Johnny is having difficulty throwing the ball off his left hand. He's not putting enough spin on it to give it, like, distance and accuracy. I knock on the window and tell him as well.
I'm there, "You're not putting enough spin on it to give it, like, distance and accuracy." But Honor tells me to sit the fock down, like she's my teacher – which, I suppose, she actually is?
“If you want me to homeschool you,” she goes, “you’re going to have to learn to concentrate, okay?”
The last time she saw me with a book in my hands, it was the <a class="search" href='javascript:window.parent.actionEventData({$contentId:"7.1213540", $action:"view", $target:"work"})' polopoly:contentid="7.1213540" polopoly:searchtag="tag_company">Littlewoods</a> Ireland catalogue
I'm there, "But how come they're allowed to go outside to play?"
"Because they're five years old," she goes, "and they're not proposing to sit the Leaving Cert for – what is it? – the third time?"
“Okay, that was uncalled for.”
“Dad, just sit down and try to, like, focus. Okay, we’re doing English now. Did you stort that book I told you to read the last day?”
"Er, not only did I stort it, Honor, I actually finished it."
Oh, that rocks her back on her kitten heels. The last time she saw me with a book in my hands, it was the Littlewoods Ireland catalogue – and that's only because an ex of mine was modelling a velour hoodie and a pair of form-hugging joggers on the cover.
“You read Wuthering Heights?” she goes.
And I’m like, “Yes, Honor – surprising as that may seem, I did.”
She picks my copy up off the kitchen table and flicks through it. "What, all of it?" she goes.
And I'm there, "Every single page, Honor. Nice move, by the way, telling me that the dude ends up playing rugby at the end. That was the main reason I persisted through the first, like, hundred or so pages. But then I ended up getting really into the story, to the point where I didn't actually care that there was no rugby in it."
“Oh my God,” she goes, “what are all these things you’ve underlined?”
I’m there, “Mainly big words that I didn’t understand.”
She just, like, shakes her head. I’m a genuine wonder sometimes. “I can’t believe you read an entire book in, like, a weekend,” she goes. “So what did you think of it?”
I'm there, "Yeah, no, I loved it. I thought it was going to be like a Christopher Nolan movie – that I was going to have to ask Sorcha to explain it to me over and over and over again, until I got bored and just pretended that I knew what the fock was going on."
“What did you like about it in particular?”
“The main dude. Heathcliff – was that his name?”
“You’re saying you were sympathetic towards him?”
“In a major way. I mean, Heathcliff was kind of the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly of his day, wasn’t he? And I hope that doesn’t come across as big-headed. Here, Honor, what’s that thing you always call me?”
“What, a knob?”
“No, not that one.”
“A sad sack, clinging to the delusion that he could have been a rugby player?”
“Keep going.”
“A norcissist?”
“Bingo! See, I’ve looked that one up once or twice after you’ve said it. They think everything is about them, don’t they? Well, 20 or 30 pages into Wuthering Heights, I storted to think, oh my God, this is basically the story of my life.”
"Er, how exactly?"
The only time in my childhood that I ever remember the woman smiling at me was when I was five years old and I mixed a strawberry daiquiri for her
"Like I said, Heathcliff was a good-looking dude who could be a bit of a dick, especially when it came to women. But then the reason he was like that was because of his, I don't know, background?"
“Keep going.”
"Well, that Mr Earnshaw took him in, even though Mrs Earnshaw wasn't keen. She wanted to fock him out on to the moors to fend for himself. And that was basically my old pair. As in, my old man really wanted me but my old dear used to accidentally, on purpose, leave me in the National Gallery, or on the back seat of taxis."
“This is good, Dad.”
“The only time in my childhood that I ever remember the woman smiling at me was when I was five years old and I mixed a strawberry daiquiri for her in a way that pleased her. Anyway, so Heathcliff is, like, totally storved of love. And, like me, no one bothers their orse educating him. Plus, he’s never allowed to forget the shame of his background. In his case, it’s that he was an orphan. In mine, it’s that we lived on the affordable side of the Glenageary Road.”
Honor laughs. She’s like, “Keep going.”
"Heathcliff was in love with Catherine," I go. "And they were, like, totally attuned to each other – we're talking mentally, we're talking spiritually, we're talking, I don't know, whatever else there is."
Honor’s there, “So, like, who’s Catherine in your story?”
"Well, Catherine is obviously rugby," I go. "As in, the one true love of my life, who I wanted to, like, be with. Except – yeah, no – it was stolen away from me by Edgar Linton, who I pictured as either Declan Kidney or Warren Gatland or a combination of both – if you can imagine such a terrible thing."
“Keep going.”
"So, instead, Heathcliff ended up marrying the naive and impressionable Isabella, who's basically your old dear. Don't tell her that, by the way. Like Sorcha, she was totally infatuated with her man, mistaking him for some kind of romantic figure, even though everyone told her he was a dick and she was making the biggest mistake of her life, including her old man, out of the corner of his mouth, even as he was walking her up the aisle of Foxrock Church.
“But even though Heathcliff married the girl, he was driven slowly mad with bitterness for the life that was stolen away from him and yearning for his one true love, crying out in his sleep at night – even as Sorcha lay in the bed beside him – ‘Rugby! Oh, rugby!’ and, ‘Fock you, Warren Gatland!’”
Honor just, like, smiles at me and goes, “You can go outside and play, Dad.”
I’m like, “really?” jumping up from my chair.
And she goes, “Yeah, you’ve earned it.”
