In the Dark

One of the things I learnt during my sabbatical in Barcelona a couple of years ago is that un Puente (a Bridge) is a term used to describe a day in between a weekend and a public holiday. In Spain, it is quite normal to take such a day off work so as to create a long weekend. A sequence of such days is called un Aqueducte, the ideal version of which involves public holidays on Tuesday and Thursday leading to a whole week off!

Tomorrow being St Patrick’s Day (Tuesday 17th March), it is a public holiday in Ireland so I have decided to adopt Spanish practices and declared today La Puente de San Patricio. I am not going to campus (though I will be doing some work, including participating in a Euclid telecon). Officially this week is a Study Break, not a holiday (apart from tomorrow), but there are no lectures or labs or tutorials.

This reminds me to mention that I have made it to the final round of the annual St Patrick’s Day Beard of Ireland competition, which I actually won way back in 2020. The poll has been conducted mainly on Xitter in recent years, and I’ve hardly registered because I have had no presence there since 2023. This year, however, voting is possible via Bluesky (though I don’t think you have to be registered on Bluesky to vote). Last time I looked I was in the lead, but that’s by no means guaranteed to last. Here is a picture of me and my beard:

Anyway, if you feel like voting for me (or indeed any of the other candidates) you can do so here.

This entry was posted on March 16, 2026 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Barcelona, Beards, Biographical, Maynooth with tags Beard of Ireland 2026, St Patrick's Day, Un Puente. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.