Where I've Lived

I've lived in some different places. Here are the ones I remember.

Growing up#

Near Blarney, County Cork, Ireland

I grew up in the countryside, went to a small Catholic school and played a lot of video games.

When I was a teenager I went to school in Blarney (yes, the one with the castle), which was about a 20 minute bus ride away. As I got older my friends and I would go drinking in the Blarney woods. It seemed like we would talk about everything.

The family house was a bungalow surrounded by farmland. There is a crashed car in the back garden and I still don't know how it got there.

Factory cottage#

On the site of a manufacturing company in Aberdeenshire, Scotland

I did an internship for a company in Scotland that had cottages on company land. They put us up in one for a month until we could find a place in the city. It was odd living in a relatively idyllic cottage embedded between industrial manufacturing facilities.

Two of us would go to a local bar, where it was usually just us and the owner, who always seemed like he was after a few pints.

Something difficult happened during that time which had a big impact on me. I can't really go into it.

Place for two for three#

Apartment in Aberdeen city, Scotland

The three of us found it impossible to find a three bedroom apartment in Aberdeen. So we pretended there was only two of us and I slept on the couch for six months. I watched and rewatched Twin Peaks on a laptop every night.

Aberdeen is not a fashionable city but I liked it. There's a beach at the city's edge with carnival attractions and oil rigs in the distance. A strange configuration.

We never met the absentee landlord and never got our deposit back.

Studio I avoided#

Tiny studio in Sunday's Well, Cork city, Ireland

This was a small, old studio in a house with five other tenants. The studio was bleak. I don't think I had the internet and there were mushrooms growing in the landing.

I wanted to spend as little time as possible there. I worked late on my PhD in a laboratory and stopped in a pub on the way home. Five old guys sat at the bar ribbing each other and I would read the newspapers nearby.

An unusual man in my building once invited me into his place when I came home. He asked me to sit down on the couch and then he did a nunchuck demonstration — it wasn't very good and I was nervous for both of us. Afterwards he gave me a large block of government cheese that he no longer wanted and said goodnight. I never saw him again.

Sunday's Well is one of the wealthier areas of Cork city. Lots of doctors, solicitors and professors live there. I could rent there for one year during the recession and it has been beyond my financial reach ever since.

Shared house with musicians#

Shared house in Lower Janemount, Cork city, Ireland

I had to leave the studio after a year because the landlord sold up.

I went from living on my own to living with seven other people. Most of them were musicians. From where I slept, there was a trained opera singer at one side and a really bad singer on the other; I would often hear both of them practising at the same time, which was quite something.

I only lived there for a year because I got a scholarship to do research abroad.

I met my partner during this time. She was from the place I was going (Midwest of the USA).

Apartment blocks in the Midwest#

Apartments in Madison, Wisconsin, USA

I lived in two buildings in Madison, Wisconsin. In the first I shared a small apartment with a lovely guy who watched sermons on YouTube. To my relief he never mentioned anything about religion. He was a really nice person.

Then I moved to the 11th floor of a nearby building. It was a studio and I lived there alone. I had a view of frat houses and a big lake from my balcony. It was a great time to smoke and the cigarettes are cheap in America.

I had no internet so I would download podcasts in the lobby after doing laundry in the basement. The elevator back to the 11th floor always gave the impression that it was about to malfunction.

Madison has boiling summers and icy Winters. When Winter hit it was a kind of cold I had never experienced. I shivered into the Winter supplies store and said:

Hi. I'm Irish and I don't know what to wear....

They gave me gators, wicking layers, insulating layers and a bunch of other things so that I wouldn't freeze to death.

To this day I love Madison as a city. Very laid-back, hippy-ish vibe. Lovely bookshop and record store. Lakeside terrace with beer, food and music.

Place with door-sized hole#

Apartment in Shandon Street, Cork City, Ireland

I moved back to Ireland and got a tenured position as an academic. It was to be the first time since I left home that I would live somewhere for more than a single year.

This house had a lot of problems. Worst was the frequent rodent issues. Some weeks I would catch almost ten mice.

Eventually the apartment underneath was gutted. For infrastructural reasons, one of our rooms had to be removed. This left a large hole in the wall that was covered with a thin board for several months. There was construction noise and dust from below and a cold draft coming through the hole.

My partner and I spent the Covid lockdowns here. We had no garden, so we would walk out onto the roof and talk to our friend in the apartment below.

It was a happy time for us despite everything that was going on.

Shandon street is a unique place on the North side of Cork city. There is a mixture of traditional Irish shops and bars but also a lot of African-owned businesses, as well as a Mosque.

Sometimes when I told people where I lived they would have a funny reaction. They would say it was dangerous and they wouldn't believe me when I said otherwise.

With a garden, near a stadium#

A house in Turner's Cross, outside Cork City, Ireland

We moved from the North to the South side of the city. The South side is generally considered more affluent. Now when I told people where I was living they would say "Oh, that's nice.".

The area was very residential, with lots of kids playing around. The main attraction for us was that we finally had a small garden.

We were near a stadium and there was regular crowd noise. It amazed me how pleasant a sound it was to hear.

One night there was a prolonged and sad breakdown of a marriage next door.

We had a lot of problems with the property manager. The place was never cleaned after the previous tenants left. Lots of things were broken. There was a mould issue. We needed to press a weight against the fridge to keep it closed.

After two years the landlord said they wanted to give the place to one of their children.

In the few months that remained on our lease we looked for apartments and were contemplating the prospect of homelessness because the search was so futile.

Luckily, we did find a place in the end.

Back on the north side#

The house where I live now

We are now living on the North side of Cork city again.

This is probably the place I've lived with the strongest feeling of community. People really look out for each other. There are always neighbours chatting on the street.

One peculiar feature is the fireworks. As October approaches there is constant, intermittent fireworks. I don't know where exactly they are coming from. It must be just a fun thing people do.

We plan to stay put as long as we can.