It's a small, small world!

So, I 'twitter' (@gemmak500 if you're interested, which you are probably not but I digress), in fact I twitter somewhat obsessively some might say but thus far only once have I had such the surprise I had one day last week and among all the turmoil of that particular week, this incident was one of the few happy highlights.....if not the highlight!

I have been 'twittering' for a fair few weeks to one lady in particular. I don't recall who found who originally but we got on very well from the off and daily had pretty quickly had a good dialogue going.

One evening last week she asked me where in Buckinghamshire I live, the reason being she had spent some of her childhood in the county. One question led to another and it quickly transpired that myself and my new friend were in fact old friends!

She spent her first ten or so years in the street that runs parallel to the the one in which I was bought up and now again live, we were friends and junior school and 'went round to play' at one another's home fairly often for a number of years!

How cool is that! Much reminiscing ensued needless to say!

Her family moved away and we obviously lost contact, we now live two hundred miles away from one another but I wonder what the probability of bumping into each other among the millions on twitter are??

What a small, small world it is sometimes!

What can I say?

I suppose the most honest thing would be to say, yes I know , I am still being a bad blogger but sometimes there just isn't room in my tiny mind for anything more than those things I have to give priority too. Now is one of those times!

Life is all pretty surreal right now. It seems to consist mainly of massive up's and down's on a roller coaster that we thought we had all disembarked from just weeks ago, this time however it's a bigger one and it's pretty scary. We seem almost daily to have to make some pretty major decisions and to take responsibility for things we aren't really equipped to deal with.... and I feel like I'm watching myself doing it all from outside somehow. It's very odd.

On a happier note, I did make it to Thursday's 'tweetup' in Soho. I love London, everything about it and it was nice to just get out for a while. I got the tube into town early and wandered around aimlessly for a while just enjoying my surroundings, before making my way to where we had all arranged to meet.

It was a fab evening and it was good to put some faces to names at last and to be able to talk face to face for once, yes, surprisingly I can still remember how to communicate minus a keyboard, though I will admit it was quite peculiar for a minute ot two! ;o)

Twitter/blog meet tonight

This evening, courtesy of The Pink Jellybaby, a 'mini meet' has been arranged in London for bloggers and twitterers who fancy hooking up for a few drinks and a chat face to face.

Whether I would make it has been a tenuous question for obvious reasons but thus far it's looking good and hopefully I will.

If you're free tonight and you want to drop by please do, the more the merrier as they say, it's at The Crown and Two Chairmen on Dean Street W1 @ approx 18.00.

More details can be found here.

Maybe see you there!

Fletch is back!...and other stuff

First up, if you get a moment pop over HERE and you will witness a small miracle, Fletch is back! He has finally posted on his blog after a ten month lazy period. Wonders will never cease! Having been absent for so long though he could use a helping hand where readers are concerned! ...oh, and if you leave a comment on his blog I get a reward so please, if you have time? ;o)

Second up, it's now only five 'Jane days' now until Lisa arrives here!! Hurrah!

And finally we are away at my parents this weekend for the first time in way too long so activity around these parts until Monday is likely to be low to nil..... I will of course have my phone glued to me Twittering, hooked? who me? but that's about all I'm likely to manage.

Have a good one guys and I'll catch you on the other side.

The twitter song

For those of us that in the words of @stephenfry, 'get it'.....

To Twitter or not to Twitter!

Today I thought I would post my own few words in defence of the latest in a long line of that which is the latest of the virtual-social-networking-phenomenon, 'Twitter'.

If you don't Twitter this will probably sound like double dutch to you, but if you do, chances are you do it for little more than a bit of fun and to make a few virtual friends....and that is my point, what is the issue with that?

There will always be high brow intellectuals standing on the sidelines ready to denigrate anything but that alone is not a reason to assume something is completely worthless!

Twitter, if you have never got to it yet is simple, you choose to 'follow' other individuals and are 'followed' yourself, by whoever chooses to do so, from there on in you get 140 characters to say what you are doing at that moment.

All sound a bit inane? Well you would be right, it is, it is just truncated conversation but as Charlie Brooker of The Guardian says in his column today it is "strangely compelling".

We Twitterers are a diverse bunch and include everyone from the Jane Doe's such as myself to the rich and famous such as Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and The Dalai Lama....and for me that is where the interest is, 'meeting' people, I otherwise wouldn't ever get to meet. I don't necessarily mean the celebs among the twittering fraternity, though some are very interesting, but the normal people, going about their normal lives, who quite quickly become friends.

This may all sound suspiciously like a 'chat room' and once you have a group of friends set up, it does have a tendency to veer from purely tweeting 'what I am doing' to more 'conversation' but thus far it differs greatly from the old chat rooms (and believe me I am a self confessed ex-veteran of IRC, I know what they could be like)in that those that Twitter seem mostly to be professional articulate individuals (ok, that's me out), as opposed to odd-bods up to no good! Sadly I suspect as time goes by the odd-bods will find a way in, as the spammers are already beginning too, but that unfortunately is a part of life that we have to deal with in all areas. Twitter does differ greastly though in that you can choose for only those you wish to, to see your 'Tweets', it's not necessarily open to all-comers.

The old argument which has always been levelled against all forms of virtual social networking (and I'm not a fan of all, Facebook for instance I really quite dislike but that's another story) is of course that these aren't 'real' people but I beg to differ. I may not be able to look them in the face or hear their voice but at the end of a line of text there is of course another human being sat at a keyboard, just as I am and I believe, certainly as adults, it's not terribly difficult to tell quite quickly if someone is being less than genuine. Add to that, given that both my partner and my best friend are people I first met virtually through blogging, it would be hard for me to have faith in the 'these are not real people' train of thought.

No, social networking is not going out and meeting people face to face it's true, in the main I will never actually get to meet most of these people but as long as we keep a perspective and balance why should that be a bad thing as opposed to just a 'different' way of interacting and why is it that the intellectuals appear to assume that anything that is 'just fun' is to be criticised? Almost everything has a negative side if we look for it, football for instance, something which in this country is almost a 'religion' for many, but is in fact ostensibly just a game, costs the NHS a fortune in cruciate ligament surgery and has a tendency to attract violence here and there but there is no doubting it also makes many people lives much more pleasurable!

Yes, like many things I'm sure Twitter can be distracting and perhaps a little addictive but that's not a new phenomenon, it's the case with many things, good and bad, but one thing it certainly is for those of us that enjoy it is fun, entertaining, quite often informative and sociable and in my humble opinion that isn't a bad thing.

Like the inimitable Stephen Fry, he who has over 100,000 followers and 'tweets' hilariously is quoted as saying, "some people just don't get it"...and that's fine, we are all interested/entertained by different things but what aggravates me is why those that don't 'get it' feel they have to criticise it almost on principle! I could go into all kinds of psychological theories and principles on that aspect but I won't bore you any longer! If you don't 'get it', that's cool but don't critisise us who do, purely because we do!


....and incidentally, if you are interested my Twitter I.D is 'gemmak500'. All comers welcome :o)

Sod it!

As ever it seems, sods law has prevailed and the promised heavy snowfall is yet to be seen here! We have a light dusting, pathetically light and that's it, nothing worthy of boots or a sledge. Pah.

It's a funny thing me and snow, when I lived in London, it snowed in Scotland, when I lived in Scotland it snowed in London, when I lived back near London, the significant snowfall was back in Scotland and now, having moved to Cambridge, the snow is in London! I'm beginning to think sod's law is gunning for me!

That said, the snow has given me much entertanment over the last twenty four hours, if you are a snow-a-holic like me and you Twitter (surely you Twitter?!)check out the thread #uksnow, moment by moment snow reports, news and images from likeminded mad people snowlovers around the UK. :o)

So, it's back to hoping, the forecast still promises more today, though less than it did and again a very significant fall for Friday......maybe sod's law will sod off just this once in my area!