‘Rugby is the best idea we’ve ever come up with as a species,’ I go, channelling Fr Fehily
I tag along as Brian, Johnny and Leo get the tour of Castlerock College from Fionn, but the school isn’t quite how I remember it
Sorcha goes, ‘The Dalkey Lobster Festival is this weekend. How am I going to show my face?’
Honor has just given Sorcha her biggest shock since she found out her teenage pen pal was actually a death row inmate in Texas
‘I think you should have a conversation with Honor about her drinking,’ Sorcha goes
We’re picking her up from the airport after her Leaving Cert holiday and – yeah, no – she’s mashed all right
‘I got thrun out of Amedica,’ Ronan goes. ‘Me visa was revoked’
‘There must be something we can do,’ I say. ‘Someone we can threaten. Or pay’
When Honor drops the news, I sit there with my mouth open like someone from Roscommon seeing escalators for the first time
Honor’s debs is coming up, and Sorcha’s telling her not to make the same mistake she made
The old dear made a seating plan for her own funeral. She didn’t want ugly people in the first three pews
It’s the morning of Fionnuala’s funeral and the gaff is a scene of chaos
I get this sudden flashback to when I was six or seven and I’d hold the wheel steady for the old dear while she drove home, half-cut
Ross and Honor dress up the visitors’ room to take the old dear to her favourite restaurant for a bloody Mary with an extra shot
The old dear goes, ‘Sorcha? I don’t know anyone of that name. Is she one of your tarts, Ross?’
Ross and Brett are hosting a living funeral for Fionnuala, but she can’t remember anyone
Oisinn goes, ‘Dude, you’re saying goodbye. You do realise that? You’re saying goodbye to your old dear’
‘I hope she has one of her good days – because there’ll be some crowd at her living funeral’
Brett goes, ‘She’s close to the end, Ross. I was thinking we should arrange a living funeral for her’
The old dear is pretending she doesn’t know who Brett is, in the hopes of scaring him back to the US and as far away from yours truly as possible
I’m always telling Sorcha to tone down the southside when we come out to Bray but she never listens
Sorcha’s friend Claire has opened yet another cafe but this time with a new gimmick: all the staff are ex-offenders
‘I haven’t really been living before now,’ Brett tells his wife. ‘Ross has slept with more than 800 women’
Brett is in bed with a woman he met at the Divorcee Disco when his wife arrives at the front door
‘I’m not even a bit stressed,’ Honor goes, ‘I haven’t done a focking tap for these exams’
It’s the night before the Leaving Cert, and Sorcha wants to have a mother-daughter hort-to-hort
‘He obviously decided that he’d wasted his life, focusing on career, marriage and family goals’
Brett has arrived downstairs for breakfast with a woman named Rowena, and Sorcha is accusing me of corrupting him
‘We’ve been through so much. I slept with two of JP’s ex-girlfriends, and Christian’s actual mother and even that didn’t break us up’
Brett, my brother slash half-brother, is clearly impressed by our tales in the pub. The dude can really put the drink away – that’s one thing he inherited from the old dear