The older you get the more health conscious you become.

Without getting obsessed by this imperative, Anne and I are pretty careful about what we do and what we eat and drink. Some daily exercise is regarded as important, whether a walk or a swim, or some heavy outside activity like tidying the garden or washing the car.

Recently Anne has been taken off the long-standing medication for her arthritis, which included an injection every week, and she continues to feel that the swimming the rheumatologist pushed her into a couple of years ago has a beneficial effect on her mobility. That swimming decision was also of great benefit to me. Since her childhood in Bray, Anne has been a very good swimmer, with an elegant backstroke and crawl. Her backstroke is particularly powerful and as a student she swam on the UCD team and was Co. Wicklow backstroke champion.

Our current aim is to swim twice a week at the Rochestown Lodge Hotel and Spa near Blackrock where we have membership of the pool and gym. While my schoolboy swimming was good, it was largely focussed on lifesaving, where the emphasis was on strength and confidence in the water, using the breast-stroke for visibility and calm in any approach to someone struggling in the water.

Anne’s teaching has now improved my crawl and backstroke so that (I believe!) I am now swimming with more style and speed than ever before. This swimming has also helped my general movement and I am sure is good for heart and lungs.

My heart irregularity seems completely unthreatening and is often forgotten on a day to day basis. What I do try to remember is the daily dose of my warfarin medication. Although the nuisance of warfarin is that it has to be monitored by frequent blood tests, it is believed to offer some protection against the risk of strokes. I was diagnosed with the genetic disorder haemochromatosis in the middle of this year. I am glad to say it had done no damage to liver or kidneys and by the end of the year my absorption of iron was brought under control through phlebotomy treatment.

It seems worth mentioning these personal matters because many people, particularly men, can be slow to seek medical advice. Most potentially life-threatening conditions now have active support organisations and I have been particularly impressed by the Irish Haemochromatosis Association.

At the beginning of 2008 I agreed to be considered for appointment as convenor of the Congregational Committee of Monkstown Preparative Meeting. This Committee is largely responsible for reviewing the life and development of the Meeting, its members and attenders. In agreeing to take on this job, I had in mind the possibility that I might be able to help organise some outreach events in Monkstown that could help to raise the Meeting’s profile and even attract some new members.

I am among those Quakers who think that the philosophy and way of life fostered by the Religious Society of Friends has a lot to offer people who find a lack of spirituality and decency in the world around them. Having said this, I must admit that, even at the present time, when the dishonesty of the financial industry and clerical sex abuse are the stuff of daily headlines, there are few signs of any widespread determination to shape society differently. Discussion of the role of religion seems to be largely confined to people with an instinctive interest in such things.

Poetry and travel were again important features of the year. Following the successful Dublin launch of “Home”, I set about ensuring its availability in a number of local and city bookshops and arranging some kind of Brussels launch. Poetry books are like pictures at an exhibition, the best hope of sales is at launches and gallery openings.

Obviously the Brussels scene had changed somewhat since my retirement. The Irish Club no longer had its own space and my links with staff and colleagues in the Commission had dropped off. On the other hand, the poetry group was still active, with my friends Carmel and Brendan Sinnott offering their house for a launch evening. Nicola Lennon, the daughter of a former colleague, Peter Lennon, who had started a small international bookshop with a space for readings and book club activities, was also prepared to give me a date there. I was able to take up these offers in February and they made for a happy visit to Brussels.

Unexpectedly, later in the year, I was offered two lunchtime readings at Chapters bookshop in Dublin, through the good auspices of a new publishing initiative by a company called Seven Towers. Their drive and enthusiasm has brought back more open mic opportunities and is helping quite a number of aspiring poets and novelists to get into print.

Almost everyone who buys my poetry has some awareness of my background and interests. Most such readers seem to take something positive from one or two poems and welcome the fact that the books look well and that the writing is accessible. As I enjoy writing the poems and working with Ross on the production of the books, my activity as a poet has a positive feel to it, all round.

At the same time, I am not in any position to make any claims as to the quality of my efforts and the nature of the reviewing process is such that no book of mine is likely to get a serious review by a well-known critic, other than a friendly brief mention in “Books Ireland”.

For this reason I asked Kieran Furey, a poet who I respect, and who has a good critical mindset, to take a hard look at “Home” and to tell me what he really thought of it. He did as asked. Rather than being disappointed by his verdict that the content was perhaps 40 per cent poetry, I found his commentary extremely helpful and reassuring.

He identified one poem as a poem he would love to have written himself and dismissed the two longer poems as largely cut-up prose. This seems entirely fair. What keeps pulling me into such prose is, I think, the wish to get away from the difficulty of writing deeply-considered stuff and my natural inclination to go on and on.

The year’s travel dimension was provided by the second University Club trip, this time from Santiago de Compostela to Oporto and Lisbon, and by visits to London, Brussels and Leeds. London and Brussels have obviously been a feature of regular family visiting, but Leeds is now also on the map because of a decision by Patricia to make a radical change of career.

She took some leave of absence from her financial controller job to see if she might be able to develop a life for herself working as an independent language specialist, focussed on teaching, editing, and so on. As part of the process, she took up an opportunity to do an MA in Screen Translation at the University of Leeds.

Anne and I were delighted to go to Leeds in December for the conferring of her MA.

The University Club trip was another great success. The highest compliment paid to the organisation and the route arrangements was that travellers who had enjoyed the previous Saint Sebastian trip said they could not decide which was the better of the two trips. Anne and I would agree with this verdict. Again we visited places that other group tours, or indeed individual tourists, would find difficult to access. I think particularly of the university library at Coimbra and the centuries-old Irish Dominican Convent in Lisbon.

The year ended with another happy Christmas. Patricia came to stay with us and Justin and family came to the Fitzpatrick Killiney Castle Hotel. The highlight of the holiday was a big party in our small house. We managed to entertain 16 adults and 14 children on Boxing Day. This brought together most of our family connections in Dublin. It worked because we signed on a puppeteer to entertain the kids. Julie Rose McCormick is from a puppeteering family we know through Monkstown Meeting and is a brilliant entertainer. In addition to setting up a tiny theatre in our front room bay window for an enthralling puppet show, she turned out to be a wonderful face-painter and balloon sculptor who kept children of all ages occupied while our dining room and conservatory were filled with adult family chat.

Some notable omissions in my account of this year get some coverage in a lengthy diary poem I wrote between 14 March and 9 August. That longer poem was called “Breaking the Lights”.

After an opening haiku, twenty-four sections chronicle some artistic and political highlights, travels and bereavements in those months. There was the retrospective for the painter Cecil King and a prize for the poet Harry Clifton, the resignation of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the loss of the Lisbon Referendum, visits to Leeds, London and Madrid, and the deaths of three men who left their marks on Irish life and on my own journey: Dr. Patrick Hillery, former President, Robert Greacen, poet, and Tom Garvey, former colleague and family friend.

Read more: 2009 – Celebration and Loss