Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

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?

Conor Hession sits on the terrace, nursing a vodka lorge enough to put a grizzly bear to sleep. He’s like, “She was quite the most conniving, the most calculating, the most manipulative person I’ve ever met. And completely devoid of human feeling, of course.”

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.

Sorcha goes, “This is exciting, isn’t it, Ross?” because – yeah, no – we’re having dinner in Iguazu, a new hipster restaurant on Camden Street, where there’s no actual menu and an algorithm chooses what you’re going to eat based on the answers you provide to 10 questions when you’re booking.

Dalisay says she’s in the pool. I’m like, “The pool?” “Yes,” she goes. “Your mother likes to swim every morning. Would you like to see her?” I’m there, “In a way, no? But I suppose that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? So I suppose – yeah, no – lead the way.” I walk with her from the old dear’s private ward to the actual gym.

The Broken Orms is absolutely packed to the rafters for the engagement porty of Tina, the mother of my firstborn, to Tom, her fireman boyfriend, who famously played 300 matches in the All Ireland League, albeit for Bornhall.

So – yeah, no – I’m in Dunnes Stores in, like, the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, grabbing a few bits for Sorcha, who’s making a special dinner tonight. I dump my items on the checkout belt and make a mental note to find out if it’s her birthday, or our wedding anniversary, when all of a sudden I hear an old woman’s voice go, “Mind if I just go ahead of you there, son?”