Jamie Heaslip stopped me in Kielys not so long ago and went, “The life you’ve lived, Ross – how are you even still alive?”
MY DAUGHTER JUST loves to hear my stories about my – you’d have to say – wild years? I was telling her just the other day about the time I famously attended two debs dances on the same night – one in the Berkeley Court, the other in Jurys. I bought two orchids and two boxes of Leonidas and spent the entire evening running between the two hotels, a date and a chicken supreme in each and never the twain did meet.
By now, the story has passed into – you could say – south Dublin folklore, although Honor was hearing it for the first time and I could tell from her face that she was thinking much the same thing as Jamie Heaslip was thinking when he stopped me in Kielys not so long ago and went, “The life you’ve lived, Ross – how are you even still alive?”
The answer is, I don’t know. I’ve always had, at any given time, multiple – let’s just say – scenarios on the go. My life is like one of those plate-spinning acts that you sometimes see on Britain’s Got Talent and I’ve become a master at keeping everything going through a combination of bare-faced lying, cheating without conscience and a general – I don’t know – preparedness to screw people over. The point I’m making here is that after 30 years on this earth, I’m used to sticky situations. But none – and I mean none – was ever stickier than what happened last Saturday.
Terry and Larry called in at, like, half-nine in the morning to bring me on this protest morch they’d organised against the queen’s visit. I was in bed with a dirty big hangover, having overdone the celebrations for Leinster’s victory in the Magners League the night before. I was like, “Goys, I might end up having to sit this one out – give me a shout before the next one. Plenty of notice, yeah?” Terry picked my balled-up chinos off the floor and just threw them at me.
“Get thressed,” he went, in a way that suggested the subject wasn’t open for debate? The next thing I knew, I was stood at, like, Sandymount Dort Station, being introduced to Terry and Larry’s friends – or, as they call them, their crew. There were, like, 70 or 80 of them – and it was some rogue’s gallery. There were so many ex-cons that the Dort service that morning must have been one big parole violation on rails. And I doubt if Dublin 4 had ever seen as much prison ink concentrated in so small an area – certainly not since the Alicante Property Expo at the RDS in 2005.
“Who’s this sham?” some dude called Edser turned around to Larry and went, talking about me like I wasn’t even there. Larry was like, “Ah, he’s eer neighbour. He talks funny but he’s sowunt, so he is – wonderneat it all.”
Edser looked me up and down, like he was angry about the way I was dressed. “Where’s your fooken boat?” he went – which was a definite dig at my Dubes and my Henri Lloyd sailing jacket. Before I could think of a really, really funny answer, he stuck a placard in my hand and went, “Carry dat.” I looked at it and it was like, “Go Back, Union Jack!” We storted to make our way towards the Merrion Road, this big, angry huddle of people, talking about how much they hated, not only the queen, but the entire royal family? We’d only walked, like, 20 yords when my phone all of a sudden rang. I possibly shouldn’t have answered it in the circs – except it was Rebecca, this English bird I’ve been kind of stringing along. I might have mentioned to you before that she’s an old school friend of Kate Middleton’s and she’s invited me to the big bash as her basically plus one. So I’ve got to stay on her good side.
I was like, “Hey – how the hell are you?” She went, “I’m on my way into Dublin. I have this beautiful dress for the wedding – remember? – but I need to get it adjusted from knee-length to tea-length.”
“Oh, yeah,” I went, obviously not having a bog what she was on about.
“I remember now.” As we reached the Merrion Road, I could hear Edser turn to Larry behind me and go, “How do you know he’s not MI5?” meaning obviously me. “He could be chatting to his handler theer.” And Larry laughed and went, “They’re called the intelligence community for a reason. You try talken to him for foyuv minutes!”
Imagine my actual stress. Because it was at that point Edser grabbed me by the elbow and, like, steered me right to the front. And in my ear, Rebecca was going, “It really is an amazing dress. Really expensive. I’m just terrified I’m going to walk past Zara or Topshop and see that they have a high-street, low-budget copy of it!” I was like, “Yeah, that’d be a serious bummer.” And that’s when the chanting storted. “Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie – out, out, out! Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie – out, out, out! Lizzie – out! Lizzie – out!”
“What’s that?” she suddenly went. I was like, “What?” stalling for time as much as anything.
“That chanting – where are you?” So I just blurted out the first thing that came into my head.
“I’m at home,” I went. “Watching the – believe it or not – news.”
She was like, “Oh, it must be that protest against the queen’s visit. Silly, isn’t it?”
“Hey, don’t get me storted, Rebecca.”
“Why can’t people let bygones be bygones? I mean, you should see the traffic here.”
“Traffic?”
“Yeah, I’m on the Merrion Road, just coming up to the British embassy . . .”
A fart silently slipped from my orse.
She went, “It’s taken me nearly an hour to get from . . .” There was suddenly silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her silver-grey Subaru Forester making its slow way towards the Simmonscourt Road junction.
“Ross,” she went, like she’d seen something she couldn’t quite believe. Which, obviously, she had. “Is that . . .”
Of course, my quickness of thinking is one of the reasons I’m still considered the greatest ever Irish rugby player to never actually make it.
Out of the blue, I went, “Anyway, I can’t just sit around here watching Sky News all day. It’s time I got up and got some brunch into me.”
She laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry, Ross. There was a guy at the front of the march there. He was the spitting image of you.”
“You’re yanking my cord.”
“I’m not. For a few seconds, I thought it was you. You have a doppelganger.”
I laughed then. “I think you mean a doppelskanger!”
rossocarrollkelly.ie, twitter.com/rossock
