What's going to happen this evening?

The Queen Dad is in Paris today; one of the many thousands of Irish people who must be wondering what the hell they are doing in the city of light on a night when it is possible that our rugby dream is going to be washed down the toilet.

I am wandering around in a state of complete bewilderment, no doubt engendered by my prolonged absence from the Irish rugby scene.

Stringer dropped for some bloke I've never heard of? WTF?!

All my memories of our recent successes in rugby are tinged with little baldy Peter wrestling the ball away from scrums twenty times his size and passing it to our Ronan, who then kicks it to suave Brian/ suave (other tall guy I can't remember because it's 6am) who then puts it over the touch line.

I think I remember Peter getting dropped once before and the results being an unmitigated disaster. Or maybe he was injured. I don't have a brain that can remember these things well.

And the Queen Dad is in Paris so I can't ask him.

Anyways, I am in confused shock. No doubt Stringer has had a string of bad games that I know nothing about. Because Eddie Sullivan wouldn't make a stupid decision would he?

And what's all this about the guys having 'personal problems'?

The last time I was in Paris, France annihilated Ireland in the Five Nations and the Queen Mum and I had to put up with it in a tiny room in the Hotel des Arts in Montmartre.

I hope that the Queen Dad gets a moment in the sun. At least he is on a pharma-junket, so the hotel room should have enough room to swing a cat in celebration if necessary.

Anyone who feels like sending me text updates this evening will be my friend for life. I shall be hanging onto the internet like a mad woman, trying to get the game on Setanta. Which is nigh on impossible.

Stupid internet pay per view.

Speaking of the unspeakable, on his recent visit here, the Queen Dad gave me Cormac MacCarthy's The Road to read. I asked him what it was like. He kind of shivered (strange for him) and said: 'it's a bit intense. It's a bit frightening. It's a strange strange book'.

I read it.

I couldn't be in a room on my own when I was reading it.

This book blows the bleak, post-apocalyptic vision of Margaret Atwood and her ilk right out of the ooze. It is delivered in McCarthy's simple prose, which as usual contains huge ideas in small sentences (how does he do that).

Then I read Charlie Brooker the other day:

This week Charlie finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy ("which might as well come with a razor-sharp spine, so you can slash your wrists once you've finished it"). He continued playing Bioshock on the Xbox360 ("but I can only play it if someone's in the room with me, because it's too scary to tackle alone"); and he failed to quit smoking for the 18 millionth time.

I'm glad it's not me.

If this book does not get you sorting out your compostibles from your paper waste, then nothing will.

A man and his son wander around a post-apocalyptic north american continent, heading for the (Pacific I think) ocean. The world has been on fire. The remains of the built and natural world still smoulder. Ash settles on everything. The sun is blotted out. Hordes of cannibal wildmen roam the land searching for food and weapons.

I kept reading bits of it out to Himself in a panic. 'Would we survive, babe?' I kept asking. 'Sure', he said.

Then I got to the bit that told me what happened to the man's wife.

I'd head north, meself. Fuck the ocean. They couldn't see it anyway.

Anyways, up the lads, I'm wearing my rugby shirt to work today and they had better not let me down.