The best things in life

Just in case some of you don't know it, your Editor has a life outside the Diary. A working one, mostly involving motor cars and aspects of motoring, including offroad.



And I spent last weekend in Solihull at the Land Rover factory campus, chasing after a group of 44 Irish men and women who were taking part in the runoffs to become Ireland's representative on the Land Rover G4 Challenge 2006.



I was wearing multiple hats: journalist, judge, and photographer. And it was fun, tough fun though, watching them all really punish themselves in a series of athletic, driving and navigational tests designed to show up the best and the weakest facets of each one.

I was no stranger to it, having covered the final week-long leg of the first G4 Challenge in 2003, across southern Utah in the United States. Though I did none of the mountain biking, trekking, running and climbing that the contestants did, I got more than my share of exercise, and air dusty and fresh as I and my camera followed the tests, and sometimes scarifying trips in the back of a Discovery as the teamed Irish and Canadian contestants pair drove thither and yon in pursuit of the grand prize of a Range Rover.



Last weekend's group were a great crowd, and though only three of them -- one a Carbury girl, Vanessa Lawrenson above -- made it through to the next round at the end of January, there wasn't a hint of disappointment amongst the others as they waited for their plane home at Birmingham Airport.

These were all outdoors people, with various sports and athletic and environmental interests. Where many of us go only to the pub for entertainment, they were the kind who climb a mountain or two first, and then go to the pub to talk about it amongst themselves.

As a nation maybe we give ourselves a bad name as drinkers, Celtic tigers without compassion, increasingly unspiritual, and me feiners.

But I know from growing up and still living in Kilcullen that this is not the true picture, only the odd miswielded brush-stroke. We all here know so many of the good things about people that we can see through the portrayed nastiness as mostly malhype.

And as I watched all those others last weekend, who should have been ruthless and selfish and doing their damndest to make sure their fellow competitors didn't catch up, let alone pass, that same thing was evident.

The strong helped the weaker. The individuals were pulled along by a team spirit. And each encouraged everybody else to get through the really tough parts.



None of them really knew each other when they arrived at Dublin Airport on the way out. By the time they came back, they were, as one put it to me, 'members of a new small club'. And they'd already made plans to meet again.

Also, very many of them had found new things about themselves, including being able to do things they'd not believed themselves capable of before the weekend.

I was there in a professional capacity. But I was truly bouyed up by watching them compete and become friends at the same time. No less than I have been many times growing up and living in the community spirit of Kilcullen.

Some of my fellow journalists and the newspapers they work for might spend much of their time highlighting the bad side of modern Irish life.

As far as I'm concerned, there's much more of the other out there ...

Brian Byrne.