Once again Anu, Ashok, Conrad, Gaelikaa, Ginger, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria, Ramana and I, all part of the Loose Blogging consortium (Helen is on sabbatical & Ashok might be otherwise engaged right now) once more dip our pens as we prepare our offering on the topic for the week, chosen today by Maria.

” Fifteen Minutes of Fame“

I am struggling here, since my moments of fame never last longer than five minutes.  Most of them have already been documented right here on my blog.  A lazy option might be to just link to one or two and leave you with all the clicking and work to do….

Nah!  That would not be fair, so I will tell you a little story.

In October 2008 I wrote a post called Is it in the Bag? One of the comments was a little surprising:

Hi Grannymar,
I was wondering if you could contact me please. My name is Dearbhla and I’m writing from RTE’s The Afternoon Show. I’d love to have a chat with you as possible as you seem to have lots of tips etc that we would be interested in hearing.
This seems like a somewhat unconventional way to get in touch with someone but you didn’t have contact details posted on the blog.
My number is Dublin 01 XXX XXXX. My email address is dearbhlaXXXXXX@XXXXXX.ie
If you could send me a mail with some more info on your background etc and maybe even attach a photo, that would be fab.
Regards,
Dearbhla Lennon

I replied

Hi Dearblah,

It is good to hear from you again so soon.

You found me as Grannymar and that is how I like to be known in public.   Born and reared in Dublin, I moved north to County Antrim when I married.  In fact I have been in Northern Ireland longer than my years down south.  The connection with the south is still very strong as my daughter is now married and working there and I have siblings and friends scattered across the country.

I am not shy about my age, it is after all written in the lines on my face! At 61 I am now officially a senior citizen. In the UK women retire at 60 and men at 65, although that will change over the next few years and women will work as long as their male counterparts.

I started blogging in 2006. It grew slowly and at this stage I try to post something everyday. Now I am rather overwhelmed by the visitors to my blog who range in age from 17 years old to over eighty years young! I also follow about 120 other bloggers, they do not all post every day. The variety of their topics are amazing, they cover technology, music, photography, health, politics, sport, beauty, crafts and of course food. They all add colour to the rainbow of daily life and I learn something new from each visit. It might be the latest tekki widget or plug-in, a new angle on a news item, a story to pull on your heart strings, a photo that takes your breath away or a humorous tale that will have you laughing for the day.

I was honoured to jointly win the award for the Best Personal Blog in the Irish Blog Awards in March this year. In April I was the recipient of the first Blog Post of the Month Award – also from the Irish Blog Awards stable; for: The light went out. 

Dearblah you ask about household hints, part of my young life was spent at my mother’s side as she reared her large family. Mammy taught me to cook, mend and deal with all class of household chore. While running my own home and in my working life I suppose I picked up a few tricks along the way.

For recent photos and a little more information about me, try here and here

I hope you find this helpful

Lán grá

Grannymar
aka Marie

The emails were flying backward and forward for a few days and we soon moved to phone calls.  Then suddenly I was asked late one Monday evening if I could appear on the Wednesday edition of The Afternoon Show.  By now most of you are familiar with the video clip that Elly added to the link for the show.  I suppose in total my air time lasted about 15 minutes, but from that came 40 weekly postings on my blog about handy hints.

We never know when we hit the publish button where it will lead,  I have been interviewed for several newspapers and attended a photo-shoot for the Irish Times Magazine, I have been contacted by at least three Sculptors whose work I featured in posts with further details about past or future pieces.  One of my posts was featured in the book in the sidebar and a couple of recipes found their way into another book. Oh!  Hold on a minute, I almost forgot about Mr Shoes: His project is complete and the book printed and it includes six photos of my shoes – even a shot of all of them in the bath!

None of this would have happened if I was not pushed off the cliff.

Thank you Elly for the push and more than the Fifteen Minutes of Fame!