I have this thing I call the Wedding Test which goes like this.  You are sitting at the reception of a wedding and making small talk with the person beside you while tucking in to your slab of beef (or salmon).  You have discussed the bride and groom, the bridesmaid's dresses, the mother of the bride's hat, how nice the service was, the table centrepiece, how ridiculously OTT weddings have become (''they spent €40,000?!! My God are you kidding me?!''); how nervous the best man is about his speech, the institution of marriage, kids, traffic, the price of property etc etc.  Having established a wine-fuelled comfortable rapport, they then feel comfortable enough with you to pop the question: 

''So eh, what do you do?''

Up to very recently I've always dreaded that question.  It's a loaded question, a question that judges you.  Measures you.  A question that expects.  ''What do you do?'' Four little words with a sting in the tail.  Four little words, the answer to which will define you in the eyes of that person.  Say for example you say that you're a Managing Director or a Doctor - it will immediately establish you as a successful person in your dinner companion's eyes. Yes, we are all just that shallow.  How do you feel about the answer that comes out of your mouth?  Are you happy with your response?  Are your proud of what you do for a living?  Or do you mutter something through a mouth full of roast potato and hope someone will start clinking glasses to herald the start of the speeches? 

For ten years I did the latter. ''I'm a salesman'', I would mumble and hope that they didn't hear me or that the person on the far side of them would ask a question and they would be distracted.  Somewhere else at the table Mrs Kelly (my wife is an insanely private person and has therefore expressly forbidden me to use her first name, Eilish, anywhere in this book) would be saying ''I'm an accountant'' to her dinner companion and watching their eyes glaze over.  More often than not I would be too embarrassed to say ''I'm a salesman'' and would say instead ''I work for an I.T. company''.  Then they would say, ''Oh very good.  Are you a programmer?'' And I would say ''eh, no I'm in sales.'' I tried to avoid the word salesman as much as I could.  I can't really explain why I was so embarrassed by that word - and I was more embarrassed by the word than by the profession itself.  The job itself I could just about handle. But the word, salesman - I hated that word.  (Incidentally I'm not alone on this one - you will never find a salesperson with the word ''salesperson'' on their business card.  It will say account manager, sales executive, new business development manager, sales account executive, sales development manager.  Pretty much anything but salesperson). 

To many people the word “salesman” conjures up images of someone slightly shifty, perhaps even a bit false or smarmy.  It always seems to suggest that something unpleasant is about to happen.  If you ask someone what a sales person will be like to know socially they will say that they might be fun and there certainly won't be too many lulls in the conversation (salespeople do like to talk after all) but …. won't they always be looking for an angle?  Can we trust them, really?  We've become incredibly tired and cynical about sales, advertising, marketing and PR and rightly so in my view - we always tend to think that those professions are trying to con us in to buying products we don't need and worse, they have Jedi mind-tricks up their sleeves that make us powerless to resist their charms. 

Back at the dinner table, if the conversation developed beyond these initial forays, and it rarely did, I would find myself getting all defensive about my job, quite uninvited.  I would say things like ''well sure it's only a job'' or ''it pays the bills''.  But of course a job is never only a job and we are deluding ourselves when we say this.  It's far more than that.  In the average working life of 45 years, we will spend 10,800 days at work.  Think about that.  10,800 days.  Sounds a lot doesn't it?  Our job is something we will be doing until we're 65 - so we better bloody well like it.  And I was starting to realise - admittedly all too slowly - that I bloody well didn't.

I've never understood why as a society we have all bought in to the notion of retirement being the ultimate goal of a working life.  It's held up as this utopian destination that we will reach one day in the distant future when we will be able to kick back and enjoy life.  When we see retirement as the ultimate goal, we are willing to put up with all manner of misery in the workplace in the meantime - ''My job's shit but never mind - when I get to 65 then I'll live''.  My father died when he was 57 so I think that's always made me circumspect about the chances of even reaching retirement age. Imagine working away thinking ''ah at least in 8 years time I'll be able to retire, then I'll live God damn it!'' and then kablamo, you're time is up.  You'd be pretty miffed, wouldn't you?  I remember sitting in a meeting with a pensions adviser when I was about 25 and he told me I had to start putting in 400 POUNDS a month in to my pension - I had to stop myself from laughing in his face.  The notion that I would deliberately deprive myself of such a large chunk of my earnings and let some bank hold on to it for the next 40 years just seemed absurd to me, particularly given that I might not be around to get it back. 

In your twenties you don't tend to waste much time thinking ''long term''.  In fact, if you think at all it's probably about sex, or beer and how to get your hands on lots and lots of sex and beer.  The notion of a career is completely alien to a person in their twenties and rightly so - at that stage of our lives work is a means to an end.  When you are in your twenties you do tend to ''work to live'' as opposed to ''live to work'' - that's a tired old cliché but there's a lot of truth in it.  You work to get money to buy beer which will hopefully lead you eventually to more sex.  It's a simple formula.  Your twenties was a decade for pubs, clubs, parties, sexual exploration and falling down drunk.  Your thirties is a decade for getting real.

When I turned thirty I started to think long and hard about where I was going with my working life and whether I wanted to spend any more time as a sales person.  I remember reading an obituary in a newspaper one day and wondering to myself - when I die, will there be an obituary in the paper?  I know that sounds painfully vain - and don't get me wrong I know that (a) there are loftier measures of our worth as human beings then whether we have done something newsworthy and (b) there are also other things in life that are far more important than our careers - the type of person we were, the way we treated others etc.  But you get my point. If you can wrangle an obituary it probably means you have done something of note in your life.  Would anyone want to write an obituary about a salesman?  ''Michael Kelly died yesterday aged 57 while in the middle of a sales pitch on storage area networks to ABC Corp.  He was on slide 18 of a 138-slide PowerPoint presentation when he keeled over dead from boredom.''

In your thirties you are more than likely settled down, hopefully with the love of your life, so when it comes to sex there's a status quo of sorts in operation - you've a fair idea when and how regularly it will arrive so you stop getting worked up about it in the interim.  As for beer, well for some inexplicable reason these days, two or three pints makes you slur your words and fall asleep in to your pint and your hangovers now seem to last for four days.  You start using a phrase that you thought would never pass your lips: ''I can't drink anymore.'' Fundamentally in your thirties you can do something which you could not do in your twenties: you can imagine yourself being forty.  Or fifty.  Or God forbid old and wrinkly.  You can imagine yourself being un-cool, driving too slowly, befuddled, overly fond of routine and finding music too loud.  You realise with considerable anguish that people in their teens and twenties now consider you to be a stuffy old fool - even though you think you're still pretty hip.

I remember in my twenties being convinced I was going to be a millionaire.  It wasn't a childish pipedream - it was an unshakeable belief, so much so that I voiced it to other people, most notably the future Mrs Kelly back when she was my girlfriend.  In fact, I think I actually wrote her a cheque for a million pounds when I got my first cheque book, which if I am not mistaken she still has (that's a little freaky that she kept it come to think of it - though she was an accountant after all).  I wasn't sure how I was going to become a millionaire - I had no plan to achieve this grand financial milestone.  As I frittered away my twenties selling I.T. systems I could console myself that I had lots of time to switch in to that new career or stumble on to that great invention or idea which would bring me my millions and allow future Mrs Kelly to cash that cheque.  But in my thirties I started gradually to realise - you know what, that's not going to happen.  That gurgling noise that I could hear in my subconscious was the sound of the last vestiges of my youthful dreams going down the plughole.

For the first time I realised that this job I was in might actually be what I would spend the rest of my life doing and that thought alone, pitched me in to sheer terror.  You build up capital when you spend time in a job.  You build up expertise, knowledge, credit, recognition, maybe even renown.  All of which makes it difficult to jump ship to another career.  So you don't.  You pass five years in a job, then seven, then ten.  Pretty soon it's twenty, then thirty years.  Next thing you know a young CEO is thanking you for your long years of service and handing you a gold watch and a card signed by colleagues, most of whom don't know your name.  And then?  Apparently, that's when you're supposed to start having fun.

I couldn't imagine being a salesman at 40 years of age - never mind 65 - and once you arrive at that realisation, moving on becomes an absolute necessity.  Thankfully it was made less difficult by the fact that I was gradually becoming disillusioned by the corporate world and the grubby sciences that surround it: sales, marketing, PR, advertising, guff, lies, pretend, bend-a-rule, break-a-rule, tell the customer what they want to hear.  In my last five years working in sales I built up what I consider to be a healthy suspicion about corporate motive.  When it comes to the crunch, capitalism is cold and brutal and its overriding loyalty is delivering profit to shareholders.  Companies don't really give a rats about the people they employ.  We are expendable.  We are a means to an end.  Most of us know this but we forget at times in our lives and think the company we work for is some how different.  Or we think that we are somehow different, better and therefore immune. 

My reasons for staying put for nearly ten years in a job I disliked were varied and complex.  Firstly there was that general malaise and fear of the unknown that cripples us all to some degree.  The fact that I was earning really good money was also a factor - good wages are very seductive and it's tough to deliberately turn off the tap.  Bizarrely, earning good money tends to tie you down even more - ''I'm earning good money,'' you tell yourself, ''so now's a good time to BORROW!'' I seemed to have accumulated a dizzying array of fiscal responsibilities - mortgages, loans, credit card bills.  You can't just give up your job and live on air.  Can you?  And anyway, even if I did move on - what would I move on to?  Sales is quite specialised - people like to think that a salesman is skilled at selling and that's true to a point.  But what I was good at was selling I.T. systems.  I could no more move in to selling say chemicals, than I could move on to being a racing driver.  I could move on to a different I.T. company but that would be the same shit, different venue.  So on Fridays I would open the jobs supplement believing firmly that some new career, some ideal job would magically pop out from the page, delivering me from my purgatory. But it never happened, probably because I didn't have any clue what the ideal job was. 

There's a saying that if you can work at something you love, you will never work a day in your life.  Which sounds wonderful.  But are there really people out there for whom that holds true?  When I thought about it, which I did frequently, there were two possible jobs that I considered would be my dream jobs.  Something to do with music.  Or something to do with writing.  Both of those things were hobbies of mine.  But just how do you go about turning a hobby in to a job - what you might call a jobby?  So I stayed put.  And the years rolled past.  When I look back on it now, I feel pretty mad that I wasted so many years whining and moaning and doing damn all to change the situation.  I'm convinced, there is one reason we settle down comfortable but unhappy in the little rut we scratch out for ourselves: consumerism.  Consumerism is a vast, highly complex conspiracy - It keeps us wedged in jobs we don't like, working every day God sends so that we can keep paying for the cobble-lock driveway, iPods, MP3 players, a spanking new Mini Cooper convertible, hot-tubs, a collection of DVDs we will never watch and CDs we will rarely listen to, 55-inch high definition plasma TV's, gym subscriptions, pilates programmes, yoga holidays.  As a wise man once said, we are more eager to amass than to realise. 

The real genius of this conspiracy is that we remain completely oblivious to the fact that if we simplified our lives slightly and got rid of (or didn't buy) the stuff we don't really need we mightn't have to work as hard or for as long.  Or even more intriguing we could chose to work at something we love even if it doesn't pay so well.  The conspiracy has been so successful it has warped the nature of work itself beyond all recognition.  Work is no longer a means to an end; it is no longer a way to provide food and shelter for ourselves and our loved ones.  It has become instead something we MUST spend an entire lifetime doing and all the while the original objective, i.e. providing food and shelter, becomes a sort of by-product.  If we don't buy in to this model, we are considered slackers, wasters, losers.  We are not game-players.  Work has become so all-encompassing it has relegated living our lives to second place. 

This book doesn't pretend to know how to unravel that complex conspiracy completely or even slightly.  All it shows is how two people shouted ENOUGH and then started to simplify, to downshift.  To opt out.  If we can claim any credit at all, which we don't, it is that we finally came to a really small but very important (and entirely obvious) realisation: less money going out means you need less money coming in.  And that opens up a whole world of opportunities.  All of which is really easy to say, fairly easy to type but very hard to do.  It means flipping everything you know on its head.  Economists tell us that cheaper credit has liberated Irish people.  When interest rates were 18% or whatever they were in the bad old days, people could only afford a house worth 10,000 and the repayments still swallowed up half their salaries.  These days interest rates are as close to 0% as they can be (although they are creeping up) so we can afford to spend €800,000 on a two bedroom townhouse in some previously rural town about two hours drive from work, can't we?  100% mortgages are now the norm - there's not even a necessity to save a deposit these days.  Whenever any pundit pops up on TV or radio to offer the possibility that this might not be the greatest idea in the world, they get shot down as if just by mentioning it they are not playing ball.  Shame on you Sir!  Cheap credit has made us free! 

Arse! Cheap credit has made us slaves!  Hundreds of thousands of couples locked in to 30 and 40 year mortgages with repayments that are so high, there will never be any other option but for both of them to work all the hours God sends.  40 years!  What age will they be when they finally get their mortgage paid off?  65.  Ah retirement age - the Garden of Eden, El Dorado, Nirvana, the old utopian chestnut, the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow.  An entire lifetime of working dedicated to paying off a bank that makes more money in a minute than you would in a hundred lifetimes.  And because both parents have to work to pay off the mortgage, the little darling they brought in to the world gets plonked into a crèche from dawn to dusk.  You're not happy about it but what other option do you have?  The exorbitant costs of childcare lock down the rut even further until there is literally no way out of it.  That's not freedom.  It's a modern form of slavery.

Part of the problem is the desire to amass, to have stuff.  It's only when you accept that as fact that you can start to consider downshifting as an option.  Our aspirations keep us trapped just as surely as a monthly mortgage repayment and in some ways they are harder to let go of.  Aspirations can be just as tight fitting a strait-jacket as things.  Downshifting isn't easy in modern society because it is all about accepting that less is more.  It's about making sacrifices.  It's about saying - I do not want a house as big as our neighbours.  I do not want a new car.  I don't want three holidays a year.  In modern day Ireland which is fundamentally about wanting pretty much everything and where our value as a person is measured by how much stuff we own, downshifting is also about ploughing a lonely furrow.

Now, I began to say to myself, what if you worked at something you love and you don't want to retire when you're sixty-five?  Imagine the freedom that would grant you?  Then you wouldn't need to be giving €500 a month to the pensions people.  And on your spreadsheet where you mark down all your incomings and outgoings, you can take €500 out of the outgoings column.  And that's when you see the first chink of light.  Well, you say to yourself, if I need €500 less each month, then I can afford to earn €500 less.  Right now.  And maybe instead of working twelve hours a day I can work, let's say, eight or seven or six.  Or maybe four days a week instead of five.  The extra free time would be sort of like moving your retirement forward by thirty-five years or so.  Which makes sense because at least you know that now you are blessed with the good health to enjoy it.  Now you're starting to see the potential.  You wonder is there anything else you can take out of your outgoings column.  There's a car loan there for €400 a month.  It's a hell of a nice car.  But how much free time would €400 a month buy me, if I was to sell it off and buy something cheaper?  See what I'm getting at?

With any new start-up business, there comes a nerve-jangling moment when you just have to get your product or service out there, even if you're unsure whether there's a demand there for it.  When Dunboyne, Co. Meath native Keith McDonnell set up a hiking and adventure tours company in 2007, he designed a 15-day adventure tour of Ireland and put it up on his newly established website. 

Initially just two people signed up for the trip and McDonnell was caught in a classic catch-22 situation.  He had to go ahead with the trip now that people had signed up for it - but he didn't exactly relish the notion of touring around Ireland for two weeks with just two punters.  ''With a tour like that, anything less than three people, really turns in to an extended counselling session,'' he laughs. 

Thankfully orders for the trip trickled in eventually and to be on the safe side, McDonnell managed to convince some friends to come along to bulk up the numbers.  In the end the tour set off with an eclectic mix of Irish, Canadian, Israeli, Swiss and French tourists of all ages.  ''I knew if I could fill a tour like that in my first month, then it would probably work long term.''

An avid mountaineer and extreme sports enthusiast, McDonnell studied Electrical Engineering in Kevin Street and when he graduated spent time travelling in adventure sport meccas like Australia and New Zealand.  On his return to Ireland, like many engineering graduates before him, he ended up in the I.T. industry - he spent a year working in system administration in the Office of the Taoiseach and then did contract work in the Financial Services sector.

The contract work allowed him to indulge his passion for adventure sports and from the age of 25-30 he took about two months off a year to travel - the more he travelled, the more he felt the job that was waiting for him on his return was not for him.  In between contracts McDonnell spent some time working as a guide with tour companies such as Killary Tours and the notorious Paddy Wagon.  ''It gave me a taste for life as a tour guide.  It was very good craic but incredibly tough work.  You basically can say goodbye to your friends and family and forget it if you're in a relationship.  You are on the road all the time.  But I just loved meeting people from all over the world - that's the appeal for me.''

It was enough to convince him that his dream job lay in operating tours and he also reckoned he spotted a gap in the tours market that wasn't being filled.  ''I spent a lot of time in New Zealand and they are renowned around the world as an adventure activities destination.  Ireland is sort of the northern hemisphere equivalent in terms of our scenery and we have the activities too but there are no packages out there to cater for people who are interested in adventure and extreme sports.''

In his spare time, he started making contacts with adventure clubs and tourism operators across Europe and beyond.  ''I was working away on it at night time and sometimes I have to say during the day at work.  I would be up until two or three in the morning sending out emails to anyone who had any connection with adventure sports.''

The company, called Extreme Ireland, opened for business in May 2007 and he ran his first tour shortly afterwards.  The decision to abandon the relative security of the I.T. industry for a more uncertain path was he says extremely tough.  ''It was a huge step, but my advice for anyone that is thinking about a new career is simply to do it. It's daunting but incredibly exciting. You will have highs and lows but overall you will feel so much better about yourself.''

The tours the company offer include treks and hill walking but also adventure activities like parachute jumps, bog snorkelling, kayaking, rock climbing and zorbing.  Zorbing?  ''In a nutshell, you roll down a hill suspended inside a three metre tall ball. It's great fun.''

His customers are generally pretty relaxed, he says, and there hasn't been any diva-like behaviour to contend with yet.  ''They are on their holidays so they are usually pretty cool.  At the end of the day you are their guide so you keep some distance.  You don't want it to be too personal.  They want to feel like they are in safe, professional hands so that's the main part of the job is making sure they feel confident and relaxed.''

Not surprisingly he has even less time on his hands now that he is running his own company.  ''My girlfriend does a lot of international travel with her job and I am away a lot.  That side of it is tough, I'll be honest.  There's a huge difference between the idealistic side of a job like this and the reality of running a business.  People say to me ‘look at you, you've got a great tan' and I'm thinking, yes but I'm working my ass off.''

Minor gripes aside, you get the impression of a guy who can't quite believe his luck.  ''Last week I was up Mount Brandon and I was sitting looking at the views and thinking, is this really what I do for a living?  There are lots of moments like that.  I know this is a cliché but this job is what I was meant to do.  I get great pleasure knowing people are enjoying their holidays - that gives me more satisfaction than a slap on the back from a manager or a pay rise!''

http://www.extremeireland.ie

There can be few more serene places to work then Christ Church Cathedral in Waterford.  Visitors stroll around in respectful hush taking in the beauty of this wonderful neo-classical building while classical music plays gently in the background. 

Ask for a guided tour of the cathedral and chances are it will be Erica Fay that will be doing the guiding (so to speak).  The Waterford woman worked for 23 years as an operator in Bausch & Lomb on the outskirts of the city before leaving manufacturing behind for this most peaceful of work environments.  Is it as idyllic as it looks?

''Oh yeah, it really is,'' she laughs.  ''I never mind coming in to work here and I've never gone home from work in bad form.  There is no stress involved, it's just a beautiful place to be.  The two words we always get back as feedback from visitors are peaceful and tranquil''

Fay joined Bausch & Lomb shortly after leaving school in 1980.  ''Things were bad job wise at the time so there weren't a huge amount of options available.  I looked at nursing but just felt it was a vocation that I didn't have and I also thought about art because my father was an art teacher.''

The multinational contact lens manufacturer opened in Waterford shortly before Fay left school and started a recruitment drive in the city.  ''I applied for a job as an operator and I just loved it at the start.  There was a really young work force and a party at the drop of a hat.  In any case, even if I hadn't liked it, it wasn't a time when you could go to your parents and say you weren't happy in a job.''

She was spared the worst of shift working because at the time the company's female employees were not permitted to work night shifts.  ''I started off doing just two shifts - the day shift and the 4-12 - which wasn't too bad.  Then I moved on to days which I did for eight years - that was brilliant.  Eventually I got a house and mortgage, so you sort of settle down then.  I won't say I was in a rut, but you're not likely to move on when you have those responsibilities.''

Fast forward to her twenty-third year of employment and the company announced the phasing out of day shifts.  ''It meant having to go back to three shifts, including nights.  I just thought, you know I'm 41 years of age - this company has been very good to me but this will be a step back rather than forward.''

She recalls the considerably uncertainty which surrounded her future the day she left the company.  ''I hadn't anything else lined up so there was a bit of trepidation there obviously.  I left on a Tuesday and my best friend left on the same day.  It was something we had discussed together.  It was very strange knowing we would never be going back there.  But somewhere in my mind, I knew it was the right thing to do.''

Assessing her options, Fay made the brave decision to return to education.  ''I decided to do a course in Tourism and Front Office skills in the Central Technical Institute in Waterford.  It was literally like going back to school - I was the oldest on the course by about twenty years.  There was a Russian girl who was 23 and the rest were kids just out of school.  I remember sitting down that first morning and thinking, oh God what have I done.  But of course I made some brilliant friends even though I was old enough to be their mother!''

After a year, Fay graduated with a FETAC diploma and was named Student of the Year.  ''That was a great boost to my confidence which was low at the time.  I just felt really good about it.''

It was her love of history that provided a clue as to what her dream job might be.  She has been a member of the Waterford Archaeological and Historical society for over twenty years and did an introductory course in archaeology while still with Bausch & Lomb.  ''While I was doing the course I heard that Christ Church were looking for volunteers so I went along and started doing weekends initially.''

Officially called the Cathedral of The Holy Trinity, Christ Church has been a constant presence in Waterford since the 11th century.  It is the only neo-classical Georgian Cathedral in Ireland and while still a place of Christian worship, it is also now a venue for concerts, recitals and exhibitions.  Fay acts as a tour guide as required, and works in the Cathedral's gift and coffee shop.

''I took to it like a duck to water and just loved learning about the history of the place.  It's all about meeting and greeting visitors when they come in and giving guided tours if they want them.  There are lots of questions about the cathedral and about Waterford in general.  There are also lots of questions from people looking to trace their family tree and genealogy is another passion of mine.''

It is a sign of more enlightened times that the people of Waterford are able to enjoy this beautiful building.  ''For a lot of older people when they come in, it's their first time in the building even though they have been living within a stone's throw of it all their lives.  There was a time when it was a mortal sin for Catholics to enter a Church of Ireland building.''

Brought up in the yachting town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, Shanks was immersed in the sport of sailing from an early age and initially planned a career in shipping.  ''I always thought that I would go in to shipping because my eyesight was too bad for the navy,'' he says, ''but I discovered while doing Marine Studies at Plymouth University that it wasn't what I wanted to do.''

After dedicating a year to sailing when he finished university, he ''fell in to'' a job in I.T. recruitment in London.  ''It was around 1995 and Windows was the hottest thing on the planet.  We were working with companies to find them developers and you just couldn't fail to make money.'' In 2000, with the I.T. industry in a slump, he left recruitment to establish a boat building company with friends.  ''As it happened it was the worst possible time to get in to it because as the tech stocks collapsed the people who had money, no longer did.  It was utterly cut-throat - they say that if you want to make a small fortune in boat building you must start with a large one.''

Competing at a sailing event in Dun Laoghaire in October 2000, he met his wife Tara and it was this budding relationship which brought him to live in Ireland permanently.  ''She was an auctioneer at a time and doing very well.  It would have been illogical for her to give that up and come to live in England, so I moved here.''

Shanks also made the decision to sail full-time and paired up with Max Treacy, an engineering graduate from Trinity, to go on the International Star Class circuit.  Given that there is no prize money in these events, who was paying their wages?  ''It is a combination of having some money ourselves, getting some funding from the Sports Council and having a series of sponsors.  Tara was also massively supportive.  Nobody gets in to sailing to make money.  The aim is to not lose money.  We would spend the winter training in Miami, then focus on the Spring Euros in April followed by the Worlds and European Championships in the summer.  There are ten or eleven events a year and massive amounts of travel.''

Despite encouraging finishes at the preceding World Championships the duo failed to qualify for the 2004 Athens Olympics.  That setback was the start of a miserable summer for Shanks.  In August he slipped down the hatch of a boat in Howth, falling six feet to the ground and breaking his back.  ''I completely crushed the top lumbar vertebrae and spent four weeks in a bed in Beaumont hospital without being able to move an inch.  It was a very depressing time for me.  I had an amazing consultant and I remember asking him whether I would walk again and he said I would.  And then I asked him could I sail again and he said there was no reason why not.  Breaking my back was a fairly seminal moment for me - it really makes you stop and think about what you want out of life.''

Four weeks to the day after the accident he walked out of hospital.  ''My back gradually healed itself and it is now stronger than it was before - the human body is incredible.'' Indeed - just 24 weeks after his accident Shanks competed with Treacy at the 2005 World Championships in Argentina.  He proudly shows me a framed photo of their boat leading the race with the Buenos Aires skyline in the background.  They eventually finished a credible 18th, a monumental achievement considering the injury from which he had just recovered. 

After Argentina, the pair decided to take a break from sailing.  Looking around for business opportunities, Shanks focussed in on massage.  ''I got a lot of deep tissue work after I broke my back and I was unable to find anywhere that really specialised in massage.  There were plenty of people doing it in their front room but it was very much a cottage industry.'' His new business, Bodytime opened its doors in Baggot Lane in January 2006.  Six therapists work in the Ballsbridge premises and the company is doing an increasing volume of corporate work.  ''We take over a boardroom and send in a team to do massage for employees.  It's very good for productivity and proven to reduce absenteeism.  It was difficult to convince employers of this at the start, but now they are coming to us.''

Shanks and Treacy have returned to sailing and were fourth in the Spring European Championships this year.  They are currently training with an eye on qualification for the Beijing Olympics.  Meanwhile there's another new project on the horizon - he and Tara moved from Dublin to Durrow in Co. Laois and bought Newtown House, a restored 18th century house and mill building (complete with one of the country's largest working water-mills).  ''It is probably a five year project but we want to turn this in to a home and business that has zero carbon footprint and eventually to have the mill building as a conference or retreat centre.  It's a huge responsibility to refurbish something that was such an integral part of this community.  I feel massively daunted by it but I think it's something we can manage.'' Given the adversity that he has overcome in the past - would you bet against him?

Jim Hendrick was fishing with his young son recently at Forlorn Point near Kilmore Quay in Co. Wexford when he suddenly realised that they were standing in exactly the same place where his grandfather taught him to fish when he was 9-years-old.  It's a testament to the love that Hendrick has for fishing that he still enjoys it as a hobby, despite recently establishing a business around the sport.

When Hendrick decided to set up a business bringing shore-anglers from around the world to fish for bass off the Wexford coast, people told him he was mad.  Fishing is a niche sport, they said, and saltwater fly-fishing is a niche area within a niche sport.  Shortly after he started trading however, a group of journalists came from France to experience bass fishing in the county and when an extensive feature about their experience was published in a French fishing magazine, his phone started ringing.  French anglers came in their droves, followed by Dutch, Belgians, Italians and Danes (and more recently, the Irish).

It's a far cry from the situation that Hendrick found himself in back in 2004.  A graduate of N.I.H.E. (now DCU) in Dublin, he had been working in manufacturing companies in Wexford in materials management and information technology roles - firstly Wexford Electronics which he left in 2001 and latterly with Snaptite.  ''I was brought in to implement an Enterprise Resource System for Snaptite and I basically engineered myself out of a role.  Once I had the system implemented there was nothing left for me to do.''

Out of work, he found himself wondering if it was time to move on from manufacturing and IT.  ''You can only take so much exposure to ‘Jim, my pc is not working' before you get frustrated by it,'' he laughs.  ''My wife Eileen is self employed.  She runs an interior design business and when I was working, we were only really seeing our kids for a few hours in the evening.  I started wondering why we bothered having kids at all if you weren't even getting to see them.''

Like many people looking for their dream job he looked to his hobbies for inspiration and wondered could he convert his expertise as a bass fisherman in to a fishing tourism business.  As if fate itself was knocking on his door, the semi-detached house next to them came on the market and the couple decided to buy it and use it as accommodation for visiting anglers - a risky proposition given the fact that Hendrick didn't have a job at the time.  With the assistance of a LEADER grant, they renovated the house to bring it up to Bord Failte accommodation standards. 

But what type of fishing to offer his visitors?  Having fished for bass all his life, Hendrick was inclined to stick to what he knew - but Wexford had little track record as a destination for bass fisherman.  ''The focus in Ireland had always been on pike, salmon and trout but I had been to Texas and Mexico as part of my job and I had been very influenced by the US anglers, in particular the technology that they use for bass angling.  I met with David Byrne from the Fisheries Board and I was asking him, why not bass?''

What's the appeal of the species?  ''For most anglers, catching a bass is a very big prize.  It's an enigmatic fish.  Bass fishing attracts a particular sort of angler, mainly young people.  It's considered almost an extreme sport because bass grow very large and they are very tough to catch.  It's physically very demanding.  This type of fishing - where you are fly or lure fishing from the shore - is new and exciting and because the equipment is lightweight and easy to carry, they can travel all over the world with the gear.  They are demanding tourists - it's not a case of them coming here and doing a spot of sedentary fishing.  They come here expecting to catch bass.''

His visitors typically spend a week in Ireland, fishing twice a day and visiting local tourist haunts such as Hook Head and Tintern Abbey.  The bass season - roughly from April to October - is a marathon of sorts for Hendrick.  ''There are very early starts because we fish very early in the morning and late at night.  That means being up at 3am most mornings.  You really could run yourself ragged in the summer because these guys are on their holidays and they want to have a meal and a few beers at night.  I have to be careful of that!''

Like any tourism business, he is at the mercy of the Irish weather.  While fisherman generally have the gear to make the sport weather proof, bass are heavily influenced by the weather and they tend to stay away from the shore when there is wind, rain and cold. ''It's very tough at times and some weeks this summer have been a disaster.  I have had to ring people who were due to arrive and cancel due to the weather.  You are literally losing thousands.''

There are however always bright moments on hand to convince him that he has made the right move.  He tells me of a recent visitor who had never fished before in his life and within four hours caught a 10lb bass.  ''It's very much right place, right time.  I know of fishermen who have fished their whole life and have never caught a 10lb bass.  When I see someone catch their first fish and they are clutching it to their chest with a smile as broad as a canoe, that's what it's all about.  As long as that keeps happening I will be fine.''

http://www.bassfishing.ie

It's hard not to feel a little jealous of Laurence Young.  The 25 year-old former architect is calling me from Pila in the Valle d'Aosta, Italy where he has just finished a day on the slopes teaching kids how to ski.  Later on, he tells me, he'll be heading off for a spot of skiing himself.  Tough day at the office.

Young studied Architectural Technology at WIT and when he qualified got a job in the Dublin office of architectural firm Murray O Laoire.  Architecture it would seem was very much the Young family business - his two brothers also worked in the firm.  ''Stephen was working there at the time and then Patrick joined after I did.  We were spread out around the office so it wasn't too bad.  We didn't bump in to each other too much.''

Having established himself with the company however, doubts started to creep in about his chosen career.  ''For the last two years I was working on a conservation project in Carton House in Maynooth which I loved but architecture is pretty intense work and a lot of the time it's just you and your computer.  There's not much chit-chat going on.  On a personal level I felt I would prefer to be dealing with people more and I am also sports mad so I wondered was there something I could do that would combine these things.''

Not unusually for a 25 year old he also had a bit of a travel bug.  ''I wanted to travel but I also knew I didn't want to just bum around Australia for a year and then come back to the same spot.'' In August 2006, Young was talking to a ''friend of a friend'' who was going off to work in an American ski resort and he found himself thinking, I'd love that. 

''When I was with Murray O Laoire, I went on skiing holidays three years in a row and was really in to it.  I never went to ski school so technically I was terrible.  Basically throwing myself down the mountain; black slopes and all.'' Now though he started to think of skiing as a career option and stumbled on the website of a company, Mountain Lodge that offer a ten week ski instructor course. 

He handed in his notice in mid November and on January 7th, flew out to Courchevel in the French Alps to start his training.  ''It was amazing.  There was a really good crew of people on the course and great instructors.  I wasn't the only career-changer; there was a New Yorker who had been a corporate lawyer and a guy from England who worked for a pharmaceutical company.  Because I had so little skiing done I really had to push myself to do well in the course.''

He passed his level 3 BASI (British Association of Snowsports Instructors) exams on March 16th, and the following day shipped off to Pila in the Valle d'Aosta, Italy to start teaching.  ''I've been teaching intermediates so they are pretty handy skiers.  Last week I was teaching a group of teenagers from Essex and this week it's a group of ten year olds.  There are about thirty instructors so it's a tight-knit community.  I have about twenty additional friends from when I got here - there aren't many jobs you can say that about.  We do about four hours of instruction a day so when we finish in the afternoon we can head off skiing ourselves.''

The ski instructor's life is inextricably linked to the seasons so at the end of April he'll be out of work and plans to return to Ireland.  ''The course was expensive, about €10,000 so I have to pay my Dad back for that.  My brother Stephen has his own company now so I might work with him.  A lot of ski instructors get into mountain climbing or martial arts and teach those in the off season so that's something I will consider too.''

His short term plan is to get a few seasons under this belt (possibly in Canada next season as opposed to Europe) and then go for his BASI grade 2 qualifications.  I mention to him that many people have the impression that ski instructors seem to be permanently in holiday mode - heading for après ski bars each night with their students.  It's clearly a great job for a young person, but is it something he could do long term? 

''I want this to be my career.  When I told friends I was giving up architecture to become an instructor, some of them said “oh we know what you're doing it for: partying and women”.  That's what most people think.  And there certainly are instructors who are in it for that, living from season to season.  But there are also instructors who take it really seriously and who aren't out partying every night of the week.  It's the same in all jobs: there are people who are happy to plug away and there are people who are trying to reach the top of their profession.  I want to get to BASI 1 level so that I can work for myself, maybe even set up my own company down the road.''

For the moment though, he is enjoying his new life.  ''Every time I sit on a chair lift, I look around and think: is this a dream?  Is this really my job?''

Lots of students work in pubs to pay their way through college but not many decide to leave college altogether to manage bars.  28 year old Stephen Vaughan was studying Finance in UCC and working part-time in bars in Cork when the opportunity arose to run a student pub in the city.  ''I've never regretted not finishing college,'' he says.  ''I was immediately attracted to the money and I felt that I was learning what I wanted to learn at work.  The idea of finishing college and then starting in some €18,000 a year job and working my way up the ladder just didn't appeal to me.  I would have been taking a pay cut.  I managed by first bar in 1999 when I was 20 years of age and two years after that, guys in my class were finishing up and couldn't find work.''

Vaughan managed some of Cork's best-known watering holes including The Hairy Lemon, The Thirsty Scholar and The Slate but his life changed direction courtesy of a Christmas present from a friend.  The gift, a painting by local artist Bill Griffin, got Vaughan in to art appreciation and eventually put him on the road to owning his own gallery.  ''It was the kind of painting that when you put it on the wall, it was very hard to have anything else other than paintings around it.  Once you start buying a few paintings you start to learn more about art.  I got in to a habit of walking in to galleries, going to auctions, keeping an eye on certain artists and watching what their paintings would sell for.''

As his personal art collection grew, Vaughan started to sell paintings, largely to create space on his walls for more art.  ''I started trading up, buying more expensive paintings as I went along and I realised that I was doing quite well at it.  I never started out to make money but I was making a healthy profit.  It got to the point where I was making more money from buying and selling paintings then I was taking home as a bar manager.''

It was at that stage that Vaughan started to investigate what would be involved in running an art gallery.  ''I felt that I was young enough to do it.  I was 26 so I could afford to spend a few years at it and if it didn't work out I would still be in my twenties.  Also I don't have a wife and kids so I only have myself to look after.  I was looking for leases around Cork and a place came up in Washington Street.''

The Shaw Gallery opened its doors in May 2006.  ''Traditionally galleries are dead quiet in July and August - most galleries would say that you should close your doors in the summer months.  I knew it would be hard for the first few months but it was all my own collection that I was selling so that kept me going.'' He speaks poignantly about seeing customers coming in and snapping up his private collection.  ''It was heartbreaking.  I am a collector at heart and I promised myself that I wouldn't buy any art for myself for two years while the gallery was getting off the ground.  The only painting that I kept was the original Bill Griffin piece that I got as a present.  There was a watercolour from Jack Lynch's private collection which I had bought at auction which I was particularly sorry to lose.''

Since then the gallery has put on exhibitions by Bill Griffin, Vittorio Cerefice FRSA, former Warhol Protégé Steve Kaufman, Mieke Vanmechelen, Grzegorz Laskowski, Anthony Ruby and Rachel Burke.  ''At first it was mainly local artists but as our reputation has grown we have had national and international artists.  Initially it was very much about keeping the head above water but we are doing well now and the gallery is typically booked up six to eight months in advance.''

Recently, Vaughan has acquired a short term lease with the Dame Street Gallery in Dublin for a four-show exhibition.  So is this the start of a Shaw Gallery expansion to the capital?  ''It's a big step to come to Dublin where there's so much competition but this is a good opportunity for me to see if it's viable for the future.  I would definitely look at it.''

So does he miss pulling pints?  ''I miss certain aspects of it.  The social side of it, the banter that I had with the customers.  But I don't miss the shifts.  There were weekends, like the Jazz when you would do sixteen hour shifts three or four days on the trot.  That's fine when you are 21 but not so fine when you get a little older. 

The progression from bar-manager to art dealer cum gallery owner can't have been as easy as it sounds, can it?  ''When you are interested in something and have a passion for it, it's never hard work to know a lot about it,'' he says.  ''I have friends who are mad in to soccer and they could tell you the names of the starting eleven in every team in the Premiership.  I had five or six years in business under my belt so I suppose I had a good business head on my shoulders. There are trials and tribulations running your own business but I am the kind of person who thinks that if an opportunity comes along you should take it, rather than look back in ten years time and regret it.''

Most people who have abandoned the rat race for a gentler pace of life had a defining moment that acted as the catalyst for their change of lifestyle.  Gordon Green and his wife Maria didn't have that sort of grand epiphany, but they were relentlessly bothered by the fact that their frenetic corporate lives in London didn't allow them the luxury of a daily sit-down meal with their children. 

''We had this crazy life,'' says Green.  ''I was working in the IT department in JP Morgan and Maria was with Accenture and at that stage we had two kids who were in a crèche for eight hours a day.  Mealtimes were done in shifts basically.  We would take turn feeding the kids when we got home and then worry about feeding ourselves later on.''

Erratic mealtimes weren't their only concerns.  ''We hated the fact that the children were in a crèche and it was only after we took them out that we realised how unhappy they had been.  I think crèches present an image to you for the time you are there with your kids but you have no idea how things are when you're not there.''

As they negotiated life in the fast lane, the couple dreamed of country living in Maria's home county of Monaghan.  Perhaps to soften the blow for Green, who hails from Essex and admits that he has lived most of his life within the confines of London's M25, they opted for a gradual move to rural idyll - first stop Dublin. 

Maria was able to relocate to her company's Dublin office and Green continued to do part-time contract work from home, while also looking after their children.  While he toyed with the idea of looking for a full-time job in Dublin, the impact that having one parent at home had on the quality of their lives forced a rethink.  Above all else, they revelled in sitting down to a home cooked dinner each evening, a daily routine which has become the focal point of their family life.

After two years in Dublin the family moved to Carrickmacross with Maria continuing to work in Dublin and Green becoming a full-time house-husband.  A third child had arrived on the scene, to be followed shortly afterwards by a fourth.  ''Maria has a twenty minute drive to the train station in Dundalk and gets the train to Dublin so it's one and a half hours each way.  She doesn't like the commute obviously and would prefer not to do it.  It's tough you know?  Every now and then I ask her if she wants to swap - I'll go back to work and you stay at home, and she says no, of course not.''

So how has he coped with being a stay-at-home Dad?  ''My Dad always did the cooking and washing up when we were young so I didn't have that macho thing in my head about the man having to be out working.  I don't have my own money anymore but I am happy to make that sacrifice.  I've had to say goodbye to all those impulsive CD and book purchases so it's a little like saying goodbye to my youth.''

Meanwhile as he busied himself with that most important of parental duties - reading children's books over and over again to his tiny tots - he was struck by a thought that surely has occurred to many a parent: I could write that.  ''I had a basic outline of a children's story in my head and when I had some free time I wrote it down and drew some pictures to go along with it.  I had it in a binder and would take it out occasionally for our kids and they would clamour for it which I took as a good sign.  I would be comparing it with other kid's stories and thinking, mine's better!  There is that perception with children's books that anyone can do it, but like any book, it's a case of actually sitting down and writing it.''

The story, Buzz Off, is aimed at pre-school children and tells the tale of a tired, homeless fly seeking refuge on a farm, and the array of colourful characters he meets along the way.  Convinced he was on to something, Green made the brave decision to publish the book himself.  ''I had a very specific idea in my head as to how the characters needed to be illustrated and I felt that if I sent it off to a publisher, I would have no say in how they would turn out.  I found an illustrator in the UK who drew the insects exactly how I imagined them so I went with him.''

The process of self-publishing a book, he tells me, has been somewhat of an eye opener.  ''I think the hardest part is yet to come and that's getting the book out there.  Most of the distributors won't take it unless there's a huge marketing spend behind it, which obviously I can't do.  So for the moment the book is only available on the internet.  It will probably come down to me going to door-to-door around the book shops trying to get them to take it.''

Meanwhile, with half acre of land at his disposal, Green has also taken to growing his own vegetables - the city-slicker lifestyle, it seems, is permanently abandoned.  ''It's great, I love it.  Any bit of spare time I have, I'm out there.  I suppose we're on the way to the whole Good Life scenario.''

Buzz Off by Gordon Green, (2Plus4 Publishing) RRP €7.99 available from http://www.2plus4publishing.com

With all the talk of farmer's markets, it would be easy to believe that we are in the middle of a purple patch for farming.  The reality for farmers in Ireland is quite different - the number of dairy farmers for example has declined substantially from over 40,000 in the early nineties to less then half that number now and Teagasc predicts that the number will continue to decline by 1,000 per year over the next decade.

Behind this trend there are individual stories of profound upheaval for the farmers involved.  While some choose to work part time in farming, many opt for a new career and 39 year old Lory Higgins who ran a dairy farm near Rathnure in Co. Wexford falls in to the latter category.  Higgins started farming with his father on seventy acres at the foothills of the Blackstairs Mountains when he left school and took over running the farm when he was 25.  ''I knew from before the time I did my leaving cert that I would be farming and when I was 18 or 19 there wasn't a whole lot else for me to do anyway.  Farming was good at the time too and I was making good money.''

During the late nineties he started to notice a substantial decline in income.  ''Each and every year the amount of money coming in was falling.  I just saw no future in it.  If you wanted to stay in, you had two options - either go part time, which I didn't want to do, or expand.  We would have had to double the number of cows, bought more land, got bigger sheds, more machinery.  I just didn't want to get in to a very large debt when there were no guarantees that it was going to be viable longer term.''

Along with financial concerns, Higgins increasingly felt hemmed in by the lifestyle.  ''It's a seven day week, milking twice a day with no let up and when cows are calving it's even busier.  I was big in to hurling as well so I just seemed always to be rushing from one place to another.  There's no such thing as two week holidays when you're farming and for four or five years I didn't go on any holiday at all.''

The decision to leave farming is a difficult one for any farmer but another consideration for Higgins was how his father would feel about it.  ''He had built it up to what it was so if he had been against the idea that would have been really hard. My father is a forward-thinking man and he was very supportive which was a big boost.  It was still tough to see everything that you have worked so hard at being sold off.  The day of the sale was very tough.''

The question was what to do next.  ''I suppose I could have done labouring on a site or something but I always wondered what it would be like to go to college.  I had done a few night time courses before and I was interested in engineering.'' In the end he opted for a three year degree course in Construction Management and Engineering in Waterford Institute of Technology.

How did it feel to start student life at 36 years of age?  ''There are four or five other mature students in the class so it's not too bad, although I am by far the eldest.  They treat me the same as anyone else and I have made some very good friends.  The lecturers do treat you a bit different and I think they understand that it is a big thing for mature students.  It's totally different for the young lads straight out of school.  They still tend to mess.'' He describes his new life as ''not quite the full student experience'' due to the fact that he's living at home and commuting up and down to Waterford.  ''I have joined some societies like the kayaking club and had great craic with them - that's been a fantastic experience.  But it's not all night partying or anything.''

During breaks from the course, Higgins has worked in engineering and construction firms and he is currently working with a project management company in Dublin on a work placement.  ''The placement element of the course is what really attracted me to it because I am playing catch up so it's really important for me to get some experience before I graduate.''

So does he miss farming?  ''I miss being out on the farm but I don't miss milking cows.  I'm having the time of my life.  I'm sure when I get out there working it won't all be a bed of roses but for the moment there is no pressure on me and my quality of life has improved 100 per cent.  I've had golfing holidays and skiing holidays in the last few years which I would never have been able to do before.  I was standing on the side of a ski slope last year thinking that there was no way I could have done this when I had the farm.'' Like any student, his plans post graduation may well include heading off to see the world.  ''I saw my brother travelling when he was young and I could never do it because of the farm.  The course is recognised in Australia and New Zealand so I could head off and work abroad.  With the Olympics coming up in London, it might be nice to work there for a while.''

All career changes come with their own set of challenges - but there's something particularly daunting about the notion of leaving behind an I.T. career after 17 years to study medicine.  Frenchwoman Claire Kehoe has just started a 4-year Graduate Entry Programme in Medicine at the University of Limerick and on top of the rigours of studying to become a Doctor, she must also grapple with some additional difficulties.  Though she speaks fluent English, she is essentially studying in a foreign language and above all, while she spends her weekdays living in Limerick, her husband and two children go about their lives in Dublin.

Kehoe studied biochemistry in Paris and genetic engineering in Strasbourg before getting sidetracked (by her own admission) in to a career in I.T.  ''In the early nineties in France there were not enough I.T. graduates so they started recruiting quite aggressively among scientists and training them up to be developers.  I worked for a very young, dynamic company in software development and project management.  I enjoyed it - it was great to be able to afford things after being a student.''

On her first day's training with that company she met her husband Kevin.  ''They went to Trinity College in Dublin looking for graduates so he decided to go to Paris.'' The couple married in 1993 and worked for a period in the UK before settling in Ireland at the turn of the millennium.  ''Kevin wanted to go back to Ireland because he thought it would be a great place to live and to raise kids.  But as it happened our timing was really terrible.  We moved back at the same time as the dotcom crash.  My husband got a job but he was made redundant.  At this stage we had two young kids so it was a very difficult time.  I did swear a lot and I was asking myself, why did we make this move?  It was a bit of a shock how small the job market is here.''

Circumstances forced Kehoe to take an I.T. contract in the UK.  ''For two years I travelled every week over and back for work.  Being away was very difficult but it had to be done.  After that the situation improved in Ireland - my husband was back at work and I suppose I had more on my CV to impress employers with by then.  I got a job with a company in Dun Laoghaire.''

Kehoe noticed some cultural differences between her native France and her new home.  ''The main thing for me was the food. I noticed a big difference when we moved to England from Paris and there was even less variety in Ireland.  I think that has changed since but when we came first the supermarkets didn't cater for continental tastes.  I was eating less fruit and vegetables here than I was used to.  There was a very restrictive supply of seasonal vegetables and broccoli - lots of broccoli!  But I found the Irish very welcoming and friendly.  In the UK it was very materialistic.  You were expected to conform and have the latest car registration.  So moving to Ireland was a bit of a liberation.''

So what led to her monumental career change?  ''I always wanted to be a Doctor but I just didn't go down that route.  When I was thinking about my job I would think - how tedious.  I enjoyed I.T. but what I enjoyed was the relationships I had with people.  Apart from that it can be quite a lonesome job sitting at a computer all day.  I looked at psychology as well but then I heard about the graduate medical programme in UL and I thought it sounded excellent.  My kids were that little bit older so they were more autonomous.''

Without having made her mind up to make the change, Kehoe sat the GAMSAT entry exam for the course and came in the top 60 in the country.  ''Even then it was still a huge decision.  I mean it's a four year commitment and to have to leave the kids behind for that length of time, it's very difficult.  Also it's very expensive at about €12,000 a year on one salary.  But my husband has been fantastic - really supportive.  At the moment he is doing everything for our children - cooking their meals, doing all the school runs, picking them up from after-school care in the evening.  What I really miss is the small things - all the little daily joys and pains they have.  We try and speak every day.  We have Skype so I can see them and they can see me.  But it is difficult - they have just one person organising their lives now.  It's a big sacrifice but the further I go, the less I can see myself sitting behind a desk so I think that's a good sign.''

Though her grasp of English is excellent, it must surely be difficult to study Medicine in a foreign language?  ''I make lots of spelling mistakes,'' she laughs.  ''The medical jargon can be pretty heavy alright.'' She describes the course as ''brilliant.'' ''Every week we start with a real case study and all the learning we do for the week centres around that. This is a very different approach.  I think when we go out in to the real world we will have a good understanding of our patients.''

Kehoe is the oldest student in the programme and the only one who has children.  ''It's lonely at times because it can be difficult for me to relate to the other students.  It's strange to rejoin student life and be back to student food and accommodation.  All of the other students are very young graduates.  We study very hard and I try to get everything done during the week so that I have the weekends free.  In my mind all the time I am thinking about the weekend and getting home to my family.''

What do you do when you are made redundant from a job that you've been in for twenty years?  Is it possible to change careers when you are pushing 40 and the experience on your CV seems to act like a strait-jacket?  These were some of the questions faced by Tom Colbert when he was made redundant from a middle-management role with Waterford-based toy manufacturer Hasbro last year.

''I started there in 1987 as a general operative,'' he says ''and worked my way up eventually to warehouse supervisor.  I was also a forklift driving instructor for the company.  Around Christmas 2006 they announced 150 job cuts and my job was made redundant.  I suppose I could have looked for work elsewhere in the company but I decided to take my chances.''

He had mixed feelings about leaving.  ''It was a huge shock at the time but I was also excited.  I spent years saying that I'd love to get out of there and do something different but I never did anything about it.  You become institutionalised and you just do what you know.  The day I left I was quite emotional thinking that I would never be in there again.  You spend twenty years in a place and you have really good friends.  I went home and brought the dog for a walk and I was thinking - what am I going to do now?''

The initial excitement quickly gave way to fear and uncertainty about the future.  ''It was fine over Christmas but in January when my wife went back to work and our daughter went back to school, I was in the house with nothing to do and it really started to hit home.  Financially things weren't too bad because the redundancy gave us a bit of comfort but it wasn't a case of being able to retire or anything like that.  My expertise was with logistics, so your CV ends up pigeonholing you.  I was sending it to manufacturing plants in the area and getting back the usual letters saying, ''We will keep it on file.'' I was down to the last two for a warehouse manager's job in Clonmel but I didn't get it and while I was disappointed, to be honest I hadn't been all that excited by the prospect.''

As it happens, it was just as well he didn't get that job.  Reading the recruitment pages in his local paper, Colbert came across an ad for an Air-Traffic Controller job in Waterford Airport.  ''As soon as I saw it, I thought God I would love to do that.  My hobby is aviation and the space programme.  I used to take days off to go home and watch the shuttle take-off on the internet and I've read NASA engineering reports and all that stuff.  My daughter says that I'm a right nerd!  I applied for the job but felt I hadn't a hope in hell.''

In February 2007 he was called for an interview.  ''I had nothing to lose so I wasn't really nervous going in to the interview.  I just thought, get in there and sell yourself as best you can.  There were some aviation related questions which I was able to answer so I was delighted with how it went.'' After an aptitude test with the Irish Aviation Authority in Dublin and a second interview, Colbert was offered the job.  ''I was totally shocked.  I just couldn't believe that it had worked out.''

The first step in his training was an eight-week theory course at Sligo Airport.  ''I was the oldest and the only one who was completely green.  On the first day we all had to introduce ourselves and explain our background.  They all had some aviation experience and then I was saying “Hi, I'm Tom.  I used to teach lads how to drive forklifts!” I was really coming from behind compared to the rest of the guys.''

Training then moved to Rudloe College in Shoreham, near Brighton for ten weeks of simulator work.  ''We were studying emergency scenarios, what if's - that sort of thing.  It was very intense but very enjoyable.  After that I was back in Waterford for four months of on-the-job training.'' In January of this year, Colbert passed his final exams with the Irish Aviation Authority.

So what's the job like?  ''Basically we are responsible for the safety of all aircraft on the ground and in the air in the Waterford Control Zone which is a radius of ten miles and up to 5,000 ft.  It is controlled airspace so craft can not enter or leave without our permission.  Shannon will hand over inbound flights to us about 15 minutes before landing, maybe at 8,000 ft and thirty miles out.''

Though small, Waterford Airport is getting busier all the time, according to Colbert.  ''We have about eight scheduled flights a day at the moment with Aer Arann to the UK and then for the summer season there are flights to Amsterdam, Faro, Malaga, Lorient and Bordeaux.  There are training colleges here for commercial and private pilots and the Irish Coast Guard Search and Rescue helicopters are also based here.  On top of that you have all the private stuff, executive jets and helicopters - everybody seems to have helicopters these days! That all adds up to a lot of traffic.''

You get the impression talking to Colbert of a man who can't quite believe his luck.  ''It's amazing the way things work out.  I always wonder when I pass a graveyard, how many unfulfilled dreams are buried under the ground there?  Imagine if the ad for this job had been in the paper a few months earlier or if I hadn't been let go from Hasbro?  This is a brand new life for me, a completely new world.''