T 16 Essay he vintage front page shows a street full of Dublin holidaymakers smiling at the camera, sitting on the kerb, waiting for the bus in the sun. But these early queues soon dissipated. Bank holiday spoiled by weather, announces the reusable headline. The citys thoroughfares were WEEKEND ESSAY HAS A PUBLIC HOLIDAY EVER LIVED UP TO ITS POTENTIAL? ByLauraSlattery lashed by sweeping rain, as if from minor cloudbursts, according to The Irish Times, which hints at the familiar spectre of public transport collapse by positing that CIÉ officials budgeting for endless tram and bus queues, were disappointed, or perhaps one should say relieved. By the time it stopped raining, most people had lost their incentive to go anywhere near the sea. This page, which I pass on my way to my desk, is framed and hung on the wall, not because the dashed expectations were worth preserving, but because the date is Tuesday, August 7th, 1945, and the lead story concerns a more sinister cloud the impenetrable one that formed over Hiroshima after the dropping of the first atomic bomb. When juxtaposed with this moment in history, the sorrowful report on the weather hopes of Dubliners, who would have been unaware of the dawn of the nuclear age as their Monday unfolded, seems quite ridiculous. Into each life some rain must fall but must it fall so heavily on a bank holiday? In fiction, too, the line between exuberance and agitation on such days can be thin. In the opening chapter of Graham Greenes 1938 novel Brighton Rock, we meet Charles Fred Hale, a journalist who does not belong to the early summer sun, the Whitsun wind off the sea, the holiday crowd. It is Whit Monday, once a public holiday in both Britain and Ireland, and he is watching the seafront arrivals uncoil endlessly, like a twisted piece of wire, two by two, each with an air of sober and determined gaiety. With a downbeat outlook not untypical of his trade, Hale envisages their queues for lunch, return journeys on crowded trains and weary walks home, with just a grain of pleasure extricated from a long day of immense labour and immense patience. What is it about the public holiday that provokes shuddering clashes between the pursuit of collective bliss and the thwarting of it, the pressure to celebrate the day and the failure to do so, the desire for freedom and the frazzled impossibility of attaining it? They taunt us with an ideal born in the Victorian age. They dangle nice things in front of us, but turn fraught fast. They say were not time-poor and heres the long weekend to prove it, then corral us into the chaotic overflow car parks of life, sucking that time away from us. They are hot messes of days on which we get dressed up for an inevitable letdown, then slump back to THE IRISH TIMES Weekend Saturday, August 1, 2026 work A-G-A-I-N, as the frenetic Blur song Bank Holiday puts it. Drained by determined gaiety and the unrecoverable disruption to our week, were left confused. Arent we meant to want more of these bloody things? The numbers are often presented without nuance. Ireland has 10 public holidays and the average in the European Union is 12. But the comparison is muddied by the fact that workers in several EU countries with apparently generous quotas do not receive a compensatory paid weekday off if public holidays fall on the weekend. No referendum proposing a new public holiday would be rejected. Not everyone is as curmudgeonly about them as Hale, or me. Enough people run the gauntlet of their infrastructural pinch-points to suggest a critical mass still tries to make the most of the ones we have. And yet a widespread clamour for an extra one is conspicuous by its absence. One group of people is keen to talk about them: politicians. The Green Party argues that Good Friday should be converted from a bank holiday into the fully fledged public holiday many people think it already is. Its alternative idea is for a new public holiday on the first weekend in July to allow people to have some time off over the summer, while People Before Profit has called for two more, circling the last Mondays in September and November. Those in power, too, seem enamoured with the glorious potential of public holidays to both boost morale among the electorate and shore up support for approved markers of national identity. In Britain, for instance, Westminster loves announcing once-off, non-recurring public holidays tied to the royal family. Its a lot trickier, after all, to maintain buy-in for the monarchy if people are too busy working to pay attention to weddings, funerals and jubilees. Call it populism or sheer opportunism, but British politicians are also fond of using public holidays to maximise the unifying power of sport. One consequence of England DavidSedarisontheseriousbusinessofcomedy.Page8 WalledtownsofIreland:RositaBolandvisitsWexford.Page10 PatrickFreyne:GlenHansardwasIrelandsbandleader.Page5 WEEKEND THE IRISH TIMES Saturday, August 1st, 2026 A WOUND IS HEALED Afterdecadesofheartbreakandnearmisses, Mayofinallyhasitsmomentinthesun By 2 Cover story A HOUSE OF PAIN NO MORE MayosAll-Irelandtriumphreleased75yearsof pent-upemotioninoneunforgettableafternoon ByKeithDuggan M acHale Park in Castlebar has always been best suited to those Saturday-night matches in winter, when the season is young and the promise uncontained. An ideal Cover story meme, the jokes came thick and fast. Through all that, Mayo footballers and supporters never shied away from speaking about it, nor returning to All-Ireland finals. Maybe we make too much of the football, Fr Leo Morahan, the former county board executive, said back in 2007. Mayo has the 4 Cover story 2004, when he was beginning his sec- ond term as Mayo manager. By September, he had the county back in an All-Ireland final, when Kerry defeated his young team. Like most GAA counties, the network of names and connections within Mayo football are impossibly dense: you could fill the People GLEN HANSARD WAS OUR NATIONAL BARD TheFramesfrontmanwasIrelandsbandleader, anditfeltlikehewouldbedoingthejobfor alongtime ByPatrickFreyne I n the 1990s, I wasnt convinced by The Frames. They felt a bit mainstream. A bit major label. I was a young idiot. Later, a friend convinced me that I 6 Music THE PIANIST WHO PLAYS WITH ONE HAND ONLY Freya Terris is the first pianist to pass their Grade 8 piano exam playing solely with their left hand ByJohnOConnor L ike countless other young musicians, Freya Terris discovered her love of music at the piano stool. Yet her journey has been anyt People 7 Fearkeptmefrom doingwhatIreally wantedtodoorsay Q&ARevJanetBroderick The Donegal-based priest on childhood games with her brother actor Matthew Broderick, how people react when she preaches sermons, and who could play her in a biopic Howagreeableareyou? I think life has made me agreeable 8 Interview I DONT LIKE EXTREMISTS. BUT I FIND THEM THRILLING AS CHARACTERS TheUSwriterandhumouristtalksabouttheseriousbusinessofbeingfunny onthepageandathislivereadings ByPatrickFreyne WEEKEND INTERVIEW DAVID SEDARIS A few days after I interview David Sedaris, I receive a thank-you postcard fe Interview 9 I just tried to get through my days [at school] without being found out as gay. Im 69, so no one even really imagined then that anyone could be anything that awful back then DavidSedaris: Idontknowhow tobuyaplane ticket.Idontopen anymailthat doesntlooklike fanmail. Photograph: Leonardo 10 Feature HISTORY EMBRACES US EVERY DAY IN WEXFORD In the first of a four-part series on Irelands walled towns, we visit Wexford, where history is quite literally in peoples back gardens ByRositaBoland I f Billy Colfer talked to you about history, youd sit up and listen, Paul Walsh tells me. W Feature field. We discovered that Sparrow was a surname of ship owners back in the 1830s, Hussey says. Hussey brings me out into their back garden to show me where, more than a century ago, a house was built against the other side of their wall. The medieval wall thus became a party wall. It towers 12 Photo essay Formedtotacklethe siltingissueintheriver Liffey,thereservenow extendstotheentirety ofthebay WILD AT HEART Photographs: DaraMacDónaill andEndaODowd Words: EndaODowd O f the 797 Unesco biosphere reserves across 147 countries, Dublin Bay is the only one to include a national capital Photo essay DublinsNorth BullIsland,partof theDublinBay Unescobiosphere reserve,isnow hometo180 differentspeciesof bird.However, conservationists warnthat,asworks tostopcoastal erosionareerected alongthecoastline, theirlong-term impactonthe ecologyand landscapemaybe difficulttopredict. Photographs: 14 Feature TWINS PEAK WERE PROBABLY MIRROR IMAGES OF EACH OTHER Whetheritsthehighsofalwayshavingcompanyor thelowsofsensingtheotherspain,thebestpartof beingatwinisneverbeingstuckforafriend ByJenHogan I relands birth rate may be falling, but the incidence of twin births continues to rise, with al Feature 15 Its sometimes fun and its sometimes not, because they could steal your stuff had a friend beside you. In fact, the twins only really went their separate ways when they went to college and that was a major shock, Emma says. Rebecca says there are lots of upsides to being a twin, but the T 16 Essay he vintage front page shows a street full of Dublin holidaymakers smiling at the camera, sitting on the kerb, waiting for the bus in the sun. But these early queues soon dissipated. Bank holiday spoiled by weather, announces the reusable headline. The citys thoroughfares were WEEKEND E Essay 17 Governments might fancy deploying bank holidays to foster cohesion and goodwill, but that doesnt mean everybody has to play along crashing out of the Fifa World Cup was that Friday, July 24th, became the bank holiday that never was. Would Keir Starmers mooted last act have applied across 18 Feature BE LIKE JOHN LENNON AND BUY AN IRISH ISLAND Four islands for sale off Mayo, Donegal, Tipperary and Galway, with bidding starting at 299,000 ByJessicaDoyle W hen you attract screaming fans everywhere you go, what do you do to get some peace and quiet? You buy an island, of course. Tha People 19 SARAH MOSS Teenage dieting made me an expert in mental arithmetic I bofin. It is suitable for grazing and features two natural freshwater lakes. The island measures 1.2km by 0.4km and rises to a maximum height of 63.3m above sea level. It is a Special Protection Area under the EU Bird 20 Environment TOMAÍ Ó CONGHAILE Our beautiful, troubled planet needs a skilled reconciler T he World Cup may be over but the fallout continues: Trumps unwanted interventions; Germanys early exit; football not coming home; Argentinas post-final petulance. Not to mention, of course, that banner. Environment 21 British navy, spent several days imprisoned in the Tower of London on corruption charges, and died of smallpox before reaching 40. Initially, a strait running between the two main islands was named after him and, by 1765, the Falkland Islands had become the English name for the entire 22 Obituaries FIRST WOMAN DIRECTOR OF A NATIONAL INSTITUTION, LIBRARIAN AND ACADEMIC Patricia (Pat, Patsy) Donlon Born: January 28th, 1943 Died: July 23rd, 2026 Patricia (Pat, Patsy) Donlon, who has died peacefully aged 83 at Blackrock Hospice, Dublin, was a leading light in that remarkable generat Obituaries 23 RENOWNED ORNITHOLOGIST AND COMIC ACTOR WHO STARRED IN THE GOODIES Bill Oddie BillOddiewasamemberofcomedy trioTheGoodies,whoseanarchicTV sketchshowairedinthe1970sand 1980s.Photograph:IanGavan/Getty Born: July 7th, 1941 Died: July 25th, 2026 Bill Oddie, who has died aged 85, was a mul 24 Last word DAVID McWILLIAMS ThefirstvictimofAI? Theeconomy W e are in an era of great technological advances, or so say all the tech bros who are championing not just AI, but a whole host of technological innovations from finance and healthcare to supply chain management and communications. In