'He's got an IQ of 140 - what's the point of him going to school?'

Ro’s latest scheme sounds a winner – not sure about the two old goys working for him

SO FIONN rings me the other night to tell me that Ronan hasn’t been to school since, like, January? Of course, my immediate reaction – as his father – is, “The kid’s got an IQ of a hundred and forty – what’s the point of him going to school?”

"Well," Fionn goes, "it's the law," and I'm pretty sure I know what he's actuallysaying? They've got, like, a lay principal at Castlerock now – as in Tom McGahy – and he's always hated sport. Not surprisingly, I was never exactly his cup of tea, on account of constantly sticking the old GTI in his porking space whenever the mood took me, stealing his employment records and telling the entire school that he only got a Desmond in his college finals and, well, loads of other shit, then always playing the S card whenever he complained about me to Fehily.

He’d be looking for any excuse to come down hord on Ro, obviously to get his revenge on me.

I actually haven’t seen the kid for a couple of weeks now, so I decide I probably should spend a bit of quality time with him anyway. So Thursday lunchtime, I spend an hour walking around town, checking all his usual boltholes and I find him, as usual, in the snooker hall on Capel Street, taking on his friend Buckets of Blood in what looks like a serious money match.

“Ah,” he goes, suddenly looking up from a shot, “there y’are, Rosser!”

I can’t believe how much he’s grown, even in the few weeks since I last saw him. He’ll be twelve soon, he’s already up to my shoulder and, according to his old dear, he’s started shaving his face every day in the hope of speeding up the arrival of his first actual moustache.

“Are you not going to say congratulations to Buckets?” he goes.

I swear to God, it’s impossible to stay mad at him for, like, any length of time.

I ask him why and he says that Paul Williams called him Scumbag Millionaire in the paper last weekend. “It’s, like, half the Dublin underwurdled were after the nickname and Buckets was the one who got it.”

“Fair focks to you,” I go and Buckets sort of, like, shrugs, you’d have to say modestly. I turn back to Ro and I ask him why he’s not in school. “I’ve been woorking,” he goes. He pots, like, a long red.

“Ro,” I tell him, “this isn’t work,” although if they made it an Olympic sport I’m pretty sure he’d bring medals home. “Nah, this is me break,” he goes. “I’m woorking with me Grandda.” I’m there, “Your grandda? As in, my old man?” and it’s at that exact point that his mobile rings. He checks Caller ID and goes, “Ah, the very buachaill!” and, the next thing I know, Buckets is conceding the frame and I’m following Ro back out onto Capel Street, where he says the old man is going to pick us up.

While we’re standing there waiting, I can’t help but notice that Ro does that thing that a lot of skobies do – gives filthy looks to passing buses just in case there’s anyone on board that he hates.

Imagine my surprise, roysh, when ten seconds later, what pulls up beside us is not the old man’s Beamer but a thirty-foot truck, with the old man in the front passenger seat and Hennessy – as in, his solicitor – at the wheel. The old man’s got, like, one orm out the window.

“Hello there, Kicker,” he goes and Hennessy gives me a quick blast of the horn. The passenger door suddenly swings open and Ro sort of, like, clambers up the little ladder into the – I think it’s called, like, a cab? “Room up front for one more,” the old man goes and, only because he’s blocking, like, an entire lane of traffic, I climb up into the truck as well.

The old man’s opening line is, “I expect you’ve heard the news about young Stringer,” which is his way of trying to get all palsy-walsy with me. He knows I’m serious Strings man. In fact, I’ve gone on the record as saying that if I’d had the kind of ball that Rog has been getting from him week in, week out for practically his entire career, my life could have been totally different.

“Kidney hasn’t a focking clue what he’s doing,” I go. “Apart from the two Heineken Cups obviously. And probably the Grand Slam this weekend. Anyway, I’m not here to exchange pleasantries with you – what’s this Ronan’s been saying about him working for you?”

The old man looks at Ro. "You've been underselling yourself again, little chap. Go on, tell your father. It's youridea. Yourbusiness. Hennessy and I are just transport and heavy lifting."

Ronan looks at me and goes, “The way I see it, it’s after being pissing the last couple of summers in Ireland, reet?” I’m there, “Roysh.” “So you’ve got yisser Woodies and all yisser garten centres and thee’ve got all this garten foorniture that thee haven’t able to get rid of, reet?” “Roysh.” “Well, you’ve also got forty-thousand-and-odd apeertments in this city that are empty. You see them, driving around, big bleedin’ blocks with no one living in them. The thing is, reet, who’s going to shell out for an apeertment if they think they’re going to be the only sham living in the fooken building? No one. So what these developers have to do is make it look like there’s neighbours already moved in – by putting garten foorniture on all the balconies . . .”

I’m in, like, awe, if that’s an actual word? “And of course you’ve bought it all up,” I go. “Cheap, I presume.”

“Chip off the old block, eh?” the old man goes. Which he’s obviously not. Intelligence, I think, skips a generation.

Later, roysh, when I ring Fionn and tell him the Jack, he cracks his hole laughing and agrees with me that Ronan probably doesn’t need any more schooling. It’s, like, what’s he going to do at the end of it – conveyancing? Then he says – and this is very funny – if there ever ends up being, like, a nuclear winter that wipes out basically the entire human race, give it ten years, then three figures will eventually come out of a bomb shelter somewhere, blinking in the cindery dawn – two old men in Cole Haan overcoats, followed by a much younger man in a Dublin tracksuit top that he’s long since outgrown, with a moustache.

“I say, Old Scout,” one of the men will say, lighting a dirty big Cohiba that’s clamped between his teeth, “I know how we can make money out of this.”

The younger man will say, “Too fooken reet.”

And I couldn’t have put it better myself.

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