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I walk into the kitchen, cop Sorcha standing there with a clipboard and perform a neat little sidestep-and-turn – like the great Bryan Habana in his prime. Yeah, no, she's too quick for me, though.
“Ross, come back in here,” she goes. “I want to talk to you.”
I’m there, “Er, what about exactly?”
“About Christmas. I’m just planning the big day.”
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Which is exactly what I feared.
'You will already be wearing your mask and gloves. You will open the front door and take five steps backwards. My mom and dad, wearing masks and gloves, will enter the house and they will follow the arrow stickers to the diningroom.'
"Now," she goes, "obviously, it's going to be a Christmas with a difference this year?"
I’m there, “In terms of?”
"In terms of, we are still in the midst of, like, a pandemic? And I want to make sure that – oh my God – everything we do is in compliance with the recommended Government safety guidelines. I want a Christmas that Tony Holohan would approve of."
“Jesus.”
"So," she goes, handing me a piece of paper, "here is a map of the house and here is a timetable. Did you hear me say rough timetable?"
I’m like, “Er, no.”
"That's because it's not a rough timetable. We need to hit these times and we need to hit them with – oh my God – military precision."
Seriously, it’s like our wedding day all over again.
“Okay,” she goes, “at precisely 12:50pm, my mom and dad will be arriving at the front door. You will already be wearing your mask and gloves. You will open the front door and take five steps backwards. My mom and dad, wearing masks and gloves, will enter the house and they will follow the arrow stickers to the diningroom.”
I'm there, "Yeah, I know where the diningroom is. I actually live here, bear in mind?"
“On the sideboard, there will be a Sanitation Station. There will be 19 of these at various locations within the house and they are morked on your map with a red hand-sanitiser icon. I will be cooking the dinner in adherence to the timings in the Nigella Lawson Christmas cookbook. Which means, at this exact point, I will be basting the turkey with the remaining glaze and Honor will be preparing the maple-roast porsnips and putting on the sprout water.”
“Putting it on? Okay, sorry, I thought you meant-”
“Once you have sanitised your hands, you will make your way to your Pre Dinner Conversation Morks. These will be situated in accordance to the requirements of physical distancing and, again, they will be indicated by the use of stickers on the floor. You will make conversation with my parents for exactly 17 minutes.”
"Seventeen minutes? I haven't spoken to them for that long in the entire time I've known them. The knobs."
“There are some suggested conversation topics on pages 72 through 94 of your Information Pack, which you will be receiving shortly, as well as some briefing notes on each topic. After 17 minutes, I will join you in the diningroom along with Honor and the boys, all of us masked and gloved. We will make our way to our own distance-appropriate Pre Dinner Conversation Morks and we will all enjoy a glass of wine together – cranberry juice for the children – making sure to keep our noses and mouths covered between sips.”
“Right.”
“After 14 minutes of casual conversation, you and the boys, as well as my parents, will sit down for dinner in your Pre Assigned Dining Spaces, which will be indicated on the table plan contained in your Information Pack. You will see that the members of the two households will be separated by exactly two metres and a sheet of perspex precisely one inch in thickness.”
“Right.”
“Honor and I will follow the arrows to the kitchen, where we will place the dinner on to plates. To avoid any dangerous confusion, my parents will be assigned the Villeroy & Boch Wonderful World White set that we bought last year. Me, you and the children will use the Wedgwood Renaissance Gold fine bone china set that Mom and Dad bought me to celebrate our last separation. Do not under any circumstances eat anything from a piece of Villeroy & Boch tableware and do not handle it without using gloves.”
“Understood.”
“If my parents, at any point, require the toilet, they will follow the route morked in green floor stickers to the downstairs bathroom, also known as the Lalor Bathroom. If any member of this household requires the toilet, they will follow the orange floor stickers upstairs to our en suite, also known as-”
“The Throne Room.”
'Don't interrupt my train of thought,' she goes, 'because I still haven't demonstrated for you the brace position we're all going to assume in the event of someone sneezing.'
“-the O’Carroll-Kelly Bathroom. Please take this seriously, Ross. Beforehand, we will move the diningroom furniture in such a way as to facilitate an easy flow of foot traffic moving around the table in a clockwise manner.”
“Clockwise.”
“The Lalor Bathroom will be sealed afterwards ahead of a forensic bleach-clean on St Stephen’s Day and the towels will be burned in a barrel in the gorden.”
“The boys will enjoy that.”
“The dinner will last no longer than 105 minutes, the maximum length of time permitted at a table in a gastropub or restaurant under the Level 3 restrictions. When we have finished eating, we will escort my parents out of the house via the back door-”
"The back door?"
“-following the black arrows. The Villeroy & Boch Wonderful World White tableware will be put through three dishwasher cycles, then hand-washed, then smashed up with a hammer, then burned in a barrel, then placed in an insulated cooler box, then buried in a hole in the gorden, dug to a depth of no less than six feet.”
“It looks like it’s going to be a busy Stephen Zuzz Day for someone. I’ll take the shovel out of the shed for you.”
"During the first of these dishwasher cycles, you will take out the Royal Doulton Pacific tableware in preparation for the arrival of your parents for tea. While preparing the buffet, you and I will spend 13 minutes discussing how different it is to previous Christmas Days, but, at the same time, how surprisingly enjoyable it is."
I’m there, “Sorcha, do you think we should maybe think about just having Christmas ourselves this year?”
“Don’t interrupt my train of thought,” she goes, “because I still haven’t demonstrated for you the brace position we’re all going to assume in the event of someone sneezing.”