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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
‘Dad, you need to ask yourself what do you want to be – a rugby fan or a good father?’
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I love a crowd. Yeah, no, that’s as true of me now as it was back in my days as the best number 10 in the history of Irish schools rugby and the goy that every girl wanted to be with. I love the feeling of people staring at me with their gobs open in just, like, wonder.
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Honor has picked a theme for her year as Mount Anville head girl: ‘Vengeance’
06:40I’ve never been one of those parents. You know the kind I’m talking about. Their kid does a poo for the first time sitting on a toilet and they’re taking out an ad in The Irish Times to announce the news. It’s genuinely rare that I find myself in a position to say – like I did on Friday – that I’m proud of one of my children. Honor has now completed exactly half of her community service hours for vandalising hundreds of SUVs across south Dublin. I know it’s a low bor that I’ve set for her, but here we are.‘Protestants are not that much different from us. I mean, they’re definitely less craic, but they get sh*t done’
06:08I’m not usually one of those, what I like to call Flat White Wankers, but that’s what I’m drinking this morning, sitting outside the Happy Out Café on the seafront in Dún Laoghaire.‘What’s on offer,’ she goes, smiling, ‘is eternal life,’ and I do believe she’s flirting
06:13Leo is the first of us to get restless. He goes, “Oh my God, this is so boring!” and this is in the middle of the Protestant equivalent of, like, Mass?‘Ross, it’s not just a case of filling out a form and – hey, presto – you’re a Protestant’
06:33If getting Brian, Johnny and Leo into a new school means changing my religion and getting up on Sunday mornings, then I’ll do itHonor goes, ‘I was into Taylor Swift before, like, anyone?’
06:11Christian is sitting at our usual table in 3fe on Sussex Terrace and I can tell instantly that something is up. When you’ve played ten to someone’s twelve, you can have no secrets from each other. Fact of rugby, fact of life.Sorcha goes, ‘You had an erotic dream – about my mom?’
06:30So I’m in the cor with Sorcha and we’re on the way to Clonskeagh to collect Brian, Johnny and Leo from school. Yeah, no, they’re finishing up today and we’re bringing them out for lunch to say fair focks to them for going another year without being expelled. Like most south Dublin parents, we set a very low bor for our children.Sorcha refuses to meet my eye. And I don’t blame her – setting up her own daughter like this
06:54It’s the old Jonny Bell that hits me first – a combination of bacon, cheese and Tom Ford Portofino that comes wafting up the stairs and under the bedroom door looking for me.‘I want it gone, Ross. I want you to get it lasered off’
06:23So – yeah, no – I’m mowing the back gorden with my top off again, portly to showcase the work I’ve been doing in the gym since the stort of January, and portly to see how long it takes for it to become an item of discussion on the Dalkey Open ForumHonor and Liesel are both smiling and it’s like driving towards a cor with its lights on full beam. I end up having to turn away
06:58The school concert hall is absolutely rammers this afternoon. We’re talking, like, 1,000 students and parents crammed between the walls to hear the result of the election for Mount Anville Head Girl for 2024-2025 and I haven’t seen Honor looking so pleased with herself since the time she swapped her old dear’s hair conditioning mask for Veet.