The goys are having Celtic Tiger withdrawal – time to whip up the old rugby spirit
MANOLO BLAHNIK should be indicted for, like, war crimes, Sorcha goes.
AndJimmy Choo. And it's weird, roysh, because I never thought of them as actual people before?
"Those shoes of theirs," she goes, "they're the real weapons of mass destruction." She's upset. We're allupset? Hospital waiting rooms aren't exactly top of anyone's fun list and we havebeen sitting here for a long time.
Having worn pretty much nothing but designer heels herself since she was, like, sixteen, Sorcha wouldn’t be human if she wasn’t worried about her own sherberts.
“Whose hips is Chloe even getting?” I go, as much to break the silence as anything. And Oisinn, who’s come along with the rest of the goys to lend, I suppose, moral support, laughs. “Dude, it’s not, like, a donor situation – you don’t leave someone your hips when you die. She’s getting, like, prosthetic ones.”
“Oh,” I go, suddenly off one of my world famous rants, “because imagine if you were left a hip by some random skobe from, I don’t know, Coolock or Sallynoggin or one of those. You get out of the hospital – everything’s coola bualadh, until Saturday afternoon, when you wake up and you suddenly find yourself in, I don’t know, Dr Quirkys or the Ilac. As in, the thing’s got focking GPS built-in. Dum, dum dum . . . Where are you taking me now? Twelve o’clock – the bookies, of course! Actually be a good film, wouldn’t it?”
Weirdly, no one laughs. And I know why. I’d have to be the most insensitive person in practically Ireland not to see the effect that this whole current economic tiger thing is having on my friends. If it wasn’t for the guarantee from my old man, I dare say I’d be on a bit of a downer myself.
Fionn, who understands these things better than any of us, is really letting it get on top of him, though.
"Met Andy Culleton last night," he goes. "Remember he captained Michael's? Andy works in the bank. Twelve in his department. Gets called in after Christmas. Told there's jobs for only six. Had to re-interview for the job he's been doing for the past four years. Didn't get it. How do you like that? X-Factor Economics.
“And poor Chloe in there – wouldn’t deign to put her foot in anything that cost less than eight hundred euros. Twenty-eight years old with the hips of a ninety-eight-year-old mother-of-twelve. Seems somehow symbolic to me. We lived the dream. Even seemed to defy gravity for a while. But nature always claims its forfeit . . .”
I’m not going to just sit around watching good people go down like this – Jesus, we played rugby together. “I don’t want to hear any of that kind of talk,” I go, and suddenly it’s like I’m not in Blackrock Clinic at all? I’m back in the dressing-room, back in the day, giving him the old magic. “Would you mind checking the label of your actual shirt there? Does it say on it that these colours run?”
"Ross," he goes, "we're not seventeen anymore . . ." I'm there, "Do you know what my old man was saying this morning? He was like, 'Why is everyone talking about a financial crisis? Let's see it for what it is – a financial challenge.' He made, like, fifty-eight million during the last recession – and that's just what the Criminal Assets Bureau were ableto find?"
Fionn’s like, “But he went to prison,” and I’m there – weirdly defending him – going, “And now he’s turning that prison into Dublin’s first seven-star hotel. My point is, much as I hate his guts and everything, at least he doesn’t sit around moping about shit – even when he was inside, he was making plans.”
I get the impression I’m finally reaching the dude, because he suddenly brightens up. “I’ll give you a laugh,” he even goes. “I was on the Stillorgan dual-carriageway this morning and there’s a sign for a development called Mimosa at the Gallops.” We all crack our holes laughing.
"It's, like, has nobody told these people?" This leads to a discussion – like I'm sure most of you lot have had – about themost Celtic Tiger thing any of us ever did during the good old days.
Couple of weeks ago, I tell them, I put on my tux. Hadn’t worn it for, like, a year? Put my hand in the trouser pocket and there was, like, five hundred yoyos in it. Imagine not missing five hundred yoyos! Sorcha says she paid nine hundred snots for a Delonghi Magnifica Cappuccino maker, even though she already had the Nespresso? After two days, she took the plug off it to put it on her Hamilton Beach 25450 Gourmet Panini Press and hasn’t used it since.
Oisinn says he had lunch in Town Bar Grill one day. Cost, like, forty yoyos or something – told the waitress to keep the change, thinking he’d handed her a fifty, even though it was actually a hundred he’d given her? In fairness to her, she went back to him and pointed out that that was, like, a sixty yoyo tip – but he told her to keep it, roysh, because he was too proud to admit it was a mistake.
We keep outdoing each other with these until I eventually turn around to Sophie and go, “What about you – what’s the most Celtic Tiger thing you ever did?” She thinks about this for a bit, then she eventually goes,
“When my mum and dad got divorced, I changed my name for a couple of months to Seauphee.”
We all laugh like this is the funniest thing we’ve ever heard and we’re pretty much still on the floor when the big double-doors suddenly open and Chloe is pushed through on a trolley, out for the actual count.
The mood changes again. Sorcha starts, like, sobbing? I put, like, my arm around her. Through her tears, she manages to go, “What if Chloe can never wear amazing shoes again?”
"Don't you think that," I go. "Don't you fockingthink that!"
Sophie stares into the mid-distance. She says that if she can’t, she’s going to ask her for her Viktor Rolf aubergine closed-toes. As in, the patent ones.
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