The funeral drinks at McCarthy’s bar was splendid, and towards the end we got invited to another one.

I was sitting at the bar with a bowl of soup and a plate of neatly cut cheesy sandwiches, while the builder boyfriend drank a pint of Murphy’s, when the bar owner leaned over and told us that the next one was at a different bar, so when we had all drunk up and the sandwiches were eaten everyone was going to be heading off down the road, if we would like to join them.

I’ve never known so many people say it’s just a coincidence that so many people are dying

In truth, I would have liked to go, for I had so enjoyed this wake I would have followed them to the second of the day.

The rate of funerals is at such an alarming level, with so little explanation, that I’ve moved on from worrying about the excess death rate to worrying about the excess coincidence rate.

I’ve never known so many people say it’s just a coincidence that so many people are dying.

Every time someone dies, and I point out that this follows loads of other people dying, someone says it’s a coincidence.

The rate of someone telling me ‘it’s just a coincidence’ is now running at a couple of times a week, which in itself I would question as odd. The coincidence-mongers will, no doubt, tell me that the number of people telling me it’s just a coincidence is just a coincidence.

The rate of coincidence, in other words, has become a coincidence. But back to the funeral…

This bar is one small room so that you feel you are sitting in someone’s private home. There is racing perpetually on the television in the corner and the proprietor, a horse man who has his own gallops at his farm down the road, stands behind the bar chatting with his customers while various female relatives, his wife and daughters I presume, work away in a small kitchen beyond the bar, emerging to serve their guests with steaming plates of delicious home-cooked food.

A puppy gambols about the owner’s feet and is occasionally passed to a group of young girls seated beneath the horse-racing so they can cuddle it.

We had been invited by one of our new friends, a rosy-cheeked old fellow of few words, but the ones he says are usually the ones no one else dares to.

We were squeezed onto high chairs by the bar next to this fellow and some other locals he was introducing us to, talking mainly horses – they all keep ‘trotters’ – when the bar door was flung wide open and a giant of a man dressed all in black with a thick mop of white hair stepped one foot inside while announcing himself by shouting: ‘Ah! So I’m not too late then!’ And it was immediately obvious that he darn well intended to be very late, and to enter like this, and to interrupt everyone, and to be welcomed as though the entire gathering had been pointless until he arrived.

The bar went slightly quieter, everyone looked round a bit, then went back to talking as they were. In other words, the grand entrance fell flat, and embarrassingly so.

The tall, white-haired man shouted out again, this time greeting individuals by name, as if to force an acknowledgement out of the gathering. But although those singled out replied politely enough, the welcome was demonstrably and deafeningly not forthcoming.

As he walked by us, our friend, who always says what no one else will, and was, in addition to his outspoken character now very drunk, called out, ‘Afternoon Father,’ for this was the priest, and then, as the man in black moved onwards, he added, at a volume almost identical: ‘That’s it, you get yourself a sandwich and a pint, you fecking…’ And he concluded with a very rude word.

‘Oh, so the locals don’t like him either,’ I whispered to the builder boyfriend, delighted. For I had been nursing a terrible guilt about my dislike of this priest, who had lectured us during mass about the Dublin riots and ordered us not to go on social media, where we would, according to him, hear all sorts of lurid gossip – or information, as I call it.

‘What’s the story with him?’ the BB asked our friend. Turns out the old priest everyone liked was moved on. Our friend pulled a face, slurped his pint, and would say no more.

I assume the new man is the government-approved version, which would explain the pro-EU lectures, and the attempt to ban people from looking at reliable news sources when something happens that makes Leo Varadkar look a prat.