“Okay,” the old man goes, “here’s another one you, Kicker!” because – yeah, no – he’s written a book of his Fifty Years of Letters to The Irish Times, which Honor has helped pull together for him. “Listen to this one! Dear Madam. Whilst sorting through the vegetable tower in the kitchen the other morning, I discovered an oval-shaped tuber with a pale yellow flesh. Is this a record?”

No one laughs – except him, of course?

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“What the fock?” Oisinn goes. “Are you serious?”

I’m there, “Oh, I’m serious all right. I’m as serious as – well, you know what.”

He goes, “A living funeral? Where did this idea even come from?"

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“He must have been in a fight last night,” Sorcha goes.

And – yeah, no – she’s talking about my brother slash half-brother, Brett.

I’m there, “Why do you say he was in a fight?”

And she goes, “Oh my God, didn’t you see the bruises on his neck when he came home this morning?”

Seriously, sometimes it’s like she was never young at all. 

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I’m like, “Bray?”

And Sorcha’s there, “Yes, Ross – Bray!”

I’m like, “But why do we have to go to Bray?” sounding like a spoiled child – in other words, one of ours.

irishtimes.com

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So it’s, like, ridiculous o’clock on a Saturday morning – we’re talking nine, ten, something like that – and I hear a ring on the front doorbell, followed, a short time later, by the sound of a woman’s voice going, “Is this the home of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly?”

irishtimes.com

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Sorcha thinks we should maybe check on Honor and there’s an air of definite excitement in her voice when she says it? Yeah, no, it’s the night before the stort of the Leaving Cert and my wife is absolutely determined that this should be one of those mother-daughter moments...

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Sorcha tells me that I need to do something and obviously, I’m like, “Er – as in?”

Yeah, no, Angela – the wife of my brother slash half-brother – has been on the phone from the States and Sorcha is running out of excuses....

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