What's a goy to do when you go on three dates with a bird you really like - but haven't the slightest clue what her name is?, asks Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
THIS EVER HAPPEN to you? You meet a bird you like, as in really like, to the point where you go on three dates with her - and yet you haven't the slightest clue what her name is.
I mean, yeah, she might have dropped it when you were introduced - but you were too busy knocking out unbelievable one-liners to hear it and now it's gone, gone like the seven pints of Vitamin H and the kebab you grabbed from Ishmael's while walking Baggot Street looking for an Andy McNab.
See, I blame texting. In the old days, roysh, you met a bird, maybe gave her your number, then three nights - always three, so as never to look John B - she'd ring you and go, hi, this is Jennifer, Suzanne, Danneel, Verruca, whatever.
And you'd either go, "Yeah, I remember you - do you fancy getting a big of nosebag during the week?" Or you'd go, "Sorry, Babes - your ticket said One Night Only."
But texting has, like, ruined the ort of conversation. Now it's all, "Dinnr thurs peploes@8?" with no actual, like, interaction, which is one of the things I was always amazing at.
This bird, I stuck her in the old Wolfe as EP, because she was a ringer for Ellen Pompeo. Still is, I think, looking at her across the table in Bang Café.
She's telling me that the economy was bound to go into recession, propped up, as it was, on the precarious hulk of a property market that had lost all sense of reason, while I'm pulling all the right faces, like you do at school when you're listening to some teacher banging on and you haven't a bog whether you're in chemistry or French.
"Forget all that," I go, "let's talk about the real world. Your name - it's beautiful. Is there, like, a story behind it?" which you have to admit is a clever, I suppose, ruse.
But she looks at me like I'm off my chops. "A story?" she goes. "It's hardly unusual." Must be something plain then. Lucy. Joan. Sandra.
"Although my brother calls me Woo," she goes.
I'm like, "Woo?" "Yeah, he couldn't pronounce my name when he was a baby so he called me Woo. It sort of, like, stuck?"
Woo. Koo? Lou? She asks me a question, roysh, about my work as an ortist and I tell her I like to paint what's within, then I order the recession-busting rib of black Angus beef and she asks for the pan roasted scallops, but as, like, a main?
I whip out my phone while she studies the cocktail list and I text JP. He knows her name. He spent two hours chatting her up in Krystle before I breezed over and wiped his eye. I hope he's not bitter.
I'm like, "Dude im in bang wit dat bird from2 saturdays ago - need2 kno her name!" but he just goes, "Lol," which means he is still hurting.
She orders a strawberries and cream martini, roysh, and tells me that I'm not to let her have a second one because she's got Vinyasa in the morning. That could be breakfast, a form of exercise or a child from a previous relationship for all I know - or care.
Vinyasa. Vanessa. Valora. Valgerdr. This thing is actually killing me and I'm about to ask her straight out when she all of a sudden stands up and announces that she's going for a hit and miss.
So off she goes, roysh, and I'm looking down and I notice that she's left her red Lulu Guinness clutch bag on the floor.
It's like, re-sult! Her ID will be in that. A credit cord or something. But I've got to be quick.
I try to, like, hook it with my foot but I'm getting looks from one or two tables, so what I do instead is I get down under the table, on my actual hands and knees, and grab it.
I'm about to, like, open the clasp when I find myself, all of a sudden, staring at a pair of red Miu Mius, which happen to match it quite well. Yeah, she came back for the bag.
"What are you doing?" I hear her go and I end up saying the first thing that comes into my head. "I, em, dropped a contact lens."
"Oh my God," she goes, "I didn't know you wore contact lenses," and she suddenly drops to her knees and joins me. "They're not the disposable ones, I take it."
I'm there, "No, er, the other kind. Price of vanity, huh?"
The next thing, roysh, one of the waiters is over."Is everything okay?"
"He's lost a contact lens," she goes. "Watch where you put your feet."
So the next thing, he gets down and storts, like, helping us? Pretty much the entire restaurant is looking now.
She's going, "You know, you really should think seriously about using the disposable ones."
A second waiter, who brings our Gungas, joins us and suddenly there's, like, four of us down there, combing the floor for a contact lens that doesn't even exist.
I'm about to say fock it, doesn't matter, I'll just keep one eye closed, when all of a sudden I find myself staring at a pair of Dubes. Then a familiar voice goes, "Hi, Ross - how the hell are you?" It's JP.
I quickly stand up and I'm there, "I'm Kool and the Gang, my friend," and, well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when he turned around and went, "I wasn't talking to you - I was talking to your date."
Ross. It's her name too. Well, actually, it's Roz, but how could I have forgotten that? "What are you looking for anyway?" JP goes.
I'm like, "My, em, contact lens," and I give him a big wink.
He smiles at me, winks back and, just as I'm thinking what a legend he is for coming through for me like that, he goes, "But Ross," meaning me, "you don't ever wear contact lenses."
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TXT ROSS
The Lempmeister goes: "Was in this girls apartmnt the othr night n parked the old golf in some random parking space, the managemnt co clamped me n they want a hundred bills to take it off, can they do that legally and wots to stop me getting a power tool and sawing it off?" Anyone from the Law Library out there on their holliers fancy taking this obviously worthy case on, pro bono? A power tool of some description - we can't let this goy loose in Woodies.
Alan C gives it: "Hav u seen that domestos ad on TV - grot busting? Remember when a girl who wasn't easy on the eye was known as a grot?" Before my time, I'm
afraid. In my day, it was orcs, grendels or ditchpigs.
Some bird called Hillary goes: "Leaving Cert results out this week. 5,000 failed maths - wots ur take on that?" It's great.
All these people failing, my F in pass maths is gaining in currency every year. Ten
years time, I'm going to be like Stephen Hawking.