"SURE, you're less than two hours away," my mum tells me at the entrance to the Port of Dun Laoghaire.

MY PASSION for documenting old and crumbling buildings started over a decade ago.

THE Rostrevor Literary Festival returns tomorrow with a headline appearance by Hungarian/British poet and translator George Szirtes.

1. When did you think about a career in writing and what were your first steps into it? I always thought it was what I'd 'end up' being but I did very little about it for a long time except write terrible stories and the first chapter of novels and then delete them.

THE date is Saturday April 30 1994 and it is destined to be a red letter day.