Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

So – yeah, no – I grab a stick of Heinemite from the fridge and I ask Sorcha, “Who’s the kid in the bow tie?” The reason I ask is because I don’t trust kids in bow ties. I’m on the record as saying that putting a bow tie on any human being turns him straight away into an insufferable dickhead. We’re talking nightclub bouncers. We’re talking wine waiters. We’re talking clowns.

Honor is sitting at her computer doing fock knows what? Although I’d be shocked if it was homework. I’m there, “Honor, I need you to brace yourself – for some news.”

She’s sitting in the window of the, whatever you want to call it, nursing home, playing the piano – badly, I might add – and I get a sudden flashback to my childhood. This is what she did whenever we had, like, visitors coming to the gaff. 

For, like, 30 seconds, I’m as quiet as Thomond Pork since 2019 and the dude ends up having to repeat himself.

So it’s, like, Paddy’s Day and me and the goys have arranged to go for our usual walk on Killiney Hill with the kids. They’re already waiting for us in the cor pork – we’re talking JP with little Isa, we’re talking Fionn with Hillary, we’re talking Christian with Ross Junior and Oliver and we’re talking Oisinn with little Paavo.

Honor says she’s not worried. She says she couldn’t give two focks. But Sorcha’s like, “Well, you’d better give two focks. This is a serious matter. A head girl has never been expelled, Honor – not in the 170-year history of this school.”

“The fock is this?” I go. Yeah, no, I’m doing the morning school run, crawling up Trees Road in a procession of all-terrain vehicles, like an invading ormy, when Honor hands me a piece of paper. She goes, “It’s, like, my results – from, like, my mocks?

Sorcha rings me and there’s an air of, like, panic in her voice? She goes, “Ross, where are you?” Yeah, no, we’re in Portugal for midterm – along with the rest of south Dublin – and I’m on the road from Quinta do Lago to Vilamoura. Although I don’t tell her that.