My blog posts are like bloomers

I just can't seem to blog easily anymore. Things happen, but I have much less to say about it all. Well, that I'm prepared to commit to the blogosphere anyway.

The kids are growing up and I'm less inclined to write about them in case it comes back to haunt them.

Things happen but our life isn't that remarkable. We're all healthy, we're not especially wealthy or especially poor, no major drama is playing out in our lives.

Life bumbles on but we're not able to spend out on lots of trips out or holidays. I don't craft although Missy Woo likes to make things. We bake, but we make other people's recipes so I can't blog them without infringing copyright.

I have opinions but I'm not necessarily sure anyone wants to read it or whether I'd cause an uproar for my terrible views. Sometimes, I end up ranting in my head and then mentally slap myself for being so judgemental.

What's left? Not a lot. I know I will never be no1 at blogging and having the world fall at my feet. I just don't have the time. But you know what? I'm OK with that. I'm glad I've had this time in a way - it proves that blogging really is just a hobby to me; if I was top dog, I'd be feeling the pressure to write lots of posts and I just don't.

You'll just have to wait. Having mastered making bloomer bread recently thanks to Paul Hollywood, taking your time makes for a better, more enjoyable product. My blog posts are like bloomers (not that sort) - I'm hoping the wait is going to be worth it.

Well, I'm not going to bore you.

Or maybe I am. You see, a few weeks ago, I received an approach to do a review and I accepted. I accepted because it was for a brand with which I have had a chequered history over time. I assumed that because they were approaching bloggers to do a review that they had got their act together.

After I had said yes, I realised that when they said they had approached bloggers, they had asked just about everyone in the parent blogging community. Review after review started to appear and I'm sure that readers who read a lot of parent blogs got very bored. Not only that, my fears were founded as many had dreadful experiences there and the best seemed to have had an OK experience, but nothing terribly great. Actually, excuse me, I think I read one completely positive review.

I had committed to doing this review so I feel I should write it. However, I'm not really sure what I can add to what's already been said but here goes.

The brand that offered me the opportunity was Frankie & Benny's, and as I said, we have a chequered history. We have had extremely slow service at times and instances of substandard food that the staff have tried to conceal, but at other times, they have been great. Our last visit had been disastrous, but nothing to do with them because Monkey was sick in the toilets shortly after we arrived. The staff were troopers and even arranged for our breakfasts to arrive at different times so one of us could sit outside with an improving by the minute 7 year old.

We chose to return to the same branch to do our review, not because we liked it so much but because it was at the Trafford Centre and we chose to meet husband there after he'd finished his marathon. The area was rammed that day because of the appalling weather, but Frankie & Benny's itself wasn't too busy. The main purpose of our review was to try out one of the four new menus. As it was a Sunday afternoon, we couldn't try the lunch or the breakfast menu so we tried the specials menu.

The kids are always well catered for with activity packs full of things that they really want to do. They love the kids menu which is £3.95 for main, dessert and a refillable drink - and it is not stingy at all. Missy Woo had the pizza because she knew that it's big - in fact, you'd expect it to be 3.95 by itself.

The specials menu was 2 courses for £10.95. Looking at the menu, it was struck by how unbalanced it was for vegetarians. All but one of the starters was vegetarian, but only one of the main courses was. This seemed strange as there were 10 choices for the mains. I was also a bit disappointed at the range of choices. - 4 pizza type dishes, 4 chicken dishes doesn't leave a lot of room for variety. We chose dough sticks and chicken wings to share with the children to start, then a New Yorker and a chicken burger for mains. When the starters arrived, I discovered how hot the wings were - there is no way the children would touch them; my lips were still tingling 10 minutes later. The children enjoyed the doughsticks before their mains arrived.

What of our mains? Well, they were OK. They weren't fantastic burgers and I felt the portion sizes were a tad small. Still, husband was still full of running gels and water so didn't finish his main but his chips got plundered by the children and me. We moved onto puddings - well, I had some crumble and the children had ice cream. Again, nothing exceptional.

The service was as good as before. The staff were generally friendly and helpful and the children loved the waiter who did tricks with drink napkins when he brought your drinks. What they loved was the staff treated them like grown ups and chatted easily to them. What I found annoying was the birthday routine. If someone has a birthday, they turn the music right up, bring out a pudding, play happy birthday (presumably singing it) then Congratulations comes on over the speakers. It's annoying enough when you're having a quietish meal and want to talk to your family but this happened SIX times in one hour, two of them back to back. I mean, seriously? I know a birthday is special  but does the whole restaurant have to be subjected to it? I sat there dreading the volume knob increasing and if I'd heard Cliff one more time, I swear I couldn't be held responsible for my actions. The only other thing that grated was that after I handed over the voucher to pay, the waiter didn't say thank you and didn't come back to explain that they weren't going to give me the balance in vouchers. In fact, the waiter barely said thank you.

Would I go again? Possibly. I would go to eat from a different menu; the lunch menu is too restrictive when you consider the price. The children love it but I yearn for something a bit different and the food really was a bit samey on the specials menu. I'm happy enough to go for breakfast but that's it. I prefer to go elsewhere for family meals although we do go occasionally because the children do get well fed.

However, I know that we were lucky that had a decent experience, and that's my problem with this. Frankie & Benny's have a reputation for providing inconsistent service that is often slow for no apparent reason and that often translates itself to the food. When I was approached, I assumed that they had put some considerable effort into offering a more consistent standard of service across the board. How wrong I was. You won't have to look far to find reviews that are far from flattering. Which begs the question - why run this campaign? Why give a large number of bloggers the chance to review your brand when you know that in some branches, they may not have a good time? People are going to be searching the internet and finding some awful reviews which people will take note of as they are written by bloggers. And I don't get why they approached so many people to do this - there is such a thing as brand fatigue if it gets written about too much but it seems that they didn't think about this when planning their campaign.

I'm sorry if you're fed up with yet another review for this brand. I shall be more careful next time - I don't like doing something that everyone else is doing because well, it's boring really. What this campaign has proved to me is that quality is definitely better than quantity and that brands really need to be sure of their product before they offer it to bloggers to try.

(I was sent a £50 voucher to use on a meal to try out one of the four new menus. The branch didn't know we were coming, nor that we were paying by voucher until we had been given the bill. I have not been told what to write and all words and opinions are my own.) 

Giving credit where it's due - how to make things right the right way

Back: Danny Ward, Alex Smithies & Alan Lee.
Front: Jordan Rhodes & two new signings

A while back, I experienced what it was like when the reaction to a blog post goes almost viral. Everyone reads it, it gets talked about,  passed around and causes a bit of a stir. That post was my review of the family facilities at Huddersfield Town. The home fans very quickly picked up on it and soon, thanks to Twitter, it had come to the attention of their commercial director Sean Jarvis, who promptly invited me to a meeting to discuss my experiences. In the meantime, the local paper even published a story about it!

Half grand, that's me.

I don't write controversy - we've been there before.

I don't generally write funny posts. Whatever anyone says, it's a lot LOT harder to write funny stuff regularly than you might think. Meet me in real life and I will be funny occasionally, but the act of writing it makes it all sound a bit trite and unfunny. Hats off to anyone that manages to write genuinely funny posts regularly.

I don't do fabulous photography that makes people go "Ooh" and "Ahh". Possibly, it's because I don't have the patience to set it all up to create that effect. I am very much a "point and shoot" kinda gal. Which is a problem when I'm trying to make my food look fantastic,which of course it is *cough*, and it ends up looking ordinary.

Would you be controversial just to get your blog read?

Photo credit: asifthebes

This has been bugging me for a few days. I may rant occasionally on Twitter but I do not like conflict and confrontation. Classically a middle-born child, I was always the peacemaker for family arguments when I was small. I'd do anything to stop arguments and restore calm. Yes, I do fall out with people, mostly the children (actually, make that mostly Monkey. Sigh) but it doesn't last and I will always try to make peace. I hate unresolved rows - especially going to bed on an argument.

As a blogger, that attitude has stayed with me. I don't like judging other parents or their choices and I wouldn't criticise any particular person directly (or indirectly by hinting) via this blog. I worry about mentioning people in my family in case they find and read this back. I've even delayed mentioning my husband in blog posts, and featured him in photographs, in case he is offended or I upset him, however unintentionally and asked his permission before hitting publish.

Frustration

Sometimes, the words roll around in my head but they just won't come out. The frustration freezes my brain, immobilises my fingers and I stare blankly at a screen, pixels dancing in front of my eyes and wish I had more inspiration. Thoughts remain abstract as I can't articulate them; well, not the way I want them to look or sound on the page. I want my words to sing in perfect harmony, dance in perfect time, to delight and entertain readers but they end up singing and dancing like a drunk at the wrong end of a heavy session.

I'd like to tell you stories that will make you laugh and cry, whilst moving and inspiring you. You wouldn't be able to wait to tell your friends and associates. You'd comment, you'd retweet it, and it would be like the post was taking over the world. It would be everywhere. I mean, that's what we all want for our posts when we publish them, don't we?

Sadly, that post is not this. Lack of inspiration is leading me to vent my frustration at what I see as my limitation of my blogging talents instead. Blogger's block is firmly in place at the neck of the bottle that contains the articulate and erudite sentences that I aspire to write. I've tried to remove it but it's not happening.

Anyone got a blogging corkscrew?

There are more questions than answers...

II'm regretting giving this post that title as I've been humming that tune ever since. Anyway.... I was tagged by the lovely Gemma from Storm in a K cup (more about her later) to answer the 10 questions meme. I have not done a meme in a while, if you don't count Meal Planning Monday, Life Circle or the Gallery so I thought I'd give it a go. All you have to do is answer the 10 questions, tag a few people, then return to the original post and comment so that the tagger knows you have completed your mission.

So, I'd best get on with it then!

My radio debut. Not quite a radio star.

Quick blog post before bed!

I was invited to be interviewed over the phone to talk about blogging on the local radio station, BBC Radio Lancashire. It all came about when they started following me on twitter and I made a funny comment about them wanting to find out what bloggers got up to in their spare time and that actually my life was dull!

The next day they DMd me and asked me to call them. Before I know it, they're asking me to appear on the radio the next morning. I accepted and then thought "What have I done?"

Anyhow, I got up early the next morning and they rang me a few minutes before. I was only on air talking to Graham Liver for about 5 minutes and I don't think I made a fool of myself. I got some good feedback on Twitter from my followers anyway.

If you want to hear it, the programme is on iplayer until Tuesday 11th so you can listen in here. I'm on from about 85 minutes in. I still haven't listened to myself back as I hate listening to my voice, but apparently I'm posh. Really? I love that I got introduced as a Lancashire-based author. It made me sound important!

Listen in if you fancy. But I'm a radio star now. (Not)

The day I went to Blogcamp

As you probably already know, I'm off to Cybermummy next weekend, thanks to my sponsors Seaworld Parks. It's a huge event with hundreds of bloggers attending. But last Friday, I travelled a much shorter distance to a much smaller event aimed at bloggers called Blogcamp in Manchester. The organisers are running events in different locations around the country to allow bloggers to meet up, chat and perhaps listen to a few experts.

Truly, MADly, Deeply

If you're a regular reader of this blog (and if not, why not?!), you will maybe have noticed a little badge that has snuck in on my sidebar in the last week or so. I've been wondering whether to mention it or not, because it feels very un-me - or should that be un-British? In one of those "oh, sod it" moments that we all have, I've decided to take the plunge and explain, in case you don't know what it's about.

The badge denotes that this blog has been nominated for one of the The MAD awards. These awards, now in their second year, celebrate the best of Mum And Dad blogging (hence the MAD bit - no, it doesn't mean we're all bonkers. Then again...). The awards recently opened for nominations. There are several categories, and weekly, lists of all blogs nominated in each categories are published on the site's blog. The five blogs with most nominations in each category will become finalists, and a public vote opened for all but the Blogger of the Year award. The winners will be announced in September, and there are some really brilliant prizes on offer.

To date, I have been nominated in five categories, which is just amazing really. Thank you to anyone and everyone who has taken time so far to nominate me for an award.

The categories I have been nominated in are:

Blogger of the Year
Best MAD Family Life Blog
Best MAD Food Blog
Best New MAD Blog (a category I qualify for by 4 days!)
Best MAD Blog Post of the Year for this post, that created a big reaction when I published it a few weeks ago.

If you would like to nominate me in any of the categories - there are others, but I don't qualify for some, like pregnancy blogs - visit the MADs website here to cast your vote. If you do, then thank you.

I couldn't have foreseen what effect starting this blog would have upon my life, as I noted in my Happy Blogoversary post last week. To be nominated for awards for my blogging as well is just thrilling.

I will now go back to being very British and not mentioning it at all. What's the MAD awards again?

Happy Blogoversary

Photo credit: melodi2

Today, The Five Fs blog is one year old. One whole year of me, wittering on about all sorts of stuff. It started with So, this is me, which was more of an arrival with a whimper than a bang. I remember feeling very, very self-conscious when I posted links to it on Twitter. After all, I was in awe of all the fantastic bloggers that I'd recently discovered. How could I ever match up to them? I felt pretty dumb, to be honest. What right had I to do this? I felt like everyone was going to laugh at me. They didn't. Well, not to my face anyway.

200-odd posts later, I'm still here. I still feel like a newbie to the blogosphere, and compared to some bloggers that I look up to, I am - they've been blogging years. However, it's become apparent from chats I've had on Twitter in the last few weeks that I'm regarded as an old hand. Old being the operative word. It's very flattering, but deep down, I feel that I'm still learning, which is good, because I like learning. I'm odd like that.

Blogging was a slow burn at first - I only posted infrequently, but now I think about blogging all the time. I see blog posts in everything, but thankfully, most of them never see the light of day. Lucky you.

I intended to blog about the five Fs in my life when I started (hence the name) but when I look back, I blog about football far less than I thought I would do. I still don't post lots of recipes but I seem to blog about food in more general terms quite a bit. I wasn't blogging that much about fitness but since I started My Fitness Story... earlier this year, it's had an at least weekly presence on my blog. I'm in awe of the guest posters who've taken the time to tell their stories. A huge thank to all of them for subjecting themselves to public scrutiny. (And if you want to have a go, feel free to get in touch, slots are always available!)

A lot of my posts have centred around the children, which is as it should be, since they are growing and changing, frustrating and delighting me - all in equal measure - every single day. I don't always blog about the bad times, I don't always blog about the really good times, but some of the little details are often mentioned that I would probably otherwise forget. Like the conversation I had with Missy Woo yesterday. She told me that she had a gingerbread man for pudding at school then went onto say "But he got up, jumped off the plate and ran away up the field so I had to go and chase it so I could eat it" which was just brilliant imagination, and made me laugh.

In the time I've been blogging, I've discovered that writing funny posts is a hell of a lot harder than serious ones. I've discovered I write long posts that I have to edit right down. I've discovered that editing them can sometimes turn them into completely different posts. I've discovered I like writing a lot more than I thought. And that what I think will make a good blog post sometimes doesn't at all, and vice versa.

And I have discovered that people do read my stuff. That, for me, makes it all worth it. When people say to me they love my blog or a particular post, I'm blown away. If I say I'm proud, that makes me sound big-headed but I don't think I've ever done anything like this that's been so successful. I have to say thank you to all who read or support this blog in whichever way, shape or form. You all rock. Fact.

A special thank you must go to Garry, who writes The Blog Up North, who started me blogging by convincing me to write some guest posts for him and then lying being kind about them enough to inspire me to start this blog. He is the person I turn to when I need advice on all things blogwise, he's one of my regular commenters and gives me encouragement when I'm doubting myself or my blogging. I blame would like to thank him for everything he's done this last year. He's a better writer than me, and ten times funnier, but I'll let him off.

It's been an amazing experience, this blogging. Through it, I've met some lovely people, some of whom I'm now proud to call close friends. I've been invited to places I never even dreamed I'd visit. It has made me laugh out loud but I've also cried buckets at times. The good and the bad, the happy and the sad, all of it has enriched my life.

I may feel like the newbie for a while yet, but I know that blogging has me hooked. There should be more blogoversaries because the ride is far from over. I hope you'll stick around.

Why not celebrate my blogoversary by popping over to enter my blogoversary competition? 

What do your kids eat for breakfast?

Do you insist on only healthy options? Or do you take the view that anything is better than nothing? Do yours even HAVE breakfast?

I know, that last question sounds shocking but I went to a event called Snap, Crackle and Blog at Kellogg's UK headquarters last Friday, and they revealed that 1 in 6 children do not eat breakfast, 1.7 million of which are children under 6. I think that last statistic shocked me most - babies and toddlers, with tiny tummies and who need to have food regularly, going without breakfast. That's awful - I can't believe all of those 1.7 million children don't want to eat in the mornings. On top of that, school children spend £646 MILLION pounds on the way to school buying snacks and drinks. That's over £3.5 million every school day.

Kellogg's are obviously the market leader in the UK breakfast cereal market. Their market share is way ahead of their nearest competitor - something like 40% with the next biggest around the 15% mark. Obviously, it is in their interest to tell a group of mum bloggers that statistic, because maybe our blogs about the event will mention it and maybe more people will buy cereals to eat breakfast. But is that so bad?

We all know that breakfast is a positive thing. It helps us to function better throughout the day. Getting a child to eat breakfast is a habit we want them to have for life. But many of the breakfast cereals on the market have what people perceive to be large amounts of sugar in them - think Coco Pops - and consider that to be bad. When we were there, and we were discussing this with one of the Kellogg's dietitians, I remembered a programme I watched a couple of years ago made by Professor Lesley Regan looking at children's products and part of which investigated sugary cereals. Lo and behold, I have managed to find a video of that programme for you to watch here (and funnily enough, Kellogg's are featured). It also features one of my favourite bits of trivia from last Friday - that most people who consume Frosties are actually young men, rather than small children. Brilliant.



So, maybe we all need to relax about things like that - they get so many other things from it. For instance, cereals are now the leading dietary source of iron for most children. Speaking for myself, I am happier if Monkey and Missy Woo have the healthiest options for breakfast but occasionally, they have Chocolate Weetabix, and sometimes for a special treat, I buy them chocolate spread for special breakfasts. But when it's run out, I don't automatically replace those things and they are happy enough having less sugary cereals like Rice Krispies. Missy Woo is currently having a big porridge phase and will devour bowls of it with only a few raisins added to provide sweetness. I'm happy with that balance - they understand that some things are treats and not to be eaten every day. Were I to have a really finicky child and a sugary cereal was the one thing they would eat for breakfast, I'd give it to them. So shoot me.

Still, Kellogg's say they are looking to reduce the sugar content of some of their sweeter cereals. That has to be a gradual thing because tastes change slowly, although they can be changed. The same applies to cereals. There will come a point where they can't reduce it any further because we just won't eat it. I'm thinking of some reduced salt and sugar baked beans that taste so bland, I want to add salt so I don't buy them.

Beyond the serious side of nutritional messages, it was a great event and I met some lovely bloggers for the first time, and some others for the second or third time. Kellogg's had us "making" our own cereal - and even designing our own cereal packet. I use the term designing loosely as I am so not crafty, it's embarrassing. Still, I think I did OK - and the cereal is actually quite edible. Here's mine, along with a few things that Kellogg's gave us to take away.

And yes, that is my face on a Cornflakes packet! If you saw my Silent Sunday post this week, hopefully all is now explained - they took photos of all of us at the start and then printed them on either a packet of Cornflakes or Rice Krispies for us to take away. Incidentally, did you know that the cockerel on the packet is called Cornelius? (Geddit?) I didn't!

Because I can't fit them all in, I've put pictures from the morning into a slideshow for you to peruse at your leisure.



Apart from coming away with arms laden with stuff, the one thing that stuck with me is this: children need breakfast. And as things go, cereal ain't necessarily that bad an option. If your child will only eat the sugariest thing on the supermarket shelf, let them have it. In the grand scheme of things, it's no biggie. If that's OK by Professor Regan, then it's OK by me.

I am a Twitterholic!

I have been considering starting a Twitter meme for a while and I'm just getting around to it now. That's the problem you have when you have too many ideas for blog posts in your head.

I decided to start this, because I love Twitter more than is healthy for a grown woman. I had a slow start but it's now reached fever pitch, and there is no hope for me; I'm hooked. I am a Twitterholic So, I have concocted a few questions about Twitter and you, which I hope will make for interesting blog-type reading. And of course, in time-honoured fashion, I get to go first. Eyes down, look in, ladies and gents, here are the votes of the kateab jury.

When did you join Twitter? (You can find the exact date at bwitterday.com)

28th November 2008.

Why did you join Twitter?

I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I'd read an increasing number of press articles about it and was intrigued. However, I made the rookie mistake of assuming it was like Facebook (which I'd joined early 2008 having resisted for a long time) and so protected my tweets for quite a while. It did mean that I didn't get it at first. It was like tweeting into the abyss. I don't think I got my second follower until February! A few months later, I got Tweetdeck and was hooked.

Who is/was your first or oldest follower? Who did you follow first? Tell me all about them. (firstfivefollowers.com will give you this info)

These are one and the same person for me. It is Blaise Grimes-Viort who tweets here. I have known Blaise for 6 years or so, when he joined Handbag.com as their communities manager, which is now part of National Magazines. I was a regular on their discussion boards and was one of the volunteers who helped to moderate the boards - dealing with spam, abuse and so on. I also helped on a new discussion board which Blaise set up connected to some websites, aimed at mums-to-be and new mums, until NatMags decided to close it down. Gah.

I don't really use Handbag any more. I stopped visiting because most of the users I knew stopped visiting after an upgrade radically changed the boards for the worse. We all found new homes to go to, but I still kept in touch with Blaise via Twitter. Blaise tweets some personal stuff but mostly tweets information about being a community manager (and job vacancies, if you're interested). He left National Magazines last week and is now Head of Social Media Services & Engagement for Webjam.

The other thing I know about Blaise is that he has a famous sister. She's a supermodel - reckon that could be a bit of a conversation stopper! Her name is Benoit, better known as Ben Grimes. It means nothing to me as I am so not into fashion but she appears in celeb features.

Do you have any celebrities following you, or have you ever had a DM from a celeb? (This was inspired by Paula getting a DM from John Cusack - still jealous!)

Erm, I have a couple of radio type people (the lovely Helen Blaby and Phil Williams) who have become followers somehow. And the lovely Dhruv Baker, winner of Masterchef 2010, got talked into following me.

I did once get a DM from a former Apprentice contestant, offering telephone numbers and an email address. They weren't for me, but for someone who is not on Twitter. I was just the messenger girl. Honest, m'lud.

I had a real phase of following celebrities in my early days on Twitter. I do still follow some but these days, I am more interested in interacting with people, which is hard for celebrities who get thousands of replies to every tweet. I keep some for banter, amusement and nosiness, because that's what following a celebrity is all about.

If you could follow anyone not on Twitter - alive, dead, real or fictional - on Twitter, who would it be?

I think it would have to be someone literary, just to see how they get on fitting their ideas into 140 characters. So it's between two authors. The first is Thomas Hardy, whose books I read as a challenge, because the language was so difficult. Most of his books are fairly depressing so I can't imagine his tweets would be a laugh a minute. The other is Kahlil Gibran, who wrote The Prophet, one of my favourite books. I could imagine him tweeting some great lines from that and his other works, all of them guaranteed to delight and uplift.

Which came first - Twitter or blog? 

Definitely Twitter. It is because of Twitter that I got into blogging, through "meeting" bloggers on there who got me to write, leading me to set up this blog. The same people regularly give me advice, offer their opinion or input, and for that I will be forever grateful. It just so happens that Twitter is the perfect platform for telling the world about my blog, so I can't imagine blogging without Twitter. Twitter also helps me find some great blogs, some of which are in my blogroll down the right hand side of the page.

So, that's me. It now falls to me to pass on this Twitterholic meme to some other great bloggers. I am therefore tagging to receive my wonderful Twitterholic award:

Garry at The Blog Up North
Wendy at Very Bored in Catalunya
Joanna at At Home With Mrs M
Karen at If I Could Escape
Kirsty at Gone Bananas

to have a go. The rules, such as they are, are:

1. Nick the badge at the top, and mention the person who tagged you.
2. Answer the questions. (Duh!)
3. Tag some other great twitterholics bloggers.

Alternatively, tag yourself, mention me in your blog post and link to it in the comments below. I'd love to hear about your Twitter experience.

OK, OK.....I am officially rubbish at blogging.

My last post was 4 days ago and I've got nothing in the pipeline. For the second week in a row, I am devoid of inspiration for the Gallery. I've got some ideas in my head but nothing laid down in concrete form that will make any sense to anyone but me. My online brand, if I were to have one, is being neglected. In my defence, it's nearly the end of term and I spent about 5 hours of my child free day yesterday (I get 6.5 hours to myself) making blackcurrant jam!

However, I hope you've noticed I've made some changes to the blog over the last few days. I've added a whizzy button to get an RSS feed of my blog and you can now also subscribe via email so that you get sent you new posts if that's what floats your boat. And this evening, I found I could add the little buttons at the bottom of the post that allow you to post links to all sorts of random places.

This is on top of the new commenting system I added last week, and the fancy new layout I found on Blogger's new Template Designer.

I may not be sharing my wisdom with you, but I've been tinkering away and making me look a bit different and hopefully, this blog will be easier for you to "drive".

Come back soon when I have real wisdom to share with you. Pretty please. I'll try to make it good, honest.

The Five Fs gets an award!

I got given an award the other day, by Garry at Blog Up North. The award he's given me is a Blog of Substance award, although I've noticed, in the slightly obsessive way that I do, that the original badge/award is called "A Blog With Substance". To be honest, I am slightly amazed. This blog has only been going for a few months, and I didn't post on it for nearly a month so really, it's only a couple of months old. To be recognised by a fellow blogger of having substance is quite something. Obviously, he sees something I don't although it is his fault I started blogging as I wrote a couple of guest posts for him back in March and started this blog a week or two later after the second one.

I feel like I am still finding my way in the blogosphere and the blog is evolving as I go. Already, I've noticed that out of the five Fs I claim to blog about, I've blogged about food most, family next, football hardly at all (which is bad considering I've been watching the World Cup), fitness hardly ever, and nothing really fun. In fact, some of my recent posts could be considered quite maudlin and self-pitying and not really fitting into any of these five. But I've enjoyed creating them, and been thrilled with the response I have had from readers. I love the comments, so please, please keep them coming. We all need validation of what we're doing and people commenting positively on my writing really does that for me, and I don't care if it's good or bad, the fact it has generated a comment is enough for me.

So, thanks go to Garry for seeing something in this blog that makes it worthy of a read. (PS Your cheque's in the post ;) ) A condition of accepting this award is that I must sum up my blogging philosophy in five words. Five words?! Good God, have you read my posts? Five words is almost an impossibility for me! I haven't even thought about this until now. So, I've had a think and killed off some brain cells and come up with this:

Write it from your heart. 

My most popular posts - not just my opinion, I'm judging this by the number of page views and comments I've received from readers - have been when I have done just that. I've written some posts and been on the point of not publishing them but have decided to let the readers decide if they are worth bothering about. They've felt too personal to be of interest to others, but they seem to strike a chord.They have given me confidence in my ability to create something that others enjoy reading. I may not always get it right, but I do not expect to; I am learning. And it's my blog so I'll do what I want. ;)

Anyway, it now falls to me to pass on this award to other blogs of real substance. There are loads I enjoy reading (and I really should update my blogroll) but here we go:

Mrs M of At Home With Mrs M (great food, and better photography than me)
Joanne at JAG's Fitness Blog (inspirational, also with some great food)
Wendy at Very Bored in Catalunya (who rarely fails to make me laugh)
Christine at Thinly Spread 

So now they have to:

1. Thank the blogger who awarded it to them.
2. Summarise their blogging philosophy in five words (and share it with your readers of course!).
3. Nominate some other bloggers of substance.

I could have added lots of blogs. I find new ones to read every day and I'm rubbish at remembering to visit them all so sorry for not mentioning you all. (That's why I love Twitter - follow your favourite bloggers, and they'll let you know when they have published a new post.) Some of my favourite blogs have already nominated so it seems silly to do it all over again. Please don't be offended if your blog is not here. If you like, add a comment to this post, so we can all find you. Hopefully, soon, I'll get round to updating my blogroll too.

And so, I'm off to bed, clutching my award. I think I might, in the time-honoured tradition of celebs, put it in the downstairs toilet after I've slept with it, nonchalantly but ostentatiously so that people see it are moved to comment on a) the award and b) its placement.

And whilst I'm here, I'd like to thank my agent......