And the train rolls on ...

It's a kind of weird thought that I have been producing the Kilcullen Diary during a third of my professional journalism career, writes Brian Byrne. But that's the case, as last Friday marked the completion of the Diary's 14th year.

As always in such things, you wonder where did the time go? And specifically in this instance, how on earth did something that started out as a sideline, an experiment, a hobby even, end up being such a large chunk of my daily life? I'm not even going to try and work out an answer …

Just to say thanks to all of you who read the Diary regularly, who contribute in news, words, and pictures. To the advertisers, who were never even considered in the original idea but whose support is very much appreciated.

And a salute through the decades too to the many who helped me in my early forays into writing and journalism, after I exited a future in The Hideout back in 1977. There are too many to list. Some have passed on, others include encouragers (Fr Brian Darcy, take a bow), those who took a chance on me (Mike Burns, head of RTE radio news when I did my first broadcasting there at the beginning of the 80s), many editors through the years who used my work (and, so important, paid me) and those who continue to do.

A nightcap conversation I had last week in a Barcelona hotel — at a motoring business event — for some reason found its way to the importance of enjoying what you do. That it doesn't just keep life good, but probably in large measure helps to keep you alive.

Most of us are probably well aware of friends, relatives, colleagues who were desperately looking forward to retirement to be released from their work. The Diary is one of the strands in a mesh of activities that keeps me looking forward, not to retirement but to getting up every day with something positive to do.

In conjunction with my motoring journalism and publishing, with my weekly page in the Kildare Nationalist, with my latterly return to working with The Bridge, and other communications related activities, it does sometimes seem that I'm working more than I ever did.

But that's only if I thought of it as work, in the sense of work being what I'd prefer to be doing something else instead of. Maybe something like golf. Which I gave up on after two years in the 1970s because I couldn't justify the time. Maybe I was lucky. Otherwise that's what I might have spent a normal working life waiting to retire to. Instead I have the Diary, and the other stuff. And no retirement.

I am lucky. When Dante wrote his Divine Comedy about the nine circles of hell, golf hadn't been invented. I have a thought that, if it had, he might have made it the tenth.

So thanks again to all of you who are the reason I'm still doing this. Onward, through Kilcullen's 700th, Halverstown NS's 60th, Kilcullen GAA's 130th, to the Diary's 15th, and The Bridge's 50th.

All of which should provide enough material to keep this whole runaway train going for another while ...


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