At the end of July, while I was combining rape, a well-known south Meath landmark was blown up. Thankfully it wasn’t Trim’s 23m Wellington monument which in earlier, more immature days had caused controversy.

Apparently, those of a certain mind didn’t like the eminent soldier/statesman and (arguably) self-styled Englishman smirking down on the town. The family seat was at Dangan, just out the Summerhill road.

Anyhow, in the early 1950s, a staunchly nationalist member of Trim Town Council was particularly bothered by Wellington and sought his removal. The council discussed selling the monument should anyone want to buy such an edifice.

The Duke of Westminster’s man in Ireland heard of this and he was interested. John Sisk quoted the duke £15,000 to dismantle it stone by stone and move it to his Irish estate, Fort William in Waterford, for re-erection.

That’s grand said the duke to Sisk but when Trim was pressed to sell, the councillors reneged and it ended there.

But I’ve digressed badly.

Wellington is safe but an ugly 1980s steel transmission tower was, in fact, blown up. And although the 250m long wave radio mast in Summerhill could transmit to Moscow, it wasn’t Russian secret agents who sabotaged it.

No, the decision to cease broadcasting on long wave had been taken in Montrose for reasons of cost saving – about which RTÉ would know nothing. The mast was no longer needed, they said, as long wave was only listened to by Irish-born UK geriatrics and so explosives were fixed to its base and down it came.

The locals are delighted but I’m more muted.

The mast was built in 1988 to transmit the new, all music, 24-hour radio station Atlantic 252 primarily into the UK and also much further afield. The broadcasting studios were in Trim in Mornington House where my grandmother had lived previously and right beside the saleyard prior to its closure in 2001.

But the station presented a very suave UK image, well removed from the Friday mart day smells as they floated through the Trim air. And lowing cattle left in the saleyard overnight weren’t popular.

Spilling rain

It could be spilling rain in Trim but you wouldn’t know it from the Atlantic 252 forecast which continually looked out into the brighter blue skies of London and southern England.

As Gay Byrne said, the best pictures are on radio

As a young buck in the early 1990s, I was a regular listener and became besotted with the lovely English accent of their weather presenter who, in my mind’s eye, was a lady who commuted into work on the tube.

As Gay Byrne said, the best pictures are on radio.

I mentioned this to my brother, Thomas, who said she was a lovely lady all right but not to get too carried away as she was from out the road in Rathmolyon and had never left it. He had lunch with her in the Wellington Court (now the Castle Arch) hotel in Trim.

The red marker lights of the tower were always a constant companion while combining at night. But let me take you back to one night combining wheat with the 1660 Case Axial Flow in the early 1990s when I was tuned to Atlantic 252.

The hauntingly beautiful voice of Sinéad O’Connor suddenly filled the cab with the hymn, Amazing Grace. I’ll never forget it and, as an aside and if I may, let us hope Sinéad is surrounded by amazing grace now, a peace that seemed to be denied her in a short and troubled life. Atlantic 252 left our lives in 2001 and, ultimately, RTÉ took over the wavelength until it was axed in April of this year.