Heard on the radio some days ago that Father Brown the Jesuit priest who died in 1960 left 42,000 negatives from his hobby of taking photographs. A selection of these was printed some years ago and now a second book of photographs concentrating on Limerick has just been published. Father Brown died in 1960 and most of his negatives were in black and white.

Met two students from Imperial College London who stopped for a break in a walk from Galway to Dublin. They set out from Galway on December 29^th and reached Shannonbridge in two days. Mike Brownnutt and Phil Lorbishley are science engineering students and for the past two years they walked the 80 miles along Hadrian’s Walk in England in 2003, and they did The Great Glenway Walk in Scotland in 2004.

They had a target of six days set to walk from Galway to Dublin and reached Shannonbridge on the evening of the second day. At night they camp along the route and after having some food they set out in the dark hoping to find the Grand Canal as they planned to walk alongside the canal from Moystown to Dublin. They met Mary Allen when they crossed the bridge and Mary directed them to the pub for food.

Mike said he was in his seventh year in Imperial College and I got the impression he was beginning to like it there. Maybe they will select The Pilgrims Walk to Clonmacnois one year as their route this year did not have time for a visit.Eamon Brady, London and Culliagh is home on holiday for a few days. Eamon is son of Stephen Brady and he works at Heathrow Airport with a firm that carry out maintenance work on the runways.

People who died recently include Dr. Francis Mac Kiernan who was bishop of Kilmore Diocese. Des O Brien who was a member of the 1948 Grand Slam Irish rugby team that won the Grand Slam. Barney Finlay Athlone well known publican in Athlone and London and auctioneer. May they rest in peace.

At Barneys funeral today the guest celebrant of the Funeral Mass remembered Barney’s establishment in London which was known as Dublin Castle. It was a great meeting place for thousands of Irish and others in London and provided drinks and meals and acted as a work center where people advertised looking for workers or seeking work. Barney often acted the part of matchmaker and often contacted the celebrant to arrange for couples to get married. Father Colm Conlon was telling us on the phone today that he met Barney’s son Ray some years ago in California.

We had some rain for a couple of days and Brian has noted that the river level has risen from 3.25 Metres on Saturday to 3.50 Metres this morning.

A Dublin couple stopped off the other day and they wanted to know where they might buy a bag of turf as they liked the aroma from a peat fire. When Mick offered to sell them a bag they asked if it was smokeless as they live in a smoke free zone in Dublin. No sale. When we told Patrick Kenny from America, Falthy, Oldtown, Athlone he said that he would have sold them a bag of smokeless turf. The only condition was they were not to light it.

Great news that Michelle Egan, nee Devine gave birth to a baby girl this morning. Michael and Brid will be particularly pleased as this is the first of their godchildren that was a girl. The Egan family originated in Garrymore near Shannonbridge.