Competition: Win Isn’t It well For ye? the book of Irish Mammies / [closed]

Congratulations to Colm O'Regan, a positively lovely fella altogether (on the twitter here   whose new book "Isn't it well for ye? the book of Irish Mammies " is published today.

You can buy it online here  and we have copies to give away.

The book itself started... well, I'll let Colm himself tell you:

This book is a celebration of the phenomenon of the Irish Mammy.

It started life as a Twitter account called @irishmammies. If you don’t know what Twitter is, don’t worry; that’s not what this book is about.

 One way to describe Twitter is as the online equivalent of graffiti on the wall alongside a fairly busy secondary road. If you’ve time you’ll see it, but if you’re not on that road you’ll never see it. And you won’t miss much.

I set up a Twitter account to relay some of the things that Irish Mammies say. They’re not necessarily words of wisdom – just words of living from my own mother and other mothers I have witnessed in action. Within hours of the account’s inception, these little snippets – 140 letters or fewer in length – were being re-tweeted (the Twitter equivalent of he-said-she-said) around the place.

Over the course of the next few months, thousands of people started to follow @irishmammies. (‘Follow’ is Twitter parlance for ‘sign up to read what she has to say’. There’s nothing messianic going on here.)

Across the world, emigrants thinking of their own Mammies at home, people who had met an Irish Mammy and others who suspected they were turning into one latched on to the @irishmammies Twitter account and became very fond of her.

So now there’s a book.

It’s not the first exploration of the Irish Mammy and neither will it be the last but, hopefully, it’s an enjoyable one.

Not everything the Irish Mammy says and does in this book will mean all things to everyone. There are of course many different types of Irish Mammy, but whatever the variations are, you’ll recognize some things. This is a woman who more than likely will have spent some time on a small, rainy island in the Atlantic, with the nights drawing in, worrying about damp clothes and unaired beds, feeling the lift from a stretch in the evenings, making and drinking gallons of tea with neighbours and family (being sure to scald the teapot), ordering children down off a wall for fear they’d break their neck, being surprised by prawn cocktail, and having the pavlova.

She has re-addressed countless letters to a variety of locations around the world. She knows far more than her children give her credit for and often wonders what’s keeping them at all.

Now she’s in a book, so call in if you’re passing, but be sure to ring ahead.

This book - now shortlisted for a 2012 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award goes on sale today but you can win a copy right here.

Just stick a comment below to be in with a chance.

Winners will be chosen on November 1 and PM'd. The book will be posted to you.

Thanks (and congratulations) to Colm on the publication. You can find out more about him here .