Evening dress, bute and a Basketcase win

Guess what? Basketcase won! My little blog won the Best Online Journalist at the Guild of Agricultural Journalists awards last night in Dublin. It's so lovely to get recognised by your peers and I was delighted to win especially as I never win anything; not even an egg and spoon race. Seriously.

Yesterday was a bit manic as I was rushing to finish a piece for the Indo (Irish Indendent), pick up the kids, bring in horses from the field, muck out, feed (then muck out and feed kids) and get ready and into town for 7pm which is not a mean feat from this part of the world. I picked up Philip in RTE still with a packet of bute in my pocket that was to go into the thoroughbred's feed. That's how much of a hurry I was in.

After a drinks reception and dinner we were into the awards part of the night. Great to see my ex-colleague Liam Lavelle from Ear to the Ground, Sarah Sheehan, Darren Carty from The Farmers Journal, Ella McSweeney and Catriona Murphy from the Indo all pick up awards with Catriona winning the overall journalist award. I was absolutely delighted to pick up the honours for my blog from Damien O'Reilly, also a colleague of mine from Countrywide from RTE. Writing is a fairly solitary existence and it was so enjoyable to spend the evening with people in the same business as me; to share gossip, slag each other and celebrate with a few drinks. A "few" not being a very accurate description.

I'd like to give a big thanks to everyone who visits this blog and takes something from it. It's important that writing about agriculture and the food sector has a strong place online. As new media meets old media at a critical time I hope I can be part of this changing way of disseminating news. Please continue to read and enjoy it, comment and let me know what can be improved. And thanks for your support!