Ross O’Carroll-Kelly

“Oh, Ross!” Sorcha goes, her head tilted to one side.

"Je suis très excitée! C'est fantastique d'etre ici à Paris! L'Arc de Triomphe! Le Marais! Montmarte!"

“Can I ask you a question?” I go. “Are you speaking French to me?”

She's like, "Oui" which is their equivalent of, like, yes?

“Thank God for that,” I go. “I thought I was having some kind of episode. I keep thinking I can smell gas and they say that’s a sign, don’t they?”

She’s excited. I get that. She put our names down to be volunteers on Honor’s school trip to Paris and she’s literally in her element. Not only do we get to spend the weekend in the most romantic city in the supposedly world, she also gets to feel like she’s pulling her weight as a member of the Mount Anville Junior School Parents Association.

I just want to sleep. I never imagined what a difficult job it would be to direct 42 children through the metal detectors at Dublin Airport, especially when 23 of them have braces on their teeth. The security screening room sounded like the casino floor in Caesar’s and this morning I’m fit to just crash.

But I can’t, of course, because we’ve got – that awful word – responsibilities? Fifteen minutes later, along with the other parents slash volunteers, we’re getting all the kids together into a room to basically brief them on the itinerary for today.

After breakfast, we're going to the Louvre. Probably the easiest way to explain it to you is that it's the museum from the movie, The Da Vinci Code.

"Bonjour, tout le monde!" Sorcha goes. She's talked her way into being the team leader for the whole trip. That's just the way she is.

"I hope you're all looking forward to this morning's visit to the world-famous Louvre, where we're going to see some amazing, amazing works of art, including obviously the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo."

I'm there, "The Mona Lisa is the one of the bird smiling."

You should see the way the kids look at me. The word is awe. I’m an educator. It’s a genuine surprise to me that I never went on to coach at a high level.

Sorcha’s like, “Yes, thank you, Ross. The museum is home to hundreds of thousands of ort pieces, ranging in age from the antiquity to the middle of the nineteenth century.”

That’s when our daughter decides to suddenly pipe up.

"I'm not going," she goes, not even looking up from whatever she happens to be texting.

Sorcha laughs. She’s like, “What was that?”, trying to play the whole thing off as a joke.

But Honor repeats it and this time her voice is loud and unmistakable, like a piano falling down a stairwell.

"I said I'm not going," she goes. "Hashtag – are you deaf or just hord of understanding?"

This, of course, is a major challenge to Sorcha, not only as a mother but also as a team leader. She’s a former head girl, bear in mind.

And now she’s being basically challenged in front of 42 children and eight other parents. It’s going to be interesting to see how she plays it.

"Come on, Honor," she goes, making the mistake of trying to reason with the girl. "You can see The Fortune Teller by Caravaggio. Remember I got you a print of it from Habitat before they closed down?"

Honor – still texting away – goes, “I haven’t come to Paris to look at a bunch of old stuff.”

It’s then that I should possibly jump in and tell her not to disrespect her mother like that. But I actually have some sympathy with the point that she’s trying to make and I wouldn’t mind finding out where this is going to go.

Her mother's there, "Honor, we have an itinerary that combines educational stuff with fun stuff.

“There has to be a balance. Tomorrow, we’re going to Disneyland Paris. Today, we’re going to the Louvre and the Elysée Palace.”

I don’t know what the second one of those is.

"I'm not," Honor goes. "I'm going to the Christian Louboutin store on the rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau."

You can see the other parents looking at each other, wondering how does a kid end up speaking to her old dear like that?

Sorcha – red with embarrassment and possibly a bit of anger as well – goes, “Christian Louboutin doesn’t make shoes for young people, Honor. Why would you want to go to a shop to look at shoes that you can’t wear?”

And Honor’s like, “Why would I want to go to a gallery to look at paintings that I can’t own?”

There it is! My entire life I’ve been searching for the words to explain why I hate going to, like, museums and galleries. And my seven-year-old daughter has just done it in less than 140 characters.

A bit of a standoff develops then, so I go, "I've got an idea. Why don't I take Honor to this famous shoe shop and you go to the museum with whoever wants to go there."

It ends up being totally the wrong thing to say.

It was Warren Gatland who once said that if you X-rayed my head, all you would find inside is a man in a high-vis jacket standing next to a tiny brain, shouting through a loudhailer, “Please disperse! Nothing to see here!”

Suddenly the other girls stort going, “I want to go to the Louboutin store! I want to go to the Louboutin store!”

It’s Mount Anville, remember, and suddenly we’ve got a coup on our hands.

"Ross!" Sorcha goes, glowering at me, with a mouth so mad she could eat a pain au chocolat through a boulangerie window.

But it’s too late. I think we all know where we’re going this morning.