Happy Ginger day Chumlies!

For Twenty!



I is feeling a little glooooomy today, what with all the work and the meetings and what not, so I thought today's Friday Foto For Friends and Chumlies, should contain a little pizzaz. And LO! Pizzaz it has.





Top of the morning to you chumlies and busy busy day ahead. Meetings! On a friday, why marmalade why? Friday already! Where does the time go? Allow me to offer a two prong post.
Prong numbero uno
Interesting row brewing once again with the Catholic Church. From today's Indo.

"Archbishop of Dublin Cardinal Desmond Connell yesterday secured a temporary injunction preventing a State inquiry from examining files relating to his handling of complaints against paedophile priests.

The unprecedented move could undermine Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's policy of open access to Church files.

Cardinal Connell (81) has repeatedly promised victims gardai and a dedicated judicial inquiry would have full access to internal files.

Last night, he was in hospital in Rome after a fall, while a leading Canon lawyer accused him of a "cover-up"."

From a legal point of view I'm sure they are perfectly within their rights to protect their files, but from an ethical point this will surely look bad. The Catholic church has been losing ground steadily in this country, public trust in it is shaky. I'm not sure this is the right way to go about things. Secrets and lies were the bedfellows of abusers in the church. Why should we trust them to do the right thing now?


Numero dos

But never mind, on to something more joyous. A mighty thank you for all the nominations for the blog awards, and a thousand huzzahs for the chumlies, nice to see so many of you nominated for your most excellent blogs. I am pleased. I read most of you pretty much daily-What? I work from home! I put in over 12 hours a sodding day, I have time!
There have been some snippy remarks made on the interweb this week about us bloggers, and no I'm not talking about Fanny Waters either. A few disgruntled folk have expressed dissatisfaction with the 'circle jerk' nature of the blog awards, and how we bloggers, especially the Irish, are too chummy and back- pattingly nice to each other and that the blog awards are nothing more than a giant wet emission of bloggery smegma.
To them I would say yeah, and what fucking award show isn't?
No no, I wouldn't. Or would I? It depends on my toast intake actually.

Here's the thing, nay sayers, if it seems we are disgustingly chummy it is because we are for the most part chummy. We are because we're not forced into each other's company. We visit each other, read, pass comment, laugh, get irked, agree, disagree and pretty much interact on a daily basis because we can and because we choose to.
I can't speak for all blogs, but I can speak for my own, the people who come here are good people, they're intelligent for the most part, entertaining, thought provoking and best of all the sort of people who do not make a woman reach for her blunderbuss and google map.
Life is too short to go looking for reasons to get annoyed. Why would any of us want to go regularly to a site they didn't enjoy? Who wants a flame war? For what purpose?
Also I don't need to leave here in order to get eyes rolling. I publish enough 'I'm against it' rhetoric to keep me occupied and amused. Why go fishing for trouble when it can drop by here from Mullingar and call me a names?
I'm pleased to be included in the long lists for my blog. Not because I give a monkey's about awards, I don't blog because I want awards. I blog because I work from home, alone and I like the company and I like the community that has sprang up among us chumlies. No, I'm pleased to be included becasue it means that I am appreciated, and everybody likes to be appreciated.
So thank you.

I'm super pleased to see so many of my web chumlies up for awards too. I appreciate those blogs, I nominated those blogs, and it's great to see other people feel the same way.
So to everyone who made the lists and to everyone who didn't, to bloggers, cranks, sulkers and wafflers everywhere, I wish you all a hearty ginger day and I hope you all have a cracking weekend.