With Piazza Maggiore, Bologna’s main square, as the backdrop, a short video depiction of the volume, which can be seen on www.fmronline.it, was followed on Thursday night by an hourlong spectacle that included dozens of costumed dancers, a string quartet playing from a stage suspended in midair, suckling pigs roasted over a pit, a fake snowfall and a foppishly dressed acrobat walking Spiderman-style up the facade of San Petronio, the city’s cathedral.

You′re looking down upon ‘rangas’ crossing at the traffic lights below. What a cheap but satisfying form of Dublin entertainment! With the sun out, the redheads of Dublin glow like copper wire.

Some parents prepared goodies such as muah chee and rojak for the fair while others helped run the stalls.

Tough titties, Martha. People sometimes rise to The Occasion and sometimes not, Martha. Often, people rise to The Occasion, then fall, then rise a little short of The Occasion, then fall again, and so forth: that's how the ball bounces.