Last weekend the Princess and I went to see 12 Henrietta Street as part of Dublin Open House.
I love Henrietta Street, it is full of Georgian faded grandeur; big houses that became tenements and were then left to rot. It’s being slowly reclaimed but it is a long way from gentrification. One of the houses is for sale by auction with a reserve of €650,000. It’s essentially derelict in an exciting (ahem) urban part of town but massive and completely beautiful. I wonder who might buy it.
We had guests to dinner in September. I offered one of our guests gin, but when I went to the cupboard, there was no gin. I was a bit surprised but, you know, it could have been finished off at any stage. He had wine instead.
The Princess spent some time painting and cleaning the shed in September (stay with me here). She plans to sleep out there with her friends for her birthday in April. She is planning ahead. As part of her clean out, she decided that an old dusty suitcase which looked like it hadn’t been moved in years should be disposed of. In fact she had used it before the summer as a prop in a film she and her friend were recording. It hadn’t rattled then but it did now. Inside were two empty gin bottles. For ages we were all baffled.
Then we realised that we had swapped houses this summer with a French family with two teenage children. I am really looking forward to the teenage years.