Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

“So, anyway, I tee’d off,” the old man goes, loving the sound of his own voice, “and of course I managed to slice the bloody-well ball and, well, naturally enough, it ended up in the lake!”

JP looks well – even though I don’t know what to call him any more? I’m like, “So how are things – I don’t know – Father?” He actually laughs at that? He’s there, “Ross, you don’t have to call me Father.” I’m like, “What do I call you then?” because it’s my first time seeing the dude since he finished his studies to become an actual priest.

I think I’m on the record as saying that being a parent is one of those things that I just happen to be very, very good at without having to put any actual effort into it. Even allowing for that, at the end of a long, hot summer, just like the rest of you, I’m absolutely sick of the sight of my children and I’m glad they’re now someone else’s problem until the end of October. 

Hennessy is grinning like a dog trying to pass a laundry ball through its urinary tract. Yeah, no, for five days now, me and Bernie from Bray of all places have been – in fairness – texting each other, and the dude is reading through the exchanges, some of which are pretty, it might be a word, explicit?

Hennessy actually laughs when he sees me sitting at the bor with a pint of the old Dutch medicine in front of me. He’s like, “What the hell are you doing here?”

Everybody knows about the Dalkey Lobster Festival. It’s coming up in, like, two weeks’ time, and Sorcha is already practising her walk and wave for the Parade of Lobster Queens Past, wearing the sash and crown that she’s held onto ever since her victory in 2008, at the stort of the crash, on a platform of, I want to say, hope?

All of Ronan’s old mates are there. We’re talking Buckets of Blood. We’re talking Stacks of Money. We’re talking Nudger. We’re talking Gull. It’s actually Stacks of Money who sidles up to me as I’m watching Ronan across the room, chatting to Paul Reynolds from RTÉ.

The old man looks wretched. I say it to him as well. I’m like, “You look focking wretched – worse than usual"