Grannymar

There were a few people about.

I attended the inaugural Slugger Awards “Promoting a conversational politics in Northern Ireland.” The awards were presented in the atrium of W5 in the Odyssey in Belfast.

Slugger O’Toole has been following Northern Ireland politics since June 2002. It is the oldest political blog in and about Northern Ireland and is read by Journalists, Political Professionals and bloggers with 23,000 unique visitors every month. Founded by Mick Fealty, it now has a team of regular bloggers contributing to the site. Slugger O’Toole is a place where the Blogosphere and Main Stream Media merge.

Mick Fealty giving us a little history of the blog and how the Awards came about.

The ten Awards were:

· Up-and-coming Politician of the Year - Daithi McKay (Sinn Fein) -

· Local Newspaper of the Year - Impartial Reporter

· Local Council of the year - Belfast City Council

· Local Councillor of the Year - Deirdre Nelson (DUP)

· Jobsworth of the Year - Assembly Commission (and it was collected in good humour by the newly appointed director general Trevor Reaney - pictured to the right with his award)

· Journalism Award - David Gordon (Belfast Telegraph)

· Stormont Committee Chair of the Year - Danny Kennedy (UUP)

· Political Blogger of the Year - Nevin Taggart behind the North Antrim Local Interest List (NALIL)

· Eternal Representative (MPs, MEPs and others) - Peter Robinson (DUP MP)

· MLA of the Year - Naomi Long (Alliance)

I was invited by to join the table of Channel 4 TV who were one of the Sponsors of the evening and Stuart Cosgrove and Ewan McIntosh presented two of the prizes. Paul Smith of WIMPS who provided the video clips to precede each Award, and also made one of the preesentations was seated beside me and he was a pleasure to talk to. There was a laptop on the table and later I discovered that it belonged to this guy and perhaps I was sitting in his seat -

He looked quite comfortable down there as he live blogged his own event!

Thank you Mick for the seat and it was a great evening and very professionally organised.

I also spoke to Davy Simms who supplied a Podcast of the event and to Alan In Belfast . Finally a big thank you to Mairin Murray who looked after me so royally. It was great to catch up with you again Mairin.

Tell me a story,

Tell me a story,

Tell me a story & I’ll get out of bed.

I promised you, I said I would

I’ll tell you the story if you are good.

I’ll tell you the story before I go back to bed.

About a month ago I went to Dublin and was almost drowned in the flood.

I told you all about it here.

I even had a photo:

You heard all about the lunch…

A group of bloggers, dishing the dirt gossiping stuffing our faces sharing some tasty food and a bottle of wine or three while chatting about the blog world. No sin there you would think.

Now there was something I didn’t tell you….

We sweet ladies were gathered together to take part in an Irish Times Photoshoot for Lady Bloggers. The text of the article is available online but there are no photos available in the online version.

This photo by Brenda Fitzsimons appeared over two pages and I did my best to piece it together. So apologies to Brenda and to you all, but it will give you an idea of what the day was all about.

Thankfully we were all looking very respectable and ladylike. I wonder what they did with the other shots? Do you think they might be used to blackmail me?

Darling Toyboy Darragh, has a written very nicely about it here with pixtures!

I can’t go!

I wish I could.

Alexia is plotting and planning.

Our very own Rick will DJ set next Thursday night at the SoundCheck indie club night in Spy on South William Street. It is not somewhere I frequent but as the saying goes there is always a first time!

As there’ll probably be a gaggle of bloggers going to the club to throw their knickers at him….

Do ladies do that sort of thing these days

how about we all meet beforehand to formulate plans

Well I can’t be there and since Global warming is with us for sure,

I thought I would let you have these…..

Grannymar is older than the flood!

Nooooooooooo! I’m not older than that flood; the one I am talking about was on Saturday, in Dublin.

According to the bible in Genesis Chapter 6 we are told that ‘Man’s sin was the cause of the flood’. So what caused the flood on Saturday? I was a good girl!

I was down in Dublin for an innocent girly lunch. Look this is the evidence:

Now what could be any more innocent than that, I ask you? A group of bloggers, dishing the dirt gossiping stuffing our faces sharing some tasty food and a bottle of wine or three while chatting about the blog world. No sin there you would think.

Of course I did gatecrash a party on Friday night. A Toyboy Birthday Party and I brought my Manager. She was supposed to keep an eye on me… instead of chatting up all MY toyboys. Every time I was busy hugging one of them she was chatting up another. We had a ball, didn’t we missus?

So back from the tangent once more…..,

I was at a girly lunch. Now rumours abound that I left with a Toyboy….. I’m saying nuttin! Them ’uns down in Dubland are a jealous bunch You could do nothing!

However I did end up in a Taxi going nowhere for two and a half hours. It cost €60 to travel 12.5 klms! The Toyboy came to the rescue and brought me home to his house.

Darragh and Niamh, thank you both for providing a bed, food, and an evening of fun. There is no way I would have managed without you.

Elly who was in Cork for the day on Saturday, had a similar journey from the airport driving through two feet of water on the M50. She and George collected me on Sunday and rescued my car from where I abandoned it the day before.

Now for further developments you will have to wait…..

On a daily wander through my RSS feeds yesterday I paused to draw breath with the Podcast Sisters.

Being a Friday afternoon they were in playful mood. The game was - a vanity search developed by Chris Anderson of The Long Tail fame.

It was not very difficult all you needed was to insert your name in a box and click the enter button. Hey Presto it measures your Internet fame on a scale of 1 (unknown) to 100 (ubiquitous) -using Google’s PageRank technology.

So how did the three little girls from school rate?

Krishna De - Scored 44

Anna Farmery - Scored 52

Heather Gorringe - Scored 55

I thought I would play a little…. So I picked three names at random from my Blogroll:

Darragh Doyle - Scored 45

Damien Mulley – Scored 57

Ellybabes – Well I’ll let her tell you herself.

Well if you must know how I did….

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Grannymar – Scored 44

Give a thing and take it back

God will ask you where it is

If you say that you don’t know

God will send you down below!

Now we all know there is no such thing as a free lunch. Hails from Coffee Helps, was singing my praises the other day. Usually when someone does that they are looking for something. The darling of Ballymena the European Grand Tour was no different to all the others, she gives me something and then she wants me to give it away….

This is what she gave me:

Now here is the catch:

• Pick five blogs that you consider deserve the award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language.
• Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
• Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
• The award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of the Arte y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

I stopped at creativity and had no difficulty picking five blogs worthy of this accolade.

Deborah at Tastie has a blog that I lurked on for some time before joining in the fray. In fact the very first time I braved her comment box I ranted on about a recipe and the way she suggested it should be made. I have come to appreciate her talents, her recipes and suggestions to help all our pockets at a time when prices are rising faster and more often that the sun. Last March I had the opportunity to enjoy her bubbly personality when we met at the Ladies Tea Party in the run up to the Irish Blog Awards. Deborah has now launched her own online food business specialising in Spice Mixes, Sauces and mouth watering Brownie mixes.

Kieran Murphy is at the helm of Ice Cream Ireland a blog about the business he partners with his brother Sean in Dingle and Killarney in County Kerry. He regularly shares recipes with pictures that I defy you not to drool over. If only I lived a little nearer and didn’t have a doctor chastising me about my cholesterol. Kieran’s blogging has led to publishing The Murphy’s Ice Cream Book of Sweet Things

Claire otherwise called Gingerpixel is a very talented unassuming young lady who again, I had the pleasure of meeting at The Ladies Tea Party. She is capable of bringing tears to my eyes as I follow her photo blog, and she regularly makes me feel broody with her portraits of babies and young children.

I would not be Grannymar if I forgot to include a Toyboy. Phil at Iced Coffee is another talented Photo blogger. The images he captures leave me in awe. I hope that in studying his work I might improve my meager attempts behind the lens.

Made Marian. has recently updated and moved house with her blog. The clean calm ordered lines are just as every craft workbox should be. Reading Marian’s blog brings back the enthusiasm that I felt in my early days as I embarked on each new area of needlecraft, whether it was embroidery, cross stitch, crochet or sewing. Marian I know you will enjoy Arte y Pico blog be sure to scroll all the way down. It is full of wonderful craft ideas.

There are many more creative blogs out there but I was asked to select five.

Now go spread the love, visit enjoy and become enthused. Don’t forget to say hello and you can tell them that I sent you.

First Robin Blandord came up with the idea to run his CV through Wordle.net to see what it would look like as a tag cloud. The idea snowballed and was taken up by Ellybabes, Sinéad Cochrane, Will and Paul Browne. They were all very different.

My CV is rather dog eared and dusty at this stage and I would waste valuable time searching for it. I teased Will about running my blog through instead of a CV. The next thing I know he has it done and emailed to me.

Now I was not very sure that I liked the result… am I constantly referring to a Ferrari? The words used most frequently appear in large type. Now my regular readers do you notice anything……

I don’t doubt the work of my Toyboy Will, but I thought I would have another shot at it myself.

I changed the layout and the colours.

Again do you notice anything….?

The clue is in the top right hand corner, about three or four words down… look how small it is!

And you all think I am obscessed with a word beginning with T……

Today Baino mentioned that Olive Riley reputed to be the world’s oldest internet blogger, has died at the age of 108. She was born in the town of Broken Hill on 20 October 1899. Since she began her blog in February 2007, Olive posted more than 70 entries about her life.

Rest In Peace Olive.

May your efforts give encouragement to others out there, to give it a go and join in the fun.

It made me think…. 108 years of age…

At one post a day I have at least another 17,155 posts to write

Do you think you could put up with me for that long?

If I am not in, I can’t win!

You can’t have an election with only one candidate so I am throwing my cap in the ring.

Word has reached me that Krishna De is putting herself forward for the race to The White House. Now I think she needs some healthy competition. Off with the gloves and down to business. The time has come to see what my Toyboys are made off.

Steph, as my Manager you need to organise the campaign. If only we had Paddy Bloggit to sort out the policies it would be a doddle.

Darragh is proving to be fickle and with Mr Sneezy he seems to have jumped the gate. Darren has gone in search of Oxegen 08.

Rally round now, remember there are still some badges to be earned. Rick where are you when I need you.

I am a Groupie!

The kind folk of the blogging world are kind enough to include me in their various groups. BarCampers, PodCampers, Foodies, and Photobloggers come quickly to mind. Did I leave any one out? I consider myself a bumbler among so many talented people. I am forced encouraged to try and take part in all that is happening. My efforts appear to me to be rather tame and amateurish.

I know when a recipe has failed because the term ‘YUK!’ appears and the very few comments that day! The Photo bloggers are a more mannerly crowd. They say nothing about my feeble attempts. Do they think I am made of tissue paper, ready to shred at the slightest criticism? Come on Grannymar is tougher than that. Someone, anyone, all of you take a look at the picture above and tell me where I have gone wrong. I know I use a baby camera smaller than some of the lenses you guys have, but there must be something I can learn.

What was I trying to achieve in the shot above??? I was walking towards the pergola and liked the shade I was in and the light beyond.

OK you have my permission tear it to shreads.