Eighty-two years ago on Saturday, November 2nd. two young Irish women took a train from London to Woking in Surrey and travelled a further six miles to Pirbright. They were going to attend a meeting in the drawing room of a private house in Pirbright; One was 25, her companion was 26. As they sat in that room they could never have foreseen that their actions would impact on all of us who are and have been connected to NCBI and to the blind of Ireland in general. For at that meeting the little seed that was to become NCBI was sown.

Neither Barbara Knox, Molly Rochfort Wade nor their host, Waldo McGillicuddy Eagar, had a crystal ball; but they had commitment and a keen sense of social justice. The times in which they lived were tough, stringent times — not unlike our own. Yet through sheer determination and the hope that they might succeed in their task, they prospered.

Eighty-two years on, the ghostly echoes of that conversation are wandering in the ether; the flimsy letters which preceded and followed it are almost faded, yet the hope which they engendered, though faint, is still discernible in the stockade glare of the greed which has impacted and retarded the progress of the people for whom they had so willingly shown their concern.

They too, were facing into the back end of an old year and a new year for which no crystal ball might predict an outcome. But they cast about and found others of a like mind and generous spirit; they found Alice Stanley Armitage, 35 years their senior, profoundly deaf, infinitely kind and passionately committed to blind welfare.

We who continue their legacy must take good care of the small light in that lantern which they tended so diligently. We who are charged with the daunting task of husbanding meagre resources and fulfilling the compelling remit of NCBI must look to their strength to recharge our own. There are hard times out there; there are people close to us and unknown who are suffering and in need. Ours is the challenge.

As we face into our new year, let us be mindful of from whence we came and why we must be compelled to continue the work so flimsily begun and so magnificently continued.

Ghostly echoes, fading letters and stupendous hope are our birthright. Need there be more?