After many years based in Dublin Read-out has finally "Gone West", not so much heeding the admonition of Horace Greely - we are neither young nor we suspect, are we going west enough - but fulfiling a dream of youth and settling in an area where the ancient language of Ireland is the vernacular and where the pace of life is rural and where three cars on the road constitute a traffic snarl-up worthy of headlines on Raidio na Gaeltachta! Nor are we following the instructions of Minister Charlie McCreevy when he sent all the government departments to various rural districts out of the capital causing the headline "Gabhaigí siar" (Go west!) to appear in one of our dailies.

The name of the place in Irish is Caorán na gCearc Theas - which means the "southern hill of the grouse" - but that is such a fuss to pronounce, as T.S. Elliott might have said, that we usually call it just Caorán.

Caorán is a small community which appears isolated on first glance but in fact is full of real life and within easy distance of what passes for civilisation in the early 21st century. Galway, our nearest city and the fastest growing urban area in Europe, is about 20 pleasant miles away. and through Galway we can fly to anywhere in the world.