You know the feeling. A message lands in the family WhatsApp on a Sunday night to say the problematic American uncle is coming over for a few days.

Nobody asked for him, but he's distantly related to us, sort of, and, well, we’re just going to have to grin and bear it for the weekend.

Donald Trump lands in Dublin early on Saturday morning, if all goes to plan, and it is very much not a State visit. The phrase the Government has settled on is a ‘courtesy call’ which is a polite way of saying a ‘pain in the a**e’.

Simon Harris drew the short straw and is being sent out on the tarmac to shake The Donald’s hand. Presumably, he will also wax lyrical about his much-hyped investment scheme through the medium of sean-nós dancing.

Then it's Marine One into the Phoenix Park and a massively awkward chat with Catherine Connolly who may or may not give him a dig in the ribs. After that, it's over the road to Farmleigh to see Micheál, who is presumably going to end the Iran war with a single pointed sentence.

The whole thing has been contained inside one park, which is basically what you'd do with any toddler. Then he's off to Doonbeg for the night to watch the golf on his own course, with his own sons, in his own hotel, which is a completely and utterly normal thing to do. 

There's an outside chance of Conor McGregor turning up of course. He was last seen at a White House podium on St Patrick's Day explaining Ireland to the Americans. The smart money is on him appearing in a suit somewhere in the vicinity of a tee box.

Anyway, best to keep the head down, say nothing and hide the good biscuits.

Now to the complete opposite of Conor McGregor in every way…

Katie Taylor got some send-off in Croke Park at the weekend, didn’t she? We had half a head out the back door to see the fireworks, but I was always conscious of getting back inside before Westlife came on, so it was hard to relax.

It was the biggest crowd for a women's boxing match anywhere, ever, and the sixth biggest post-war boxing crowd of any kind in the world. And one of the biggest events to honour an individual female athlete in the history of the planet. Not bad going for a young one from Bray.

The last person to box in Croke Park was Muhammad Ali in 1972 and by all accounts the place was half empty and a good share of the crowd came in over the turnstiles.

Saturday night was sold out in minutes and it was a sight to behold. Marty Morrissey dancing with Michael Flatley. Over 80,000 phone torches. An a cappella Grace, and then the national anthem. Holy moly, as Marty might say.

The fight itself was a formality: ten rounds against a very game Flora Pili who was unbeaten coming in, and Katie added the WBC belt to the other three and retired as a three-time undisputed champion. Then she did a lap of the ring, put her gloves and her belts down in the centre of the canvas and walked off.

Pure class.

The United Nations voted on Friday, by 164 to one, to stop making Africa look small. The map on every classroom wall since you and I were youngsters is referred to as the Mercator, drawn up by a Flemish lad in 1569 for the benefit of sailors. It works grand if you're trying to get a ship to Newfoundland but it blows everything up the nearer it gets to the poles. For this reason, Greenland comes out about the size of Africa even though Africa is actually fourteen times bigger. The UN is now asking governments, schools and the tech companies to switch to something called the Equal Earth projection, which was only invented in 2018 and shows the continents at their real relative size. You’ll be relieved to know that Ireland is now even smaller than it used to be. It should take about ten minutes less to go from Clon to Ballydehob.

Other countries have shrunk even more. Europe deflates like a balloon at the end of a party, Russia loses about half its bulk and Canada has taken a hit also. The one country that voted against it was the United States, which called the whole thing a radical ideological project. Don’t mention it at the weekend, basically.

A word of warning for anyone out around Roaringwater Bay this week, because it turns out islands aren't as reliable as they used to be.

In July a group of boaters on Williston Lake in British Columbia, a reservoir the size of a small country, came across an island that nobody had ever seen before. It was covered in mature trees and about the size of two football pitches. Everyone assumed it was a hoax, until the satellite pictures from the 21st of July came back and confirmed there was in fact a new island in the lake. By the 5th of August, it was gone again and had vanished off the satellite entirely.

Thankfully, they found it last week, about thirty kilometres upstream. The explanation is that decades of driftwood had piled up in a sheltered bay, trees took root in it, and this summer the water came up high enough to lift the whole lot off the bottom and float it away on the wind.  

So let’s keep an eagle eye on Sherkin, lads. Anything can happen these days.