B: I got an email yesterday from my very favourite teacher, I loved lots of teachers, just in case anybody’s listening.
R: [snorts] hashtag all teachers
B: Yes, hashtag all teachers, but my absolute favourite teacher, my English teacher, who shall remain nameless although actually that was a bit of a dead giveaway, but anyway she wrote to me yesterday and she said she’s been listening to the podcast and she was in stitches about the part about the balloons, which I have to say Rosemary makes me think, that was a bit callous.
R: Everybody was in stitches at the part about the balloons! But I think, like loads of people messaged me about it actually, and were going, ‘God that must have been awful, but I laughed so much at you telling your sister cos she was in such convulsions.’
B: You know, I think it’s really unfair, you know how much I like all this feedback and interaction with people, and you never tell me about these messages that you receive and I would love to hear about every single one of them.
R: I am in communication with you for, currently I’d say, at least three hours of every day, speaking about reviews, chart positions, reviews, how many downloads we’ve got on any given day, and then there’s a nightly phonemail, ‘Are we doing well? Are we doing better than last week? Are we doing better than yesterday?’
B: [laughing]
R: So I think, actually –
B: Sssh! You’re letting me down! Poor Mum and Dad.
R: – I’m giving you a lot of my time.
B: Poor Mum and Dad. Luckily, though we asked them – luckily they can track the charts now because it’ll give us a reason to call them. [laughs] Joke, Mum and Dad! J.K.
R: Poor Mum! You know, a friend of mine texted me the other day, and said, ‘oh my God I just got this text from your Mum and I was laughing my head off.’ He had an accident and ended up being in hospital overnight, and Mum had texted him and said, you know, ‘I heard about what happened. I hope you’re okay. No need to reply.’ She even spelled it out for him: no need to reply.
B: Well, he was in hospital.
R: Well, yeah.
B: She didn’t want him overthinking. Taxing his brain.
R: Yeah, but I mean, like, when you’re in hospital, what else have you got to be doing?
B: So. You’re Rosemary.
R: You’re Beatrice.
B: And this is Not Without My Sister.
[music plays]
R: I don’t feel like I can sing any more. I used to enjoy singing the theme tune.
B: Why… [laughing]
R: Then after you laughed so much after my “dfff!” [drum sound]
B: Then we heard ourselves! I don’t think anybody else was supposed to hear that.
R: It didn’t help that we were totally out of sync, as well.
B: ha! Not as bad as the counting.
R: Sometimes I think that our producer, Liam, when he goes through our podcast and edits it, he’s literally like, ‘How can I make these two idiots sound stupid?’
B: I agree, because the last one I listened to the–
R: I mean, it’s not that hard to be fair.
B: The last one I listened to the extremely poor counting and I was like, nobody was supposed to hear that! Any editor worth his or her salt would know that in order to make us seem extremely intelligent, nearly all –
R: You need a lot of editing!
B: [laughing] Nearly everything needs to be edited.
R: It just needs to be classical music and the odd word.
B: Yeah! And a couple of things like Dr Tomasz. Some cultural references. Dr Tomasz.
R: I love how you pick your cultural reference! I made lots of cultural references in the last episode.
B: I can’t remember any other names, you know I can’t remember anything.
R: I talked about Dr Death on Wondery. The podcast.
B: Oh. Very good.
R: Have you listened to any good podcasts lately?
B: I’ve listened to yours.
R: Okay, but like . . .
B: Yeah, for which I texted you every three seconds, so it wasn’t so relaxing cos I kept texting you commentary.
R: It wasn’t relaxing for me either.
B: I listened to Joe Rogan, which I was horrified to discover was three hours long, but only after an hour and a half, I was like, ‘When is this thing over?’ And I listened to H3.
R: What’s that?
B: It’s the one Don told me I need to listen to, but I only got about 10 minutes in, so I don’t know what it’s about yet.
R: And you listened to Liam’s episode of Meet Your Maker, didn’t you?
B: I did, that was brilliant, the one about Don Bluth. Yeah, that was very good. Very interesting actually. Very Irish, it was adorable. I loved the bit where they were talking about how loads of Irish people moved over to LA, and they were like, ‘I mean the cultural differences are . . . ‘
R: Yeah they all hated it!
B: It was a desert.
R: Yeah!
B: It was brilliant! [laughing]
R: What were they all saying? There was no cultural . . . or nightlife . . . like, they didn’t hang out after work, they all just drove back to their houses. And they were all giving out about the driving as well, like nobody walked anywhere.
B: Well, it was like when I lived in Dallas, they were talking about the downtown, nobody hangs out downtown. And I mean that’s very American, apart from the big, big cities, people hang out in small suburbs. And you very specifically pick where you live because that’s the suburb you want to hang out in.
R: That’s the area you want to hang out in, yeah. But downtown Fort Wayne is trying to create that more downtown, they’re trying to do . . . aren’t they?
B: I mean, there’s a lot more here than even there was in downtown Dallas. Downtown Dallas was absolutely dead. I remember when we moved there, Don and I drove downtown on a Sunday morning, and I was like, oh we’ll find some great brunch spot now, but literally there was nothing. And then at one point, tonnes of people piled out of this place, and I was like, oh my God that must be so popular! And Don’s like, ‘It’s a church.’
R: Oh! I thought you were gonna say it was Cracker Barrel.
B: [laughs] Oh no, your favourite! But I was reading about yer man, Robert Sheehan, in The Irish Times, they were saying he was in his house now, or apartment, in London, and he said the same thing, he just moved back from LA, and he was saying, basically, it was too much driving and it was just too kind of, not soulless, but he said you’d miss the craic, you’d miss . . . And I thought it was interesting, as well, he said you’d miss the language, but the cultural language. I always talk about that – because I really feel like it’s that shared history that you just don’t have.
R: The shared understanding, yeah. It’s just totally different. Robert Sheehan is very good in The Umbrella Academy.
B: I haven’t seen it, but he was very good in Misfits, was in he in that?
R: He was in Misfits, but he was in Love/Hate, you didn’t watch that, did you?
B: I didn’t watch that. Is the dog . . . is the dog actually snoring?
R: She’s not. She’s stopped. I’d love to be snoring right now.
B: To go back to our teacher, today we we’re going to talk about . . . school. And how excellent we were.
R: [laughs] I thought you were going to say, how excellent it was.
B: I was excellent. No, I was basically like, I have no stories to tell because I was a massive nerd, I was extremely good all the time, never did anything.
R: The dog actually sounds like she’s just making a noise of, like, shut up I’m trying to sleep. For God’s sake.
B: [laughs] She could be doing that.
R: What’s your favourite memory of school?
B: I didn’t really like school. Secondary school. I was very introverted and shy and it sounds ridiculous but I was. Mum got a phone call from the teacher, saying, is Beatrice okay? She really never talks. She’s very . . . I know. It’s true. I mean, I was massive! I was massively tall and awkward! D’you know what I mean? And then, I did Transition Year – you mentioned that in one of the previous episodes.
R: Mmm-hmm.
B: And that was like a whole new world for me. [sings] A whole new woooooorld!
R: Jesus. For anybody who’s not familiar with the Irish school system, which will be approximately 1% of our listeners, it’s divided into the Junior cycle where you do your first set of Junior exams, first, second and third year with that curriculum. And then the senior cycle is meant to be fifth and sixth year, and you can choose to do an optional fourth year. Now, most schools now it’s mandatory. Most secondary schools in Ireland. I think even at the time, our school was quite unusual, in that a lot of my friends, say, where Clare went to school, it was mandatory. A lot of people I knew had to do it.
B: Oh yeah, I know some people did, but I didn’t know it was increasingly required. Well, I enjoyed that a lot. You mentioned before the freedom, and being treated like an adult . . .
R: And just doing really interesting things, like getting to explore the subjects outside of the curriculum which was quite binding.
B: I really do think there was an engagement with the teachers where they actually talked to you like you were a normal person, and they had conversations with you, and you’d ask a question and they’d ask a question back, you know, and then you went back into fifth year and it was like, you know . . . ‘Sir, I was wondering if . . . ‘ ‘Turn around, sit down in your seat.’ ‘I . . . I had a . . . ‘ I mean, maybe I was pretty bold at that point. But I mean, I was really good before that.
R: You know what’s funny? I was obviously not introverted and not quiet, at all, at any stage of my life, not for want of –
B: You were organising all the school rallies and school clubs . . .
R: No, I was never organising any school rallies in secondary school! It was in primary school that I was very into organising clubs.
B: Well, we’ll have to get that letter from Mum, the one where you –
R: Oh, that was when I was like nine.
B: That was the beginning of it.
R: Yeah, but secondary school – so when I went into secondary school, I wasn’t part of any popular crowd, so I had no power to organise, if you know what I’m saying.
B: You always have power to organise!
R: No no, I didn’t. But what I was going to say was, even though I wasn’t introverted and I wasn’t quiet, I also didn’t like secondary school.
B: Well I’d say, to be fair, you didn’t have time to organise because you were too busy dating people. You literally have had a boyfriend since the age of five.
R: You just don’t let me live my truth! You have this interpretation of my life that you . . .
B: It’s true!
R: – whitewash over everything.
B: You said it yourself, it’s true! There’s nothing wrong with that!
R: I was four and a half!
B: Oh, there you go. I would have loved to have boyfriends, all my life. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Or lack of wanting.
R: Ah, you weren’t really trying – ah, yeah.
B: Lack of wanting, then, lack of desiring. Sitting at home, reading Anne of Green Gables and every Jane Austen book, on repeat, sobbing into my pillow, like, it sounds . . . I know!
R: You sound like a catch. I’m shocked that you weren’t snapped up by someone.
B: [laughing]
R: [laughing]
B: And in my spare time, I could be found making dolls’ house furniture; painting; and walking. And reading! Reading and sobbing, basically, was about it.
R: And wondering where your favourite dog had gone.[cackles]
B: [laughing] So mean! So mean. But I mean, honestly, I actually remember very little about most of those years, except I remember nearly every – all the books I read were just amazing. You know what I mean? I loved – I read so much.
R: Yeah. The only books I can actually think of from school are Jimín Máire Thadgh and An Triail, the two Irish texts that were from about 1820 and we were forced to read.
B: Oh, I just meant, in my life reading. We read, eh –
R: Ah no, I know, but I just can’t think of anything that I read outside of school Was too busy hanging out with my boyfriends.
B: We read Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, and that was brilliant.
R: We didn’t read that. I think we read To Kill A Mockingbird.
B: Oh we read that, and I think we read Wuthering Heights, which was brilliant, and so –
R: I actually don’t remember any books I read in secondary school.
B: Oh my God, I was looking out across the gorse and the fields wondering, where’s my Heathcliff? Standing in the rain . . .
R: I mean, Heathcliff’s not a great . . .
B: No, I know. I know! But listen, I didn’t exactly have a load of, you know . . .
R: I know. Beggars and choosers, I know.
B: [laughs]
R: [laughs]
B: But so go on, so you talked a lot . . .
R: Well, I mean, I think I was gonna say, I went from primary school, where . . . So, I’d obviously – like anybody – I’d been in primary school for eight years, but I felt so comfortable. And as if I knew all the teachers and, you know, I felt like I could really talk to them. Especially because our principal in our primary school, in Social Chrónáin, Brenda McKenna, was probably one of the most . . . I don’t want to say amazing, but like impressive . . .
B: Progressive.
R: Yes!
B: She was very progressive.
R: Yes. Progressive and impressive and empathic and just . . . I loved her so much. Even though I was also scared of her. I never wanted to get in trouble.
B: She was a very unusual teacher, though, I remember my friend Béibhinn and I used to go into her class, into her – she used to call us in. It was funny, actually, the only photocopier in the building was in her office and so we’d have to go in, we’d be sent off to make photocopies.
R: Remember you’d love to be asked to do the photocopying?
B: Oh my God, we’d love it. We’d be sent off to do the photocopying. And then when we were in there, we’d re-enact for her a full scene from the Nescafe ads. I remember, at the time, the Nescafe ads were . . . She’d knock on the door, you know [sexy voice] ‘Do you have the . . . I’ve run out of coffee.’ There was this kind of romantic thing. We would act it out for her while we were waiting for the copies. [laughs] She was hilarious though, and she is really interesting, or doesn’t she have her own TV show now, or she makes documentaries or something?
R: She does, for TG4.
B: She’s very interesting.
R: I remember going to her to talk to her about how my Mum wouldn’t let me get a bra and I was one of the only girls in sixth class who did not have a bra, and it was really upsetting me.
B: Did you need one?
R: No I didn’t! I don’t know, like, my tits developed quickly, but late.
B: Mum doesn’t like too . . . I mean, in fairness, I’d say Mum did not believe that you actually did not want to go and suffer the indignity of being measured. That’s mum’s absolute nightmare. Sorry, Mum. She doesn’t even like trying on clothes.
R: I’d say Mum, if she’d had her choice, would have bound our chests and kept us in age 10 clothes for our entire lives.
B: I thought you were going to say, bound her own chest.
R: Oh, maybe. I’d say she wouldn’t mind that either.
B: [laughing]
R: But, no she would have happily kept us as little children forever.
B: I would have been a very flat-chested monster. [laughs] That would have been really, really cruel.
R: It’s probably Mum’s greatest disappointment, like, why is she so big?! She’s a baby!
B: I know, I guarantee that was her biggest disappointment. Well, one of her biggest disappointments.
R: But basically, then when we went to secondary school, I think I found it really jarring . . . as well because we had different teachers for each subject, you never really got to know anyone, or you never really got comfortable with anyone in the way that I was used to, and I found that really hard. I mean, obviously I was not . . . I mean, what I’m thinking about now, obviously I was a bit of a nerd if the main thing that I think about was, oh I was such great friends with my teachers in primary school and then . . .
B: [laughing] Secondary school was a disaster! I couldn’t!
R: I didn’t get a chance to befriend them!
B: They’re all listening now, rolling their eyes going, ‘Thank God’.
R: [laughing] But actually, you know what, one of our teachers, who taught us Irish, I think, now follows me on Facebook and Instagram and sometimes messages me. So we’re like besties now.
B: Oh! That’s nice.
R: I know. But it’s weird to me . . . I think it was weird to me when I got the first, the first time I ever noticed that she was following me, the first time I ever interacted with her, I was like [gasps] a teacher in the wild! It felt kind of like, oh! We’re on the same internet. We’re on the same . . . It had never occurred to me before that we were both human beings in the world. This was years ago, in my defence.
B: I hope this was many years ago.
R: It was.
B: You’re reminding me, though, I think one of the big things was, I mean now living in America, I don’t think our school was massive, but going from a small, 30-classroom school in primary school . . .
R: Thirty-student year.
B: Sorry, precisely. Thirty people in a classroom.
R: Maximum, yeah.
B: Too . . . what was there then? A hundred and eighty?
R: There was a hundred and twenty in a year, right? Oh yeah, maybe, cos there was 850 in the whole school.
B: I just remember going, this was way… so massive, you’re such an anonymous individual.
R: You probably weren’t, because you were so tall.
B: [laughing]
R: [sings] Where everybody knows your name!
B: I remember being – cos I was really shy – and I remember being mortified, ever being asked to put my hand up, and I think part of what was hard as well, was like, you know you had your 30 people in your base classes, in your core classes, and then you’d be with a different thirty in a different…
R: Totally random people, yeah.
B: And that was always really… I hated it so much, and I remember, I’m still traumatised by this. In first year, too many people applied to do technology, which was a new class at the time, so they went around with little pieces of paper, or straws, I think it was sticks of spaghetti, I can’t remember, and one of them was short, of course, and they went around and made everyone pull one out to see because there was… 31 people had opted in and only 30 spaces in the classroom. And of course! Which giant chose the ironically short straw? Me!
R: What did you have to do instead?
B: Engineering. It was a nightmare.
R: I thought you liked engineering!
B: I hated it! I absolutely hated it. The ferrous…
R: I thought you were just happy with your lot and you were miserable!
B: Ugh. The ferrous percentage of this iron versus this iron…
R: I thought you meant, ‘The fairest…’
B: No, give me that iron so I can poke my eyes out with it, it was absolutely the most boring thing ever, although I had a very nice, pleasant teacher, and there was part of me that felt very liberated. I felt like I was doing great things for womankind by (a) wearing trousers when they were just new to the school and (b) well, and, I could barely find them, so that was a miracle in and of itself, and then (b) doing all of these classes, because I also did technical drawing, that were, you know, typically male classes. I loved technical drawing, now.
R: I don’t even remember technical drawing being an option when I was there.
B: I loved it. Pan elevation.
R: I obviously have very limited memories of school, where I’m like, we didn’t do any sports, and you’re like, no, you just didn’t do them.
B: [whispering] Oh my God, sports. Sports. That was what I actually hated the most. The absolute worst sportsperson you ever met in your life.
R: Actually, do you remember in primary school – this is terrible when I think about it now – in primary school, once a week or twice a week the boys went out to play GAA and we used to do cross stitch!
B: I absolutely do remember, I was not set up for success!
R: And I loved it!
B: What?!
R: Well I loved cross stitch! I hated the sexism of it. And, like, at one stage I started to…
B: I think you did a petition against that, didn’t you?
R: [laughing] At one stage I tried to set up a GAA team! But we were so bad. But we also never got any training, we were terrible!
B: But we did go out for sports in primary school, too.
R: Yeah yeah yeah, we went across to the hall and did a bit of bouncing around. But the boys, either once or twice a week, the boys who were on the football team – which was all the boys – got taken out, and we would do either cross stitch or we would do nitting.
B: Oh, we did do Lumra rugs, though, I loved that. I hated the knitting, but I loved the Lumra rugs that was brilliant. Now you’re making me think, I’d forgotten about – I also [sighs] in primary school, as a large… there are some uses to being extremely large and tall, big and tall, as your boyfriend likes to say. Is that what it’s called?
R: Eh, yeah, I think so, he just likes to talk – you’ll go, like, ‘Why don’t you get…’ It can be stupid, ‘Why don’t you get a pair of those socks?’ And he’ll go, ‘They don’t do them in my size.’ You’re like, get an actual grip, socks are stretchy?
B: [laughs] Socks are stretchy. They also have big sized socks!
R: Of course they do!
B: You’re not actually a basketball player! No offence, Brandin, you’re extremely . . . You’re lovely.
R: He’s six foot five, he could be a basketball player!
B: I know, but he’s not. My point is, there are lots of people who are six foot something.
R: He’s not swift enough for basketball.
B: [laughs] That’s really mean.
R: He’s not! I’m not a fast runner either!
B: Oh, I know you’re not.
R: I’m sure he’s faster than me.
B: I’m not a fast runner either. However, I was put to good use at the far end of the tug of war.
R: [laughing]
B: I was on the tug of war team, and we travelled around Ireland.
R: Did you really?
B: We did! And we competed. And I was the secret weapon. The one time in my life I was… That also reminds me of the time we went swimming, and I had never somehow learned to dive. Everybody dove in and I just jumped straight to the bottom and then came up and watched everybody else tip the pool at the far end while I was, like, still surfacing. And I had to swim the entire length… And afterwards, I was like, how did nobody ever teach me to dive? Or how did I never think to learn? [laughs]
R: See that’s… That’s like me in the hundred-metre race, except I had the wits to get off the track. You should have just got out to he pool when you saw them all down the other end.
B: I wouldn’t have been able to climb out the side. That was never a skill I mastered. I could only get out the ladder. [laughs]
R: You still can’t do that, it’s terrible.
B: I did it the other day!
R: No you didn’t, you basically pushed yourself out of the water, said, ‘oh right I could do that in an emergency’, and then you got back in again!
B: [laughs]
R: Had you changed that in your memory to, ‘I got out?’
B: Yes! I did! [laughing] Oh, God. But anyway, yeah, so I was the secret weapon on the tug of war team, so the teacher used to tie the big rope around my waist, double, triple knot it, make sure it was extremely secure, and then everybody else would file up, and then we would all be tugging the rope, et cetera. That sounds terrible. [laughs] Your face! We would all be… pulling, right?
R: [laughing] Yeah!
B: We’d be playing the game. They’d say ‘Start’, right?
R: ‘We’d be playing the game!’ We’d all be pulling in tandem, would be fine. Tugging the rope is a bit much.
B: We’d all be pulling in tandem, and then at one point my teacher would turn around and he would go, ‘DROP!’ In an Irish accent, more like ‘THRRRRROP!’
R: You’re absolutely giving away who that was, as well.
B: Oh right, yeah, exactly. [laughing] And I would just fall straight back, like a dead weight, and we never lost.
R: [laughing]
B: It was so humiliating. I just had to, poker-straight, just fall back.
R: But, like, did you enjoy being on the team? You didn’t have to do it, did you?
B: I don’t know that, I mean, were you ever asked, age nine, age ten, do you want to be on this team?
R: I thought we were talking about secondary school.
B: No, this was primary school. I was saying, that reminded me, my glory days were behind me by the time I got to secondary school.
R: Do you remember any sports days in secondary school?
B: Yeah. I absolutely dreaded them. Oh!!! Oh God! I just remembered that. So terrible because I used to hate PE and Mum used to dread Thursdays, which was PE day, for me…
R: HOW do you remember it was Thursday?!
B: Because I dreaded it. Every Wednesday night I would cry myself to sleep, I would get up in the morning, I would nearly throw up.
R: The absolute dramatics.
B: It’s true!
R: I know.
B: I would be actively nauseous all the way there in the car, and then Mum would be like, ‘Come on, you’ll be fine. Buckle up!’ basically. And then you had to put these tiny little bibs on. Remember these bibs that were pre-knotted and they’d been there for forty-seven decades.
R: And they stank!
B: I don’t remember the smell, I just remember the size of them.
R: Well they stank.
B: And one time, I squoze it on to me and I couldn’t get it off after the game of basketball and Mr… Whatever his name was, no offence can’t remember his name, had to come over to me… He had to go into the storage closet…
R: Oh, I can see him.
B: [country accent] ‘Hold on there, Beatrice…’ Go into the storage closet, in slow motion, and then come back out with the massive scissors that he then used to cut the bib off me.
R: [laughing] A shears!
B: A shears. That he then used to cut the bib off my swollen flesh. And only swollen, like not swollen during the game, like, just chubby.
R: No but you probably were a bit swollen cos you got hot.
B: I’m sure I wasn’t, but thanks. Absolutely… So humiliating. And I just remember the cool girl in the class chuckling.
R: Oooooh. Oh hang on, he cut it off in front of everyone?!
B: He cut it off in front of everyone! But I mean, also, they could see that I was stuck in the vest.
R: Oh, God.
B: So embarrassing. [laughing] No wonder, like, poor me.
R: They literally should have sent you to the office, then you should have been allowed to take two weeks off and they should have said you had a terrible allergic reaction.
B: That seems a bit dramatic, but yeah.
R: That would have been a good way of… cos that is such an embarrassing thing for a teenager to go through in front of everyone, they could have been… but men would never think of that.
B: No. No. And it was Ireland! ‘Sure, she’s grand! She’s grand.’
R: That’s awful! I remember, like, I used to hate PE, as well, similarly not athletic, surprise surprise, but I remember I tried out for the basketball team, I think mostly because a lot of cool girls I wanted to be friends with were on the basketball team, and I just wanted to hang out with them. And I remember I didn’t make it. I didn’t make the team, and I thought that was really mean, even at the time I was like, would they not just have said yes, kept me on the bench, played me for two minutes a game? I would’v been wrecked! Like, fine, that two minutes is all I need! [laughs]
B: My God. But it was like… what was it, ice hockey? Or hockey?
R: Oh, the thing with the puck?
B: Oh, hockey… or…
R: That was brutal.
B: I’d like to say, we are not sport professionals. ‘That thing with the puck.’ Hockey, yes.
R: It was brutal, it would whack off your shins!
B: I mean, I think the reason I was never… Okay. There were many reasons I was never good at sport.
R: You were too far away from the puck, you were so tall.
B: I was going to say, I was just so afraid of the puck, every time it came near me I would get into such a massive heap, it was similar to, like, how I talk about when, if a zombie, you know, if a zombie apocalypse ever happened.
R: A zombie a-puck-alypse.
B: Literally – [raucous laughter] – that was good. Literally, just count me out, I might as well just lie down and be devoured on day one because there is zero way I will be able to ever run from a zombie. I just freeze! Sheer terror!
R: But you know what, I’m the exact same with football. As soon as somebody tries… and I mean, people didn’t pass the ball to me very often, but as soon as the ball comes near me, I go running away, like, don’t hit me!
B: And like, I never got picked for sports day. Why do they do that! Why don’t they just go, you six over there, or you six over there. ‘Rosemary, you pick your six best friends, then they can pick their six best friends and whoever’s left you can just feel sorry for them.’
R: But also, people didn’t pick their six best friends, in my year anyway, people picked strategically so they picked the people who were best at sport, who they thought we’re gonna win.
B: But that’s what I mean – and your best friend.
R: And of course you’d get left to the end! Also it’s so unfair because it means the teams aren’t spread evenly. Why don’t they just go, ‘you’re really tall, you go here. You’re really tall, you go here. You’re really big, you go here.’
B: Are you being personal right now?
R: No!
B: That was really specific.
R: You were one of the tall people and I was one of the bigger people!
B: And I was really tall and really big.
R: I think, actually, we played Dodgeball in Transition Year which, in hindsight, seems ferociously… dangerous.
B: I did like volleyball.
R: Oh my God! OH my God, this is it. I was thinking about school today, right, and I was Googling, I was Googling the school because I was trying to remember the name of this one particular teacher, right, so I was Googling the name of our school with all possible combinations, and Beatrice! I found a picture of the volleyball team, and if I … I’ll show it to you! If you could see the sass! On these girls!
B: Rosemary, you sound about 90!
R: I know, I know! But they were, like the official volleyball team! The basketball team definitely had uniforms, in a specific colour that they brought out from the back of the dustiest shed…
B: I think I thought I was on the volleyball team… Twenty years later, I obviously wasn’t.
R: Like, ‘I loved being on the volleyball team!’ And they’re all like, ‘Quick, get on the bus and make sure she doesn’t see us!’
B: [laughing] You bint! Oh my God, yeah I was just remembering… I was in all the school musicals, though.
R: Hang on. How many school musicals were you in? I think it was only one.
B: Maybe only one. [laughing] That I can remember!
R: I think there was one school musical you did in your senior… there was one school musical every two years, so you either got to be in it…
B: Okay, well I was in the choir. Did lots of singing in choir.
R: Oh my God, the choir. I loved the choir. We did Freddy Mercury, we did eh…
B: We did none of that!
R: We did, ‘Mama, ooooh…’
B: We did do ‘All the leaves are brown’, which I loved.
R: But I think, did we have different teachers for choir? Did we have the same teacher?
B: And we did, [singing] We’ve only just begun….
R: You know I got kicked out of the choir?
B: No. Why?
R: So, at one stage, I don’t know, like, well no I mean I… I do know. But I’m… I don’t know what exactly happened but, at one stage we had done three songs in a row that nobody liked, and they were like, oh we should ask can we help pick the songs, or can we vote on the songs, or something, and I was like, ‘Great, I’ll ask can we!’
B: [laughing]
R: What is wrong with me?! And I asked the teacher…
B: This is becoming a recurring thread.
R: But this is also, like, sorry I was a child, right? I was obviously a precocious dickhead, but I was also a child.
B: I dunno, seems like a pretty reasonable request to me.
R: So I went to the teacher and I asked, you know, ‘A few of us have been talking, and we didn’t really like the last couple of songs, and we were wondering, from now on, could we maybe vote, could we have a choice…’ And she said, ‘You know what, if you don’t like how I’m doing it, you can leave’ and she kicked me out.
B: Did she say, you can leave? Or, leave.
R: No, she said leave. Because I was really upset – I loved the choir, and it was the only extra-curricular thing I did in school.
B: And you never went back?
R: No. But that was also, like, in fifth or sixth year when I had my downward spiral, toward, fine, academic achievement, but nobody thought… everybody thought I was losing it.
B: Were you losing it, though?
R: Well… No. I mean, I just… stopped respecting them. [laughs] I think. Which is awful! But like… I stopped being as obedient, basically.
B: I do remember, I did… I did home ec, right. Oh no, I was going to say anyway, I just remembered that I was in all these musicals, and…
R: My God, I remember thinking you were so cool in that musical, when we came to see it.
B: I was not remotely cool. I still have those pictures somewhere!
R: Do you remember we came to see it, and the director, before the play, was walking over the seats trying to get to something, and our aunt Ursula was there, and she gave out to him, and went, ‘Excuse me! What are you doing standing on that seat? I could be putting my fur coat down there!’ And he said something like, ‘Well don’t!’ And just kept going.
B: Oh my God, what is wrong with her! [laughing] Well no, and none of the clothing in the, whatever, dress-up box, in the school dress-up box fit me, so my favourite teacher went and got her own clothes to dress me with. I mean…
R: In hindsight, Beatrice, your favourite teacher, I think, probably was a little bit more petite of stature than you were…
B: [laughing]
R: So I wonder if she actually just bought you some big and tall clothes? And told you they were hers…
B: Oh, poor me! I lost a lot of weight in Transition Year!
R: Ah I know, but you were still… tall and… slightly broad.
B: No I was still tall, but I lost a lot of weight that year, do you remember?
R: I’m not taking that away from you, but you weren’t petite.
B: I was very…. Tall and…
R: Petite? You were not.
B: That was so nice of her, how mortifying. She did it in a way that didn’t make me feel like… Nothing would fit me. Poor me. Anyway.
R: She didn’t cut one of the costumes off in front of the rest of the class, basically.
B: Well, exactly yeah, it’s a pretty low bar.
R: [laughing]
B: So what else did you do? What else did you do after Transition Year? What was your favourite subject?
R: Eh, probably English. I mean, I really liked Art as well, but – and I’m not just blowing smoke up your ass when I say this – I always had the spectre of you being really brilliant, over my head, so anything I did in art, I was always like, it was not as good as Beatrice, which was in my head as well.
B: Absolutely in your head.
R: But it actually wasn’t.
B: It was though because art’s all different. There are different types of art, as well.
R: Ah yeah, but some people are objectively better. If I was asked to draw a bowl of fruit and you were asked to draw a bowl of fruit, yours was better.
B: I don’t know, our cousin Blaise, who is a professional artist, would say that anybody can draw, it’s all just practice. Maybe you weren’t willing to put in the practice.
R: I was too busy with my boyfriend. You were at home sketching non-stop cos you’d nothing else to do.
B: I was! I was but I think this podcast has also taught us that I have an obsessive personality, and you potentially are more relaxed.
R: I actually would say that you have great drive. And I have great… procrastination.
B: I have great procrastination, too. I think everybody does, don’t they? I also like to procrastinate about things I don’t want to do.
R: Yeah, sure – but you’re very driven and you’re also very willing to put the time into something if you can envision there being a result at the end, whereas I’m very willing to put the time into something… tomorrow.
B: [laughs]
R: D’you know what I mean? I don’t want to do it now, I’m watching Love Island.
B: So what was your least favourite subject, then?
R: My least favourite was probably Biology, right? I’d no interest in science, at all, but I just did it cos I was like, you should do one science subject, for your Leaving, do you know what I mean? Because there were loads of things, if I’d decided to do X or Y in college – and you have to decide this in fifth year, two years before you leave – so I’d no idea what I wanted to do, but what if I decided to do something for which I needed a science subject.
B: Mum really wanted you to do a teacher, so you would have needed science.
R: She did, yeah. So I did biology. And I hated it. I just found it very dull, and my teacher also was convinced that I was crap – and kept, as I’ve mentioned, I’m clearly bitter…
B: You are very bitter about this! [laughing]
R: Kept trying to get me to drop down to Pass!
B: Well maybe you will discover, or realise, Mum’s dreams of being a teacher now in the next couple of weeks, with this home schooling, when you come over and give us a hand, cos it is a nightmare.
R: Oh my God, for a second I thought you were going, if this podcasting and writing doesn’t work out for you, and I was like, I’m fucking 35! I’m not starting over again!
B: [laughs] No, I just meant now in the next couple of weeks, because honestly this entire working at home and home schooling and having other kids is an absolute nightmare. Like, these… It’s not even like, here’s the amount of work you have to do, during the day, and it’s all on the same app and it’s just doable and then, like, tick the box. It is so complicated! I mean, I find it confusing! And then, of course, there’s the internet.
R: Yeah, which keeps coming in and out, but obviously I wonder, I mean – obviously, if this went on for another year, two years, three years, touch wood it won’t, but if it did, I’m sure things would get a lot more streamlined. I mean, like, they’d have to! Because nobody envisioned this, you know what I mean?
B: I’m not sure, because I think it’s fine for everybody over the age of, like, nine, the age of eight, you know what I mean? At that point you can get it, you can understand, they’re all super tech-savvy, it’s the six-year-old is having major issues.
R: I mean, a part of me wonders if, like, I know it’s really difficult for parents who kind of don’t have the time to stay at home parent, if you know what I mean, who have a job… no no no, but I was going to say, I wonder if, for this time, we should just all adopt the Scandinavian model of sending them to school when they’re what, like, nine or something?
B: Yeah, I was talking with somebody, with one of my colleagues, who’s German, and she was saying, in Germany they don’t start til they’re eight or nine, and they go to school from nine til twelve, and they’re done! And she was like, that would be a lot easier, right now. But I mean, the thing is, their lessons – well, Beau’s lessons take probably the full day, but also because he just doesn’t get it yet. He doesn’t get it and he needs a lot of helping, and he’s so distractable, and I mean, this was the same child who was caught filming Yoshis, submitting a load of Yoshi videos, of like…
R: Twerking with his Yoshi.
B: Various different Yoshis play-acting, and submitted as his English. I mean, I have to credit him with good imagination.
R: Mmm-hmm. Good for him, yeah.
B: So what else? What else did you hate or love?
R: I think I was really pissed off and, as I mentioned, bitter about my kind of last two years in school, up until very recently when… not that I necessarily started looking at it differently but I just stopped caring as much.
B: But, I mean, let’s get on to the good stuff, because the whole point is, you did have these – you may not have been in the Mean Girls crew, but you did have a good gang of girlfriends you still have to this day, a very close gang of girlfriends, and you had tonnes of boyfriends. So…
R: I mean, honestly I think… like, there might have been five or six guys I dated, but like it wasn’t dozens!
B: Rosemary, there were dozens.
R: Oh my God, there weren’t.
B: Mother and I went through the list recently.
R: Mother and I! You’ve little to be doing, as mother would say.
B: We went through the list! You called her up, cos you were asking how in God’s name did they let you date a 21-year-old when you were 11!
R: Twenty-four, and I was 14.
B: Okay, but I had the age difference correct.
R: Okay, but eleven’s worse.
B: Okay, riddle me that, then. Tell me about that.
R: I don’t even know how that happened. I was working in Spar.
B: Which was your favourite job ever.
R: Oh my God I loved it.
B: I know you did.
R: Have I mentioned before on this podcast how… I mean, I really loved it cos you just got to chat to everyone, right? But I also loved it because of the power! I used to work on the deli counter and if people were mean to you, you could really just fuck their lunch. You could ruin everything.
B: Okay, but not in a gross way.
R: No no no. Nothing gross. Well… gross, because you wouldn’t want to eat it, but… no. Basically, if somebody said to me… like if somebody was rude and they asked for a turkey sandwich with egg mayonnaise, right, and they were snappy and they were on the phone or whatever, they would get so much egg mayonnaise.
B: Actually so revolting.
R: And then I would cling film it up, the egg mayonnaise would be spurting out all over the cling film. It was so gross.
B: You are so disgusting!
R: But also, after you cling filmed it you’d then wrap it in the Spar paper so they wouldn’t be able to see it til they got to the car or started eating it, then it’d be too late they wouldn’t come back. So that kind of thing.
B: So petty!
R: No, but like at least I wasn’t spitting in it!
B: That began your lifelong affair with, not a boy, but…
R: Mayonnaise?
B: Oh, mayonnaise [laughs]. No! With those pecan…
R: Oh my God, the Cuisine de France maple pecan plaits. I.L.U. I honestly… they were delicious.
B: What do you mean, they were? They were in your spending diaries up until the day before you left Ireland.
R: Ah, I haven’t had one of them in a while… No no, no no, that was, so I graduated from them on to Brother Hubbard’s – similar – walnut and cinnamon scroll.
B: Are you having a laugh? This is literally… and I was also laughing at your spending diary this week, as well, which was, ‘I spent $600. Don’t judge me.’ And I said to Don, unbelievable! She went, she bought furniture. She’s moved into a new house, she spent six hundred dollars. Living in Dublin going from breakfast to lunch to dinner she managed to spend fourteen hundred euro on a weekly basis. [laughs] You know it’s true I can’t believe the face you’re making!
R: Beatrice.
B: I said it used to go like this. ‘Massive lunch. Avocado. Stopped at Spar for snack on way to office. Got…’
R: You’ve got a lisp now you’re so excited at these thnackth. Thtopped at Thpar for thnackth. Can I just say, my spending diaries are…
B: Thpending?
R: They are being a paywall for a reason. They are secrets, for subscribers only, and I do not wish you to refer to them or reveal any of my secrets on the public podcast again.
B: Sorry. [laughing]
R: You are so annoying. Tho annoying. I’m trying to think, did either of us ever get into big trouble in secondary school? I got detention once.
B: No! I was trusted with, like the keys of the school! I actually was…
R: An absolute nerd.
B: I spent my summer painting the school, literally had the keys.
R: Did you do that for free?!
B: No! I was paid for it.
R: At the time I thought you were such a sucker, doing that for free.
B: No, I was paid like, I think a relatively normal rate, but what a massive nerd. ‘Sir? Madam?’
R: Listen! That’s very enterprising. What else would you have been doing up in Kildare? Nothing!
B: Hanging out on the cemetery roof. Drinking. In fields!
R: Imagining Heathcliff… Drinking? You?
B: I would have loved it.
R: But what I’m saying is, if you hadn’t been painting the school you wouldn’t have been drinking you would have been at home reading Heathcliff for the fourth time.
B: Making tiny bits of Fimo furniture for my dolls’ house that never got built.
R: Why didn’t it get built?
B: I kind of built half of it in the end and then went off it.
R: Whack of Philip Mac Cabe off that. It’s not off the ground you licked it.
B: Oh! But I do remember that I had, I did Home Ec, I’d forgotten about that, this was now in sixth year when I decided I needed an easy class, cos I was like, this’ll be really easy now, I’d heard it was really easy and I was like, I’ll just do this now…
R: Sounds like me and the Psychology.
B: Well it wasn’t really easy, let me tell you, because it was things like, ‘draw a diagram of the inside of your washing machine and then label every single part’ and I was like, why would I need to do this? I could actually just take the…
R: There are people for that!
B: Well I could just take the leaflet out of the back, d’you know what I mean? The manual! RTFM, right? So it was actually ridiculous. And then, anyway – and the teacher hated me. But I mean I have to say I probably hated her too, and I would constantly get fits of the giggles. She’d be doing the most serious demonstrations. Here’s how to whisk a flamange or a blamange or whatever, a flan, I can’t remember. It was so boring. Literally it was my worst subject in my Leaving Cert, of course, typically, but I remember yer woman…
R: Hang on, sorry. Your worst subject? Did you get a B1?
B: No, I got a B3 or something. But she absolutely hated us all and she constantly was berating us and telling us all that we had no work ethic, and that Asians had good work ethics and we didn’t, and I remember at the time, even back in the day, going, this is not okay. I think she had worked in Hong Kong for a year or six months and she was constantly telling us about, like, the Asians and they work and they study and they go home and they study and they study in their sleep and when they wake up they’re studying and that’s how they’re the number one earners above even white people! Asians are the most hardworking people. And I was like, this is not remotely normal. And I remember I actually had an argument with her in the class, which was very out of character for me, and after that I was a marked woman.
R: About this?
B: She hated me. No, just about I can’t even remember. I think, at that point, I was a bit… It was after Transition Year, you see, so I had been, like…
R: We were all a bit loosey-goosey, yeah.
B: I think I was like, I don’t really agree with this, or I don’t think we should talk like this, kind of thing.
R: But isn’t school so weird, that there… there’s no other situation in life… maybe in, like, a group setting with your boss, where you wouldn’t put up your hand and go, ‘I actually disagree with you’, d’you know what I mean?
B: But I mean nowadays right, you’re told that you should disagree with your boss. The power of diverse thinking and all this kind of stuff, even though obviously you’re going to think about it twice. But yeah, I 100% agree with you, and how do you also teach your kids, listen to your teacher, but if they tell you to do something… Do you remember the other day, beau and Nash were trying to kill each other, basically, in the pool, and then Beau was talking about s school and he said, ‘my teacher said’, you know, blah blah. And I said, ‘Would you stick your finger in the fire if your teacher told you this?’ And he said, ‘what do you mean?’ And I said, ‘Well I’m trying to explain to you…’ And I mean, I don’t know that we have fires the way we used to talk about it. Mum was constantly rolling The Irish Times to make those fire starters.
R: She still is, she still is. She loves to roll papers. Doesn’t believe in firelighters.
B: No, she certainly doesn’t. And I said to Beau, like, ‘Beau, if your teacher tells you to absolutely do something and you know it’s the wrong thing to do and you know it’s mean’ oh yeah, ‘would you bully somebody if your teacher told you to bully somebody, tell me what you’re going to do?’ ‘I’m gonna bully them, Mom! If my teacher says to bully them, I’m gonna bully them, cos I’m always gonna do what my teacher says!’ I was like, little maniac!
R: I told him to give you the finger one day and he absolutely would not. He has no respect for me.
B: I’m his favourite this week. He told me today. ‘You’re my favourite’. I was like, thanks, small creepy.
R: Did he say ‘this week’? That would’ve been even better.
B: Yeah, he said ‘you’re my favourite this week’. Then Chance came up behind him: ‘You’re not mine!’ Like, thanks. Thanks a lot.
R: [laughing]
B: But anyway, yeah, it’s hard to think… how do you… and also teachers are not necessarily – I mean, not all teachers, but a lot of teachers are not willing to entertain… but I can also imagine, like, how hard it must be because if you start, sort of, engaging in debate, or discourse, I mean, if I start engaging in it with my own kids, I’m like, this is not a conversation, like, this is… I’m asking you to do this, please do it.
R: Yeah, and also especially in secondary school, you have 40 minutes to do this one subject, you have to get X, Y, Z done in that 40 minutes, and if somebody goes, ‘Do you not think x, y, z?’ Like, yeah you don’t have time to get into a critical discussion of Pythagoras’ theorem because you’re like, this is what you need to know for your exam that is the main thing we have to drill into you from minute one when you get here. So it is all the curriculum’s problem, but it was just… yeah, I think I found that aspect of it really difficult. But you know, what I got detention for was, we had a free class, so our teacher was sick and there was another teacher sitting in, so you know you would just do your own work, or you would do whatever. We didn’t have an actual lesson. And I went to the bathroom. And on my way to the bathroom I bumped into my music teacher, who was like, ‘How are you getting on with your piece for blah blah blah?’ And I was like, ‘Oh it still needs a to of work’. And she was like, what are you doing now? So I said I had a free class, and she was like, ‘Why don’t you come in and practise now?’ And I said, ‘okay’ and just went in and started practising, but didn’t tell the other teacher. And the other teacher then was like, where the hell is Rosemary gone? She went to the toilet 20 minutes ago. I didn’t come back until the end of the class, and she was like, where have you been, and basically I got in so much trouble… but like, obviously, common sense, I should have gone back to tell her, but in my head I think I must have been like, teachers have a neural link. They all know.
B: Yeah, or – or, I mean, it wouldn’t have been the hardest thing in the world, the teacher will tell the other teacher.
R: But I think she thought that I had come to ask her, or something. It was just a total misunderstanding, but I got detention for that. I was in a rage.
B: But didn’t you also get a detention essay? You were very bold.
R: That wasn’t a detention essay. That was… I was talking…
B: Too much.
R: Yeah. I mean, story of my life. You know, I used to always come back every September, and be like, this year I’m not gonna be the one who puts her hand up? I’m not gonna talk in class.
B: Maybe it’s Mum’s fault. Mum’s a desperate talker.
R: She does love to talk. But Mum also, whenever she tries tog et off the phone to you she goes, ‘oh I have to go I’m with Elizabeth. But listen, did you get that thing I sent you?’ And you’re like, do you have to go or do you not have to go?
B: Oh she used to do that whenever you’d leave somebody’s house as well.
R: You’d be standing in the hall for 20 minutes!
B: She’d be like, ‘Come on! Come on!’ And you’d be like, ‘I’m not coming in the hall til you’re in the car.’
R: But anyway yeah, Iw as talking in class, I think it was Geography, and the teacher asked me to write an essay, I think it was on the history of rocks. I think she was like, ‘It has to be about geography!’ And I asked what it should be about and she said, the history of rocks, and I think I wrote a piece about a rock family.
B: You’re such a brat!
R: I know.
B: You’re still a brat.
R: I know. I was like, I’m going to subvert this subject.
B: Well you have subverted my children. There are many things you’ve told them that I’ve been like, please don’t tell them those things.
R: Like what? Do you remember the time, years ago, I played that Australian trains ad for them.
B: Yes, I remember it.
R: Basically [laughing] I was at the kitchen table, looking at my laptop, and they were like, play a video on YouTube! And the only thing I could think of that even looked like a cartoon, I panicked, I thought I’ll play them this ad called Dumb Ways to Die.
B: Un-believable.
R: It’s basically all these different ways that you can die by being stupid and the whole thing is like, stay away from trains, cos it’s just another dumb way you can die. Anyway the song is like, [sings] dumb ways to die! Then we went to TJ Maxx and Nash spent the whole time walking around singing this really loud…
B: Yeah but I also remember he spent the next couple of weeks going, ‘Mom, if I stab myself will I die? If I fall over here will I die? If I –‘
R: If I stick a fork in the toaster…
B: Yes! I was like, you’re actually dead meat.
R: I know, but listen. It was done at that point.
B: So basically, your education was well spent.
R: My education was well spent. I always imagined that I’d like to go to the Institute, but then I remember one of my friends went to the Institute and I went to meet him for lunch one day and I thought, they all seem like knobs, and then I was glad that I didn’t.
B: Oh. My. God. No judgment. I’d like to hear other people’s stories about what they remember from school–
R: Oh, so would I
B: And any sports teams they were on…
R: Any sports teams you thought you were on and are now realising you weren’t.
B: Because Don just came in and announced that I definitely told him I was on the volleyball team
R: on their first date
B: [laughing] I’m pretty sure I did not! On our first date. I think he was being mean. I hope.
R: That is probably something that I would tell a man on my first date. I’d be like, men love sports.
B: [laughing]
R: I was on the volleyball team and I love Star Wars. [laughs]
R: Thank you all for listening to this episode of Not Without My Sister. Oh yeah, if you do have any school stories you can email us, notwithoutmysis@gmail.com or you can send them to us on Instagram @notwithoutmysister. Confusing me. I’m on Instagram @rosemarymaccabe
B: I’m @beatricemaccabe
R: We both have As in our Macs, blame our Dad. And…
B: Please give us a review, because I love reading them, basically.
R: If you have an iPhone or an iPad, go on to Apple Podcasts, give us five stars, write something nice. Don’t give us any less than five stars. If you feel inclined to give us any less than five stars just do not do it. Save yourself.
B: Oh my God, democracy in action.
R: I know, thank you so much – well listen, I live in America now. Thank you so much for listening! And we will catch you next week!
B: Bye!
