Those with no sense of irony should stop reading now, says Marc Coleman

"Don't worry, it's just a temporary torpor," the estate agent said the day before. Whatever it is the property morket is going through now can't be worse than what I'm suffering. It's like 4am, roysh, and the estate agent is due at my pad for the fourth time in a week. I can't sleep and I've had cold sweats, blackouts and panic attacks all in the space of one hour. There is a majorly disastrous likelihood that my aportment in Rathgor won't fetch the price I need to buy a semi in the hood, despite being worth more than the GDP of one of those ex-commie countries now in the EU. The thing is, roysh, that in the nine years I've had it, so has the price of southside semis gone through the roof. But just as I get Kool and the Gang about moving south worse happens: four scheduled showings and four no shows! The aportment might not sell at all.

Flogitte & Runne, a small agency, tells me everyone is going through this. A counselling group for property sellers has even been set in Ranelagh: after the third glass of Sauvingnon blanc, roysh, they all get really emotional and stort group hugging each other and stuff. Fitzfagan tells me: "Courage, mon amis, apres election the market will flow like you-know-what after a laxative."

Maybe so. But if my aportment sells for the price of a second hand Lada my chances of living in walking distance from the other goys in college are shot. Another problem causes "crisis" to appear on the horizon in mile-high capital letters: a parental donation towards preparing for family life has, er, gone amiss. It funded a really excellent night out with Oisin & the lads in the K-club. A second request to the immediate ancestors might not go down well so I visit friendly uncle Declan who lives in Rathgor to see if he's in a good mood.

After a few beers I make my pitch: "I'm selling the aportment to buy a semi not too far from here but no matter how far west I go, the prices are too high. A donation might," I clear my throat, "help to keep the family in close mutual proximity."

He goes: "Why didn't you look for a place on the northside?" When I hear this I stort giving him loads and I'm like "Omigod how could you say that? I've spent the whole bloody day on the northside", waving brochures for houses in the Liberties in his face. Then he goes: "The Liberties are actually on the southside, Ross." He then tells me, roysh, the northside doesn't actually stort at the Dodder but north of this other river. He drags out an ordinance survey map to prove it. I've heard this kind of thing before and it sounds like the "we had soap boxes for furniture" routine the rellies use when they're being tight. But the map is fairly convincing and soon the old mindwheels begin to turn.

For the first time in my life I take the Dort beyond Lansdowne Road to some station in the centre of town. As I emerge from the station, there is a smell like a locker room after a Leinster schools final - the River Liffey. I get into a taxi and go to some place called Clontorf and then Raheny. "This is SOO like Booterstown," I think to myself. My forefinger storts dialling for Flogitte & Runne and I arrange to meet the estate agent Fitzfagan. Later that evening in his office I go: "Talk to me about the northside, Raheny sounds interesting." My Stillorgan apartment won't sell for enough to buy the three-bed semi in Knocklyon I've had my eye on, prices there having risen by 216 per cent since 1998.

Fitzfagan shakes his head with a sad smile on his face. "Ross, you remember nine years ago when you bought the apartment in Rathgar?". "Like it was yesterday," I say. He goes on: "and how I advised you to buy a house in Raheny". I'm like "I didn't know where it was". "Well now that you do, I can tell you that prices there are 400 per cent up on 1998; way out of your league. Don't expect sympathy from me, particularly not given the good advice I gave you at the time about your southside/northside fixation. Can you remember what it was". "Location, location, location?" I respond. "Nope", he says a broad grin spreading across his face as he finally puts me out of my misery "Go east young man".

With profuse apologies to Ross O'Carroll Kelly