Many retired Commission colleagues seemed to think it natural that I would want to take up some type of consultancy work and earn fees to add to my pension income. This never crossed my mind.

I could see myself making a contribution to various Quaker or political activities, but on a strictly voluntary basis. Indeed the timing of my retirement facilitated my becoming Clerk of the Quaker Council for European Affairs in 2001 and meant that I would have plenty to interest me in Dublin in the fates of the Nice and Lisbon European Treaties.

To my surprise and disappointment, my period as Clerk of QCEA proved much more taxing than almost anything I had experienced in politics or in my professional work. I tried to cope with things as I thought Quakers should, and believe I eventually succeeded in helping to create a platform with a new staff, and the beginnings of properly established employment and governance arrangements within Belgian and EU law, which might serve the future well. But, the cost to me and to others in misunderstandings and personal relationships was so heavy that I decided to retire before the end of my three-year term. It nevertheless lifts my spirits to read the prophetic text, A Quaker Vision of Europe, which, as Clerk, I was privileged to see adopted by QCEA on 2 December 2001.

If only a text like that could have been a leadership standard for Europe in the intervening years we might have escaped successive crises and be on the way towards building a better future. This and other QCEA documents are available on the Council’s website and my own QCEA files are in my Boole collection.

I carried into retirement my irrepressible urge to write grand visions and draft manifestos and needed to be equipped to be able to do so. Anne and I got organised in Blackrock with two studies rather than spare bedrooms. We based our PC in her study, and I invested in a Dell laptop for mine. This little machine (a Latitude X1) has been prodded sufficiently to produce pronouncements on health, better government, the ethos of a Quaker primary school, violence on television, and the status of Irish neutrality, as well as draft reports, speeches and letters to the editor. All that on top of our routine administration and correspondence, and a lot of more artistic material, including a good deal of poetry and these remaining sections of my chronology.

Thanks particularly to the focus and energy of two extraordinary Dublin characters, Michael O’Flanagan and Liam O’Meara, I have been encouraged as both poet and manifesto-writer.

When I was establishing myself in Blackrock, I read in the Dublin Event Guide that open mic poetry evenings were held in the Pearse Family Home on Pearse Street. I duly presented myself there and found a first-class venue and incredibly good organisers. The state or corporation had helped to have the historic home of the Pearse children and their parents refurbished as some kind of Irish Institute foundation, with appropriate lecture room spaces, toilets and so on. The larger rooms were well lit and could also serve as gallery space. Michael and Liam had booked a first-floor room for the evening and had brought their own microphone and video equipment.

It turned out to be a most friendly and enjoyable evening. There would not have been more than ten or so people there, but all had brought something to read and Michael and Liam read themselves. In so far as there was any division of labour, although Michael seemed the chief organiser, Liam was gifted in terms of acting as master of ceremonies and humouring tricky customers.

Over the next few weeks, I got to enjoy and respect these Pearse Street gatherings and was sorry when they stopped. I learnt that Michael and Liam’s organisational base was the Inchicore Ledwidge Society and that many of their supporters came from that Kilmainham area, or from some of the city’s writing groups, particularly from around Rathmines. Michael was the editor and publisher of a monthly poetry broadsheet called “Riposte” and Liam, a natural researcher, was pursuing the Ledwidge heritage. While both might have personal or political agendas, where poetry was concerned, they were enthusiasts, patrons and practitioners. (I assumed that Michael, particularly, had some kind of “republican” involvement and that that gave him the connections to what seemed to be the traditions of Patrick Pearse and James Connolly behind the Pearse Street premises.)

When I learnt that Michael was planning a Dublin Poetry Conference for February 2002, and as a 2002 General Election looked certain, I offered to let him have my ideas for a Poets’ Manifesto.

Not only did he take this on board, when the Conference met at Pearse Street on Saturday 4 February, the Manifesto was part of the programme and I was among the speakers. There were not many people there, but I was impressed that there were quite a few who had won poetry awards and who had at least one published collection. For me, the most impressive speaker by far was a poet called Sean Carey who spoke about modernism. He seemed to have a deep appreciation of the development and content of modernism and to have both reading and personal knowledge of an extraordinarily wide range of writers. When it turned out that he was a personal friend of Richard Caddell, a former professional colleague of mine and an established modernist figure, we moved on easily to become warm friends.

The adopted Manifesto, another candidate for the Boole collection, called for recognition of and freedom for the poetic voice. It stressed the importance of pluralism and diversity and urged increased support and sponsorship for poetry, including a poets’ database. Poets who thought they might have something to contribute to national politics were urged to declare themselves and stand for election. Voters were called on to vote for poets. After the General Election, the Conference would call on any newly elected and appointed government to further the objectives set out in the Manifesto, “possibly through the establishment of a National Poetry Forum to be convened annually”.

Read more: 2003 – Activists and Joiners