IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:WE ARE ensconced in one of those American houses in upstate New York that has everything: games room, TV the size of a cinema screen, gadgets stashed in gadgets and beds like feather buckets
There is no swimming pool, instead we have a creek. I may build maself a raft, change ma name to Huck, rip ma jeans off at the knee and float downstream. We are here for the next few weeks, free and gratis, having located American strangers on the interweb with an inclination towards Dublin who were willing to swap their pristine pad for our crumbling pile of bricks so they may savour an authentic Irish experience.
I only hope Ireland's authenticity doesn't rise up and bite them.
We exchanged e-mails over the past few months, even spoke twice on the phone, but the closest we came to meeting was as our planes slid by one another somewhere mid-Atlantic. Now I sit surrounded by pictures of this young couple, with their perfect teeth and glowing skin, and try to piece their personalities together.
They may be considering the same questions in our house, as they search to find something that works.
I wrote in these pages some weeks back that travelling as a family should not be approached with trepidation because when children are the ages ours are, they are the holiday.
They guide the programme and you can choose to be haunted by that or run with it. My positivity, never a strong point, was put to the test these past 24 hours. Actually, that's not wholly true, my optimism was bruised through the best efforts of an Irish volley of body blows to ensure our trip should get off to a difficult start.
We had a taxi driver who started his meter when he arrived at the house while waiting for us, even though that was 10 minutes earlier than the time we had ordered him for. Then, on arrival at the airport, we were told by the airline
we couldn't all sit together on the flight despite checking in over three hours before departure.
We accepted both these sideswipes with reasonable grace before sitting down for a hearty breakfast in the departures area. The combination of mulch products in various states of decomposition slopped onto our plates at less than room temperature was reminiscent of some of Damien Hirst's early work but without the wow factor and costing significantly more.
We became strained but the kids told us to stop bickering and we bucked up. It was after all only money, a lot of money, and appalling service, and shoddy product, but we were leaving the country and should be hopeful that this sort of an Irish welcome would be left behind us.
And it is in the juxtaposition of what you get from the moment you land in JFK to that which we take for normal that momentarily shines a light on the nonsense we presume is acceptable.
Touchdown to collection of hire car involved minutes rather than hours. Our journey of 150-odd miles through unfamiliar territory ran smoothly because everything, car and road related seemed to work. The only spanner in the works was the variable temperament of a three year old who had been forced to stay awake too long and then told to lie down in an alien bed. That sort of drama we are used to and can cope with.
It seems churlish to mention Irish roguery and American over-servicing - that contrast of twinkling eyes versus the insincere "Have a nice day" - but by bigging up our own charm we mask the deficiencies we live with every day, particularly in pursuit of the tourist dollar.
We expect to be able to charge over the odds for second-rate products and services and get away with it because, sure aren't we Irish?
If that's bugging visitors as much as it is the locals then we can only wish our continental compadres well in their receipt of monies which may previously have been destined for us.
The kids love coming to the States. They think everyone's nuts, being friendly and enthu- siastic all the time. At six and three they already have built-in Irish sarcasm detectors and cannot quite get to grips with the standard Yank's sincerity levels.
But, being young, they trust to the good and run with everything that's suggested.
Their parents take a while longer to settle due to our innate embarrassment at all public displays of keenness but, in the meantime, as we get used to it, we can occupy ourselves with all our new toys and our creek.