Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

“So this dude here,” Oisinn goes – and he means me, “he tucks the ball under his orm, beats five players and crosses the try-line under the posts. But he doesn’t ground the ball there. No, he puts it down in the corner to make the conversion horder for himself"...

My daughter is giving the valedictory at the Mount Anville graduation, and there’s a little something in it for everyone

So – yeah, no – the old dear is in the swimming pool when we rock up to the nursing home, doing her – I don’t know – hydrotherapy exercises? She’s dancing to Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like a Woman! while holding a beach ball and she has singlehandedly cured me of my fetish for women in wet swimwear. 

Brett asks me what she was like when she was younger. I’m like, “Who?” He goes, “Our mother.” And it’s random because I’ve never thought of the old dear ever being – like he said – young.

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. 

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.