Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

So the latest “thing” in our house is the Swedish death clean. For those of you who aren’t married to Sorcha Lalor, this is a decluttering method that’s meant to spare your loved ones the trouble of sorting through your shit after you’ve dropped the mic.

The old man says he thinks he might not live long enough to see Leinster win the European Cup again. I tell him I’m only 46 years old and I’m storting to feel the same way.

Sorcha says she’s – oh my God – so excited about Saturday and I tell her I am too. She goes, “These are the moments, aren’t they?” Which is random because she’s hasn’t shown the slightest flicker of interest in rugby since she thought Rob Kearney gave her a smile and a wave at Taste of Dublin the year before the pandemic and I didn’t have the hort to tell her that he was smiling and waving at me.

So what do you think? Yeah, no, Nicola – as in, like, Honor’s girlfriend – is showing me a watch that she bought from, like, Tiffany of all places? It must be, like, a grand’s worth.

The old man asks me if I’ve been boning up on my Spanish ahead of the trip to Bilbao. I’m like, “Is that where Bilbao is? In Spain?” I honestly think I learned more from rugby than I ever did at school.

So I’m in the gym and I’m bench-pressing, I don’t know, something ridiculous, when all of a sudden there’s someone standing over me and – yeah, no – they’re, like, talking to me? I take out the old AirPods and sit up and it ends up being Nicola, as in, like, Honor’s new – in fairness – girlfriend. 

The old man is sitting in the corner of what was once Shanahan’s on the Green, sucking on a Cohiba the size of a Daihatsu exhaust. 

Sorcha asks me how I’m feeling and I tell her I’m in scintillating form – especially after the win over Sale yesterday. I’m half-thinking of doing my joke about having a semi to look forward to – but then I think better of it.