Sign up to be a back seat charity driver for Swift

Over 30 people have signed up for a public reading of 'Gulliver's Travels' during this year's Trim Swift Festival. A total of 93 readers are needed to get through the entire work, which organisers have calculated will take 15 hours to read. The reading will take place in a parked car on Market Street in the town for five hours each day during the festival - on Friday 1st, Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd July. Readers will be presented with a certificate to prove that they took part in the marathon reading. Each of them will contribute €5 to Aware - a charity that would have been close to the heart of author Jonathan Swift who had a keen interest in mental illness and depression. "Each reader will get to read three pages of the book," explained organiser Paddy Smith, a member of the Trim Swift Festival Committee. "This will take them anything between six and 10 minutes, depending on the amount of text on those pages. "I don't think this has ever been attempted before anywhere in the world, so we'll be creating our own little bit of history," he said. There are 39 chapters in the book, 318 pages, or more than 123,000 words, and organisers calculate a reading rate of 140 words per minute, "which is a nice steady pace, not too fast, not too slow," added Mr Smith. Organisers believe it is possible to get through the entire book in three sessions of five hours each. "Celebrity readers are being arranged to spice up the project," said festival director Barbara Nestor. "But we're sending the call out to all Meath people and from everywhere else to get involved. "Reading for 10 minutes is within most people's grasp and we're very confident that people will rise to the occasion." Copies of Gulliver's Travels will be supplied on the spot for participants to read from and readings are taking place in a parked car "because we couldn't fit an airplane on the street," explained Paddy Smith. "An airplane, I think, would have been Gulliver's method-of-choice in his travels if he were alive today but a car would have actually been better because he would have interacted with more people." It is expected that the car, appropriately enough, will be a Suzuki Swift and listeners will be charged €2 to hear 15 minutes of the readings. "They will sit in the front seat of the car and listen to the reader who will be in the back seat. We will seat two listeners in the car at any one time - three if they really know each other well!" he said. The readings will take place from 1pm-6pm on Friday and Saturday, and from 10am-3pm on Sunday. Reading slots can be booked by email or phone by contacting Paddy Smith on (086) 157 7526 or paddys@iol.ie