here...you'd figure maintaining apartments instead of letting them degenerate into inhabitable slums would be top of their owner agenda), but I am furious that roaches may have been brought to my new place. I think Ian may have a permanent guest in me. My sink is a complete joke though. Who in the hell thought duck tape would hold a sink in and prevent water from running into the closet and all over my new floor. Although, at this point I would to thank the creators of Dettol as their wonderful product succesfully disinfected all my plates and cutlery and gave them a dishwasher sheen.
Also because I am in a one room unit there isn't a laundry area. So, my washing machine has been decked out in true Knocknaheeny style..... it is currently sitting on bricks in my apartment.Yes. You read correctly. Bricks. The school caretaker had to place it near the bathroom door and so placed it on bricks and thoughtfully wrapped said bricks in tin foil. I don't understand the rationality behind that particular move. However, the story gets better. On Thursday I stood in front of the machine and could not for the life of me work out where the water supply for the washing machine would come from. The school caretaker appeared, I asked him how the machine would function and the poor guy looked at me as if I had ten heads. In his limited English he explained with the aid of demonstrations that I would have to drag tubing from the machine to the bathroom where the tubes would connect with taps in the bathroom and the draintube would have to be rested over the shower drain to filter out dirty water.


I think they have it better in Ballymun