by Paul Howard
When she finally does look at me, roysh, she goes – at the top of her voice, we’re talking – she goes, ‘Ross, why are you staring at me?’ and I can feel myself go red and Sorcha, roysh, she stares at me and goes, ‘How was the debs, by the way,’ and it’s obvious Erika’s told her about knocking me back.
All the goys are cracking their holes laughing, roysh, and I’m so morto I don’t know where to put myself, but Sophie rescues me by changing the subject. She goes, ‘It’s a pity you can’t buy, like, a glass of boiled water in a pub,’ and Emer’s there, ‘Oh my God, that reminds me, how many points is a muffin?’ and Sophie’s like, ‘Five-and-a-half.’ And Emer’s there, ‘There’s no way that muffin was five-and-a-half,’ and Sophie goes, ‘Emer, it was an American-style muffin and an American-style muffin is five-and-a-half points. I told you you shouldn’t have had it, so don’t take it out on me,’ and Emer just gives her daggers.
Fionn turns around to me, roysh, and he goes, ‘Girls are obsessed with points, aren’t they? When we were doing the Leaving, it was getting as many as possible. Now it’s eating as few as possible,’ which is way too deep for me.
Christian is, like, really quiet, roysh and I ask him if he’s alroysh and he says he’s cool, but he’s tanning the Ken, knocking back two pints for every one I’m drinking.
The girls stort talking about some bird called Rachael who was in Loreto Foxrock and has put on SO much weight since she went on the Pill, and then they’re talking about this big night out they have planned, they’re going to see Vonda Sheppard, a girls’ night out, even though Sophie thinks her latest album SO isn’t as good as her last one. And Sorcha says she wouldn’t know because she’s been listening to mostly classical music lately, especially Elgar’s ‘Third Movement from Cello Concerto in E Minor Op 85’. Emer goes, ‘Oh my God, have you got The Best Classical Album of the Millennium … Ever?’ and Sorcha, roysh, real defensive, she goes, ‘Yeah, but I’ve got, like, loads of other classical albums as well as that.’ And Fionn goes, ‘You’ve probably got The Best Classical Album of the Millennium … Ever Two, Three, Four and Five, have you?’ and I high-five him, even though, to be honest, roysh, I don’t really get the joke.
Sophie says she loves Pachelbel’s ‘Canon’, and Sorcha says she loves Rachmaninov’s ‘Variation 18 from Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini’, roysh, and this pretty much goes on until Fionn asks whether or not we’re going to The Vatican, and that’s when we all grab our jackets and stort heading up towards, like, Harcourt Street.
We’re pretty much halfway there, roysh, and me and Fionn are walking ahead of everyone, basically talking rugby – Ireland’s chances in next year’s Six Nations, whether I could be as good as Brian O’Driscoll if I got my finger out, all that – when all of a sudden, roysh, Sorcha shouts up to me, ‘Ross, where’s Christian?’ and I turn back and I go, ‘I presumed he was with you goys.’ She’s there, ‘No, he was behind us.’
I tell them all to walk on up, roysh, and I head back towards Grafton Street and I find him outside Planet Hollywood, arguing with the bouncers. They’ve got, like, whatever they’re focking called, C3PO and R2D2, in the window, roysh, and Christian, who’s off his face, he wants to go in and touch the two robots, to see if they’re, like, the real ones, the ones they used in the movie, which Christian reckons they’re not, but the bouncers – you can’t blame them – they’re having none of it, they’re trying to move him along, and all of a sudden he storts going ballistic at them, giving it, ‘YOU DON’T OWN THEM! THEY BELONG TO THE PEOPLE!’
I grab him, roysh, and sort of, like, drag him up the street, but we only get, like, ten steps up the road when all of a sudden he stops and storts crying his eyes out, and I keep asking him what’s wrong, roysh, but he’s too upset to talk and he just grabs me and hugs me there on the street and I’m sort of, like, you know, looking around to see who’s, like, watching, not wanting people to think I’m a steamer, obviously.
I’m like, ‘What’s wrong, Christian?’ and he squeezes me horder, roysh, and I can hordly breathe at this stage, and I’m like, ‘What is it?’ and he goes, ‘My parents are getting divorced,’ and I can’t think of anything to say to the dude, even though he’s been my best friend since we were, like, four, and I just end up going, ‘That’s heavy shit, man.’ He’s lost it, he’s bawling like a baby, going, ‘I don’t want them to break up. I don’t want them to break up,’ and I’m there still hugging him, going, ‘This is SUCH heavy shit.’
When we were kids, roysh, Christian’s old pair brought the two of us to Lansdowne Road to see Ireland play. It was, like, a Five Nations’ match, roysh, against, like, Scotland, and though I remember pretty much nothing about the game, roysh, I know we lost by, like, three points, or maybe it was six, but we lost anyway. Christian said Ireland were crap and his old man said they were far from crap, that if they had in their legs what they had in their hearts then they’d win the Grand Slam every time.
We waited in our seats until about ten minutes after the final whistle, roysh, then we headed around the back of the West Stand and Christian’s old man decided we were going to, like, wait in the cor pork and cheer every Irish player onto the bus, to let them know that their courage was appreciated by at least some of the fans.
Me and Christian both had programmes, roysh, and his old man gave us a pen each to get the autographs of the players as they came out. I’m pretty sure it was raining and Christian’s old dear put up her umbrella and, like, pulled the two of us under it. And what I remember about that is the smell of her perfume.
After about an hour, roysh, the players storted to come out in twos and threes and, like, make their way to the bus, but I didn’t really recognise that many of them, except Brendan Mullin and Donal Lenihan and maybe Willie Anderson. Got loads of autographs, though. Brendan Mullin asked me my name and then he signed it, ‘To Ross, best wishes, Brendan Mullin,’ which I remember Christian’s old man telling me he didn’t have to do. He goes, ‘A great ambassador for his sport and his country. Didn’t have to do that, you know.’
Then Brian Smith came out, roysh, and pretty much everyone there wanted to get his autograph because he was, like, a major stor at the time, so there was all this, like, pushing and shoving to get at him, roysh, and I ended up falling over in this puddle and I was, like, soaking wet and my knee was all, like, grazed and shit. I was, like, bawling my eyes out, more out of embarrassment than anything else, roysh, and Christian’s old dear helped me up and told this man who just happened to be standing beside me when I fell that he ought to be ashamed of himself, carrying on like that, and the goy told her he didn’t push me, that I fell, and Christian’s old dear just looked at him and shook her head.
I remember she rolled up my trouser leg and she took, like, a piece of tissue out of her pocket and used it to clean the blood off my knee. Then she used another piece to wipe my eyes and she, like, gave me a hug and Christian’s old man asked us how we’d like a Coke and a packet of crisps, and we went to the Berkeley Court, or maybe it was Jury’s, it was one or the other, and that’s what we had, Coke and crisps. And me and Christian, roysh, we were, like, flicking through our programmes, looking at all the autographs we’d got, trying to make out who they all were, and I had this, like, squiggle that Christian didn’t have and his old man asked to see it, roysh, and he told me it wasn’t an Irish player at all, it was actually Gavin Hastings, and he told me I was a lucky man to get the great Gavin Hastings’ autograph.
Sophie rings me, roysh, to tell me that she’s going to be late – said I’d go Christmas shopping with her – but there’s a signal failure on the Dorsh again and – OH! MY! GOD! – it’s taken her an hour to get from Glenageary to, like, Booterstown. She goes, ‘The Dorsh is a jake, Ross. A complete jake.’
It’s the last day of term, breaking up for Chrimbo today, roysh, and I’ve got a letter from the head of the course informing me – ‘we’d like to inform you’ – that I’ve attended a grand total of ten lectures this term, which
is news to me, I didn’t think it was as many as that, roysh, but it’s not a letter of congratulations. It’s like, blah blah blah, doubts about your commitment to the course, bullshit bullshit bullshit, academic dimension to the course must be taken seriously, wank wank wank, monitoring your attendance over coming months. I go to Oisinn, ‘Spoke too soon about freedom. School wasn’t this focking bad,’ and he’s like, ‘Come on, Ross, cheer up. We’re out of here for four weeks.’
And you can tell it’s the last day of term, roysh, because all the boggers are walking around with, like, rucksacks full of dirty washing, bringing them home to their old dears to wash over the holidays. I see Fionn saying his goodbyes to Kathleen with the peach fuzz. There’s more to that than him sussing out a theory. He likes the bird. They’re well-suited if you ask me, one’s as focking ugly as the other.
She’s wearing a Galway bogball jersey, roysh, and it turns out she’s from a place called Gort, which I think we passed through on the way down to, like, Ennis two New Years’ Eves ago, one of those shithole towns where old men with red hair stand outside the local supermorket on a Sunday afternoon with their mouths open and ‘the wireless’ up to their ears, going, ‘You can never write off Cork,’ to passersby. In fact, the red hair’s storting to make a bit more sense now. Fionn kisses her goodbye, a big slopping wet one, on the lips, and when he comes over to me and Oisinn, I go, ‘You’ll need a shot of Ivomec after that,’ which I’m pretty happy with because for once, Fionn has no focking answer.
We hit the bor and get off our faces.
It’s the day before Christmas Eve, roysh, and we’re all having drinks in The Bailey, middle of the afternoon, and Sorcha hands Aoife a present, roysh, and Aoife goes, ‘Oh my God! I haven’t got yours with me. I was going to wait until tomorrow night,’ and Sorcha says it doesn’t matter and Aoife opens the present and it’s, like, a ‘Friends’ video. Aoife’s face lights up and Sorcha goes, ‘I hope you haven’t already got that one,’ and then Aoife’s face drops, roysh, and she’s like, ‘Oh shit, I do,’ and Sorcha’s like, ‘I don’t believe it. I asked your mom to check whether you had Series 5, Episodes 17-20, ‘The One Where Rachel Smokes’, and she said you didn’t.’ Aoife goes, ‘She is SUCH a stupid bitch, my mother. It’s Series 3, Episodes 17-20 that I don’t have.’ Emer, who’s, like, first year Morkeshing, Advertising and Public Relations in LSB, she goes, ‘Which one is that?’ and Aoife’s there, “The One With The Princess Leia Fantasy’.’ Emer says that is SUCH a good episode, and Sorcha says it’s okay because she kept the receipt, just in case.
Emer says there were three refugees outside her old dear’s coffee shop all day yesterday, wrecking everyone’s heads with their music, those bloody accordions, and Erika says she read somewhere that they’re making up to a thousand bills a day – we’re talking each – from begging and busking, and Emer goes, ‘If you could call it busking.’ I don’t know why, roysh, but I turn around and I go, ‘Why don’t you lay off the Romanians,’ and everyone at the table turns to me, roysh, and looks at me like I’m totally off my focking rocker, and I probably am because I can’t believe I said it myself. Erika goes, ‘Sorry, Ross, where is this coming from?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I mean, it’s Christmas. Could we not be, like, a bit more, I don’t know … caring?’
Erika goes, ‘Caring? Caring? Hello? This is Ross O’Carroll-Kelly I’m talking to, isn’t it? Most selfish bastard who ever lived.’ I’m there, ‘I’m not selfish.’ And Erika goes, ‘Aoife, tell Ross what Bronwyn told us. You remember Bronwyn, Ross? You were with her at the Loreto on the Green pre-debs.’ Fock! I know what’s coming next. Aoife’s cracking her hole laughing, roysh, and she goes, ‘According to her, Ross, you bought a packet of condoms. Ribbed, extra-sensitive, for her pleasure. Well, according to her, you tried to put one on … inside out.’
I’m there, ‘That was a focking accident and she knows it,’ but everyone’s, like, cracking their shites laughing and I go, ‘Look, all I’m saying is, you know, these refugees, they’ve lost their, like, homes and shit. I mean, how would you like it if you were suddenly dropped in the middle of, I don’t know … Budapest,’ and Erika goes, ‘The capital of Romania, Ross, is Bucharest. And they have Prada there. And Amanda Wakeley.’
Christmas in my gaff is a complete mare, and we’re talking total here. I wake up in the morning, roysh, about eleven o’clock, feeling pretty shabby I have to say, a feed of pints the night before, hanging big style, and I can hear the old pair downstairs all-focking-over each other, we’re talking total borf-fest here. It’s all, like, squealing and, ‘Oooh, it’s just what I wanted,’ roysh, and I go downstairs to tell the two of them to keep it down, my head hurts. Turns out, roysh, the old dear bought the old man a Callaway ERC2 driver and he bought her, like, jewellery, a shitload of Lladro and a mid-week break at the Powerscourt Springs and they’re, like, hugging and kissing each other, roysh, and it’s all, ‘Happy Christmas, Darling,’ and I’m finding it pretty hord to keep this toast down.
They’ve got me a cor, roysh, a Golf GTI, black, total babe magnet, or should I say they’re going to get me one. I told them to wait until the New Year, roysh, to, like, get the new reg. So anyway, roysh, the old dear hands me this present and she’s like, ‘Oh, we wanted you to have something to open on the day,’ and I’m like, ‘What am I supposed to say, yippee-hoo?’ but I open it, roysh, just to keep them happy and it’s a phone, a so-called phone, a Motorola T2288, we’re talking a crappy eleven ringtones, we’re talking no vibration alert, we’re talking only 210 minutes of battery talk-time. I’m like, ‘Sorry, what is this supposed to be?’ and the old man goes, ‘It’s a mobile phone, Kicker,’ and I’m like, ‘You are taking the total piss here. It’s not even focking WAP-enabled,’ and I fock it across the table and go upstairs to, like, get dressed. As I’m going up the stairs, I can hear the old dear asking the old man what WAP-enabled means, roysh, and then she says she’s so sorry and she feels she’s ruined Christmas and then she storts, like, bawling her eyes out, the attention-seeking bitch.
About, like, ten minutes later, roysh, the old man shouts up the stairs to me and he goes, ‘Don’t be too long, Ross. We’re going to go to twelve Mass. As a family,’ and I’m like, ‘Get real, will you? You retord,’ but I end up going anyway, roysh, anything for an easy life, and it’s the usual crack, Holy Mary, Mother of God, blah blah blah, and I end up sitting there for the whole thing, texting Christian, Oisinn and everyone else I know to give them, like, my new number and tell them I might see them l8er.
Sophie actually phones me back straight away to say thanks for the Burberry scorf, which I bought her pretty much to piss off Sorcha, who was basically dropping hints to me that she wanted one herself. So Sophie rings, roysh, and I have totally forgotten that the ringtone is switched to, like, ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and when it goes off this old focking biddy sitting in front of me, she turns around and gives me a total filthy, we’re talking daggers here, and I’m like, ‘Hang on a sec, Sophie,’ and I go, ‘Turn the fock around,’ and she does as she’s told.
And Oh my God, roysh, you should have seen the state of my old dear, we’re talking dressed to focking kill here, and it’s, like, guess who spent a grand in Pia Bang yesterday? When she comes back from Communion, roysh, I hear her go to the old man, ‘Ann Marie is wearing the same coat she wore last year,’ and the old man goes, ‘OH! MY! GOD!’ out of the corner of his mouth.
Dinner is, like, majorly painful. Dermot and Anita, these dickhead friends of the old pair, roysh, they’re invited around and, of course, the whole conversation is dominated by this new campaign they’ve storted, which is, like, Move Funderland to the Northside. I mean, we don’t live anywhere near the focking RDS, roysh, but Anita lives on Sandymount Avenue and, of course, the old dear can’t resist it, keeps saying that Anita was SO helpful with the Foxrock Against Total Skangers Anti-Halting Site campaign, roysh, that she simply had to get involved. What a sap.
She’s there going, ‘I don’t know how you
cope, Anita. I really don’t,’ and Anita’s there going, ‘We’ve put up with it for twenty years, Fionnuala. Gangs of what can only be described as gurriers walking by, carrying giant elephants, urinating in our gardens, off to get the Dorsh to – what’s this it’s called? – Kilbarrack, and God knows wherever else.’
She’s going, ‘Now don’t get me wrong, Charles. We’re not anti-Funderland per se, are we Dermot? But somewhere like, I don’t know, Ballymun, would be a far more appropriate place for it, surely.’ The old dear goes, ‘Now don’t get upset, Anita. Charles will print out those posters for you tomorrow. Have another drink.’
And Anita, roysh, you can see she’s storting to get emotional, already half-pissed on Baileys and mulled wine, and she’s going, ‘I’m going to picket the RDS, Fionnuala. On my own if I have to. I’m going to flipping well do it.’
This goes on for ages and I basically can’t take it anymore, roysh, and I end up going, ‘Is this a family dinner or a focking campaign meeting?’ and everything goes silent. The old man goes, ‘Well, what would you like to talk about, Ross?’ and I don’t know what to say, roysh, so I just end up telling them what a bunch of tossers they look in their paper hats and the old man goes, ‘Ross, if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, I suggest you leave the table,’ and I’m like, ‘With focking pleasure,’ and I grab three cans out of the fridge and head into the sitting room to watch the Bond movie.
So I’m sitting there, roysh, and it’s, like, Octopussy, and I’m knocking back the beers, milling into the old Quality Street, and my phone rings and it’s, like, Fionn, and I’m just like, ‘Yo, Fionn, Happy Christmas, my man. Speak to me.’ He goes, ‘Having a great day here with the family,’ – focking weirdo – he’s like ‘Greetings and felicitations to you and yours.’ I’m there, ‘What time did you leave the M1 last night?’ and he goes, ‘It was late. Hey, you won’t believe who I ended up being with last night.’ I’m like, ‘Who?’ and he goes, ‘Esme.’ This is the only reason he’s ringing me.
