Just Looking

House hunting in Dún Laoghaire, though it was more like house haunting; we are in no position to buy anything yet, so are likely to remain unsolidified, discarnate among empty-but-more-substantial rooms. We flowed with the many other temporary ghosts into this extraordinary house on a corner, opposite a park (a key to the park was part of the deal). Another listed building (like our own). That and the dark basement put me off a bit, though it was also an attractive and likably eccentric place, having once been a ballroom of all things. It did feel like a house that was moving from or towards something else, imbued with a kind of flux, albeit a rather musty and old fashioned one. When we got home I found myself oddly disorientated, as if I had breathed too much of another pungent atmosphere which had superimposed itself on everything, muffling their familiarity: haunted by the strange house, and no doubt by my strange self, a little out of my head, as if I'd just walked off a ship and hadn't got my land-legs back yet.