In retrospect, it looks as if moving house was the prelude to a period in which movement literally became a more significant part of our lives.

Relocating to an apartment, particularly a penthouse with a secure multi-bolt steel front door, meant that it became easy to pack our bags, slam that door behind us, and be away for as long as we liked.

Also, of course, we were fewer to travel as Justin had become a permanent London-dweller, and Patricia, whose summer job in Brussels had quickly developed into a post-graduation career opportunity, took immediate steps to find an apartment for herself which would give her the independence she had come to enjoy in Edinburgh. The definitive sign of her departure came in 1994 when she moved into an apartment which had room for her piano. Once again the removers had to perform their heroic exploits to get the piano down from our balcony and up through what seemed a tiny window on the fourth floor of a small bloc of flats on Rue Theresienne, a narrow cobbled street in the middle of town.

In May 1993 we treated ourselves to a tourist trip which had always been high on our list of fantasy priorities, a first visit to Venice.

Not long before we left, and shortly after the gift of my poetry collection to the Dublin library, I was asked if I would like to join a small poetry reading group of Irish people which had just got off the ground on the initiative of Margaret O’Dwyer, wife of Tom O’Dwyer, then Ireland’s most senior Commission official, a Director General. It was a pleasant group of people who met once a month at the home of one of the members, for an evening in which participants read in turn their chosen verse contribution. There was generally time for two rounds of the small circle of readers, rarely exceeding eight, and the hospitality was usually limited to a glass of wine and nibbles. The choice of reading was extremely catholic and interesting; and some members of the group were excellent readers. One member, Philip Lynch, an Irish civil servant seconded to the Commission, from time to time read poems he had written himself. Thus my idea that Venice might be the ideal place in which I might write some verse myself.

Our trip was a great success. Venice was an inspiration to me, as it has been to so many others. Apart from anything else, its small stationery shops offer an extraordinary range of beautiful notebooks. So I came back from Venice with a few poems to polish up and to write by hand into a new notebook. From then on I have always travelled with a notebook to the ready and the idea of writing, often with some kind of formal structure in mind, like the famous “Letters from Iceland” by Auden and McNeice.

We also travelled a great deal later in the year, going to America for a first visit to Santa Fe in Northern New Mexico and then on to Kansas City to visit the Jonietzs who had become established there because of Karl’s latest private sector job. Since then, Venice and Santa Fe have become our favourite holiday venues and, indeed, the Jonietzs moved to Santa Fe in 1996.

1993 was also the year in which I at last managed to move upwards professionally, and in a largely unexpected direction. The move arose thanks to the transfer of the Commission’s Central Library from DG IX, the Administrative Directorate-General, to my own DG X. This gave me access to early notice that Eric Gaskell, the Head of the Library, would retire in 1993 and that his retirement would leave an A3-grade post vacant. I prepared a successful campaign to succeed him. Although I took up the appointment with a slight sense of professional disadvantage, because of my lack of library training, I was nevertheless convinced that I could prove myself as a good manager and as a leader capable of steering the Library into the information society future.

My work on the Spokesman’s Service RAPID project and with Niels Thogersen on the launching of the Commission’s internet site, Europa, turned out to be just the experience on which to build.

Read more: 1994 – Promotion to the Library World