'Poor Gwynny. They lost everything, you know. Overreached'

It's a jungle out there in the CEC – time to see if Honor's inherited her old man's killer instinct, writes ROSS O'CARROLL-KELLY

THERE’S ONLY one thing in the world that’s more puke-making than one of your mates flirting with your old dear – and that’s your old dear flirting back.

“It has to be said,” JP’s telling mine, “glasses really suit you, Mrs O’CK,” and she’s cracking on to be embarrassed when she’s actually more, I don’t know, delighted? Of course I’m on it like a bonnet. “Er, they don’t?” I go. “She looks like a focking vagrant Gok Wan.” And she acts all hurt. “Ross!” she goes, playing the sympathy cord with JP and Fionn, who are supposed to be, like, my friends, remember? Then she asks how her rabbit stew with brandy, Sancerre and cream went down with the public and of course she already knows the answer – just fishing for compliments.

“They loved it,” it’s Fionn who goes. “There’s a lot of people are very excited about what we’re doing.” Meaning the Foxrock Food Bank, this new meals-on-wheels charity initiative of theirs to feed South Dublin’s struggling rich.

“Rabbit is so underrated,” she goes. “Except in the US, of course – there was a wonderful little place where I used to enjoy it in Santa Monica. Oh, divine! Do go, if you’re ever in California. What about my spruced-up almond cake with gooseberry and cherry compote?” See, they’re worse for even entertaining it.

“We’ve had a few requests for that again,” JP goes. “The woman on Westminster Road with the two – what are they, schnauzers?”

“Yes, poor Gwynny. They lost everything, you know. Overreached. Like a lot of people . . .” I literally can’t listen to any more of her. I pick up Honor and go, “Come on, kiddo, let’s go play in the gorden!” When I say play, roysh, what I really mean is train? See, it’s only, like, six weeks until Sports Day at Little Roedeans Montessori School – and those weeks are actually going to fly.

They’re having, like, a race for the parents this year, which I fully intend winning – yes, to make Honor proud of me, but also because that’s just how seriously I take my sport. I’m, like, insanely competitve – it’s what made me the rugby player I so very nearly could have been.

I’ve even been drawing up, like, a training programme for myself, although I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to do three up-tempo, one-mile repeats on a hilly course, with five-minute breaks in between, as I did in my Senior Cup year, or eight two-hundred metre repetitions on the track at full race-speed, with thirty-second intervals in between, which is what I did when I played for UCD.

I’ve also put Honor on a kind of training programme, though don’t mention that to Sorcha if you see her. See, I don’t want to end up being one of these pushy parents – like my old man? But the teachers in Little Roedeans have been filling the kids’ heads with some amount of – being honest – lies, about how winning isn’t the be-all and end-all? They had all these, like, sayings plastered all over the walls when I collected her from school the other day. It was all, “The important thing is not to triumph but to compete,” and if it wasn’t that, it was, “The important thing is not to have vanquished but to have fought well.” I don’t know how any of this fortune cookie horseshit is supposed to prepare a four-year-old girl for life out there in the big, bad world, especially with the CEC still in full swing.

They’ve also said – I have to tell you this – that all of the races are going be, like, non-competitive? Which means everyone gets a medal, doesn’t matter where they even finish.

Yeah, roysh.

Me, I’m going to make sure my daughter knows the difference between winning and losing.

In the boot of the cor, I’ve got the Stairmaster that Sorcha bought a couple of years ago, after I passed what was intended as an innocent comment about her bottom while she was putting the Christmas tree back up in the attic. I put it down on the gravel of Delma’s driveway and Honor hops straight up on it – see, she’s definitely got her old man’s competitive instinct and will to win, despite the school’s efforts to kill it off.

I switch the gradient from light to medium and off she goes, working away like you wouldn’t believe, while I stort giving her some of my own personal sayings, mostly motivational quotes that helped me when I was captaining Castlerock College to victory in the Leinster Schools Senior Cup, while kicking like a ninja.

“No one wins silver – they lose gold . . . Second is the loneliest word in the English language . . . It’s not enough that I should be on the green – every other focker must be in the bunker . . .”

She does, like, eight minutes on the Stairmaster, breaking her mother’s record, I could point out, by a full three. I tell her that’s enough, let’s conserve something for tomorrow – time to warm down.

I’m thinking, it’s from these, I don’t know, humble beginnings that great sporting careers are born. I think of my old man throwing the old Gilbert full-force at me in the gorden of our old gaff in Glenageary slash Sallynoggin and I think, yeah, without that, I never would have become the person I am today.

We tip back inside. The old dear, who’s obviously been watching through the window, tries to go, “She’s a child, Ross, not a greyhound.” I decide not to take the bait.

“We’ve had 20, maybe 25 people,” Fionn’s, at the same time, going, “who’ve offered to cook as well. Obviously nothing in your league, Mrs O’Carroll-Kelly . . .”

“It’s Fionnuala.”

“Fionnuala, then. But the outpouring of generosity has been, well, frankly quite disarming. I think they’re wrong when they talk about this being the me generation . . .” I laugh out loud. For an educated goy, Fionn can be unbelievably naïve. See, charity’s all very well, but it’s an actual jungle out there. Smile at someone these days and they’re suddenly living in your ear and sub-letting the other one out to a family of 10.

It ain’t a pretty picture. But that’s just Ireland in the year, I don’t know, two thousand and whatever we’re up to.