'Where's her degree from? Is it, like, Dumb Blonde School?'

Healing through t’ai chi? The only t’ai chi that interests me is the horizontal kind – and not in the focking circus field in Booterstown

I ASK HER how the food is and she says – oh! my God! – she can't believe she's eating soppressata, what with everything that's going on at the moment. Which is presumably something to do with the banks. Me, I'm just horsing down the raw succotash, telling her to chill.

“If you want my opinion,” I go, “there’s, like, way too much of that going on at the moment – we’re talking guilt and whatever else. It’s like JP was saying the other day. Two years ago, if you weren’t buying an investment property in Abu Dhabi, you were considered mentally unstable. Now you can’t have a plate of charcuterie without some focker quoting the jobless figures at you.”

Not that I even like charcuterie. I’m throwing it into me like a focking orphan here but I’m still, like, storving? If this is what the Spanish consider a meal, it’s no wonder they can’t get through a working day without putting the old noodle down.

“I’m just making the point,” she goes, “that it feels wrong – as in, I’m, like, sat in the bank this afternoon asking for a 12-month moratorium on what I owe them. Now I’m in, like, Dax, eating from – oh my God – not even the early-bird menu.”

I’m like, “Sorcha, do you think Seánie Fitz is eating Pot Noodles every night in the focking Spar on Baggot Street Bridge? Er, I don’t think so?”

She snaps out of it then, knowing that what I’m talking is basic sense.

“I’m sorry,” she just goes. “This night is supposed to be a celebration,” as in, she’s finally managed to offload all of the stock she was left with when her shop went tits up.

I tell her it’s cool, apology accepted and blah blah blah. This recession is all you hear about every time you turn on the TV these days. It’d have to affect you. Unless you just watched box sets.

“So, how are you?” she goes. “Are you seeing anyone?” See, with Sorcha, they’re always the same question.

I’m like, “Oh, I’m still making the bedsprings creak, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

She just, like, shakes her head, like it doesn’t bother her, even though it actually does?

“How’s Honor?” I go, subtly changing the subject.

Sorcha laughs. “She’s fine. Oh my God, she’s turning into such a little madam, though.”

I laugh then? “What’s she up to now?” See, she didn’t exactly lick it up off the warm maple hordwood.

“Oh my God, I had such a struggle this morning to get her to make her bed.”

“Make her bed? Jesus, what about that Vietnamese bird you have in, supposedly cleaning? Why can’t she do it?”

“Oh my God, Ross, that’s exactly what Honor said.”

“Well, maybe she has a point.”

“Linh is not there to act as her personal maid, Ross.”

I shrug. “Maybe I should be the judge of that. I’m the one who’s, like, paying her.”

“It’s important for children to have structure and responsibility in their lives, Ross. Suri has to do chores as well, you know.”

“Who?”

“Don’t give me that. I’m talking about Tom and Katie’s baby.” In other words, Cruise and Holmes. I laugh. She talks about famous people like she meets them every Sunday morning for salmon focking kedgeree.

“It shouldn’t be a burden to her, Ross. All I ask her to do is make her bed, take her dishes to the dishwasher after she’s used them and put her dirty clothes in the laundry.”

I still think that’s work Linh should be doing, although I know Sorcha well enough at this stage not to push it. Instead, roysh, I ask her how she’s doing.

“I suppose I’m still taking

time out to connect with my grief,” she goes. “You know my friend Giovanna – she used to work in that herbal tea shop

that I liked in, like, the George’s Street Orcade? She has an actual degree in psychology, Ross, and she says that what I’m going through is possibly like a bereavement?”

“Hey, that’s amazing. Where’s her degree from, did she mention?”

“What?”

“I’m just asking, is it, like, Dumb Blonde School or any of those?”

“Sorry, Ross, how does that affect the basic point she’s trying to make?”

“It doesn’t, I suppose. Okay, continue.”

She just, like, stares me out of it for a few seconds – to let me know she doesn’t need my permission? – then she goes, “Anyway, that was what she said, that all these people out there who’ve lost their businesses, their jobs and whatever else, they’re all going through grief of one kind or another. And unless people connect with that grief – reach an accommodation with it, if you like – it’ll come back and basically bite them. Can you imagine what that’s going to mean for, like, Irish society, Ross?”

It’s definitely Dumb Blonde School. I’ve ridden enough of the alumni to recognise the spiel.

“Well, that all sounds like good shit,” I go, helping myself to the last of the pork rillette.

“All I’m saying is that Giovanna is, oh my God, so an amazing person. She’s not only a psychologist, Ross, she’s also a Buddhist and, well, two or three other things as well. She’s read, like, the Koran, just as one example – four times or something? Literally from cover to cover. This is what she does, see. She takes, like, little bits from all different religions. The good bits obviously. As a matter of fact, I was actually thinking of joining her Healing Through Tai Chi class.”

She sips her Coteaux du Languedoc 2006 and looks at me over the top of her glass for a reaction.

I’m just there, “Coola boola, baby.”

“She does it in, like, the circus field in Booterstown? Half-seven every weekday morning. Oh my God, it’s nearly all, like, out of work people, Ross, and people who’ve lost their businesses.”

“Again, you’d have to say fair focks.”

"It'd mean you'dhave to bring Honor to Montessori every morning. Would you mind?"

I actually laugh at that. “Mind? Getting an extra hour of bonus time with my daughter every morning. Er, have you any idea how much that’s going to make my actual day?”

She smiles. It’s obvious that whatever she once felt for me is still definitely there.

“Well, thank you, Ross.”

"Look, Sorcha, I accept now that I wasn't much of a husband to you. Fast hands – a blessing and a curse. But I promised you – didn't I? – that theone thing I would always be is an amazing, amazing father."

She puts her hand down on top of mine, leans across the table and plants the most, I suppose, tender kiss on my cheek. She’s wearing her Clarins Eau Ensoleillante, which has always done it for me.

"We're alwaysgoing to have a connection," she goes.

I just shrug – easy breezy – and go, “Like high-speed broadband, baby. Like high-speed focking broadband.”

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