Here, right, I need to tell you about the time I got recognised. Not by a client or anything, I'm on the other side of it. But I was in a booking and a lad I play GAA with was also having a booking in the same place. Different girl, different room. Same house.
We walked into each other in the hallway on the way out. I'm not going to describe the look on his face. I don't have the vocabulary. Somewhere between a man who's seen a ghost and a man who's just remembered he left the gas on.
Neither of us said anything. Not a word. I nodded. He nodded back. We both went out the door at slightly different speeds and I'd say we were both very interested in opposite sides of the street for a moment.
Next training session, Tuesday. He's there. I'm there. He hasn't told anyone, I haven't told anyone. We play the match. We have a pint after. The entire thing goes completely unacknowledged by both of us. To this day. That was eighteen months ago.
I'll say this for it: that pint after training was one of the most comfortable silences I've ever sat in. There's something about shared knowledge that doesn't need to be spoken that creates a very particular understanding between two men. We'd never been that close before. We're fairly close now actually. Funny how it works.
The moral, if there is one, is that Cork is small and you will run into people, and mostly they'll be just as interested as you are in pretending they didn't. Your man in the hallway was more relieved to see my face than almost anyone he'd ever met, because he knew I had exactly as much to lose from saying anything. Mutual destruction as the basis for discretion. Works a treat.
Right. Match is starting.