I arrive home armed with the oranges, sausages and black pudding and the fry is officially on. I need to bolster our spirits for the game. Mikey and Joey still have the television on and the radio is on simultaneously and the whole thing is too much. They are playing tug-of-war with their football socks in an effort to stretch them out. I start to fry the sausages and pudding and that glorious smell is unmistakable. I begin to feel frustrated that I am attempting to make a decent breakfast, and that the lads aren’t ready for football, and why the fuck has Jenny got her head stuck in some piece of art instead of helping me? It’s almost as if she completely absolves herself from responsibility when she senses that she can get away with it. I set the table and start to dish out the food, and still Jenny doesn’t appear. I begin to shout, just a bit, about the importance of punctuality and Mikey’s and Joey’s water bottles for the game, how they should have them filled up by now. What have they been doing except sitting on their arses while myself and Maeve have been at the shops? I ask. There is talk of Mikey’s laces on his football boots and how they have been tied. The triple knots make it too difficult for him to untie. He squeezes his feet into them, breaking down the backs of the heels.

We sit down to the fry and as always there’s a frantic quality to the way Mikey and Joey eat. I mull over the very concept of real hunger and I wonder how they might survive if they were to properly experience it.

We are running late and I urge the boys to make sandwiches of the rest of their sausages and pudding so we can take them on the go. We make our way to the car and young ketchup-stained fingers touch old rough-textured safety belts. Maeve sits in the front seat and I wonder why my wife does not play the role of mother in our children’s lives. Maeve is slowly taking over her position.