I am one-quarter American. At least, that’s what I occasionally tell people, usually when a pub conversation subsides and I really do not want to discuss the current state of Mayo football again.

Mayo’s reality as a maritime county was never more obvious to me than when we left Achill for an Under-10 girls football blitz on Clare Island last week.

A century of state coercion failed to make us love our own language. Then a teenager in Gweedore pointed a phone at herself. We learned Irish the way you learn to flinch. There was a leather strap in it, more often than not.

It is not easy to defend Mr Trump and my instinct is to deplore his many actions especially in Gaza and Iran.

The most compelling question at present facing the Catholic Church in Ireland is the imminent disappearance of what has been a central and fundamental experience of Catholic life for centuries.

The price of oil is the determining factor of so much of what goes on in the world. That has been true for a long time, of course, but the last few weeks has been a particularly strong reminder that oil makes the world go round.

Seamus Coleman needs no introduction to readers of this column. He is by far Ireland’s outstanding soccer player of the last decade.

I’ve spent most of my adult life being quietly smug about being Irish, small, and out of the way.

For all his faults - and none of us are perfect - you can certainly not accuse former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of being circumspect. Former Taoisigh are generally reluctant to comment on live political issues. But that’s not in Leo Varardkar’s DNA.

Historians have an unfortunate habit of reading too much into things, and in this regard I am particularly unfortunate as I find myself perched at the cliff-edge of conspiracy theories far too often for comfort. Or indeed my wife’s comfort.