Me and my big Moët – I thought we’d celebrate Aung San whatsit getting out, but Sorcha wasn’t in the mood to porty
IT'S, LIKE, Thursday morning and I'm lying in bed, deep in thought – well, let's just say thinking. In fact I'm going over the events of last night, wondering did I actually dream it. But then I cop it, on the pillow beside me, a brown A4 envelope, with pages spilling out of it, and I realise that it happened, much as I don't want to believe it. It reallyhappened.
I was watching TV when I heard the news, three or four days after the rest of the world, that Aung San Suu Kyi was out. Those of you who make your way to this column via the more serious parts of the newspaper are probably thinking, er, the Rossmeister General, all of a sudden interested in, like, world events – hello?Well, I'm going to answer that question for you.
For seven years I've been married – both happily andunhappily at various times – to Sorcha Lalor, who, after Bono and his missus, would have to be considered the Vico Road's third leading campaigner on the issue of basically human rights. She's been on Amnesty International's mailing list, for example, since Mandela was still in the clink, and I've been following the twists and turns of Chia Thye Poh's life ever since I first laid lips on the girl.
But Aung San Suu Kyi was always her favourite. In fact, if there was an X Factorfor, like, prisoners of conscience, Aung San Suu Kyi would be her Rebecca Ferguson – and I hope it's not blasphemy to say it.
Anyway, you can imagine what popped into my head when I heard that the woman was out again. I had a change of underpants, a mouthful of toothpaste and a splash of JPG, then, 10 minutes later, I was standing at Sorcha’s door with a bottle of Moët and a big sincere face on me.
She opened the door and I went, “I came as soon as I heard,” a line I’d been rehearsing during the drive. Sorcha looked honestly amazing. Her friends have all been saying recently how much judicial separation actually suits her.
She went, “Heard what?”
I was like, “Er, what’s-her- name getting let out. Let’s hope she keeps her nose clean this time, eh?”
She closed her eyes, then shook her head, like I was a hallucination that she was trying to wish away. When I didn’t disappear she went, “I suppose you’d better come in.”
I have to say, roysh, I expected to find her in better form. I tipped into the living room and looked at the coffee table. She’d obviously been at the Thornton’s chocolate Advent calendar, because all the little doors were open until December 16th.
It turned out she’d been watching the news. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Eileen Dunne with a face on her that said, “I don’t want to be the one telling you this, but . . .”
“Ah, you’re only depressing yourself,” I went. “Me, I get all the news I need these days from Glenda Gilson and Lisa Cannon.”
That didn’t go down well.
“Ross,” she went, in her famous Mount Anville Debate Champion of 1997 voice, “do you even care what happens in this world?”
I held up the bottle of plonk. “Er, what do you think this is, Babes?” She was wearing her Clarins Eau Ensoleillante, which has always done it for me.
She went, “It’s another one of your – oh my God – transparent efforts to get me into bed.”
I didn’t deny it. I just storted peeling off the foil cap with my best Come to Papa grin.
“Don’t you dare!” she went. “Don’t you dare open champagne in this house on a day like today!”
I was like, “What do you mean?”
“There’s talk of Ireland being bailed out, Ross. Bailed out?”
“Well, thank fock for that – should that not be the basic attitude?”
“Er, by the EU and the IMF?”
“Well,” I went, “I stand by my analysis.”
She was like, “Oh, do you? Thank you very much, Prof Joseph Stiglitz! Are you not even worried, Ross, about the kind of world we’ve brought a little girl into?”
I just shrugged. “It’s hordly going to affect Honor, is it? She’s only, like, five.”
Sorcha just shook her head, like she couldn’t bring herself to even talk to me any more.
"Before you leave," she went, "bringing whatever thatis with you . . ."
“It happens to be Moët.”
“I wanted to give you this.”
And that’s when she handed me the brown envelope. I didn’t even open it. I knew straight away that it was going to be bad news. I was like, “What is it?”
She went, “Just bits and pieces. A family-law civil bill, an affidavit of means and an affidavit of welfare.”
I was like, “This sounds suddenly heavy, Babes.”
“Ross, it’s my application for a divorce.”
“Whoa!”
“Can I consider these papers served, Ross?”
"Divorce?Jesus!"
“You said you were going to consent to it, Ross.”
“I know – but I just thought, I don’t know, with the state the world is in and blah, blah, blah.”
“We can handle it like civilised people, Ross, or we can . . .”
“Okay, okay, you can consider them served or whatever the actual phrase is.”
After that there was nowhere for the conversation to go, so I got back in the cor and headed back for Rosa Porks, for a night in, with a – by now – lukewarm bottle of champers and my printed-out photographs of the PricewaterhouseCoopers girls.
So here I am, roysh, lying in bed this morning, with a dirty big hangover rattling my bors, staring at this envelope of – honestly – scary documents, trying to get my head around the fact that this is the stort of the end of my marriage, when all of a sudden I hear it. It would possibly have to be described as an enormous explosion followed by a sort of, like, fizzingnoise? It's like, ker-booooooom! Ffffffffffffff! The building literally shakes.
I’m like, “What the fock was that?” even though there’s no one in the room to answer me. I’m suddenly thinking all sorts of mad shit. Was it an earthquake? Or is it the IMF? They wouldn’t bomb us – would they? – despite what we’ve supposedly done to the economy.
Then it happens again. Ker-booooooom! Ffffffffffffff! I throw back the sheets and run to the window, except I can’t see a thing through it. And that’s when I remember that today’s the day they’re detonating the unfinished aportment blocks. I literally can’t see 10 feet ahead of me through a cloud of just grey.
Fits.
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