Outspan Head this, Outspan Head that, Outspan Head the other. And it’s a twelve- hour flight to Los Angeles. Twelve of the longest hours of my life.

P is for Padded Envelopes of Loveliness. I was telling you there earlier about Anna and how bloody useless she always was. Well – and I still can’t figure out exactly what happened – at some stage she got some qualifications and started working for a ‘crappy’ Irish cosmetic company, doing their public relations.

But the next thing, herself and her friend Jacqui moved to Manhattan and doesn’t Anna get a job doing public relations for Candy Grrrl!

A big part of Anna’s job was to send out samples of the make-up to magazines and newspapers, looking for ‘write ups’. But sometimes, she’d slip a few lipsticks and mascaras and nail varnishes into one of those envelopes that are lined with bubble wrap and send them my way. And, honest to the Lord God, I can’t tell you! My hands would be shaking so much I’d hardly be able to open them. (I’d have to go and get the good scissors because I wanted to save the envelope – I mean, even the envelope was handy.)

I was never more proud of Anna. I suppose, technically, what she was doing was stealing and that’s a sin, but they had fecking-well loads of the products. Loads and loads and loads. Rachel went into the cupboard where all the stuff is kept and she regaled us with stories so exaggerated we were all worried she was back on the drugs again.

But it’s true. They’ve loads of the stuff; they’re hardly going to miss a few highlighters!

And it got better. The company that Anna worked for – McArthur on The Park – did the publicity for several other cosmetic companies, so Anna would do ‘swapsies’ with their public relations people – she’d hand over a clatter of Candy Grrrl goodies and they’d give her a load of stuff from Bergdorf Baby, EarthSource, Visage, Warpo and lots of others. (My favourite is Visage. It’s French. Very dear. My least favourite would be Warpo. Grand if you want to look like a clown. But I don’t.) Then she’d parcel them up into those beautiful envelopes and send them on to me and her sisters, and I have to tell you that when the ring would come on the doorbell and the postman would hand over the Padded Envelope of Loveliness, I’d often take a reel in the head, I’d be that excited.

Even Mr Walsh would get in on the act. Not so much with the eye shadows and foundations – like I’d stand for any of that nonsense … do I look like Chantelle Houghton, as they say – but there was one time Anna had sent some beautiful Vetivert shower gel and I couldn’t locate it, and where do I find it? Only on his shelf in the shower!

Anna Walsh has the best job in the world. Helen’s is good too, but Anna’s is better.

Q is for ‘The Gays’. Because I know I’m not allowed to say the ‘Q’ word. (All this interfering with words, I can’t keep up. You can’t even say the ‘Q’ word if you want to describe a thing as strange or uncanny. And you certainly can’t say it about a poor divil who isn’t ‘right in the head’. You can’t say it any time, ever, about anything. And once upon a time, ‘gay’ was a skippy, flowery sort of a word, but it has entirely different ‘connotations’ now.)

The term we use in our family for ‘the gays’ is Jolly Boys – Helen once worked with some chap from India who mistranslated ‘the gays’ as ‘Jolly Boys’ and after we’d finished laughing at him, we decided we’d use it.

And I’ll tell you something gas: the Kilfeathers next door to us have a Jolly Person in their family, and it’s not even a boy – it’s miles worse … it’s a girl, a Jolly Girl!

Now look, before you jump down my throat for being a ‘homo’ ‘phobic’, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be one of ‘the gays’. Especially as there is no such thing as ‘gay’ – they’re only putting it on to be fashionable. All I’m saying is, if you had seen Angela Kilfeather ‘back in the day’ – she used to be a right sucky little angel with long blondey ringlets on her – oh, she’d sicken you. And then she ups and becomes a Jolly Girl and gets a ‘partner’, whom she kisses out in the open, in full view of everyone on the road.

And I mean French-kisses her, not just that awful kissing on the cheek that we now have to do to say hello whenever we meet someone. (Would you mind telling me this: when did that become the done thing? I can’t bear it. I don’t hold with ‘affection’; it’s just nonsense from the telly. I’m not saying I have ‘OCD’ and am afraid of getting germs from people, not at all. But all that hugging and kissing is pure silliness.)

So there Angela Kilfeather is, standing out in the street, French-kissing another woman and not a lick of shame on her. Of course, it’s her poor mother I feel most sorry for. (To be quite honest, I could burst with delight. She always looked down on me, Audrey Kilfeather, with her perfect little Angela, with her perfect little ringlets, and my girls running around, as bold as brass. But look at Mrs Audrey Kilfeather now! ‘Eat my shorts!’ as they say … or maybe they don’t say it so much any more …)

Despite the fact that they do not actually exist, I get on very well with ‘the gays’ and their ilk. I get on well with everyone and that’s because I take every person as they come. I am very much a ‘people’ person.

R is for Real Men. Right. I’m taking a big, deep breath here because I’ve lots to tell you about them. The Real Men are a group of Irish lads that Rachel met in New York. Five of them, long-haired and burly and dressed in denim, denim and more denim – with a bit of leather thrown in. They wear their jeans tight: on a good day – and I’m quoting Rachel here – you can tell which of them has been circumcised. (For the love of God! Was it really necessary for her to say that?)

The name ‘Real Men’ was invented by Rachel and her friend Brigit to be a bit of an insult originally, but I can’t see why. Being a man never goes out of fashion, surely?

The Real Men are ‘heavy metal’ fans and they say that the last time a good record was made was in 1975 (Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, if that means anything at all to you. It’s nothing to me. As I said, I’m a Bublé ‘girl’). For a while all the Real Men shared an apartment and it was known far and wide as Testosterone Central – even though they play a lot of Scrabble, which isn’t exactly ‘rock ’n’ roll’!