Esther McCarthy: Cork v Dublin was an opportunity for a family memory
It's an annual thing, something I heard in a podcast, or read somewhere — I don't know, it's a minor miracle it stayed in my brain at all, ok, leave me alone.
It's about a little vocabulary change and redirecting your perspective.
So instead of saying 'We have to...' we're all trying to change it to 'We get to....'
When our prebooked taxi didn't turn up recently, and the impatience and the 'for feck's sakes' started, we did the 'We get to...' script.
'We get to be together in the sun, with no school or work to worry about.'
'We get to play thumbs wars with each other.'
'We get to eat ice cream while we wait.'
I used it myself recently, when we were trying to get to the Cork V Dublin hurling semi-finals in Croke Park.
'It's such a lovely thing to do as a family, isn't it,' I say, as five of us hover over two laptops, phones, and some carrier pigeons in the minutes leading up to Ticketmaster releasing the tickets.
It's the 16-year-old who secures four seats altogether as I try mashing my fists into the keyboard in panic as the little blips turn from green to red.
'Oh no!' I say as he confirms the purchase. 'That's one short. Don't worry, I'll stay at home. Ye go.'
I Revolut him the cash feeling magnanimous and martyr-ish, while thinking of a full Saturday with a guilt-free free gaff.
Already picking out my elasticated pants, I send him the €240. In the stampede online, I forgot it was real money, but as I'm trying to not buy any new clothes for 2025, I'll take my dopamine kicks where I can find them.
'No, these are for ye. The lads have my ticket,' says the teenager. 'We're going on the bus.'
On one hand, he's doing what we've reared him to do. He's independent, organised, and prefers the company of his peers.
On the other hand, instead of a lie-in, the papers, five croissants, and coffee, my Saturday is now looking like hangsangers, traffic, and the torment of parking in Dublin.
But my training kicks in.
'We get to spend the day together in Dublin!' Not an utterance you're likely to hear too often out of the gob of a Cork woman but there you go.
We vow to hit the road early and it works a treat. We're up in no time, into the park and ride by 10am.
'We get to ride the Luas!' I say enthusiastically, as two huge dudes that look like oak trees with heads and stab vests check our tickets.
We make a day of it. We go to Dream Point in the Docklands, we have a brilliant bashy balloon fight, take pictures of ourselves in an upside down house, and write UP CORK in big letters in the glow art corridor.
Oh, and we get to swim in a giant ball pit, and it's such a laugh.
Why haven't we been in a ball pit since they were smallies? It's the best!
Then we walk to O'Connell Street and watch the marchers, protesting the State's housing policies.
'When housing rights are under attack,' a loudspeaker booms and the crowds chant back: 'Stand up, fight back!' We get to be grateful for a roof over our heads.
We check out Foot Locker and the big Easons, and we wave into the portal. Then we get to join the sea of red and white as we make our way to Croke Park. We join in the chants of our own tribes,
Oh to, oh to be, oh to be a REBEL. We meet friends, and share photos in the family WhatsApp of our progress towards the Davin Stand.
And then I get to see the 10-year old's face explode with joy at every point, and I get to hug him and thump his back. We jump and roar for every CÚL that lights up the stadium.
Seven goals and 26 points — we defy gravity along with what feels like the whole county leaping out of our seats, but apparently there are about 60,000 Cork supporters in Croker and it feels like we all have wings.
Afterwards we float on the atmosphere and the bonhomie and we end up in the city centre again, and get to have dinner in the coolest place ever.
Like it's ridiculously cool. If it were a person, it would pee icecubes while quoting Fran Lebowitz. There's a live DJ, the staff look like they've been scouted from a music video, and the pizza oven has an EU award. If I'd known, I might have panicked about my look.
But hey, we're in Cork jerseys — and we four sweaty, sneakered boggers slow-moed into that hip restaurant like Warren Beatty boarding a yacht. We get to make absolute piggies of ourselves in Little Pyg, reliving every point with sauce-covered fingers and zero shame.
Later as the boys are settling in in the back of the car, the 10-year-old says sleepily: 'I think that was one of the best days of my life.'
And I got to be there for it. And we get to play to Tipperary in the finals next Saturday. We likely won't score tickets, but we'll watch it together wherever we are. HON THE REBELS.
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The crimes are endless.' wednesday ramble from me But engaging with it must take a toll? 'I feel it's my responsibility to talk about it. But I don't watch the news.' She watches gameshows for distraction. The Chase. Tipping Point. 'I love that any time you turn on the television here, there's a gameshow to be watched,' she says. O'Donnell has always found it difficult to cope with troubling events. She first went on antidepressants in reaction to the Columbine school shootings in 1999. 'I will never come off them.' Her compassion for others can sometimes lead to unhealthy compulsions. She writes about this in her extraordinary 2002 memoir, Find Me. She was given $3 million advance for the book. Her second memoir Celebrity Detox, published in 2007, was also a New York Times bestseller – the proceeds for both books were donated to the children's charities she set up. She often uses art as therapy. Affected by the horrors in Gaza, she made hundreds of art pieces. 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At the height of my fame I felt like I'd gone too high and it took me a long time to settle back on planet Earth.' The more blasé Irish attitude to celebrity is another thing she enjoys about Ireland. She has endless celebrity anecdotes – Gloria Estefan was a neighbour; more disturbingly, so was P Diddy – but makes a firm distinction between casual celebrity interactions and genuine friendship. Madonna, for example, is a proper friend, because O'Donnell can 'identify her family members without them being around. That's how I determine who my real friends are.' Others she describes as 'friends in the celebrity vernacular'. While she's enjoyed incredible successes, not everything in the garden has been rosy, career-wise. Along with the talkshow there was an initially successful magazine called Rosie, which became mired in legal battles. Her chatshow for Oprah's OWN network, The Rosie Show, only lasted from October 2011 to March 2012, failing to attract large enough audiences but netting her tens of millions of dollars. In 2003 she attempted to fulfil a lifelong dream of being a Broadway producer, bringing Boy George's musical Taboo to New York. The reviews were not kind and it closed after 100 shows. She lost $10 million of her own money. She's not shy about discussing this or other failures. 'I did it the wrong way but don't regret it,' she says. O'Donnell is constantly surprising people, even those who know her well. In recent years, she has developed an unlikely friendship with Lyle Menendez. Lyle and his younger brother Erik have been in jail for 35 years for the murder of their parents in 1989. 'I believed them then and I believe them now,' O'Donnell says of the brothers who claim the murders in California were self-defence following years of sexual abuse. In May a judge in Los Angeles reduced their sentences, making them eligible for parole . O'Donnell's recent documentary Unleashing Hope, about the power of service dogs for autistic children, came from her connection with Menendez. When the O'Donnells moved to Dublin, Clay's cherished service dog, a black Labrador called Kuma, travelled with them. [ Rosie O'Donnell says she was sexually abused by her father Opens in new window ] When I ask whether she thinks she involves herself in other people's pain as a way to avoid her own, she disagrees. 'That's not true, I've been in my pain for a very long time. It's gets dark in there.' What would she like her legacy to be? 'I'd like people to see I did a lot more for people than maybe they knew. But my legacy is going to be what it is. I am an incendiary soul in the United States, and I speak up about things in a way that women are not supposed to.' A week after our lunch, I go to see one of O'Donnell's shows in the International Bar as she fine-tunes her material for Common Knowledge. She's half an hour late, having flown in from London where she saw the new production of Evita. 'I cried five times.' She sends a voice note from the taxi on her way to the show which is played down the microphone, to the delight of the tiny audience in the packed Cellar Bar. The show, even as an evolving piece on a small stage, is brilliant. There are plenty of laughs and Clay, with their 'common knowledge' refrain, emerges as a knowing hero of the piece. It gets dark too, with themes of loss and unprocessed trauma. 'I know what you're thinking,' O'Donnell says at one point. 'You thought this was a f**king comedy show.' She does more than an hour on stage and brings the house down. Life has been a wild ride for O'Donnell but you get the sense, listening to her talk so enthusiastically about her new life in Ireland, that she has found a soft landing place for her curious, sensitive, compassionate and sometimes troubled soul. She's safe. She's home. The world premiere of Rosie O'Donnell's Common Knowledge is at The Olympia Theatre on July 27th. Photographs: Naomi Gaffey. Styling: Corina Gaffey. Rosie O'Donnell wears a teal blazer by Max & Co at Arnotts; gold jacket by Zadig & Voltaire at Costume; and navy shirt also by Zadig & Voltaire. Black top and trousers are Rosie's own.
