DATE NIGHT INDublin 3. It's not going very well. I seem to have acquired a bad case of Recession Blues, where you suddenly start worrying about everything, real and imagined and actuarial. The dust pan and brush and their contents are resting on the tiles after an unscheduled flight through the air. I don't know what the row is about exactly but everything just seems like too much all of a sudden. If an apology isn't forthcoming there won't be a date night – not tonight, not ever.
I myself apologise for the use of the term “date night”, but it seems to have sailed across the Atlantic, trailing a petulant “play date” in its wake. As newish parents who don’t get out much, walking cliches both of us, right down to the spinach in my hair and the frazzled look in his eyes, we are supposed to have one of these every month, but tonight, if it actually happens, will mark only the second date night in a year.
Our babysitter is due any minute. “I don’t want to go and see Don McLean with you anymore, so you’ll have to go on your own,” I say with a bucket of ice in my voice before I go upstairs to breathe deeply, count to 10 and cry.
Then I stop crying and realise that there is a part of me kind of relieved not to be going to Don McLean. Every cloud, except maybe one made of ash etc. Yes, yes American Pieand Vincentare classics, but date night with Don McLean (his choice) wasn't filling me with the anticipatory thrill of, say, date night with Paul McCartney (mine) which is scheduled for next month. That's if we are still dating by then.
I was quite looking forward to a pre-McLean dinner, though. Oh well.
When the babysitter comes it seems a shame to send her away. Maybe we’ll just do solo date nights from now on. I could have a date with myself at a cheesy chick flick and eat popcorn for dinner and a hot dog for afters. These are the kind of wild nightlife fantasies I’ve harboured since my social activities have been curtailed. I’d probably explode with excitement if you threw in a trip to the Pick Mix counter.
It seems the ice is thawing though. He mumbles something conciliatory which I decide to take as an apology and we head off across the Sam Beckett bridge to the Grand Canal basin for dinner.
At this point I have to make a public service announcement. Milano now serves a variety of pizzas which have the centre cut out of them. The gaping hole where pizza should be is filled with salad leaves. For these pizzas that don’t impinge negatively on your healthy -eating regimen, we Fat Fighters have to pay more for the privilege of eating less. Delicious if puzzling, Mr Milano.
Bellies full, we people-watch outside a wine bar for a while. It’s the docklands, so along with all the usual suspects there are skateboarders, starchitects and sailors to admire. Eventually we wander over to the wonderful Grand Canal Theatre with an agreement in place that if McLean isn’t doing it for us, we will drive our Chevy back to the wine bar immediately.
We go inside and my boyfriend confesses that he has a packet of Werther’s Originals in his jacket pocket which, ice box completely melted now and replaced by a warm fuzzy pizza oven, I decide to find endearing. I’m just thinking some of McLean’s audience are probably no strangers to a packet of Werther’s when the man wearing the black suit and the hairstyle time forgot starts singing.
It is already obvious to everyone else sitting in the theatre, but the man is a legend. Early on he sings a song called Food on the Table, which is perfect for beating recession blues: "Well there's food on the table and love in the heart/ And a real good woman and a couple of kids and a dog that thinks I'm smart/ I've got a big old mortgage on a little old house and a car that'll sometimes start/ But there's food on the table and love in the heart."
He sings of love grown old and love departed and ancient history and Jesus and the mountains of Mourne and castles in the air and old George Reeves and that's all right Mama, anyway you do. And, exactly as it says on the tin, he is killing us softly with his songs so full of heart and homespun sagacity, even the ones on the banjo which he plays after what he calls his "statutory requirements" ( Vincentand American Pie) have been taken care of.
We float out of there, full of love and hope and a determination to save ourselves from all the trouble and the pain. Date night with Don McLean. Macca has some serious competition.
THIS WEEKEND: Róisín will be calling in the professionals to undo the mess she made of her twins’ first haircut. “They look like a cross between Fräulein Maria and Baldrick,” said one witness, and that person was being kind.