It’s still a bit surreal and sinking in what happened in Cork on Saturday. I’m very happy and still very humbled by the results.

I blog for fun, for anger, for stress relief from my day job, as a source of pain relief (you wouldn’t believe the nerve endings that can be numbed by a bit of digging and thinking) and simply I blog becuase I can. I’ve also made many friends through blogging and met people outside my usual circles and learnt lots about things I never thought I would know or want to know anything about.

I’m also very happy to be in the company of bloggers like the brethern in Cedar Lounge Revolution, a win I was delighted with!

It was great to be in Cork with so many friends and to meet so many new bloggers and feel the energy there is in Irish blogging. There are so many topics being blogged about in Ireland and the genre continues to grow. I’ll repeat what I said on Saturday about the need for more news and current affairs blogging in Ireland, I’ve been delighted regarding the growth in economics and financial affairs blogging and hope we can see more commentary on social justice issues and news reflection and creation sites in 2009.

A word of thanks to the sponsors, IGO People for the Best News and Current Affairs category and McConnells for the Grand Prix and to all the other sponsors also – the night was hugely successful thanks to their generosity and support.

I didn’t thank my sources in my speech and am very glad to have this opportunity to do so – to those people who send me things, who call or think ‘this is something Maman Poulet might be interested in’ – Thank you so much! Thanks for your trust in me, thanks for also taking calls or emails when I ask questions about something because I’m onto something and need to double check on it. Many of these sources also act as sounding boards as I ask myself questions about an issue and need to convince myself that I’m not losing it completely and that xy or z is worth writing about.

In the top right hand corner of the page you’ll find ways to contact me if you want to get in touch with anything or talk about how to get something to me whilst protecting yourselves.

Thanks also to my many non-blogging mates who put up with me wittering on about blogs, twitter and the like and who support me as I use them as sounding boards also.

To Karen, the blog widow, thanks for the weekend and every week and weekend and putting up with the hours online and non-responsiveness from time to time as I get lost digging and thinking.

And now for a return to normality. I’ll be back later in week when my broadband gets fixed (yup I came home to broken NTL – complete the sentence a blogger without broadband is like…..!) Meanwhile I’ll be figuring out the finer points of Irish ‘pork’ and the ways you might find politicians helping out benefactors and the like even when the walls of the economy are tumbling in.