I doubt many people were listening to RTE's Lyric FM today at 6pm for the 'Lay of the Land' programme, this series looks at various notable places of Irelands heritage and interviews artists, musicians and the odd photographer (!) who find inspiration there. http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/gracenotes/1113876.html (scroll down to November 19th)

This weeks programme was about the hills of Loughcrew and the cairns, it featured poets, musicians and, erm.. me! speaking about how the landscape and the monuments inspired and informed their work. Nuala Hayes from Lyric FM was in Cairn T for the autumn equinox this year and recorded my spoken commentary of what was happening during the alignment (unknown to me!), I was explaining it to some people who had travelled a very long distance to be there for the equinox.

Anyway, the program went out tonight and thankfully my own contributions were pretty minimal and oddly, the whole recording from inside the cairn that inspired them to come out to my house and interview me was absent. On the morning of the equinox, the lady from Lyric FM was denied an interview with the OPW and was not allowed 'officially' to record inside so this may have something to do with it but nonetheless, the tales and memories of Peter Fallon who lives around the hills was very interesting. Musician Michael Holohan was the first person, as far as I know, to learn how to play the bronze age long horn which was discovered in a bog and he plays some music recorded with it.

I recorded it on the oul' tape deck so if anyone is interested in a listen I'm going to digitise it and hopefully find some webspace to upload it, I'll try to have it up in the next few days. I know some people will find the poetry recitals particularly interesting.