Hope you're reading the Heelers

If for no other reason than he gives me the odd plug in the Leinster Leader, I hope my readers are also regularly dipping into the parallel Kilcullen universe of The Heelers Diaries.

Actually, that's not the reason. James Healy's blog is one of a few that I myself check into every day, because it always raises a smile, even with the new weather we've been having this weekend, and it has a bit more flexibility in content than I allow the Diary to have.

And every now and again he shows us why he is Ireland's greatest living poet. Well, one of them anyhow. As a nation on poets, we're pretty generous with our 'greatests'.

I know these things. I was one myself back in the 70s. And I've never cashed the £1.50 cheque I got for the first poem of mine broadcast on an RTE poetry radio programme.

Keep the Kilcullen poetry flag flying, James. And the other one too.

Brian Byrne.