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Sebatik Island was news to us.

I think it’s hard to grasp how fast it has changed. I grew up in a country where contraception, homosexuality and divorce were all illegal. Now the local town dresses up the statue in its main square for Pride month.

And 'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!' might have been funny once or even twice half a century ago, but in 2026 the line deserves to be filed mentally with The Best of Mrs Brown's Boys. (But that, no doubt, would be an ecumenical matter.).

Where did this cult of comedians as the most significant political thinkers and practical philosophers come from? Why are so many people taken in at first and later astonished by the inevitable revelation of primitive instinctual opinions?

It's depressing that even a cultural initiative will be talked about and praised by government ministers, officials and journalists exclusively for its potential to increase 'footfall' in a town and to boost the profits of the tourist industry, with not a word about its potential cultural benefits.

La annatto qui rit. (He certainly had the healthy gnashers of a cheese eater back in the day.)

There will be golf tomorrow. An early fried breakfast at the golf club with the morning papers, and then a round of the links course for them. I will be curling up with my Maeve Binchy instead.

"That one tastes to me like Calvita," an eccentrically candid Wexford man said tonight about the Saint-Nectaire. "I think Port Salut is more like Calvita, Aidan. This one reminds me of Three Counties."

That's the way to do it.

One baccha, two bacchae in the original Latin.

A man of Greece has been telling us today that the text we should be reading instead is The Bacchae by Euripides. I'm sure there's a copy at home.

I will never forgive the people who have propagandised well meaning people into believing grasslands like this aren't worth preserving because they're not covered in trees or don't qualify as the made up term "Atlantic Rainforest" in order to sell books & films about "Rewilding" #speirgorm

A Northern Irish version of David McWilliams, you say? Has the paper of record been informed? Can they get them on board?

Well, I'm closer to that than to basketball player stature.

I shall take personal comfort from that, being scarcely any taller even in the morning.

You have to be careful that it doesn't get into your hair.

I understand that the sophisticated and informed critical response to THE ODYSSEY is to give it stars out of five, in units of a half star.

I suppose his too might have been books that people read to enjoy and enjoyed to read.

Meet the bestselling Irish author you may never have heard of – The Irish Times share.google/Z3vklgscA8nB... Interesting that there's now a whole genre of Irish writing now that has nothing to do with mainstream published elites

Ugh!