‘Ross, from this morning, you’re going to be home-schooling Honor.’ I laugh out loud

So it’s, like, half-eight in the morning when Sorcha shakes me awake, going, “Come on, Ross – time to get up! Let’s go!”

I'm obviously like, "Excuse me?" because we're supposedly self-isolating and there's literally nothing to get up for?

She goes, “We’re going to try to maintain as normal a schedule as possible for as long as we’re doing the whole social distancing thing. That means while I’m working from home, I’m going to be getting up at the normal time and getting dressed as if I’m going to the office.”

I'm like, "Sorry to cut you off, Sorcha, but I'm struggling to understand how this affects, like, me?"

Farm to fork: The no-dig vegetable farmer of Dromone

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"Because, Ross, from this morning, you're going to be home-schooling Honor."

I laugh out loud.

I’m like, “Home-schooling Honor? Me? Sorcha, I’m a complete focking dunderhead.”

"Well," she goes, "you're already supposedly home-schooling Brian, Johnny and Leo."

“Yeah, they’re four years old. That’s, like, crowd control.”

“And a fine job you’re doing of it, Ross. They were crawling around on their hands and knees yesterday, eating millipedes from the corpet.”

“Yeah, no, I’ve seen them do that. What can I say? They’re feral.”

She pulls back the duvet and throws my clothes at me and I end up having no choice but to get out of bed and get dressed.

But I’m like, “I can’t teach Honor anything, Sorcha. In terms of, like, brain power, she passed me out when she was, like, six.”

“All of her teachers have emailed her course work to us,” she goes. “I’ve printed it all out. Honor and the boys are downstairs in the kitchen, waiting to have their heads filled with knowledge.”

"You said supposedly, by the way. Just a minute ago."

“So?”

"The word is supposably. It's a common mistake."

She just stares at me with her mouth open. I’m thinking, maybe I am cut out for this teaching lork after all.

“I’m going to be working in the study,” she goes. “I’ll see you at 12.40pm for lunch.”

I tip downstairs to the kitchen. Honor is – hilariously? – dressed in her Mount Anville uniform and sitting at the table with a face on her.

She’s like, “Can you believe this s**t?”

The boys are sitting there as well with crayons and paper in front of them.

I’m there, “Your mother wants us to maintain some kind of, supposably, structure. So, for however long this thing lasts, just think of this as your classroom.”

She looks at me like she’s imagining crushing my windpipe with her thumbs. You can see why so many of her teachers are on career breaks slash long-term sick leave.

She goes, "What the fock could you possibly teach me?"

I’m there, “You’d be surprised.”

At that exact moment, Brian snatches one of Leo’s crayons from him. Leo responds by punching him in the face.

I’m like, “Goys, who wants to go on a millipede hunt?”

They’re all like, “Me! Me! Me!”

So I open the kitchen door and release them into the hallway.

I’m there, “And remember to share, Johnny. Don’t make a pig of yourself as usual.”

I pick up one of the worksheets that Sorcha printed out for us.

I thought she was, like, a mythological character – like Brian Boru and that whole crew

I’m like, “So where do you want to stort, Honor? This one here is from your history teacher. It says you’ve to write a 1,000-word essay about the port that Constance Markievicz played in shaping modern Ireland. Okay, that’s random.”

“Why is it random?” she goes.

"I don't know, I just thought, well – she wasn't an actual person, was she?"

“You’ve never heard of Constance Markievicz?”

“Of course I’ve heard of her. Your old dear’s always banging on about her being one of her feminist role models. It’s just –”

“What?”

“I thought she was, like, a mythological character – like Brian Boru and that whole crew.”

She looks at me the way my teachers sometimes looked at me – until I pointed out to them that I was on the S.

"Dad," she goes, "she was an actual person."

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure – and so was Brian Boru.”

"It's true what they say – every day really is a school day."

"Are you really that thick, Dad?"

“Er, yeah, no, I suppose I am.”

“Okay, so I’m going to give you some names and you tell me whether you think they were, like, real or not, okay?”

“Yeah, cool.”

“Cú Chulainn?”

"I'm going to take a punt and say . . . real?"

“Chorles Stewart Pornell?”

“Made up.”

“Hamlet?”

“I’m guessing real.”

“Otto von Bismorck?”

“Hilarious – definitely made up.”

“Heathcliff?”

“Real.”

“Emily Brontë?”

“Made up. Keep going – I’m on a roll here.”

“Jay Gatsby?”

“Real.”

“Socrates?”

“Made up.”

“Seriously, Dad?”

“How many did I get?”

"Er, like, none?"

“S**t. Maybe if I’d guessed ‘made up’ for the first one, then said ‘real’ for the second . . .”

"Dad, seriously. You can't teach me anything. Maybe I should be teaching you?"

And that’s when a light bulb goes on in my head.

"Oh my God," I go, "that's an amazing idea! You could home-school me!"

“Are you still drunk from last night?”

"It's been on the old bucket list for years – to one day, hopefully, improve my mind. This whole self-isolation thing could be the opportunity I've been waiting for. Seriously, by the time we're allowed out again, I want people to look at me and go, 'What happened to the Rossmeister? He used to be as thick as focking mince. Now he's as clever as – 'Okay, name someone with, like, serious, serious smorts."

“Isaac Newton.”

“Is he real or made up?”

“He’s the father of modern physics, Dad.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

"He was real. Now he's dead."

"You see? There's so much you can teach me. Oh my God, Honor, I'm going to resit the Leaving Cert! With you as my teacher."

“Dad, I haven’t even done the Junior Cert yet.”

“But you’re a total brainiac, Honor. You take after your mother.”

I can hear Leo out in the hallway going, “Me eat worm! Me eat worm!”

I’m like, “Those three take after me – the poor focks. Honor, what do you say?”

She’s there, “I say what I usually say – as in, what’s in it for me?”

I’m like, “How does 50 grand sound?”

And she goes, “Open my history book on page one.”