When your actual wife walks into a Paris bar with another goy, and your best friends turn traitor, it's time to learn from the master - Strings
Me, I've always been a thick and thin goy. For the past couple of weeks, roysh, when everyone else was going, "Oh my God, they're a total disgrace - I can't actually believe I spent my SSIA coming here", I was the one defending them.
You see, Drico, Rog, Shaggy, Dorce - those are heroes to me, because here in Kitty O'Shea's, in the hort of Paris, it's easy to see the bigger picture.
It's, like, wall-to-wall scenario in here, we're talking catwalk material everywhere you look, and it's like, how many of these birds would be in this battlecruiser tonight if we didn't have the best-looking backs in the world? Rugby has become soft porn for women, like Grey's Anatomy and anything with Jonathan Rhys what's-his-face in it.
So my eyes are everywhere. It's like, "Look at her - Pink Juicy Coiture T-shirt. Or her friend - Chanel Sunglasses. Or look at No Sunglasses."
"Ross," Fionn goes, trying to burst my bubble, "are you part-Cherokee?"
It's like, laugh it up, Four Eyes. I'm the one who ended up bringing a total Vanessa Hudgens lookalike back to the hotel last night and - far be it from me to write my own reviews here - I was so good that the people next door lit up a cigarette afterwards.
So, like I say, the night before the France game, I'm a happy bunny - or rather I am until the moment when I get a sudden whiff of Issey Miyake and I spin around to find a piece of my past standing 10 yords away, telling the borman that she asked for the Chateau Gaudrelle Vouvray and this is so not it.
I'm about to go over to her - she's still my actual wife - when I suddenly cop who she's with.
I'd heard the rumours that she was back seeing Cillian, that accountant tosser she went travelling with a few years ago. What I mean by travelling is that they spent 12 months in Sydney - County Bondi - seeing a lot of the local Western Union branch, where her old man would wire her enough money to keep her 10,000 miles away from Slick Mick here.
"Oh my God!" she goes when she sees me and for a minute I can't make out whether it's, like, a good oh my God or a bad one. But then she comes over and throws her orms around me and tells me it's so great to see me.
I'm playing it cool as a fish's fart. I'm like, "What are you doing here?"
"It was a surprise from Cillian - for our fifth anniversary," she goes, and then she corrects herself. "Well, we met for the first time five years ago," and I'm there, "You got married and had, like, a kid with me in the meantime - it's hordly an anniversary."
I'm looking at Cillian over her shoulder and he's, like, chatting away to Fionn and Oisinn, the traitors.
I'm there, "Is he still working for Pricewaterhouse-whatever-the-fock?" and she doesn't answer, roysh, but she doesn't need to, because the goy's still in his Magee suit - D'Arcy's crowd - with his security ID cord attached to his belt, like the total geek that he is.
I can't even begin to tell you how much it actually bothers me that she's found someone - and it's not just because it's him.
I'll put it to you this way. About a month ago I went for a bit of physio - if I'm going to go back playing serious rugby I've got to get my ligamentum nuchae problems sorted once and for all. So I'm in the waiting room, bored out of my tree and, believe it or not, I stort reading, as in one of the magazines - Time or one of those - and there's an orticle in it about Steve Wynn, billionaire casino owner and serious player - a man I can relate to, in other words.
Said in the orticle, roysh, that he rang Donald Trump up one day and went, "Just want you to know - my wife and I are getting divorced", and of course Donald Trump was like, "Hey, I'm sorry to hear that", but Steve Wynn goes, "Don't be sorry. It's cool - we're still mardly in love. We just don't want to be married any more." So five years later, roysh, the two goys bump into each other in Vegas and Steve Wynn's like, "Hey, did you hear - Elaine and I are getting remarried?" So obviously Donald Trump's there, "Oh - what about the divorce?" and Steve Wynn goes, "The divorce? Well, it just didn't work out". I thought me and Sorcha were going to be like that. Suddenly I'm not so sure.
I look over her shoulder again. Oisinn and Fionn are cracking their holes laughing at something Cillian's said, my so-called second and fourth best friends in the world.
Eventually, he comes over to where me and Sorcha are standing. I think about being a dick to him, but in the end I don't. Because suddenly I'm thinking about Peter Stringer, one of my all-time heroes, and the way he took the news that he was dropped for the game.
See, people think Strings is the smallest man on the Ireland team when really he's the biggest.
So here's what I do.
I go, "Have you got tickets for the game?" Cillian goes, "No, we're still looking. A friend of mine - he's with A&L Goodbody's - he said he might be able to source a couple." And while he's still bullshitting away, I reach into my back pocket and I whip out two Wilsons and hand them to Sorcha.
"Here you are," I go, "rare as rocking-horse shit. Six rows from the actual sideline." Of course, they're pretty much speechless. "Thanks," they both eventually go.
And I'm like, "Hey - it's nothing." And, well, it literally was nothing. They were Fionn and Oisinn's tickets.