Anyone who has read this far must by now have a fair picture of the person I have become and of the interests likely to continue to shape my life in coming decades.

Although the point of this memoir exercise, and my work-in-progress notebook, is to record both past and current activities, they are enlivened here and there by sections that read more like day-to-day diary comments.

Among such 2006 entries are reminders that this was the year in which former Taoiseach, Charles J. Haughey, died and was given a state funeral, and that it was also the year in which Anne and I travelled down to Co. Clare to join in some of the tributes to a former Commission colleague, Marcus McInerney, who died after a long and heroic fight against cancer.

Another death of particular significance to Monkstown Friends, and to the Quaker Council for European Affairs, was that of Gordon Pearson, whose commitment to peace in Europe went back to service with the Friends’ Ambulance Service in the last World War.

Further brief notes remind me that in the course of 2006 Anne and I had very enjoyable visits to Andalusia, Cracow and London.

The Andalusia visit was organised for Friends of the Chester Beatty Library and brought us to Ronda, Seville, Cordoba and Granada to look at features of Islamic architecture. We had pleasant weather and first-class guides, including a curator from the library, who gave us a vivid picture of the history of Moslem Spain, a slice of the European story which seems of value at a time when it is becoming important to understand the spread of Islam, its thought and practice.

As already mentioned, the trip to Cracow was with the Blackrock Society, and included a visit to Auschwitz. I still find it difficult to imagine how the German people could have accepted a pattern of government capable of implementing a programme to exterminate certain minorities on an industrial scale. Auschwitz, in its contemporary museum format, shows exactly how this programme worked.

If the immediate post-war Polish government had not taken a decision to conserve the site, as a witness to what had happened, I have no doubt but that every trace of the horrors of that particular killing machine would have been dismantled and covered over very quickly.

The primary focus of all our London visits now is to see Justin and Amma, Eli and Emer. When possible, we try to see other friends and to take in a play, show or exhibition of interest. In 2006 we were lucky enough to see the special exhibition at the Wallace Collection marking the centenary of the writer and novelist Anthony Powell, 1905-2000.

Up to then I had never read anything by Powell, but as the exhibition showed his friendships and connections with so many other literary figures of interest to me, I felt I should at least have a look at “A Dance to the Music of Time”, the “novel” created through his famous series of twelve novels and named after the Poussin masterpiece in the Wallace Collection. I began at the beginning with “A Question of Upbringing”. This first novel hooked me and I quickly read though the whole magnum opus.

I joined those who rate “Dance” with the work of Proust and Joyce and am now a member of the Anthony Powell Society, a fan club whose magazine is a joy to read. Indeed, I have now contributed to the publication myself, delighted that the editor accepted a poem written about my experience of reading “Dance”, and a short obituary of Robert Greacen, who, I learnt, was a reviewer for Anthony Powell, when the latter was literary editor or chief reviewer for Punch and The Daily Telegraph.

Throughout 2006, work on my second collection of poems, which I decided should be called “Home”, advanced slowly. Ross Hinds kept me in the picture regarding the progress of his layout, setting and editorial work and asked me to focus on getting my drawings for the book right. The line-drawing illustrations used in my first collection, “Turnings”, had worked well. My hope for the second collection was that the cover design could be modelled on the Boy Scout tracking symbol giving the message “gone home”, and that I might then be able to concoct equally abstract sketches for the sections into which Ross planned to divide the book.

The business of doing pen drawings to a size that can be scanned appropriately into the computer-set text, and where the weight of the strokes will print well, is a bit hit and miss.

After several attempts we thought that we had got enough sketches that would work. We would have to wait for the printers’ proofs late in 2007 before we could be happy that we would again have a good-looking and reader-friendly slim volume.

Read more: 2007 – Saint Sebastian and Home