Ireland. We love you X 365

We love Ireland. You love Ireland. But does anyone love Ireland like this guy?

Ronan Moore has come up with 365 reasons to love Ireland - and that's just the shortlist.

His self-set task is to add one new post to his blog every day of this year, and all entries have to be upbeat without being mawkish.

The 34-year-old teacher in an all-boys secondary school in Meath has had enough of the daily dirge of bad news.

There's plenty to love about this country still, he says, and he's the man to remind us.

There's The Skelligs, James Joyce, and a clutch of beautiful counties of course. But this is a democratic list, so there's a spot too for:

- Brown sauce: "A sauce that’s great fried onto brown bread";

- Turf fires: "Jaysus, there’s nothing like a turf fire!"

- Wasps: "Wandering from Fat-Frog ice-pop wrapper to Wham bar wrapper, they appear to be perpetually in a bad place but then wouldn’t you be pissed off in October with the weather getting colder and you’ve only got a week to live."

There's a suspect claim that the Irish invented rainbows, but no one can argue that our love of slagging unites us.

Ronan tells us: "I knew one guy who initiated his first ever conversation with me by calling me a “brown-nosing bollix who should be ashamed to consider himself Irish” because I was going to cook food for my boss and his wife instead of meeting a fellow immigrant Irishman for a pint. He is now one of my closest friends."

Here's Ronan

So why the list?

"I'm teaching about five years and before that worked abroad with a development agency and did a lot of travelling," Ronan told breakingnews.ie.

He caught the blogging bug then, and last year got the idea for a blog on a list of uniquely Irish things that "was not promotional, but one that anyone abroad would look at and smile, remembering home". (The Den is on the list already and, yes, Bosco, will appear shortly.) The emigration of his younger brother to Australia gave him a target audience.

Ronan began his list, added friends' suggestions and was off.

He's still looking for ideas. You can send him yours at @365irishreasons.

H/T: Ocrasorm, via Reddit