International Women's Night?

It was designated a day to celebrate the advancement and achievements of women, acknowledge and lobby for women’s rights in places where they don’t have any and by sheer coincidence I’d arranged a birthday women’s lunch. Just an excuse to get together and celebrate being alive another year. By noon on the day, I had my seventh cancellation. Some had sick children at home from school, others weren’t well, and some couldn’t get cover for their kids.

Virginian Annie had Lady Jane, her King Charles Cocker babysat but hadn’t got the message that I’d changed the time to 6.30 and arrived for lunch to find just me and the cost centres. Another guest was recovering from a golf lesson that morning. That just left myself and Blonde Racquel with a very large dish of baked chicken and parma ham for dinner and quite a bit of wine.

Blonde Racquel's Birthday Surprise

Racquel suspected a conspiracy and wondered if indeed I had any friends to speak or was it just a ruse to get her on her own. The girl does give good gift though. Absentee Boyfriend is in the doghouse so her gift is brilliant for his next visit (!)

Of all the women invited, we were the only two with children in their twenties. 1990 and 1992 really don’t seem that long ago, but we had live-in au pairs and an army of babysitters. I had ten on call at one stage, in walking distance. Not that I went out a lot, I was in college and working freelance, living with the boys on my own, if I got an invitation to something nice, I made sure I could go. For my sanity, if nothing else.

Freedom slowly crept up on us in the last few years. We can have disco naps before we go out, no babysitters required, they can even cook for themselves. Racquel is one step ahead with a daughter who can drive her and pick her up.

We were joined by author/barrister Alicia (named after The Good Wife) who was having a dine and dash evening while her husband covered the kid situation. Racquel proceeded to advise her on the babysitting back-up she would need if she ever became separated. They had never met before, it was a strange bit of advice but Alicia gamely humoured her.

The new lodger arrived while the birthday bubbles were still fizzing and opted for a quiet night in while Racquel and I high-tailed it to town. You see, being past the babysitting stage, we now have too much freedom to go out and incubate a hangover and the international woman of mystery, Racquel had some nocturnal entente cordiale to catch up on.

It’s Saturday morning and Lodger no. 3 is exploring his new territory, we’ll call him Tristan Davenport, because he doesn't like my suggestion, Roger the Lodger. It's Triss for short, as in James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small.

The door bell rings and I hope one of the cost centre will open it. I’d forgotten my mother was coming with her food bargains, I leap out of bed and realise it’s Triss who has let her in and they chat as I hastily navigate my Uggs. Triss is on the phone by the time I reach the kitchen and my mother mouths something at me, a sort of approving nod to the effect of ‘isn’t he lovely’. I quickly assure her he’s the new lodger.

I confront the kitchen in my pyjamas, not the Saturday look I’d planned. Triss is impeccably dressed and stands to greet me with a morning peck; a friend/lodger is such a different experience to my Latvian. He’s still mildly jetlagged and comes up with the brainwave to go out for lunch a la New York-cool-urban-living. There’s just a matter of the France v Ireland game and not a table in Ballsbridge to be had. Triss has a word with the maitre d’ and we get the last table for two in Bellucci amid a sea of green. Top Tenant.