G o mbeannaí Dia daoibh, a chairde, and welcome back to the comfort zone that is the Bluffer's Guide to Irish.
The Bluffer spent the weekend, ní sa tsaol seo - not in this world but in cíbearspás cyberspace as he went on line to follow the various election results and to join the global conversation via twitter. He first looked up the latest blog by his mentor at robertmcmillen.ie where he found an chat with Liam Ó Maonlaí about music.
We all know about scálaí - scales and nótaí - notes but Robert asks the Houthouse Flower about an ceol módúil - modal music which is the way Irish music was played and composed centuries ago. Liam beautifully describes what modal music is. From sean-nós and the blues, the Bluffer was enticed to have a gander at an daonlathas - democracy in action at the various polling stations throughout the country.
Toghchán is an election and na toghcháin áitiúla are the local elections.
Tóghcháin na hEorpa are the European elections while in the south there were two fothoghcháin - byeelections.
In the north, he was interested in seeing how the PUP would do given the flag protests and
was intrigued by Billy Hutchinson placing himself on the high moral ground.
The Bluffer was also surprised by the showing of the UUP led, as it is, by a man how looks completely out of his depth on the big political stage.
Then there was the sobaldráma - the soap opera that is (was?) NI21.
Irish language billboards, a Catholic Unionist whose da was in the IRA, redesignation and finally líomhaintí - allegations of sexual impropriety it cannot be said that NI21 were ever boring and no doubt it will be party that just keeps on giving.
The DUP's share of the vote was down by around 4%, Alliance stayed basically as they were but the story of the elections, north and south is the success of neamhspleáigh -independents of Sinn Féin but only on an all-Ireland basis. The party lost c12,000 votes in the north, but still got the a bigger céatadan - percentage of first preference votes than any party.
The momentum building up in the south is very impressive.
But let's be honest, the Bluffer soon got fed up with the whole pantomime that is politics.
It's olltoghcháin -general elections that really get his juices flowing so it was back
to twitter to learn that the British minister of Education, Michael Gove, has removed Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird have been removed from the GCSE syllabus because they aren't British. So much for the special relationship.
However, it brings up the role of politics in education and how politicians can control what our children read and when they do, they do it for ideological rather than educational reasons. It's a worrying state of affairs for young and old.