Zlatan wins the aerial battle but Michael D Higgins still comes home with another striking prize

Exciting times for sports fan President Michael D Higgins last weekend when he met prolific former Juventus, AC Milan, Barcelona and Manchester United (among many others) striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic in Rome, posing for a photograph with the sizeable Swede.

Higgins is, of course, a proper football man, having previously served as president of Galway United. He used the power of the Áras to issue an official statement on the death of Diego Maradona – he was remembered “not only for his phenomenal talent for ball control, passing and dribbling, but for the vision of him on the field and the joy he brought to so many”, said the President.

Some of the jerseys Michael D Higgins has received during his term. Photograph: Maxwell's

He came away from his Zlatan encounter with a “Higgins 1” AC Milan jersey, implying something more than serendipity about the meeting. It’s not the first jersey in the President’s collection. In recent weeks he came away from a meeting with Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency of all people, with a Galatasaray jersey, while a signed Mourinho Chelsea jersey, once part of the pile, was given away for a good cause.

In the permanent collection, above, the Milan shirt joins a custom Boca Juniors jersey received from Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a Rio Ferdinand Manchester United jersey, a Robbie Keane LA Galaxy jersey, plus various League of Ireland and Irish international jerseys, including one signed by the first-ever women’s international team from 1973. That’s before we get into the GAA and rugby wings of the collection.

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Any museums interested?

A work of embroidery by Ghazale Bahiraie, inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses

Bloomsday hits Tehran

“[A] good puzzle would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub,” James Joyce once said. It will easier for Bloomsday celebrants in Tehran, where Ulysses is to be celebrated this year.

“Everyone has heard James Joyce’s name in Iran but not many people, especially younger generations, read his books,” says Roxana Manouchehri, the Dublin-based dual-national artist behind a Bloomsday art exhibition in the Iranian capital.

Ulysses is, of course, banned in Iran, for much the same reason as it was banned in the US and Britain on publication: sex, particularly in the final chapter, from Molly Bloom’s perspective. But the text does exist in Farsi, and that provides an opportunity for the artists Manouchehri has gathered.

“I made all these 11 young artists read at least a few chapters of Ulysses,” she says. “All their works are based on the book and each work has a particular statement.” Manouchehri’s exhibition takes place at the Rischee gallery in Tehran from June 20th, if you‘re nearby.

Michael D Higgins encounters Declan Ganley in Rome. Photograph: X/Declan Ganley

Viva la revolución

Never one to pigeonhole himself, Higgins also happened upon would-be papal power broker, businessman and former politician Declan Ganley on the same trip. Ganley, an avowed right-winger, recounted on X that he was smoking a cigar outside his favourite osteria when the president clocked him. “I hope it’s Cuban,” quipped Higgins (who as it happens also issued a tribute to that “giant among global leaders”, Fidel Castro, in 2016).

Computer-generated image of the Dublin Metro

Getting Metrolink on track

Have you ever wanted to drive the train? Metrolink has a job for you: the as-yet non-existent underground rail line is seeking members for its steering committee.

The gig is part-time, but it’s well paid: €2,000 a day for a minimum of one day per month, plus travel and subsistence allowances for the hours spent on subpar non-Metrolink transport on the way to discuss how to finally get it going. That’s more than one Brendan McDonagh, who was due to be the housing tsar but withdrew his name from that job, would have earned on a full-time equivalent basis, although it’s likely candidates will be expected to do some thinking about the issues for free on their days off.

The tender document, issued this week, asks for people with various types of experience, including but not limited to: having worked on a project costing €1 billion or more already (common enough in Irish infrastructure circles, you‘d have to say); experience managing complex legal disputes (also common); and knowing about tunnelling (maybe less common).

Overheard highlighted last week’s fascinating fixed-term-until-the-trains-actually run PR job at Metrolink, but ambitions are more scaled back for the steering committee. Three years, with a possibility of a further three years, is how long the recruiters are allowing to get things on track.

A section of the Bayeux Tapestry

1066 and all that

Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh made headlines this week with his firm stance against the Government’s plan to participate in the Year of the Normans, an international celebration of the Norse-French castle-builders who made the rural skyline what it is today.

Most attentive Irish schoolchildren have an understanding that goes roughly as follows: Strongbow bad, King John bad, mysterious process by which Normans become more Irish than the Irish themselves. But to Ó Snodaigh – who is careful to note that he is in favour of Norman-focused tourism – the various Fitzgerald rebellions are not enough to make up for the link to the crown. The year of the 2027 celebration links to William the Conqueror’s birth 1,000 years ago.

It’s large-hearted of him to object in solidarity with the Saxons who, of course, were the ones conquered by William. And perhaps the rehabilitation of evils past has gone too far. There’s even a standing stone not far from Irish Times headquarters that commemorates the settlement of Dublin by the rapacious Vikings. The 11ft granite monument, depicting the war-like Norse king Ivar, bane of many ninth-century Gaels, was erected in the 1980s and sculpted by Clíodhna Cussen. Who was, of course, Ó Snodaigh’s mother.

Action from the women’s race during last year's Swim Ireland Liffey Swim. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill

Seeing double

Irish life’s most niche intractable row drags on this year as Swim Ireland and Leinster Open Sea fail once more to bury the hatchet when it comes to the optimal governance of outdoor swimming events.

As a result, for the second consecutive year, there will be two Liffey swims.

Leinster Open Sea’s version, which it dubs the “105th Dublin City Liffey Swim” in a clear attempt to own the lineage of the century-old event once depicted by Jack B Yeats, will take place on August 30th. Swim Ireland’s, the humbly numberless “Dublin City Liffey Swim”, takes place two weeks later on September 13th.

This is good news for neutral swimmers, perhaps, with a plethora of options on the calendar, although sources tell us open-water swimming is in fact quite tiring, so perhaps best not to get too carried away.

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