We are at a time of the year when another batch of teenagers is ready to become worldly-wise. It’s time for many eager youths to move out of the family home for the first time. They are making plans and gathering things from their rooms. Young men and women making lists, leaves falling off the trees, and landlords second-coating and double-glazing.
It’s the calm before the ethanol -Infused storm.
A month later and we are in a semi-detached house on St Brendan’s Avenue, or Prospect Hill, or Bothar Mór. It doesn’t matter. Most likely, if there are plants they will have died. If there are fish they will have reached a discoloured and suffocating demise. One room will have hosted most of the sordid affairs. It will be littered with lager cans and pages from the sex writings of Anaïs Nin. That room doubtless belongs to someone with a name like Karl. Karl, with his vapid stare and greasy hair has his own adjective. There is a Karl smell in here. That is so Karl of you.
Perhaps Karl is reading this right now, not realising his impending identity. Perhaps now he is a Stephen, or a Kyle. He is full of good intentions, perhaps a little mischief. Some would call what is about to come of him a pity. In will enter a fresh-faced nymph clutching a skull cap, some shiny biros and the lucid wonderings of a scholar. And three years later out will crawl Brendan Behan clutching the change of a pint. It’s college, and it’s make or break – so choose the right starting point, or more specifically choose a decent house.
The thing with the hunt for accommodation is it’s exciting. Of course it is. No feeling in life quite rivals the finding of one’s own feet. You felt it first before you had the capacity to remember it; like sprouting wings, and now you will feel it again. That first week when you are able, and damned-well entitled to sit on your own couch, or utter those immortal words; ‘Would you like to come back to mine?’ The prospect of independence is so exciting that many students will charge head-first into the first kip that comes their way. Perhaps it is wise to go about such a decision with more delicacy. And if one does find themselves in a place that can only be described as cosy with gritted teeth, then instead of wrecking it, it may be wiser to improve it - make it a home. Stop using bulging refuse sacks as foot-rests. Wipe the dust off that box of dishwasher tablets. Buy a plant (and for the love of god don’t name it ).
Of course it is easy to hear the stories of past students and to hope to one day emulate them. Big brother recalls days of ‘recycling bags full of non-recyclables’ with a nostalgic smile and you think one day that’ll be me, pissing off the rafters. Life will be a perpetual hangover. The world will be a cosmic ashtray. The thing is though – it wasn’t the grime that incited the pleasure, it was the things happening around it. Filth gets old fast. I’m no Suzy homemaker but having put six student houses behind me I have a fair idea. In fact, filth can be hell.
Still though, the most important thing to remember is not to take the problems that may come your way too seriously. That all-ingesting electricity bill isn’t Armageddon. Try to forget that happiness is just a couple of letters away from unhappiness, or that any dreams you may have will probably end up in a drawer in some anthropological museum in the distant future. Instead, remember that you are a student, and that these are the few years in your life when being a Karl means to be a god. So as another academic year approaches from the horizon, we say; ‘Students, I commend you.’
I probably do not speak on behalf of your neighbors though. Or a vast majority.
