Words: Dylan Murphy
Welcome back to Living hell, the series profiling the worst kips on Daft in Dublin.
What is it?
What is anything really? We’re all just a collection of atoms wandering across a floating rock that will be so hot in 50 years that we’ll have to dig holes in the ground to stop our offspring from being turned to dust by a fiery ball in space. When we’re gone the only thing that we’ll leave behind is the 200 character bangers that became a part of the shared hallucination of the internet and the memes that gave us a brief reprise from the external misery of the world.
Oh, but this? This is another very bad gaff.
Lately, I’ve been sleeping really badly. I’ve tried counting sheep, lavender tea and any other remedy you can think of.
You name it I’ve tried it.
And with the lines between work and home becoming increasingly blurred and my screen time on daft increasing by the day, I found myself lying awake last night staring at the ceiling and moving ovens and single beds around the surface like I was the Dublin rental game’s Beth Harmon.
Practically speaking, I can see how landlords work their weird game of appliance Tetris, but morally, how do they alleviate themselves of guilt? And what is the viewing experience like of these places?
I found myself falling deeper and deeper into the weird imagined world of feature-length horror that is trying to rent a property in the capital. To the point where, when I found the next property in the series, the script was already written:
It’s 1971, you are a yank with Irish heritage, but the nice kind. The type that intermittently visits their granny in rural Kerry and doesn’t repeatedly ask “so you have bread, made out of potato?!” in disbelief. When you do visit there’s no fetishisation of leprechauns or desire to wear an Arran jumper from a franchise – just vibes.
Your undying love for your ancestry and the search for solutions to a potential Cold War nuclear disaster presents an opportunity to up sticks and move to Ireland permanently.
Nice.
Some aul fella in a military suit with a buzzcut, who cheats on his wife offers to cryogenically freeze you with the option to be woken up on a day of your choosing. What a stroke of luck, it’s an absolute no brainer. Ireland here you come.
“Freeze me for fifty years and release me at a time where five decades of innovation means higher living standards, my savings have accumulated some serious interest and I can live handsomely.”
After you are thawed prematurely from the straight heat coming from Ireland’s music scene this year and you buy a new wardrobe you are brought hurtling back down to earth in your first property viewing:
Imagine sleeping for half a century only to wake up to a one-bed gaff that looks more like somewhere your ma queued up for rations. Those frosted windows on either side of the door scream “we keep the local parish’s post in here”.
Taking ourselves out of the wartime fantasy novella, (that I’ve already patented, Yank To The Future ™), it really is incredible the lengths to which people will go to make a few quid.
This just isn’t meant to be for living in, is it? There’s no handle on the door and it doesn’t look like it can close without touching rural Kerry granny’s sheets. What’s worse is, it costs €1,195 a month.
Take the bed out of this room and add cuffs to the coat hangers and I’m convinced this is the room in Saw.
God help us all.
Where is it?
Castle Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3
Conclusion
This just shouldn’t be allowed.
8/10 on the shitemeter.
Click here to view the property.
Have you seen an overpriced hellhole online? Email us at Editor@districtmagazine.ie with the subject ‘Living Hell’ or follow us on Instagram @livinghell.ireland.