We drain our glasses and head away from the village with its exclusive boutiques and the salty air. The paths become more meandering and you get the sense of tranquil urbanity that is particular to Blackrock. That’s why Dean chose to live out this way, so he divulged, plus it’s close to Seapoint swimming point. This fact alone would be sufficient for me to choose to come and live here.

We find the estate and my romantic notion of having it all, the tranquillity, the urban, is immediately crushed. This is the pits, this is where you don’t want to end up. The estate’s called the Meadows and it’s pretty clear that some forward-thinking developer basically destroyed a lovely wild expanse of land to make way for a whole load of semis. It’s a fairly regular set-up, a decent place to bring up kids but beyond that not much else. An ennui is palpable. Everyone’s garden is practically the same, the boundaries delineated by the glossy oval-lime greens of Griselinia littoralis. The areas designated to each family hardly warrant such divisions but despite that the Griselinia provides privacy all year round, a coveted thing in such close confines. The suburban popularity of the species is down to its rapid growth and its low maintenance and that is what great family men desire. Despite my scorn for Dean and what he’s bought into, I have a heaviness in my heart, in the bottom of my stomach. I understand that I’m not much better because my own garden hedge, I realize, is composed of exactly the same species.

I am one of these people.

I too am a great family man.

We take our time trying to find the house because I haven’t been here before. I have forgotten the number and I’m becoming confused because each road in the estate is replicated again and again. We turn into a cul-de-sac and Jenny points to a peach house at the end. There’s a couple of people out in the front garden chatting and now we can hear the pumping music.