Quinn brings his Ballivor memories to the screen

It"s 'lights, camera, action" in Ballivor this week as a film crew shoots scenes for 'Goodnight Ballivor, I"ll Sleep in Trim", the legendary book by village native and former RTE producer, John Quinn. Award-winning filmmaker Donal Haughey of Hawkeye Films has been commissioned by TG4 to produce a 'journey into memory" based on Quinn"s memoir of the sleepy south Meath village in the 1950s. Playing the young John Quinn in the production is nine-year old Brendan McKeon, who lives on Main Street, as Quinn himself did all those years ago when his father was a garda sergeant station there. The memoir was born out of Quinn"s radio documentary 'Goodnight Ballivor, I"ll Sleep in Trim", a now famous quote of which nobody seems to know the full origin. It is thought to refer to a stranger who was refused accommodation in the village after a day"s drinking, and a possible reference to the County Home in Trim, where the man who uttered the words may have been contemplating heading to. In his book, Quinn takes the reader up and down the main street and the families, businesses, drapers, shopkeepers and publicans that were in existence along it. Names like McLaughlins, Dargans, Walshs, McGeartys, Kellys, Dempseys and Browns. It was a time when there might have been only five telephones in the village, and as many cars. Many years after his father"s death, John Quinn discovered his little black book, chronicling many of the incidents that he had to look into - from harmless incidents like unlit bicycles or drunkenness to more serious events like a suicide in the army camp on the bog or a child having been beaten. The programme will be screened as part of TG4"s 'Cogar" series as part of the station"s the autumn/winter season.