Denis Lehane: I'm no longer in the RTÉ picture

If I could capture a fast-moving bullock, I could certainly catch a slow-moving character on Fair City.

As you well know, I'm a hard-working farmer. And one who doesn't brag about it either.

I'm one of life's humble individuals. A fellow who just gets on with the job. Be it wrestling with my wayward cattle or mending broken fences, there's never a dull moment on this farm.

And through it all, through all my trouble and strife, my greatest struggle has been in putting bread on the table.

For while farming is a terribly fulfilling life, it can be a terribly unrewarding life as well.

My pockets at the moment, my dear man, are as empty and dark as the caverns of the Aillwee Caves.

Anyhow, I thought my ducks had finally come into line when RTÉ recently announced it was looking for a photographer to take a few snaps of a television programme.

Finally, says I to myself, "a part-time job that will lift me out of the doldrums".

The RTÉ job, in so much as it was a job, was to take a few photographs of the dull as dishwater soap, Fair City. And there was I thinking the soap had ended years ago.

The payment for the photography gig, as you might expect from RTÉ, was astronomical.

T'was up there in the Joe Duffy sphere of wealth. I would be like Rockefeller in no time.

Immediately I took down my dusty old camera from the mantelpiece. For that was one of the requirements of the job. You needed a camera.

But better again for me, I had the experience to take the snaps.

Sure for years upon years, I used to take photos of bullocks at the mart.

And this fact alone, I felt, made me eminently qualified to take photos of the Dublin-based soap, Fair City.

It was often said on the barstools in Macroom and elsewhere that I was "a mighty man behind a camera".

To my mind, there was none that caught the essence of a bullock better than myself.

Sometimes in one snap I would be able to capture both the length of a bullock, his behind and indeed, the smile on his face.

It's no exaggeration to say a bullock photographed by me was as good as looking at one in the flesh.

And if I could capture a fast-moving bullock, I could certainly catch a slow-moving character on Fair City. T'would be like shooting ducks in a barrel.

Anyhow, one evening, with the cattle stable and my fences mended, I located Fair City on the television and then pointing my camera at the set, I snapped away like the devil himself.

Before long, I had enough photos to make a bumper album of soap snaps. Photos, to be fair, that made the soap look 100 times better than it actually was.

I was proud of my work for sure and was about to post them off to RTÉ in Donnybrook when news reached my ears that RTÉ no longer required photos of Fair City. The jig was up.

The plan had been scuttered, or should I say scuppered, before it began at all.

My table was now covered with worthless Fair City snaps, my dreams of wealth in tatters. With tears in my eyes, where dollar signs had been, I realisedRTÉ had let me down once again.