Bairbre Power

There’s been this particular museum I’ve wanted to visit for some time. I was brought up visiting museums at weekends. My late dad, Billie, introduced me to visiting graveyards and reading the head stones and apart from the one pilgrimage to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris to visit the resting place of Chopin and Oscar Wilde, and indeed Glasnevin cemetery where Billie himself now rests, I’m not a big fan of graveyard tours. Give me a good museum or art gallery any day.

Last Sunday, I visited a Dublin museum in order to address a riddle of sorts.

Was it my imagination or was I really part of a museum exhibit dating back almost 30 years? A while back, I’d visited the National Print Museum in Ballsbridge to interview someone. The museum collects documents and exhibits all relating to the craft of printing and the newspaper world in which I’ve worked for three decades. As we chatted, I thought I caught a glimpse of something curious out of the corner of my eye. In the distance was a pillar with a handful of front page stories in metal and there, in the middle of the column, was that mine I could see?

Living in the neighbourhood last year, I kept on promising I would call by and check it out. It was on the ‘to do’ list but never got ticked, until last Sunday. The Print Museum is home to The Press Cafe which has gotten rave reviews so, if nothing else, I’d have a delicious lunch. Culture and a slice of cake — the perfect response to a grey October Sunday.

Walking into the Garrison Chapel at Beggar’s Bush Barracks on Haddington Road, my stomach gave a flutter. Normally I would put that down to my mischievous hiatus hernia but this day, I knew I was excited. I was like a woman on a mission, going back in time, fired up on an nostalgic adventure.

I went straight to the back of the museum and into The Press Cafe, but could see no sign of the pillar where I thought I’d seen ‘my story’ first. Putting on my detective hat and the good specs, I started to check out the place methodically, from right to left, but still no joy.

My heart sank a little, o be honest and I decided to call it quits for the day. Over lunch, I chastised myself severely at the sheer vanity of this outing.

Was this some misjudged, midlife adventure or simply some egotistical quest for immortality? At home,

I have plenty of evidence of my journalist adventures over the last 30 years, all stacked high in vertical columns of yellowing newspaper front pages that

I’ve insisted on keeping.

I’ve toyed with throwing out all my cuttings on the basis that my two adult children won’t want to read them but just maybe one day one of my grandchildren will wonder what granny did for a living.

Wandering around the museum filled me with nostalgia for the good old days, when the news editor would boom at you “don’t take your coat off” and sent you back out the door with a ‘snapper’ to another breaking news story. We always had pocketfuls of coins to phone in our stories from public phone boxes which, just ike the machines those newspapers were printed on in Abbey Street, doesn’t exist any more.

I think Sunday’s museum visit might have had something to do with the emotions and thought process that come with becoming a grandmother and finding yourself being head of the family.

Just when I was getting ready to leave, into my story walked Carla Marrinan, CEO of the museum who kindly offered to help. She pointed out their four exhibits of stereoplate metal cylinders from which newspapers were printed and you could read the front page newspaper stories in reverse.

I checked the mastheads, combed the stories but there was no sign of my handiwork. I was relieved in one way. Maybe I wasn’t quite museum material yet! Let’s face it, it doesn’t exactly fill you with delight in a digital, millennial-driven society to be part of a museum exhibit in your fifth decade on this earth. I turned back to say goodbye to Carla when I decided to check out the very end of the metal cylinder which was partially hidden from sight. I got down on my knees and peered closely and when that didn’t work, I sprawled out flat on my back and cuddled close to the cylinder. I still couldn’t make it out. As one last throw of the dice, I stretched my phone around the corner to where I couldn’t see and took a photo.

The image came up clear in black and white. I checked the byline and there it was. “By Bairbre Power” in backwards type from a front page story on the Evening Herald, Saturday April

2 1988. It was about drugs in Dublin and was jointly written with my colleague, John Downing, still of this newspaper parish. I can’t say I remember writing the story, but went home vowing to bring back young colleagues from the modern print age for a tour. Maybe one day my granddaughter Lily will visit, too — she’ll find me somewhere between the

1916 Proclamation and the linotype machines.

After last Sunday, I didn’t feel antiquated, I felt relevant, in a museum-kind-of-way.

Let’s face it, it doesn’t exactly fill you with delight to be part of a museum exhibit in your fifth decade on earth