St Willibrord

Last week-or-so, I mentioned that the Polish Ambassador to Ireland had been cutting a ribbon in Glenties Co Donegal. I was on account of a) the commemoree was born in what's now Poland b) for the second half of 2026, during Ireland's Presidency of the EU, each Irish County has been paired with one of the members states of the EU 

But wait and, like, whoa! are there not 26 counties but 27 members of the EU. That was my gotcha and I had to download the two lists and cross reference to see which EU state had been [frisson - diplomatic incident] excluded from the pairings? Ans: duh Ireland IE is not paired with any one county, but with all. I felt a bit like Newton [arguably the smartest man of his generation] cutting a half-pint-sized kitten door beside the cat-flap in his study after his moggie delivered a litter.

Then on Friday 9th Oct, I was at a cultural event in our wee post-town which was opened by one of our County Councillors. Afterwards, I buttonholed him to ask which country was pared with his/our County. Luxembourg he replied without looking at  his notes. Blimey, why Luxembourg?, I responded, and who decides the divvy-up?. It seems it is because St Willibrord [who he?] a) is Patron Saint of the Grand Duchy b) had been born in Northumberland but trained in Carlow and died at Echternach, LU. All good fun; I really hope taxpayers money sends missiones of  county officials to the far ends of Europe to spread their wings and learn about other ways of doing.

You may remember my happy-out pairings of all Ukrainian Oblasts with Irish Counties back in 2013. There were only 24 oblasts and one Autonomous Region, so I had an ingenious fudge to match 26 counties to oblasts. The following year the Autonomous Region (=Crimea) was annexed by Russia and I couldn't make the twinning work any more. None of this held me back from pairing 6 civil regions in Belarus and Nor'n Ireland.