So did you know that Zorro was Irish?

Enjoying a head massage by the pond in Fitzgerald Park, still savouring the exquisite aftertastes of some Ballymaloe crab paté washed down with a 30-year-old sherry, as a string quartet plays in the background — it is hard to imagine a finer place to be on a Friday afternoon than the inaugural Irish Examiner Food Festival.

A bubble-blowing ceremony tomorrow night will kick-start the country’s first kindness festival — an event that could spread nationwide.

They’ll have ‘Kindness Zones’, bubble-blowing crowds and flash-mobs dancing to Thriller — not to mention free massages and cinema trips for lucky passers-by.

WE’RE bang in the middle of the summer festival season, and July shows no signs of letting up. Practically every weekend is cram-packed with music and/or arts festivities all around the country, ranging from Kinsale Arts Week to the Galway Film Fleadh to a national scarecrow festival. So get planning.

It was in the mid-eighties when one Anne Herbert was reputed to be enjoying a meal in a San Francisco restaurant when she was suddenly inspired.