Ross O’Carroll Kelly: “You look like something Dr Marie Cassidy should be going at with rubber gloves and a bone saw”

So me and Pang are, like, decorating the house for Christmas. We’ve done the tree and now we’ve moved onto the Nativity figurines. I’m telling her that it’s always a subject of debate in this house whether you put the Baby Jesus into the manger from the very stort or do you wait until Christmas morning?

I’m there, “Sorcha prefers to wait, for reasons of, like, historical accuracy? She says He didn’t arrive until Christmas morning. But then she puts the Three Wise Men in – and they didn’t arrive until the sixth of January, the day everything goes back into the attic.”

“Put Him in now!” Pang goes – she’s pretty adamant as well.

I’m like, “Really?”

"Otherwise they're all just standing around staring at an empty crib – er, who does that?"

I have to admit, this kid has grown on me.

“I’ll put Him in,” I go. “Even though Sorcha will take Him out and hide Him somewhere until Christmas morning. And then, in retaliation, I’ll hide the Three Wise Men until the whole thing’s over. These are what we like to call Christmas traditions, Pang.”

And that’s when the old dear suddenly shows up. She’s there, “Is Sorcha home?”

I’m like, “What the hell are you wearing? You look ridiculous.”

“I don’t have time for your unpleasantness. It’s a Camilla pleated chiffon and lace gown by Vilshenko. Victoriana is very much ‘in’ this year.”

"Victoriana?" I go. "You look like something Dr Marie Cassidy should be going at with rubber gloves and a bone saw."

Then – this is unbelievable – she goes, "Well, I think it's a beautiful piece – what do you think, Honor? What do you think of what your grandmother is wearing?"

Pang looks over both shoulders, her face full of confusion.

I go, “It’s not Honor, you dope.”

She’s there, “What do you mean, it’s not Honor?”

“It’s our Chinese exchange student. She’s called Pang.”

And Pang goes, “Who is this ridiculous woman and how much has she had to drink?”

The old dear puts on her reading glasses and scrunches up her face. She's there, "Are you absolutely sure it's not Honor, Ross, because she certainly sounds like her. Oh, look, you're right – a little Chinese girl!"

I’m there, “Did you actually want something?”

She goes, “Yes, I wanted to speak to Sorcha.”

“She’s not home.”

“She reads good books, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t know. They’re usually big, I know that.”

"It's just I've been asked by The Irish Times for my favourite books of 2015."

“So, just tell them.”

"I couldn't do that, Ross. All the books I've read this year have been, well, just books. I don't want to come across as ordinary."

“You’re definitely not ordinary. Who else pours Hendrick’s on their Alpen?”

"I'm ignoring that, Ross. No, for these types of features it's important to come up with something terribly oblique that no one else will have read. A coffee table book called Inuit Architecture in Western Greenland 1300 to 1450 or In Him, We Live and Move and Have Our Being, a first novel by a woman who's just called Aatukka, which was written in Finnish and translated into English via Russian and should have been on the Booker long list, except there were only 30 copies printed."

I’m there, “Why don’t you say all of that, then?”

"Because those were the books I chose last year. I described the first one as 'timely and important' and the second one as 'humane and labyrinthine' – or maybe it was the other way around. What's Sorcha got on her bedside locker?"

“Echinacea tablets and a mouth guard.”

"I know," Pang suddenly goes. "She's reading a book called Gender Justice – 10 Essays on Modern Feminism by Nahuel Rodrigo-Maidana."

The old dear’s face lights up. She’s there, “Oh, that sounds perfect. I’ve never heard of it. Plus, I’m a feminist, of course.”

I’m there, “You’re not a feminist. You’re barely even female.”

“Ignore him, whatever your name is. Tell me the title and the author again.”

Pang repeats herself. As she does so, she slips me a magazine that I saw Sorcha reading at the breakfast table this morning. I give it the old left to right. The headline is: “Argentine Academic Sacked for Controversial Views on Feminism.”

Then I read down through the story while the old dear tries to type the name of the book and the writer into her iPhone with her fingers like Hicks sausages.

I end up actually laughing? It's like, "One of Argentina's most well-known social commentators has been removed from his position at the University of Buenos Aires for expressing views of feminism that have seen him being likened to Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot. In his book, Gender Justice – 10 Essays on Modern Feminism, Nahuel Rodrigo-Maidana makes the case that life expectancy for men is 5.3 years shorter than it is for women. While the focus of equality campaigners has recently been on the areas of employment, education, pay and opportunities in the arts, the 97-year-old academic claims that if true balance is to be achieved between the genders, then it's necessary to close the mortality gap – by euthanizing between 40 and 50 million women per year."

Oh! My God!

The old dear goes, “What shall I say about this book?”

I’m there, totally straight-faced, “Why don’t you say that it’s, like, really, really amazing and that you agree with every point the dude makes, even though a lot of people obviously aren’t happy campers.”

“Well, I’ll put that in my own words,” she goes, still tapping away at her iPhone. “I’ll say it’s an inconvenient, even unsettling, book, but necessary, like all truths.”

She finishes typing. “That’s all I need,” she goes. “Goodbye,” and then she flounces off.

I end up just, like, collapsing on the floor. I honestly haven’t laughed as hord since the Christmas she got her pearl necklace caught in the Kitchen Aid. Pang is laughing so much, I think she might need CPR in a minute or two.

“You’re worse than Honor,” I go, “because you’re cleverer.”

We high-five each other. And I realise for the first time that I don't want her to go back to China.

ILLUSTRATION: ALAN CLARKE