The downstairs of Quinn HQ is buzzing as the Guitars are leaving, so I quickly slap on some lip gloss and run a brush through my hair. I hear a mild crackling, which means my hair is now electric, in the wrong way, and there’s not a lot that can be done with that in a hurry. I bet it looks like a frightened gorse bush planted on my head. Still, I can’t miss an opp to be seen by the latest and hippest Dublin boy band. The hallway is heaving with young men and would be quite a sight if they were all as F.I.T. as Stevie Lee Bolton but, tragically, they are not.
For example, there’s Gary O’Brien, who is a dork. He seems to be convinced he’s a badass from a ’hood and wears his jeans v low, with a beanie constantly plopped on his head. The day he opts for a hairnet or a headscarf is the day we will have to shoot him or get him permanently grounded in his home. He insists on greeting his ‘homies’ by riffling fingers followed by a fist bump, and high-fiving everyone else and calling them ‘bro’ or ‘sistah’! Strangely, though, the lustre that Ten Guitars has brought to all in the group has almost made even him* seem cool. Almost.
Mum comes sleepily down the stairs, followed by Dad, and I cringe that anyone might think they’ve been up to anything in their room. It’s not such a stretch of the imagination to think such a thing, what with them recently producing a new baby and all. So, it probably looks a bit racy and that makes me boil with embarrassment. The fact is they are both so tired from waking with Harry during the night since he arrived that they sleep whenever they have an opportunity.
Well, sometimes Dad plays golf in the house too. He got a Wii game for Christmas and he’s obsessed with it. All we hear from the TV room when he’s in there is him shouting ‘fore’, which is mad, because that’s what you do on an actual golf course if you’ve hit a ball the wrong way and need to warn people ahead to duck. We told him there’s no need to do it when it’s a virtual game, but he says if he’s ever rich enough to take up the real thing, he’ll need to get used to shouting ‘fore’, because he’s not very good at golf.
I’m glad the Guitars are leaving, because Mum getting up now means a feed for the baby and that means her buzooms will be out and there’s only so much of my mum that I want those older guys seeing! Or me for that matter – I’d prefer not to have to behold her breastage if poss.
Gypsy trots up to the crowd as if to say goodbye. She’s now wearing a sequinned dicky bow and everyone tells her she’s gorgeous. I really can’t figure out how she has everyone wrapped around her hairy paws, because she’s not in any way cute. Uggs says she’s a happy, smiling dog and that’s why everyone loves her. I think she’s a two-faced, yappedy scrap of fur, but I’ll admit she looks quite nice in the dicky bow – I know, I know, I must be going soft in my old (teen)age.
Some of the Guitars are out on the road as the next lot of revellers arrive to party chez nous. It’s Gran’s poker pals. Now the reason for Gypsy’s bow tie is obvs. The oldies are all dressed up for a James Bond themed night. Happily, it’s not as sore a sight as their Sound of Music night – put it this way, nuns in veils will never look the same to me again, and I wasn’t even so taken with them in the first place. However, as Dixie points out, they could do The Rocky Horror Picture Show and that would be the end of everyone who caught sight of it and give new meaning to the term HORROR, because they’d all be running around in women’s lingerie, be they men or women = v v gruesome. The very thought of this stirs the Kit Kat within me, in a dodgy way.
The wrinklies are, frankly, a mad bunch. Most of them hobble in or have walking sticks to help them along, but Francie Dolan is in a mobility scooter that he calls the Beast. There should be a driving test to use one of those things, because Francie is downright dangerous in his. Tonight he’s got a white toy cat on his lap, like one of the Bond villains.
‘Blofeld,’ Uggs tells me, because he is part nerd and a big fan of James Bond.
‘Your head is full of miscellaneous† nonsense,’ I say, which is both a good and a bad thing.
He nods. ‘Yup, it’s a busy place.’ He’s clearly taken it as a compliment.
Connie’s‡ Cackling Cronies proceed to MORTIFY me by fluffing up my hair and sending it rampantly rampant.
‘I haven’t seen such a lovely head of curly red hair in ages,’ says Mimsy Farrell.
I silently beg the floor to split in two and swallow me (and her!). Gran’s pals are a social liability.
Now, the law of embarrassment states that one mortification will lead to another and they will multiply in awfulness as they meet each other, and so it is that Stevie Lee Bolton has just appeared, guitar in hand. He’s grinning all over his gorge face.
‘It is lovely hair, Jen,’ he says and I think I might faint. He has done me another kindness and it’s nearly too much for my overwrought self.
I want to scream, ‘I am not a redhead or ginger,’ for all the world to know, but I’m also giddy that I got a compliment from a totes hot guy and therefore I have temporarily lost the ability to speak in anything but a gurgle. I go, ‘GUH,’ at Steve and, when he’s gone, Dixie chuckles and says, ‘J’amaze – smooth, Jengirl.’б
I give her a dig in the ribs.
Of course they’re not quite done with making a SHOW of me, because one of Gran’s cronies says, ‘And you’re such a tiny little cutie too.’
I am not a tall thirteen-year-old but I’m not freakishly small either, so I boil some more.
‘I think “petite” is the word you’re looking for,’ Uggs says.
He is being my saviour, of course, but the oldies just chuckle and go, ‘AW,’ and that simply adds to all the embarrassment. Uggs is scarlet (natch). At least SLB wasn’t around for that bit, which is scant mercy, but a mercy none the less.
The poker group moves on to Harry’s crib and they loom over him, the poor mite. It strikes me that the world has to be a v scary place for a small, new baby, because everyone leans over into your personal space and makes noises and stupid faces, and we must all look HUGE and lunatic as a result.§ Harry is still asleep, so he doesn’t have to acknowledge the madsers by even looking at them, which would (surely) lead to him crying with fright and breaking all of our hearts.
Then Gran herds them into her flat, telling them all to watch out for Gypsy: ‘She’s a card shark.’
Eh, no, Gran, she’s a dog …
NUTS!
