And so, so long D'Olier Street. We've seen the two days, bad and good, in your familiar husk. Tomorrow we take up residence in our new habitat of glass and chrome a few yards down the way on Tara Street: Not quite Bonfire of the Vanities - but a lot posher than we're used to.
It's 31 years since I first came in here when I was 22, interviewed in the old editor's office on the second floor overlooking Fleet Street by editor, Fergus Pyle, and news editor, Donal Foley. Walking away down College Green afterwards I did whatever the '70s equivalent of punching the air was: I had a job as a journalist in The Irish Times, and it just didn't get better than that.
Three decades later, writing in The Irish Times Magazine about joining the paper, Róisín Ingle said that her mother cried when she heard that her offspring was being given a chance here. "It might sound over-the-top but The Irish Times has that effect on some people," wrote Róisín.
Years ago the three basic newsroom watches were Morning Town (10 am-6pm), Evening Town (3.30pm-11 pm), and Nighttown (10pm-4am), ringing Garda HQ and the fire brigade to see if anything was stirring.
The graveyard shift is still there but radically changed. Only one edition means the Night Town reporter knocks off at 1am. No more taxi trips home just before dawn through misty city streets. In the old days when the subeditors drifted home after the country edition was printed it could be lonely at the gigantic old newsdesk with a lone copy-sorter and a subeditor way down the other end of the room and the telex machine bleeping away in the creed room - but it could be eventful too.
And you had "Hoddy" for company, the paper's jazz critic George Hodnett - who regularly slept in the tiny TV room, warm and snug in his big overcoat and layers of scarves. Though not a newshound, there was the reassuring feeling that if you darted away for baked beans and chips, you weren't totally deserting your post; if the phone rang with news of an earthquake in Drumcondra "Hoddy" might wake up and take the call.
Once the Belfast Telegraph rang to say our jazz critic, up for a concert, had come in to file his story to D'Olier Street and told them he was staying the night there - to which we replied : Of course, he often sleeps here, too. Show him to your TV room and make sure he's comfortable.
The truth is, in spite of the arrival of the 21st century, D'Olier Street hasn't changed much since Elgy Gillespie's description of it in the '70s as "that forgiving, warm, indescribably dusty Dickensian burrow" that many of us meandered into not knowing we'd be here for life.
In the dreadful days when the Northern Troubles were at their height Night Town would regularly fly over to Bowe's pub across the street with a clarion call about the latest atrocity and call the troops back to beef up the news and subs desks and take copy from reporters at the scene.
You could also talk to Night Town reporters on the other papers, being careful not to give away too much if you'd any kind of scoop because the competitive streak ran through them as it ran through us. The Irish Press, late and lamented, always had a reputation for being the sharpest on news and part of the lore was that a man once helpfully travelled in from the suburbs to the Press newsdesk in the middle of the night to alert Night Town to a murder, helpfully adding - when the reporter took out his notebook - that, actually, he'd committed it himself. Talk about getting the story. Lore maybe, but great lore and the walls in D'Olier Street are coming down with it.
On another night, Night Town rang from the Press to ask if we would tell them if anything major happened; they were having a send-off for one of their subeditors who was packing in the job to become, wait for it, a full-time writer! His name was Banville. Years later he became literary editor of The Irish Times and winner of the Man Booker.
Great friendships are often forged when people keep vigils together. My best legacy from those surreal, nocturnal shifts is my enduring friendship with Patsey Murphy, now our magazine editor. Friend of my youth, as Alice Munro might say. Other colleagues have the same.
Journalism courses and colleges do such a good job now preparing people for the profession. Back in that day, they were rare. We learned on the run, on the job. One of the great teachers in D'Olier Street was Donal Foley who sat Buddha -like on the newsdesk, flanked by Gerry Mulvey and Jack Fagan.
His pointers, sometimes mumbled, were short and sharp, like Dorothy Parker one-liners but you disregarded them at your peril because they were gems. He was a particular fan of what he called the line donnée, based on the notion that when interviewing someone they often slipped in a phrase or a revelation that was a direct gift to the reporter who could then build the whole piece around it.
Once, sent out to interview Maureen Haughey in Kinsealy, the minute she suddenly said she was sick of the way it was always "Garret the Good and Charlie the Devil" I nearly choked. I had the line donnée and was so proud I virtually ran back to D'Olier Street to get it down on paper.
Donal hammered out the old raison d'etres of journalism - the where, why, who, when and how - and the importance of the first paragraph. After all, in those days the rule was: cut from the bottom. But he also had a special regard for the last line, the little fillip at the end of the story that made it linger in the mind. A good last line and you got a short, booming accolade across the newsroom - you were a good last-liner.
In some ways for me, D'Olier Street was like a continuation of school - my old Latin teacher from Miss Meredith's (Pembroke School), Maeve Binchy, had joined the paper before me. Among the alumni of the '70s era on D'Olier Street were Conor Brady and Geraldine Kennedy, who both went on to great things, editing the paper .
Sartorial style wasn't a major feature on the newsdesk in the past, apart, that is, from Renagh Holohan who still presides there, as soignée as ever. One of Night Town's jobs was to ensure that deputy editor Bruce Williamson, who worked late in the editor's office, got safely downstairs to his taxi, complete with his stick. Sometimes you got a few Licquorice allsorts from the brown paper sweet bag he kept in his drawer as a reward.
His legendary skills as a proofreader are immortalised in our colleague Gerry Smyth's poem Scribe, perfectly capturing this "man of words / man of exactitude", his head down in marginalia, "straightening the crooked sentence."
Great occasions included the "shout-ins" inaugurated by editor Douglas Gageby, who gathered us all together, below-decks style, in the newsroom when something major had to be thrashed out. And there were the "knock-downs" when stonemen (printers) were leaving and their colleagues would bang them all the way down the stairs and out of the building by thumping on bannister rails and any other available surface with metal mounts, metal galleys and steel guages - the tools of the trade in the days of hot metal.
Very occasionally when a much respected journalist was leaving - like Douglas Gageby or Mary Maher - they'd get a knock-down too. It sounded like thunder had invaded the building. Once witnessed, never forgotten.
All week we've been shredding and packing here like elves at Christmas, so it was appropriate that what turned up in the newsroom cupboard was an artificial Christmas tree which, fiberoptics shimmering, was duly erected for one last twirl.
On the books desk, the most unusual things that turned up included a statue of the Virgin Mary whose halo was actually a lid from which to pour the holy water inside - and a leprechaun statuette complete with big shamrock and the nametag Lucky Leprechaun. The removal people had told us not to put ornaments in the crates so there was some debate about what to do with these artefacts. Our new environs are designer chic - the goal is to become the paperless office - but in a brave new world doesn't one need some talismen from the past? So the statues are coming. Appropriately, the very last book to come in from a publisher to the books desk yesterday was Death by PowerPoint: A Modern Office Survival Guide by Michael Flocker (Da Capo Press, £7.99). We'll bring that too as we head for Tara Street - our New Jerusalem.
It's been a stretch getting the paper out this week in between decommissioning the building, but how could we complain when after the fire that gutted The Irish Times premises in 1951 the staff got the paper out the next day, our personal calamity its main headline. Admittedly it was just four pages, put together with the help of colleagues from the Evening Mail. Still, the show goes on and thankfully there's a whole new generation of bright sparks on board now to make sure it's still carried off with aplomb.
What we can't bring are the many colleagues who, as is the way of life, died prematurely but whose spirits have been swirling through D'Olier Street this past week: Eileen O'Brien, Christina Murphy, Peter Froestrup, Michael Browner, Mary Holland, Anne Maguire, Peader Cearr, Mary Cummins, Niall Fallon, Nigel Browne, Andy Hamilton, Howard Kinlay, Stephen Hilliard, Jarlath Dolan, Dick Walsh, Jack Singleton, Eamon Holmes, and others whose vitality were forces in this building .
Here, on what is more Fleet Street than D'Olier Street, we were hidden from our readers - the public. In Tara Street, with the lights all on, we'll be visible to all and sundry as they pass in the busy traffic outside. Check us out if you're passing next week.
And so what's left to say, but: Will the last one to leave the building please turn out the lights ?