Some of you may have guessed from the lack of recent blogging that I have been pounding the pavements in the run up to this week's elections.

It couldn't have been more worth it.

You may know that last May, Sheffield once again bucked the trend of national Labour decline by holding all of their 44 seats. We, however, had lost our Central ward seat to the Greens and had been reduced to 35 Councillors - our lowest total since 1996. (We were to be reduced temporarily to 34 a few months prior to the election by the sad death of Cllr. Andrew White.)

I had also gone through the emotional wringer of sitting through a double recount, near-punch up and eventual 49-vote defeat for our hardworking and superb candidate Denise Reaney in Gleadless Valley.

Sitting in our party-cum-wake over a mournful pint, I decided that whatever happened, I wasn't going to feel like this next year.

Luckily, I quickly made friends with our defeated candidate for Hillsborough, Steve Ayris - a man I've since found to be not only politically astute but affable, thoughtful and extremely hardworking.

Now I'm a relatively recent recruit to the activist fold - having literally walked in to Nick Clegg's campaign office off the street in 2005 - so I was particularly surprised when I ended up as Steve's campaign manager and agent!

I will write about the campaign in more detail later, but suffice it to say that after a year's hard work and late nights - both from us and a small army of Councillors, old friends, new friends, family, co-workers, sympathetic locals and fiancees (thankyou Katie), we did it!

We were certainly helped by a catastrophic Labour blunder - a decision to close a popular and successful local school - but make no mistake, overturning a 215-vote defeat to a 491-vote victory in one election is no mean feat.

I also have to give a lot of credit to a Hillsborough population who refused to lie down and take it. In the end, they turned up to the polling station in droves to give Labour a good kicking, giving us the fourth-highest turnout in the city in the process.

Labour's faces at the count were ashen - not so much the defeated candidate (who was gracious in defeat, and had seen it coming a mile off), but the remaining two Councillors who may have seen the writing on the wall!

The eventual fall of two other Labour seats - and their subsequent loss of the Council - was the icing in the cake for me.

This year, my pint after the count tasted a lot sweeter. It may have something to do with being able to toast:

• Councillor Steve Ayris
• Councillor Denise Reaney
• Councillor Penny Baker
• Councillor Mike Davis
• Councillor Colin France

Cheers!