My early days in Dublin weren’t all fun and games.

Back in May 1980, myself and Pat Lehane travelled by mini bus to Dublin and we were dropped off outside Blackrock Garda Station. We had just completed our six months training in the Garda Training Centre in Templemore, and this was our first posting in the real world.

I’m from Cobh and Pat is from Macroom so we hardly qualified as city slickers. As far as we were concerned, we may as well have landed in the Bronx. The comfort blanket of Templemore was behind us now and this was the real thing.

Templemore has a fancy title now. It’s called Garda Siochana College and it bestows degrees in policing studies on students, but back then, we were just ordinary recruits. We got six months training, a feed of abuse and then we were thrown out to make our own way in the world.

Our first task after reporting in, was to find somewhere to stay. Fortunately for us, another Cork guy who was stationed in nearby Cabinteely, came to meet us off the bus. He had left Templemore two months previously and he gave us a hand to find accommodation. Only for him we could well have ended up sleeping in a bus shelter. That Good Samaritan was Charlie Barry, the recently retired Superintendent in Togher.

Pat and myself stayed in the same digs for the first couple of weeks and it wasn’t a great experience. One morning I woke up to find a chunk of the ceiling lying next to my pillow and I soon learned that it wasn’t unusual for bits to fall onto the bed during the night.

The first morning I went for breakfast, the landlady met me in the kitchen. She had a sliced pan under her arm and she asked me if I wanted toast. When I told her I did, she asked me if I wanted one slice or two. I was beginning to think that our relationship was doomed from the outset. I was right, and it wasn’t long before I was on the move.

I abandoned Pat, which he still hasn’t forgotten, and found another place to stay in Carysfort Avenue. This was close to the garda station and it turned out to be my home for the next three years. The house was run by a couple in their seventies and I suspect that they were taking in lodgers for the company more than the money. They were letting out three rooms on the first floor with two people to each room.

It was an old three storey house with a basement, where the kitchen and dining room were. You had to go through one bedroom to get to the other two and with some of us on shift work, there was always a bit of noise with all the coming and going.

There was a student there who hated noise and I shared a room with him. He had such sensitive hearing that he used to hide his tiny folding travel clock underneath his bed and cover it with some clothing so he couldn’t hear it ticking. My clock was a bit bigger than his and sometimes when I came home, I would have to search for it. He often buried it because it kept him awake.

Not long after I arrived, one of the other guys left, so Pat moved in. The following year, we were joined by Pats brother, John who was stationed in Irishtown.

Looking back on it, the conditions were fairly primitive, but it was nearly 40 years ago, and we didn’t know any better.

The hallway leading to the bathroom was covered with lino and there was a skylight with a broken piece of glass that often let in a bit of snow in the winter time. It could be cold there too because we didn’t have any heating.

We shared that one bathroom between six of us and there was one guy who was very fond of grooming himself. Because he was there the longest, he thought the hot water was for his personal use. There was a limited supply and if we didn’t get to the bathroom before him, we’d have to make do with cold water. This happened regularly.

There was a very large antique mirror in my bedroom, and he loved to use that when he was pruning himself and it didn’t bother him that he might be disturbing anyone else. I was often tempted to break it.

As far as I can remember it was costing us about sixteen pounds a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner and the food was good. When we were on nights, the landlady would make us a sandwich to take to work. We were completely spoiled, and she really looked after us.

Molly Trait was her name and she was a tough, capable woman and she provided a home from home for many characters over the years. She was married to Jack, a big man who was very set in his ways. He had worked as a labourer for most of his life and once he developed an opinion on something, that was that. There was no changing him.

They were living in Dublin for donkey’s years, but they were originally from Kilkenny and were really country people at heart. They were very traditional and everything came to a halt when the Angelus came on the TV at six o’clock. Both were a little hard of hearing and that often led to some confusion too, but it was a nice place to live.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then and some of the characters are no longer with us. Hard to believe it’s over 40 years since we got off that bus.