A wide cross-section of people living in Mullingar have been interviewed and photo graphed for a new book, Mullingar - Just for the Record, written by a Galway man, Matt Nolan, who has become an adopted son of the town.
Matt is a regional inspector of the Shannon Regional Fisheries Board and has spent the last 27 years in Mullingar.
Instead of producing a learned tome about the town's historic past, he got straight to the point of what a real community is all about, its people.
He picked out 41 from the town who, in his own words, embody the entire community. These are people who are known to everyone in the area and are, if you like, Mullingar.
"I thought that if I were able to capture the real people of Mullingar both in print and on film I would be doing something positive for the town for the millennium," he said.
So over the last 12 months Matt interviewed and photographed a cross-section of people, from the local milkman to the local surgeon, and put them all in his book.
The milkman is Tom Cornally who delivers up to 5,000 gallons of milk every day. On Sundays he watches Westmeath footballers when they take to the playing pitch.
There is Leo Daly, a retired psychiatric nurse, who writes books and whose gentle voice can be heard frequently on Sunday Miscellany, one of RTE radio's finest programmes.
There is Rene Lysaght, a retired teacher who tells us she was "conceived in Africa, born in Tullow, Co Carlow, and raised in Doneraile, Co Cork, but spent most of my life in Mullingar".
Tommy McCoy looked after the main sewerage and piping system in the town for many years and continues to use the expertise he gained over 50 years with the council, to help those with "underground problems".
There, too, is Trevor Winckworth, Mullingar's senior medical practitioner whose father was a chemist in the town. He is a rugby supporter and set up the local swimming club.
The list goes on - including the most elevated and to the most ordinary and that is what makes this a fitting millennium book because it is the real Mullingar as it is now.
The book is a fitting tribute to his adopted town and can be obtained in local bookshops there or by writing to Matt Nolan, Mullingar.
It appears that the affection works both ways, if that's the only address needed.