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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
Three European Cups, three Six Nations, one Grand Slam – but never winning a Leinster Schools Senior Cup clearly still rankles Heaslip
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I’m the first to arrive. I order a pint of the obvious and I do a quick circuit of the place. There’s no one here yet, even though I said eight o’clock and it’s quarter-past already. Fr Fehily wouldn’t have put up with that. What was it he used to say? Better three hours too early than a minute too late?
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‘People in the crowd are staring at Honor like she’s a cold sore on debs night’
05:50|So I’m standing with Honor at the junction of Foster Avenue and the N11 and we’re watching people pass us by with agony, I don’t know, etched all over their faces? Yeah, no, JP is running the Dublin City Marathon and I’ve turned up to cheer him on, as well as – obviously – the rest of the field.‘The thought of booking a table for one at Shanahan’s on the Green got me through my prison sentence’
06:19|Hennessy Coghlan-O’Hara rings me. Which is a rare enough occurrence. On the four, maybe five, occasions it’s happened, it’s been to ask me to retrieve the Go Bag that he insists on storing in our attic and to drive him to Dublin Airport.JP is staring at me like I’ve said I’m really enjoying his old dear’s OnlyFans account
06:41|JP says Chloe is writing a novel based on her college days. He’s like, “She’s hoping to do for DBS what Sally Rooney did for Trinity.”‘A threesome?’ Sorcha goes. ‘Why would you think I’d be into having a threesome?’
06:10|Sorcha asks if the beef is from a regenerative form and I end up having to look away. Seriously, you can’t bring her anywhere.‘Things have changed since you were at school, Sorcha,’ the old man goes. ‘We recognise that traditional media is our enemy now’
06:59|Hennessy, the old man and Honor are sitting around the island, looking as thick as thieves. Which is exactly what they are.The competition gets under way. The entrants are each told to remove a sock and put it in the pint glass in front of them
06:56|Driving through the gates of University College Dublin (UCD) brings back one or two memories. Not that I spent much time in the place when I did the Sports Man Dip course back in the day.‘Your father is a moral eunuch, Ross. Those aren’t my words. That was a main finding of the Mahon tribunal’
06:27|So we’re in Morton’s of Ranelagh, doing the big shop, when we run into Rebecca Leahy, the old dear of Honor’s classmate Diva Leahy. Actually, she and Sorcha both reach for the last punnet of kumquats in the shop and I watch Sorcha’s body shape change to fight mode until Rebecca goes, “Sorcha! How are you? Oh my God, look at you! You must weigh nothing!”The porty invitations were returned with the words, ‘Honor O’Carroll-Kelly? Are you focking kidding me?’
06:13|I‘ve always worried about Honor – from the time she emerged from her mother’s womb and gave a “fock you” look to the midwife who slapped her orse.A lot of things are storting to make sense, including the violin case Leo carries around with him like a Chicago gangster
06:34|Leo’s music teacher, Mrs Gordon, says that Leo has a genuine gift for music and I’m thinking that I need this like Ranelagh needs more launderettes with performance spaces.