THAT'S MEN:It may be too late to plan separate holidays this year, so make sure yours doesn't end in divorce, writes Padraig O'Morain.
'I'M NEVER asking them to mind the children again," a Dublin woman at a separate table in the dining room of a fancy hotel in Manhattan said to another woman. Everyone else had left the table and they sat among the debris of lunch.
"They" were husbands who had left the table for the bar and who, she explained to her companion, had declared that they "didn't come to New York to mind effing children".
"I was stuck with them yesterday and the day before," the woman, who had a washed-out face and dabbed at her eyes with a table napkin, complained.
I had noticed that the two guys had looked tense throughout the meal. A third woman, who had left for the bar with the men, had looked ready to explode.
Ah, holidays, I thought to myself. Where would we be without them?
The second woman said something I couldn't catch about "not doing it again".
"Me too," the first woman said. "You can bet on that."
They got up and followed the others to the bar. What were they not going to do again? Get married? Bring the kids on holiday? Bring the husbands on holiday?
Well, maybe separate holidays are not such a bad idea, though it's probably too late to plan them for this summer.
There are certain fundamental differences between men and women on holiday. At that same lunchtime in Manhattan one of our fellow diners recalled fondly a lads' holiday in Amsterdam which included Paul, another of the diners.
Paul had missed his plane so the lads decided to make good use of the hours before he arrived to join them. They were staying in a big room in a cheap hotel.
First they took Paul's mattress and put it into the shower. Then they switched on the shower. When the mattress had been given a proper wetting, they put it back on Paul's bed. Then they carefully made the bed.
Paul arrived the next morning, having nourished himself during the wait for the next plane with many pints of lager. So well had he nourished himself that, on arriving in his room he got into bed and fell fast asleep without noticing that the mattress had been given a shower.
In the morning, the lads left him sleeping and went off to begin their day's fun. But on the way - and this is quite admirable, I think - they stopped at reception. "You might want to send someone up to our room," they said helpfully. "We think our friend may have had an accident and wet the bed."
Although the Dutch speak better English than most of us, the receptionist either did not understand or chose to not understand, and Paul continued to enjoy his wet mattress.
I might add that the lads in question were English. There is, I think, something heroic about the behaviour of English males on holiday that the Irish can only gaze upon and admire.
Paul sat at the table beaming with pride as the story was told. His new bride - we were in New York to celebrate their wedding - laughed with the rest of us, but had a glint in her eye that said: "You won't be going on holidays like that anymore, my lad."
That's the thing: women aren't really any good at holidays "like that". Even those herds of English damsels whom you see marauding through Temple Bar and Kilkenny on hen nights with their bunny ears - and God knows what else - would probably draw the line at putting each other's mattresses in the shower.
The other tricky thing about men and women on holidays is the question of rows. Men and women bicker and fight. Normally that's alright - you both go to work and through your various routines and the tiff, with any luck, gets lost along the way.
On holiday, however, there is little or no escape from each other. Those women in Manhattan had to go back to their uncooperative husbands, not just at the end of the day but at the end of the meal. Not to mention the effing children.
No wonder there are holidays that end in divorce.
Going anywhere nice this year?
• Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor. His book, That's Men - the best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times, is published by Veritas