Oileáin - a Changing of the Guard

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DaveWalsh
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Joined: Sat Oct 26, 2013 9:37 am

Oileáin - a Changing of the Guard

Post by DaveWalsh » Wed Oct 12, 2016 9:07 pm

The attached photo records the formal retirement of DWalsh as owner of “Oileáin” and the handing over the keys of the kingdom to Sean Pierce the new editor. Saturday 8th October 2016 at the Symposium in Sligo.

Oileáin was with me and very much a part of my life for a quarter of a century. That’s a big chunk of anyone’s life. Now it is time to move on. I was 40 when Oileáin started and in “good nick”. I was 54 for O1, 64 for O2, and by O3 I’d be 75. Nothing I have yet noticed in the progression 40/65 in DWalsh suggests that the 75 year old version should be left in charge of anything so important.

“Each man kills the thing he loves” (Oscar Wilde – Ballad of Reading Gaol) and I identify myself right now as the greatest enemy of Oileáin. I moved to save Oileáin from me.

I am forever grateful to the sea kayaking community of Ireland whose support for the project has been at all times utterly generous over the whole of this last 25 years. Such support from the target audience is invaluable, as is understood by all those who spend hours over tedious detail making sure the end product looks like the flick of a switch. Ask MTB ...... Positivity makes all the difference, like cycling downhill in the warm and the dry, or paddling with the tide and a tailwind.

Transfer that positivity immediately and completely to Sean. He needs every bit of it.

Last, on a personal note, I want to thank particularly Fred Cooney for keeping me alive, Sean for photography and endless data for updating, Des the editor who made me comprehensible, Geo Stephen Mike and Pat Ewen for the big and early inputs, but most of all my wife Sheila for living with it all (in 1991 we had four children in national school- for some no further explanation will be necessary, for others none is possible).

Over and out.

DWalsh
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