Last Saturday I was in France when the Irish Times published a piece about my blog in the magazine.

I then got a series of amazingly frustrating congratulatory text messages from family and friends citing phrases like "renaissance man" "juicy titbits" and best of all my sister D saying "you could have written it yourself!"

I finally read it myself this morning and, truth to tell Marie Claire Digby has written a lovely piece about the blog and I owe her many thanks for being so kind about it.

Don't ever think, fellow bloggers, that blogging is ever going to take over from newspapers, one glance at my stat counter yesterday showed that my hits multiplied about twenty fold after the piece went out on Saturday!

For those of you who didn't manage to get a copy on Saturday I reproduce the whole lot (except the picture which was clearer from my own copy) here.