IN ANY case, the incident provides me with an almost seamless link to
mention the annual Swift Satire Festival in Trim, the seventh edition
of which takes place this coming weekend. It promises the usual
intoxicating mixture of politics and comedy, with David McSavage among

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Monde features section.

Keynote events include a two-course satirical lunch, with Val O’Donnell
performing his one-man show on Flann O’Brien, followed by former
Mountjoy governor John Lonergan, who will deliver this year’s festival

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humour, if only because, for one of the events, a bag of clay has had
to be imported from Antrim. Details of this and the rest of the
programme are at swiftsatirefestival.com.

Patrick Kavanagh once wrote poetically about the “tremendous silence of
mid-July”. That was the era before summer schools and satire festivals,
obviously. Now, he himself is adding to the annual cacophony around
this time, thanks to another of his poems, which since last year has