AGAINST THE ODDS:Temporarily banished from home by an irate Angie, our hero is left forlorn and lonely as he muses on his future options

HAD A PASSER-BY peered in the front window of the last terraced house on the right-hand side of Causeway Avenue in Clontarf on Monday night, behind the net curtains they may have seen a silhouette of a large man, slightly stooped, shuffling about restlessly.

The man was familiar with the dwelling having lived there for more than 50 years yet he felt strangely out of place; like he didn’t belong there any more. That Vinny Fitzpatrick should find himself back in his old family home was, on one level, not unexpected.

With the cheerful Khan family, his former lodgers, returned to Lahore, Vinny had a ready-made excuse to give his old stomping ground a makeover to ensure it was respectable viewing for any prospective tenants.

The letting agents had attached a bright yellow and blue sign to the front door – the colours of Dollymount Gaels, Vinny had noted approvingly – but so far there had been no takers for the modest three-bed property, even with a reduced rent of €750 a month.

Only Vinny wasn’t indulging in a spot of running repairs; instead he was stumbling about, his head in a tailspin, as he struggled to comprehend how he had been slung out on his ear by his wife Angie.

A bit like Newcastle’s shock win over his beloved Everton on Saturday, Vinny hadn’t seen the blow coming, even if, on reflection, there had been flashing lights which he’d ignored.

Looking back, he had certainly overstayed his welcome in Foley’s after the Ryder Cup wild-card sweep; while he was even later home the day Brennie won the Captain’s Prize.

He had intended getting home by eight but had lost the run of himself as Brennie, Macker and Basil “Brush” Murphy, captain of Foley’s golf society, organised an impromptu sing song.

Vinny’s throaty version of The Hot Asphalt had brought the house down and it was well after midnight when he fell in the front door, spilling the remnants of his curried chips from the Capri on the expensive rug in the hall.

He was far hoarser the following morning than Brian Cowen ever was after a Galway think-in and had done the unimaginable – he’d ’phoned in work to say he’d be late. (Had Cowen done the same to RTÉ, he might have avoided a lot of hassle).

For the rest of the week, Vinny felt he’d behaved reasonably. He took it handy at the Tuesday Night Club – six pints, one bag of peanuts, dry roasted – and had only slipped out late on Thursday for four swifties because Fran texted him about a Ryder Cup weekend of golf and gargle he was organising.

He’d stayed put on Friday while Angie was out at her Scrabble club and had fed the twins and tucked them to bed before cracking open a six-pack and a bag of cheese puffs.

And on Saturday, he had only been home half an hour late after stopping off in Foley’s after work to catch the second half of the Sunderland v Arsenal game – he backed the draw at 9 to 4 which covered his three throat-looseners.

So when the howitzer was delivered by Angie after the dinner plates were cleared on Saturday night, Vinny was caught unawares, his fleshy chins exposed.

Like Katie Taylor on the prowl of an opponent in the Caribbean, Angie had let rip from the bell. She’d picked off Vinny with sharp jabs about his drinking binges and erratic timekeeping.

Through fiery eyes, she explained how she was at her wits’ end trying to juggle the kids and fulfil her work commitments at Boru Betting.

She caught Vinny in the solar plexus over his lack of support and for his gross negligence in terms of his own health; landing an uppercut about how he might not care about seeing 60 but that his kids certainly would.

The final blow left Vinny in a heap.

“You’re in the spare room tonight and I want you out of here tomorrow. I suggest you go back to your old place. You’ve a week to sort your priorities out. We’ll talk then and decide if we have a future.

“Right now, if I was a betting man like you, I’d say Everton have about as much chance of winning the Premier League as you have of saving our marriage.”

With that, Angie had turned on her shapely pins and headed for the front room armed with half a bottle of white, a glass, and an expression that turned Vinny’s blood to stone.

For a while he just sat and stared at the kitchen table.

He thought of his attractive wife sitting, and seething, on her own. He thought of his children, not yet a year old, asleep upstairs. He thought of his health alarms, which had scared the bejaysus out of him these past six months.

Inevitably, he thought of Foley’s, a place of refuge and comfort whenever the going was good, yielding, firm or, in this case, damned hard.

It was where he had taken himself the night before, to ponder the pickle he found himself in, and to weigh up his options.

He had intended to sit in a quiet corner but had run into Shanghai and Brennie which put the kybosh on his plans and had led to a rather rapid session, an OTC – off the cuff – special.

It wasn’t until Monday night after a long day in the bus garage doing prep work for the introduction of real-time timetables, followed by a dinner of fish-fingers (six), waffles (four) and an entire tin of baked beans that Vinny’s predicament hit home.

There was no live football on the telly, and a rerun of a golf event in the US from 1994 did nothing for him.

As he sat on his old familiar couch, a can of stout in his meaty paw, Vinny knew he was in a jam. He had a lovely wife, two great kids and so much going for him, but had he blown it all to smithereens?

Was this to be his life, stuck on his own again, balding and insecure, growing old by the seaside, his trousers rolled just like J Alfred Prufrock? It was 34 years since Vinny sat the Leaving Cert in Joey’s in Fairview but he could still hear TS Eliot’s raspy voice on a crackling recorder in his old class room.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk along the beach, I have heard the mermaids, singing each to each; I do not think that they will sing to me.

He thought too of another poem, The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost, about the traveller finding two roads diverging in a yellow wood and being unsure which one to take. Should he take the one less travelled for it wanted wear, rather than the one he knew, the one of gargle and gambling, of the lads and laughter?

As Vinny sat in silence, forlorn and alone, salty tears trickled down his fleshy cheeks.

Bets of the week

1pt Matt Kuchar to win Tour Championship (11/1, Stan James)

2pts West Brom to beat Manchester City in League Cup (7/2, general)

Vinny's Bismarck

2pts Lay Tyrone to beat Dublin in All-Ireland Women’s SFC final (6/4, Paddy Power, liability 3pts)