Towards the end of May, we received notice that the rent on our apartment was going up by 25% from July onwards. And that was that: we were finally priced out of Dublin. The city where I was born and grew up, and where we can’t justify spending to live anymore. That’s Ireland in 2015.
Anyway, cue a somewhat frantic, stressful search for a new home — which we found three weeks later, 80km to the north, in Dundalk. That’s where you’ll find us today, paying less rent for a house with a garden, in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood that’s still a short walk from the town centre. And paying less for faster broadband, too.
(No thanks to UPC, who don’t provide service up here, and who threw seven years of loyal custom out the window by not only levying an exorbitant cancellation fee — a fee they used to waive in similar circumstances until quite recently — but also charging us for a whole extra month, for which we’ve yet to be refunded. If you’re thinking about going with them for TV or broadband, think again.)
Now it’s August and we’re still getting settled in. We’re not even fully unpacked, due to all the administrivia, and bouts of illness and stress, and getting appliances fixed/replaced (nothing like the trouble UPC has caused us, though). I still have to sort out the heating oil, and get a lawnmower to tame the front and back gardens. And we haven’t really had any kind of summer break. But we have a home, that’s the important thing.
So that’s where the last 11 weeks went.