'This isn't doing 120 Ks on the Rock Road, Ross. It's serious'

I’m feeling bad about dragging Oisinn home – well, if you owed the banks 70 mil would you come back?

OISINN SAYS he can’t believe the ad he heard on the radio this morning. There’s a supermorket chain offering an entire family meal – we’re talking meat, we’re talking veg, we’re talking potatoes – for €7. He says he can’t believe it’s the same country that he left two years ago, when he porked his cor in the short-term corpork at Dublin Airport, left the keys on the front passenger seat and pretty much disappeared.

He's right in a way. I mean, sevenyoyos? Two or three years ago you'd have dropped that in the bucket of whatever GAA club was packing your shopping. But I still feel instantly bad, being the one who persuaded him to come back and face the muesli – specifically the 70-something million he owes the banks.

“Hey,” he suddenly goes, “you can take that look off your face right now.”

I’m like, “What look?” but we’ve been mates for too long for me to even think about trying to bullshit him? “Okay, cords on the table. I’m worried that you’re going to realise what a dump this country suddenly is and do another park and hide. And that this time I might not be able to find you?”

He laughs, then he gets suddenly serious. He’s wearing a humongous black Afro wig, red-tinted shades and zebra-skin suit. I should have possibly mentioned that I’ve thrown him a belated 30th-birthday porty in Krystle and the theme is, like, pimps and hos.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he just goes. “This is where I belong, Ross.”

I’m there, “That sounds very much like fighting talk to me.” We’re both having to shout to be heard over the sound of Katy Perry.

“I don’t know about fighting talk. I’m prepared to face it, though – whatever it is.”

“Well, the word on the grapevine is you’ve got Hennessy Coghlan-O’Hara on your case. End of discussion.”

“Well, not quite. All he’s done is he’s set up a meeting between me and my creditors.”

I’m like, “Er, how many penalty points has he managed to get – I don’t know – expunged for us down through the years?”

“This isn’t doing 120 Ks on the Rock Road, Ross. It’s serious.”

“Well, I for one have faith in him. He’s as dodgy as they come. But either way, happy birthday, dude.”

I look – it has to be said – amazing, and I think even my critics would admit it. I’m wearing, like, a purple silk shirt, open to the navel obviously – any opportunity to show off the old squeezebox abs – ridiculously tight trousers, shades, a white Stetson and – the Crème de la Mer of the entire outfit – the old dear’s white genuine seal fur coat.

I let my eyes do a drunken sweep of the club. All of the girls are here – we’re talking Chloe, Sophie, Amie with an ie – all of them dressed the same: in other words denim minis, pink boob tubes and the old PVC slag wellies. I can tell from her body language that Sophie is going all out to try to be with Oisinn tonight. She’s just, like, staring at him, her little mouth working like a trout about to take a fly.

Fionn arrives with Erika. He gets his round in – I’ll say that straight away in his defence. He says they drove past one of these famous ghost estates this afternoon. It was in, like, Mullinavat, a name that immediately brings me back to my days as an estate agent and the job I had – even when the Celtic Tiger was still going – of persuading people that it was a commutable distance from Dublin.

He’s like, “What did that sign say again, Erika?”

“Oh, yes,” she goes, “it said 20 per cent already occupied.”

“Twenty per cent,” Fionn goes, “with an exclamation mark at the end – like it was an actual selling point that one out of every five houses had somebody living in it!” He pushes his glasses up on his nose. I still can’t believe he’s, like, marrying my sister. Of course it might end up never happening, with a bit of luck.

It’s me who ends up asking the obvious question. “What were you even doing in Mullinavat?”

He’s there, “Looking at a site. It’s my new business idea,” and he’s, like, full of himself.

I actually laugh. I’m like, “Business idea? Yeah, can I just remind you that you’re supposed to be, like, a schoolteacher?”

He goes, “Yeah, that’s actually where the idea came from. Battle re-enactments!”

“Battle re-enactments?”

“Exactly. For students studying history for the Junior and Leaving Certificates. Eight or 10 Saturdays of the year, they can gather in a field and actually participate in historically correct re-creations of the major battles they’re learning about in school – everything from the Siege of Leningrad to the Battle of Clontarf to the massacre at Scullabogue.

“It’s a way of gaining a better understanding of the main military flashpoints they’re learning about but doing it in a way that’s engaging and, dare I say it, fun.”

I just pull a face. I mean, it’s an incredible idea, but I’m not going to let him know that.

Erika takes a sip of Sancerre, then goes, “One thing that’s certainly not in short supply in this country at the moment is fields. There’s a lot of developers out there who paid ridiculous money for land that’s never going to be built on. A lot of them are happy to rent it out. Well, they’re obviously desperate to get something back.”

I go, “You two seem to have really thought this through.” Fionn takes it as a compliment.

“Well, yeah, Erika’s done up a whole business plan,” he goes, the two of them suddenly lost in each other’s eyes. “I mean, she’s spoken to all the main schools, and there’s genuine enthusiasm for the idea. We think we could have as many as 2,000 people for the first one.”

I'm like, "Two thousand? Paying how much each?" Of course he's too cool to even tell me. He just turns to Oisinn.

“We’d love to take you on,” he goes, “as a sort of business adviser.” Oisinn laughs.

“Dude, I’m hordly in a position to advise anyone on business.”

“I disagree,” Fionn goes. “You and Erika ran that divorce fair at the RDS a few years back – it was a huge success, from what everyone remembers.”

Oisinn just shakes his head. He’s only back a few weeks and he’s already landed a job. And from the way Sophie’s looking at him she’ll be going at him later like a mush dog.

He goes, “It’s great to be home,” and he genuinely means it.

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