MAD for it!

Well where to start? Thanks to the kind people who read Diary of the Dad, I was lucky enough to make it to the final of the MAD Blog Awards which took place in London on Friday evening. If I’m honest, I thought that was as far as I was going to get; I was up against four excellent other bloggers and had contented myself with the fact that I’d got as far as I had. I was going to go to the event, meet some interesting new people and applaud the winners. I really didn’t expect to be bringing home the trophy for Best Baby Blog but, amazingly, that’s just what happened!

Arriving at the Talk Talk Customer Experience Centre where the awards took place felt a little like my first day at secondary school; I didn’t really know anyone and I was terrified! To add to my rather silly anxieties, I was one of the select few with a Y chromosome in attendance. My plan was to find the other geeks and everything would be fine. As it happened, I didn’t find anybody obviously as dorky as me, but that didn’t matter a bit. I found my inner ‘brave Tom’ shortly after locating the drinks table and was soon chatting to the other finalists and sponsors. And what a lovely bunch they were; I was going to be ok. After an hour of quaffing wine and chattering away with my new friends my heart rate had slowed down a tad and the ceremony was underway. My category was up first. Argh! The palpitations returned. The golden envelope was opened and when the words ‘Diary of the Dad’ were announced, I was completely stunned. I was so convinced that somebody else was going to win that I hadn’t even written an acceptance speech.

So up I went, probably looking like I’d just had some kind of nasty shock rather than some surprising good news and swearing under my breath in disbelief – I hope the cameras missed the latter. I was presented with my new favourite thing and incoherently babbled my way through an improvised speech in which I thanked those who had voted, the amazing Sally Whittle and her team for creating such a fantastic event, Dylan for being a silly monkey and, of course, Kate. Oh, and I might have mentioned that she’s carrying our second child at the moment too. The rest of the evening flew by as the other awards were handed out and I met more lovely people. At risk of sounding somewhat saccharine, it really impressed on me what a sense of community there is in the world of parent blogging and I’m delighted to be part of it. Everybody seemed to have a great night out and – schmaltz alert again here, I’m afraid – they are all winners.

All that remains for me to write for now – before I make myself vomit on my keyboard – is to thank you for reading my blog and for voting for it in the MAD Blog Awards. It means a lot and I’m thrilled to bits.

Cheers everyone!