Roughly once a month I go to the German shop to get all the all the stuff I didn’t list here. For a discount store that gets bad press betimes, I have always been overwhelmed by the service. Until this week that is.

A trolley with 6 trays of cat food for my neighbour, who, by the way, has a cat and isn’t on some economy drive; 2 large packs of loo roll with a cute kitten on the wrapper, not that I’ve ever wiped with a kitten although I wonder what …; anyway, 2 large bags of dog nuts for my best friend who is a dog; 2 slabs of German beer for me who I’m very fond of; 4 packs of kitchen roll; 3 bottles of washing up liquid; and so on - 2 of this, 4 of that, 5 of another.

A trolley groaning under the weight. And me groaning too. I get to the checkout and place one of each item on the belt. By her name tag I guessed the (scaldingly hot) girl is Polish. Cześć się masz? Cztery z tych pozycji; sześć z tych; dwa; pięć; trzy - pointing out each and the remainder in the trolley. All distributed so as to be easily visible, mind you.

Was she impressed at my crap, yet brave attempt, at Polish? No! All items must be placed on the belt. But why? I always just put out one of each? All items must be placed on the belt. But that’s pointless. And they’re heavy. All items must be placed on the belt.

I gave in and took everything out. All the while declaring resistance is useless! in my best Vogon.

The guy behind me obviously wasn’t on for hassle and had the belt piled high before I had paid. As I turned to leave I heard her tell him you will have to go to another checkout - I am closed and she walked off. He roared after her: You people are gone as bad as the Irish.

Maybe she was just having a bad day. Or maybe it was a case of when in Rome, drive like a lunatic, shout a lot, eat pizza for lunch etc.

It was cold wet windy night. The forecast was for gales and flooding. The kind of night when sensible people lock their doors, pull the curtains and sit warming themselves in the glow of a flickering TV.

Not me. I had to go out. I’d arranged to meet someone at precisely some time between 7:15 and 8:00. But how? There would be drink involved so I couldn’t take the car. And I flatly refuse to use taxis since they tried convince us the national maximum fare was a minimum. I thought of my local publican.

Now Con has a reputation for being, shall we say, less than generous. It is said the crows flying over his house bring packed lunches. It is said he hates breathing out. It is said he owes himself money. It is said if he owned the Alps he wouldn’t give you a slide.

But I tried anyway. Good man, Con. Are you working tonight? I’m finishing at 7:00. Any chance you’d be able to pick me up after that and drop me to the pub? I have to meet a lad and it’s kind of important. He grumbled a bit but agreed.

The following morning, through the haze induced by the barrel of his beer still bubbling around in my belly, I seen him at the shop. Ah Con. Thanks for the lift last night. You were a lifesaver. He muttered something about the money he’d made out of me wouldn’t have covered the petrol he used. Ah me bollix, says I, if it weren’t for us making up the crowd the bar last night would’ve been as empty as Dáil Éireann outside of budget day.

Back home, the builders gave me a small can of petrol and I decanted a couple of hundred mil into an old medicine bottle. I knocked up a new label on the computer, put it in a box and wrapped it with left over Christmas paper. I dropped it off to him in the pub that afternoon saying that’s just a little thank-you for yesterday.

I left before he opened it but I have no doubt the contents are in his car by now, the bottle put away safely and the wrapping saved for next December. He may have managed to salvage some of the sellotape too.

At the bus-stop

Can you tell me where the Irish embassy is in Dublin? - Muriel, recently returned to Ireland after 40 years in the UK and now trying desperately to secure a passport for her 24 year old Tunisian boyfriend so he can join her.

In the shop

Not sure. Must be a sequel to an old movie - A young assistant when asked about the Brideshead Revisited DVD that came free with a newspaper.

In the pub

They’ll just ignore it. Shur they smoke on the LUAS over there - Gerry, doubting whether the French would comply with the smoking ban.

In college

You’ll need to flesh that out a wee bit - My supervisor’s advice on the acknowledgements page in my thesis: I would like to thank the dog, the cat and everyone who knows me. And of course the lady who held the door in Spar this morning.

The sun is in Uranus or somewhere like that, the moon is out at night because it can and the first snows of winter have fallen, 1cm deep in places, bringing the country to a standstill. We are fast approaching the feast day of St. Brigid, patron saint of wide open spaces, large garments and arts & crafts. Other than that it is January, this all means it is time to make your nominations for the Irish Blog Awards.

But act fast! The deadline is … I don’t know, sometime. No one knows. So maybe don’t act fast. Think long and hard about your selections. Remember lives are at stake here. Egos and Ids can be shattered. Super-egos too*. Despite the pleas of the Irish Dental Association teeth will be gnashed and not only Black Tie will be renting garments. Make an error of judgement and children, even babies, will be wrenched from their mothers’ arms and thrown to small, but very hungry, fluffy house pets. All this and worse could have happened last year when Sweary was passed over were it not for the timely intervention of some peace-loving associates of a well known construction and refuse magnate.

Then again, we don’t know when the deadline is, so maybe we should think hard and fast to be on the safe side. One thing we can be sure of, is that by the time the bloggers of Ireland meet, sometime in February and somewhere in Dublin, the judges, whoever they are, will have laboured diligently over their decisions. Right, okay, so that’s not a lot to be sure of but it’s enough to be getting on with for now.

If you’ve been putting the bits together correctly thus far you’ve probably figured out that 00000001+00000001=00000010 and that I just don’t like awards of any kind. Previous experience may be to blame. So no nominations for Sneezy please. You will only be wasting them. I’m sick the night of the do anyway so I won’t be there. But most folk love this kind of thing so being all altruistic and stuff let me make some suggestions to guide you which you can then completely ignore and go do your own thing.

Arts and Culture: What the fek is that about? Ditto for Crafts - unless St. Brigid has a blog.

Sport and Recreation: Get out and do it - Don’t write about it. Isn’t that the whole idea behind sport? The same goes for Food and Drink. Now if there was a Recreation and Drink category the choice would be endless.

News and Current Affairs: We all cover these in some form or another. Mzungu Chick is covering events as they happen in Nairobi better than many journalists but with Gay Byrne not hosting the Late Late Show or Rose of Tralee any more there’s no way we can pass her off as Irish. And MacDara fills us in on happenings in the Leb - sometimes bombs, but mostly booze. Flirty is pretty hot on the affairs bit though.

Popculture: I genuinely don’t know what this means. Is it the Bebo category? Or is it when FMC keeps us in the loop about Britney?

Music: I have to admit I don’t read music blogs. Or is that listen to? I’m not one of the I-follow-bands-that-haven’t-even-been-formed-yet brigade.

Business: Nope. Never even glanced at a single one. Sorry.

Tech: I read Moxy loads of them. More than you could shake a memory stick at. But don’t have a favourite. Sorry again.

Photo: Now it starts to get tough. MacKozer always has brilliant work on his main blog. Even more on his photoblog. Annie treats us to great work too. Does her Flickr stuff count? Whether it does or not it is worth checking out. That’s an order. Right!

Group: This has to be Shite Drivers. Isn’t the whole idea of Web 2.0 that a bunch of people who don’t know each other in real life come together to share information? It’s a well run site and has been favourably covered many times by the mainstream media (except by Ray D’Arcy but he’s a thick bollix so he doesn’t count). If they are listening it must be doing something right.

Irish Language: I love the way Rosie slips it in now and again - discretely, like a married man having an affair. Just enough to keep it interesting but without rising suspicion. No, I don’t know what I meant by that either. But I may go for An Cainteoir Dóchais, or Micilín Mac Měchúra, as he’s taken to calling himself. For the purists he even provides a version in old Irish script. Not only that, but even the images he uses are named in Irish, as are the alt tags.

Newcomer: There were quite a few this year. Gayé, once she reduced her 1,453,872 blogs down to 1, settled in nicely on Gaudium de Gaea to write in English rather than one of her 392 other tongues. Caro took up the ball and ran with it in February. I especially enjoyed reading her flat sharing stories. Not that I normally enjoy wetting myself. But I’m drifting towards Rosie for this. Once started, she embraced blogging wholeheartedly. She jumped right in there with fervour and passion. She went at it like a pig at a potato. But a nice pig. Babe. And a nice potato. Baked - and with glorious toppings.

Best Dressed: Very few of us actually design our own blogs. Most take a template off the shelf and don’t even try personalise it. I have to go for Eolaí here for his work forging Irish KC in the dungeons of Towers gan Fhéile. Hand crafted images that alter subtly over time. Sometimes not so subtly. Despite being as packed as the 05:30 bus out of New Delhi, everything is easily found - navigation is a disaster on many blogs with less than 1% of Eolaí’s content. But what category do I nominate his American Hell in? Ideas anyone.

Specialist: Myself and the Big Shopping Centre were going to nominate Rate This Toilet. Oh, yes we were, haigh. The runs of puns (see there’s one already) would be hard to resist. Okay, we’d be just taking the piss (another one). Butt (fek this, when will it stop?) Medbh might fit the bill being a specialist in three fields - literature, film and women’s rights. I could put her down as a specialist in books and films about women’s rights couldn’t I? I might to go for Paddy Anglican instead. I’ve never been a fan of the God-squad as Stephen well knows but I can’t help checking in for the latest in zanny religious merchandise/kitsch he’s found on the web. I loved the way he used Fairy Tale of New York in his Christmas sermon. He could have won the News and Current Affairs section hands down by breaking the story that Barack Obama’s ancestors came from Moneygall had the press not embargoed him.

Personal: So many to choose from. So little time. So much time. See, we still don’t know the deadline. Fek it. Flirty it is. And shur why not. Everything on her blog is personal. Normally being me-deep in conversation can be a turn off but Flirty makes it work. In fact we want her to be me-deep. We crave it. That’s why we read her blog. It’s a voyeur’s paradise. Yeah, definitely Flirty.

Political: Bock. Bock. Bock. Bock. And Bock. He is the mutt’s marbles when it comes to ripping the establishment to shreds. And not just the Irish one - he’ll go after any wrong doing anywhere in the world. No one is safe. I know for a fact Putin and Bush hold weekly conference calls to discuss him. I read it in a magazine, an expensive one so it must be true. You’ll find plenty of examples in his own Bock’s Office Hits.

Most Humorous Post: For the love of jayzez, why do they do this to us? How are we supposed to decide between all the gems throughout the year from Sweary, Kav (don’t forget them - they were blogging in ‘07), Eolaí, Conorín, Grandad and Grannymar to name but a tiny few. (Those are links to posts not blogs by the way). And every bloody thing from Old Knudsen. I’m going to go for FMC’s story of the day she was actually pleasant to her mother only to realise later that … well, go read it if you haven’t already.

Best Blog Post: I am being unfair here in that I this one picked out way back in August - Ann’s narrative of taking a walk and more interestingly, a talk, with her dog, Toby. This drew me in the way I was drawn in by stories read to me as a child. And like all those stories there was a message. Not a moral in this case, but one about the stupidity of some of the laws that have been forced upon us. Maybe it was a moral after all. You decide.

Best Blog: Again I had my mind made up about this even before last year’s awards. Annie. Better still, as she’s now living in Dublin we don’t need to use the granny-rule, or in her case, the mammy-rule, to qualify her as we did last year.

Worst Everything Blog: What you mean this isn’t a category? It should be. I’d have to give it to Áine Brady. She’s one of them - a politician. One of those politicians who embraced the web and social media pre-election. Oh, and how she embraced it - 4 miserable posts over a period of one month. The last being the miserablist of miserable misery: “Is the web fuelling a crisis in politics?” And that was it. Never heard from since. She didn’t need the blog again - she had been elected.

Foreign Blogs Read by Irish Bloggers: I know, I know, this doesn’t exist either. But how can I go without mentioning some of my favourites? Sam. Yep, the crème de la crème. That means the cream of the cream in foreignish and while the food scientists say it’s not possible to manufacture Sam is blogging proof they are wrong. Memsahib and Muzunga - my African blog-chums. Ablums? The latter I’ve mentioned already. The former I’ve long since forgiven for getting my gender wrong. That’s the Internet for ya - you just can’t reach out like Mr. C. Dundee and check. Not that she would. I think. And Stwidgie who could easily win both best use of Irish and photoblog in one fell swoop. Or Sugar who was in Ireland once but the plane took off again before she could kiss the ground.

Now this last one is going to rock the boat a little so hold on. Listen up and pay attention.

Blog by a Journalist: Lina Žigelytė’s Emigration etc. Lina works in an off-license. So she’s not a journalist, you say. Of course she is. Journalism is her profession. That makes her a journalist. Just because she can’t get a job in her chosen field in Ireland doesn’t make her any less a journalist. It says something about the Irish media though that they’d pass over an excellent writer who could bring so much perspective with her flawless English, vast knowledge, wit and good humour. Funny that Irish employers always use poor language skills as an excuse to keep immigrants in low paid menial jobs. What’s their excuse here?

I’ll leave you with that thought. Time for me to go hoover the fridge. Dog hair is a curse.

*Freud, Sigmund (1923) and not what you were thinking.

Mzungu is blogging news from the ground in Nairobi as she gets it.

It scares me. Yesterday I used Rwanda as an example of tribalism/tribal-politics to try explain the Kenyan political situation to a friend. I used Rwanda merely because of how tribalism in that case divided a country was something she’d understand having seen movies and documentaries not because of the real horror it eventually became. Reading Mzungu’s reports I fear my example may have been too close to the truth in the way I didn’t intend.

I wasn’t much of a wine drinker back then. But that was all they had. They rummaged in the cellar but not a single bottle of beer was to be found. I survived a couple of hours but finally cracked. I persuaded one of the waiters to drive me down to an off-license.

We were met by two security guard types when we got back. Ah jayzez, have they stolen the crown jewels? This is no laughing matter, sir. A man’s gone missing. One of your party I suspect - a Mr. Sneeze. Fuck off! That’s me. Look, I’m not missing. I’m here. See me. I’ve been here all along. And, okay right, there, pointing down the hill, for a bit.

Pam read me the riot act. All sort of stuff about employee safety being her responsibility on this trip. My conduct would be reported to Dublin. Yackedy, yack, yack. What had I got to say for myself? I don’t suppose I can put the beer on expenses can I? Apparently I was not only irresponsible but I was cheeky too.

Back at the hotel the VP announced he was pulling rank. He threw a few hundred behind the bar. And no one was going to bed until they had sang at least one song and all the money was spent. I sang the first 114 verses of Báidín Fheilimí - as you do. Pam decided she was off the clock, had her first drink of the evening and chilled out a bit. Now was my chance.

Eh, Pam, me auld flower. Yes, Primal - what now? Well you know they way I kind of make a bollix of things? Like nearly loosing the £100 cash? Yes, I heard. And like nearly getting arrested trying to spend it? I heard that too. And like going missing? I noticed. What now? Well I left my feking cheque on the table up at the Castle. Damn it, Primal, you are incorrigible. That’s not good I take it? I suppose it’s lads like me give drink a bad name.

She made some calls. The cheque was found. In a bin. Where else? The bagpiper would be passing the hotel on his way home and drop it off. He duly did and the VP insisted he stay for one. He couldn’t - he had two of the dancers waiting in the car. I was dispatched to fetch them and the tartan octopus.

I don’t know what time we called it a night but Sunday was the Feast of Mother Mary Aching Head. You couldn’t class me as an absolutely brilliant anything. I could just about manage horizontal but vertical was out of the question so I stayed in bed until it was time to go to the airport. I double checked the bin and left.

It being pre 9/11 security was just a formality. Sick as I was I still had the responses off by heart. Did you pack your own bags, sir? Yeash. Has your luggage been out of your sight since then, sir? Noargh. Have you any new or unused electrical equipment? Noargh. Big mistake. The scanner picked up the radio and I got the “could you step in here for a moment, sir, thank you, sir” treatment. It may have been pre 9/11 but in the aftermath of Canary Wharf being Irish was a bit of a disadvantage in the UK.

The absolutely stunning girl was beside me on the plane again. How was the musical? Brilliant! Pity you threw away your ticket. Yeah, I regretted it after. Big time. Twice. So how was your company dinner? Oh, a few glitches but great overall. Do you reckon we’ll be in Dublin before 10? If I miss the last bus from town I’ll have to take a taxi. Well we’re running very late because of that security scare so I doubt it. Some idiot was trying to smuggle electronics. Yeah, I heard. Some people, eh?

I missed the bus. The taxi driver took the last of my sterling - pound for punt - no exchange rate. I’d have preferred to have left it in the bin than give it to the robbing bastard. I bought shares in the company with my cheque. Not long after, the President and the (by then, not so absolutely brilliant) VP were caught fiddling the books and the NASDAQ suspended trading. The shares plummeted the day the ban was lifted and I was left with next to nothing. I might as well have left the cheque in the bin. So much for being an absolutely brilliant employee.