Love-Mongering

A kind-hearted blogger, Sarah Hague has granted me a Liebster Award. This, apparently, is a salute to lovable blogs with fewer than 200 followers and I am supposed to import a special badge on to my home page to advertise my good fortune.  Now, obviously I can’t do this. I am incapable of programming contacts into my mobile phone, so I shall never master the science of html codes on Blogger. But you can imagine it. It’s a white rectangle with a black rim and it has Liebster Blog written on it and an amorous red heart. And I am very grateful.

But these gongs come with strings attached. I have first to thank my benefactress who blogs enviably about life in southern France and who shames my sparse larder with her fridge full of smoked trout blinis.

Then I have to pass on the compliment to five other bloggers who have a discipleship of under 200. This could be awkward. Some blogs don’t advertise their subscribers. Asking a blogger how many followers they have is like asking a middle-aged matron her age. So, with many apologies if I’ve underestimated their adherents, or if they have already been touched by the Liebster love, here are my nominations:

Sahdandproud When his new post alerts hit my inbox I drop everything. This Stay at Home Dad endures some dark and painful journeys, but he recounts them with a humour, an eloquence and complete absence of self pity that awes me. And his Kraft Corner could reinvent the Britart scene.

Maid in Yorkshire I hesitated before including this one. The fact is I’m jealous. No editor is going to beg for the rights to my blog posts while this journalist is on the loose. She has wise and witty views on all things from Hull to vegetable intercourse.

The Girl Behind was one of my first discoveries. She has a poetic ethereality which is restful after the domestic clamour of parent blogs. She shares my love of blank paper and sea foam and her camera skills can make Quality Street wrappers look like sculpture.

Upyoursginaford I ought to dislike this blog. After all, Gina Ford and I made a fine partnership during my baby days and these blog posts tend to explode into a linguistic fervour that makes my thermals quake.  I disapprove, of course I do. She once straddled a motorbike with Peter Stringfellow. She has a husband who punched a seagull.  She describes herself as a dishwasher bitch and has never once mentioned attendance at Family Communion. But she is hilarious. And her frustrated zest rings in my ears when I am resignedly dusting down the vicarage.

Midlifesinglemum I chanced upon this blog after she posted a thrillingly cynical ‘Blogging Charter for the individually and independently challenged’. Still wish I’d written that myself. It shamed me into only checking my stats once every half hour and deleting all the fetching pictures of my kittens that I’d planned to post daily to save myself the trouble of original thought. Since then she has given me a fascinating insight into life, customs and cooking in Jerusalem. She has also been selflessly supportive of my blog. She won’t thank me for this award. She has a healthy disdain for badges and tags and regurgitated blog love. But I’m shoving it her way anyway, because it might prompt another witty charter.