FOR three years Kieran had been enthusiastically attending a fathers’ group, held monthly at a carefully chosen pub. ‘What do you talk about?’ his wife, Leigh, asked more than once. ‘This and that,’ he’d say. ‘Kids ’n’ stuff.’ To be fair, they did talk about their kids a little—particularly in their shell-shocked early days—but Kieran could barely remember these kids’ names now. The truth was, apart from forays into sport, politics and TV series, mostly they just took the piss. Sometimes, however, they simply drank their boutique brews and savoured the hops, malt and a deep, satisfying silence.