Living Hell 008: Existential crisis for one

Welcome back to Living hell, the series profiling the worst kips on Daft in Dublin. This edition we’ve examined our first hellhole of 2021.

What is it?

If Twitter is the smoking area of the internet then Daft is the bathroom, but not the kind you find women hyping each other up in. Or even one that’d have a nice little soap auto-dispenser.

No, Daft is the jacks where you hover above the indefinable myriad of substances on the toilet seat only to finish your business and come out feeling grosser than when you entered.

One that leaves a painful obstacle course of unforgettable images permanently etched on your frontal lobe. You can narrowly avoid the drunk fella at the urinal who is waving his wand around like an uninitiated member of Hufflepuff, but inevitably the dryer is broken and you have to shake your wet hands about before you inevitably wipe them on your trousers. It’s just an unpleasant experience altogether.

Searching for a house to rent in Dublin is repeatedly heading to Daft’s weird toilet nightmare only to bump into the old school bully who inevitably, is now a landlord. In any case, you’ll feel the merciless nipple cripple of the free market slowly edge you into submission before the burning subsides and you reconsider the €1000 a month back garden shed again.

You can build resilience over time, but like the reckless wizard, there are some images that’ll haunt you in your sleep afterwards.

However, coming into this year I had renewed optimism. I returned to my desk after the Christmas break and thought “maybe landlords will come to their senses. They aren’t all bad I’m sure and hell, maybe this will be the year things change.” I could almost see it: a utopian capital rising from the ashes of 2020 bound together by a new sense of community. A better Dublin, where the reopening of clubs would usher in a new era dominated by the re-release of Pop Smoke’s ‘Hotel Lobby’. It would single-handedly inspire hotel developers to scrap plans for Hilton’s in favour of affordable housing. Everyone would be happy and Americans would even stop claiming they were our relatives in this imagined paradise. The vibes would be immaculate.

Then I saw this:

*Sigh*

If you ever wondered what a typo looks like, this is it. I asked for Pop Smoke’s ‘Hotel Lobby’ and got Pitbull’s ‘Hotel Room Service‘.

Described as a “Self contained studio apartment attached to my family home” the landlord was charitable as ever as they continued and said, “This is my family home so the tenant is the only person permitted onto the property.”

So not only are they trying to rent you an anchor point for their clothes line for €700 a month, but anytime sunshine gives your life a glimmer of hope you’ll have to watch it cast shadows of their Y fronts on your window like the shittiest Batlight of all time. Brilliant.

Next up on our virtual tour, we have a sofa in lieu of a door mat.

The attempt to actually furnish this place is as sincere as a stay at home order from an influencer in Dubai. The tea towels for curtains are fooling no one either, not to mention the state of that television too, it’s got thicker glass than a gorilla enclosure, Jesus wept.

A quick glance would be enough to realise that in fact, it is not possible to fit multiple rooms worth of fittings into this cubby hole. You slip this image into a coroner’s report and they’d ask which route 66 motel this is and which lab did the mattress go to for testing.

Look, I get it, €700 a month is not expensive in the current landscape, but when you exchange money for a good or service, in this case somewhere you will live, there’s an expectation your basic human rights are upheld. I can’t remember the exact wording, but I’m pretty sure forcing someone to choose between having a bed or being able to open their wardrobe breaks something in the Geneva Convention.

Leaving the “A++” sticker on the washing so you have no choice but to accept the unquestionable status of this property.

The bathroom is normal. This is the designated refuge spot for when it all becomes a bit much. That’s the best thing I can say about this place.

Where is it?

504a ballyfermot road, Ballyfermot, Dublin 10.

Thar she blows. I just had to go on Google Maps and scout this out. If this place was marketed as a post-war escape room at least you could recreate the sharp sense of dread of going ‘over the top’ if you cut through your neighbour’s garden and hop the wall as you bid this hell hole goodbye.

Conclusion

I find refreshing the pages of search results is a bit like repeatedly opening the door to a bare fridge. You keep doing it expecting different results and just end up having this weird gaping hole in your stomach.

You’d be better off chatting to people in the smoking area. You might get a few loose cannons, but at least Twitter won’t try and sell you this shite.

8/10 on the Shitemeter.

Click here to view the property.