Culchie landlords.
I recently found myself thinking back to my first ever bedsit at age eighteen on Belgrave Square in Rathmines. It was £28 per week, a sizeable amount back in those days but it was either pay up or find anything cleaner and brighter for less money. At least the bed was new, even if the kitchen was actually in the wardrobe. I'm not even kidding either. One time, the only time in my entire life at that, I fucked off for the weekend and forgot to close the big Georgian window overlooking the back garden (it was the main reason I took the flat) and someone climbed in kicked the lock off the electricity meter and took whatever was there, leaving everything else behind. Didn't touch a thing, I had my entire drums rig piled up in boxes and flight cases in the corner, cymbals and drums worth thousands, but they weren't even touched - which made me wonder if the fucker was in there when I put the key into the lock to let myself in.
The cops came around (had to call them, landlord's instructions) and looked at the window, then at me, and then left saying they'll be in touch. Yeah, right so. Landlord arrives the next day, I'm deep asleep after a long weekender, he's letting himself in when I get up and kick the door closed again, then swing it open and demand to know what the fuck he thinks he's doing. We have a row and he leaves, not bothering to put a new lock on the pre-paid electric meter, so I use a fifty pence coin over and over and clock up a sizeable credit and was able to properly heat the flat with a two-bar plug-in electric heater which I left on all day and night. Landlord eventually shows up again with a new lock for the meter, so I tell him I'm leaving, that he's some cunt walking in and out of my home.
Rotten fucker, he advertised the flat immediately and started bringing people in when I was there and when I wasn't. So I stopped paying him any rent, found a new place (miles out in Palmerstown Woods, about twelve canal bridges out from the city. A depressing housing estate, nobody around, a view of a factory with a pile of pallets as tall as Carrantuohill. Suicide central for sure. But I kept my key to the Rathmines flat, and when lady I was seeing went to Japan for three months, I gave her the phone number of the old A/B phone in my old bedsit. When she reversed-called me at a set time, I accepted the charges from the Japanese operator and we'd chat for while about whatever. The bill must have been bigger than the pile of pallets, because I was in and out of your man's hallway a couple of times a week, and even met the new tenant. A nurse from the sticks. I asked if she was bothered by the landlord and she said no, apart from him coming and going when she was out and he was 'doing some maintenance' when she got home.
Maintenance my arse - he was panty-sniffing and likely trying on her dresses, the big culchie scumbag he was.