I spy...a Friday night in.

Once upon a time Friday nights were the highlight of the week.  A time to play, a time to laugh, a time to flirt, a time to get off one’s nut on drink, drugs  or just the heady mix of youth and expendable income.

Ah me, would that such days did last.  They don’t.  Which is I why I find myself sat in bed, a bowl of Bombay mix by my side, bugger all on the tellybox, with a bunch of equally lost souls cool people on Twitter for company at 8.30 this evening.  University Challenge isn’t even on to break up the monotony.  Sad times, my friends, sad times.

But wait!  I have a marvellous idea.  I can harness all of this middle aged, middle-England, middle to low income ennui, by the simple expedient of the classic children’s game I Spy!  But with a twist…wait for it…you’ll never guess (you might)…it will be called Fri Spy and it will be played on Twitter.

The rules of Fri Spy are simple.

1. The game will take place on Friday evenings. (Don’t pretend you won’t be in.  You will.  Or even if you’re not, you know your night will be punctuated by slightly paranoid checking of Twitter to see if you have any mentions.  Don’t deny it, it is a truth)
2. The Fri-Master (me) will tweet “Fri spy with my little eye something beginning with <insert appropriate letter>” and you have to guess whatever it is I am spying with my little eye.
3. I will give you clues (up to a maximum of three) throughout your frenetic guessing and if no one gets it right I WIN.  AND GET TO PLAY AGAIN.
4. If someone guesses correctly it will be their turn to be The Fri-Master.
5. We start again.
6. &c
7. &c
8. &c
9. As per long car journeys, Fri Spy will end when we get bored, start kicking the back of the seat in front and gurning at other passengers,
10. The evening flies by in a rush of guessing and punning and double entendres so much so that we laugh, I say LAUGH, at those silly sausages going out boozing and drugging and good timing.  The fools. 

We Friday-Night-Staying-Inners are many; indeed one could even say legion. 

We are Fri-Spyers.

Let the games commence!

(On Friday 29^th June.  I’m going to bed in a minute).

My friend

My friend is moving to Australia.  You know Australia?  On the other side of the world?  

My friend gets me.  We’ve known each other less than a year and yet I feel like we get each other on an emotional level; we click.  I can tell her things I’d hesitate to tell other people, even friends of much longer standing because I know she won’t judge. 

 My friend is hilarious.  She has a properly infectious giggle and just a glance will set me off.  She is as inappropriate and bawdy as I am which I admit is probably quite annoying for other people (especially in the midst of a choir rehearsal when we’re stifling our cackles).

My friend is very loyal.  She is the sort of person other people open up to and she takes on the burden of being secret keeper. 

My friend has great kids.  I’ve never enjoyed the company of children more, they truly are a credit to her and I am going to miss them more than I can say.

My friend has been more of a support to me over the last eight months than she knows.  When we met I was approaching my lowest ebb, she helped to pick me up. 

I set up Skype last night so I can (time difference allowing) talk to her often and we have Twitter as well.  I am going to miss the real her though.  I am going to miss my friend. 

The Twitter Days of Christmas

My Christmas Follow Fridays.  

This lot have been amazing to me this year and I couldn't have got through it without them.  Much love to everyone who has supported me through this year.  Merry Christmas!

*sings lustily*

On the first day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @PrincessofVP

On the second day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @AndyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the third day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @AntiJanner, @AndyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the fourth day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @Aitchess @AntiJanner, @andyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the fifth day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @EllaSimone @Aitchess @AntiJanner, @andyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the sixth day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @SharonGOONer @EllaSimone @Aitchess @AntiJanner, @andyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the seventh day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @ijclark, @SharonGOONer @EllaSimone @Aitchess @AntiJanner, @andyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the eighth day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @nosweetnothings @ijclark, @SharonGOONer@EllaSimone @Aitchess @AntiJanner, @andyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the ninth day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @Miss_alaynius, @nosweetnothings  @ijclark, @SharonGOONer @EllaSimone @Aitchess @AntiJanner, @andyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the tenth day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @AliB68, @Miss_alaynius, @nosweetnothings  @ijclark, @SharonGOONer @EllaSimone @Aitchess @AntiJanner, @andyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the eleventh day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @PantherPants, @AliB68, @Miss_alaynius, @nosweetnothings  @ijclark, @SharonGOONer @EllaSimone @Aitchess @AntiJanner, @andyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

On the twelfth day of Christmas my Twitter gave to me @PJMardy, @PantherPants, @AliB68, @Miss_alaynius, @nosweetnothings  @ijclark, @SharonGOONer @EllaSimone @Aitchess @AntiJanner, @andyJamesHicks and @PrincessofVP

Stigma

This weekend Stan Collymore took the brave step of tweeting about his experience of depression which struck a cord with many people, not least with me.  He writes eloquently and honestly and I found it a painful thing to read, chiming as it does with my own ongoing health.

Speaking up about mental health is frightening for anyone, especially as you anticipate there might be a negative reaction from some people, but I can’t imagine how it must feel if you've got well-documented incidence of adultery and domestic violence attached to your name.  

Not being a football fan, I have to admit these incidences passed me by, or at least I don’t remember the press coverage from 1998 and 2004, so when I tweeted earlier today “I might love Stan Collymore” I was taken aback to discover these things in his past and the subsequent implication that because of these things I ought to think differently about what Stan is doing. It made me pause. Can I really respect a man who cheated on his wife and beat up his girlfriend? Well yes, I can.  I’m not condoning what he did, of course I’m not, but do I have faith in the idea that people can change, regret and repent for their actions? Of course I do. What kind of a world would we be in if our entire personality and moral code was based on the very worst examples of them?  I doubt any of us would come up smelling of roses.  Just because you’ve done bad things in your past doesn’t mean you should not be valued and supported for the good things you do in the future.

To publically discuss your depression on  TalkSport radio and write about it when right in the middle of a bout is hugely commendable and an important step forward in the public comprehension of such a prolific and misunderstood illness.  

The overwhelming majority of people I see tweeting about what Stan wrote are people who either have suffered depression themselves or know someone who has, and this gives me real hope that with time, and the bravery of fellow sufferers famous or otherwise, we will someday reach a point where mental health is no longer stigmatised and we who suffer are given the compassion  we warrant and deserve. 

Why having a locked account doesn’t make you dick

I hate having a locked Twitter account. It is intensely irritating that I can’t reply to people in my timeline who don’t follow me back, if I reply to a mention which includes non-followers they don’t see it and probably think I’m ignoring them, people often assume having a locked account means I’m up my own arse and full of my own self-importance. I am passionate about sharing information and I’m a right bloody chatterbox so being behind a locked door doesn’t sit well with me at all.

I have to protect my tweets because I am being harassed by someone who appears to only understand Twitter as a means with which to make me life hell. This began back in January, I wrote my first blog post about it. All went quiet for some time and I began to put my life back together. At the beginning of the summer I hit a major depressive episode and had time off work with it. I began to recover and went back to work to be told that The Person had written again, this time using any tweets that referred to me leaving the house, drinking and socialising as evidence that I was in fact faking depression and asking my employers to investigate the claim. I still don’t know how The Person knew I was signed off with depression as I never explicitly said it on Twitter. Creepy, eh? I know depression is an often misunderstood condition, so I blogged about it in a bid to explain that being sociable and being depressed aren’t mutually exclusive.

Knowing your every move is being tracked by someone with a grudge against you is unnerving in the extreme. I share a lot, that’s the way I am so what could I do? Delete another account, not tweet anything relating to my personal life or say fuck The Person and continue to tweet openly and publically? Much as I wanted to do the latter I just couldn’t - this is my mental health and career we’re talking about here, not a crusade for open comms - so I locked my account and went through my 570 or so followers, forensically checking them to see if I could identify The Person. I couldn’t so I blocked 226 of them and felt like the biggest bitch going.

Obviously the police are involved although given that their main response has been essentially “dur, leave Twitter stoopid” I don’t hold out much hope of them being particularly useful. My employer is indeed investigating the claim that I have been faking depression – you can imagine how helpful that is in terms of making a full recovery from a major mental health episode – and I still have a locked Twitter account and will probably have to continue to have one for the foreseeable future; until either The Person gets bored, I stop being such an open person or, as currently seems most likely, I have a complete mental breakdown and get carted away to the nearest psychiatric unit.

So if you’re one of those people who feels the need to take the piss out of people with locked accounts, or smugly refuses to follow people back because their account is protected, remember there is a real person behind the avatar, with real reasons for locking themselves behind the door of Twitter and perhaps give them a chance.

I know it’s not me, it is you.

At the risk of going all Carrie Bradshaw on you, I’d like to ruminate on a recent love-happening that occurred via the not-actually-a-dating-site medium of Twitter. I think my basic point’s applicable to any environment you meet someone in though. So anyway Boy follows Bearface, Beaface follows back, conversations takes place and we tentatively, inch by inch, start dating. Well, I call it dating, but it was more like courting. Actually it was a series of direct messages on Twitter, texts and phone calls interspersed with a couple of daytime meetups over the course of about seven weeks. It’s not really dating I suppose but let’s call it that for ease.

Now I am quite big enough to accept that sometimes people don’t quite match up in real life to the version of them you have begun to find attractive at something of a remove. It’s a consequence of the increasingly online world we inhabit; people can be more awkward and less articulate, more reticent, less funny that their online persona would lead you to believe. However, there is a basic etiquette that dating should adhere to, no matter where and how you met.

This fellow was a nice guy, bit backwards in coming forwards, bit reluctant to talk about himself but hey, we can’t all be forthcoming and willing to share; variety is after all the spice of life. As things progressed however, it became increasingly apparent to me that this man, despite being full of the compliments, goodnight messages and daily phonecalls, wasn’t really that enamoured of me or rather, he was enamoured of me, but there was someone else who already held sway in his affections. Which leads me to my point; if you actually like someone else more than the person you’re dating, you shouldn’t be doing it at all.

It’s not cheating, but it’s being untruthful about the very basis of your burgeoning relationship which isn’t going to do either of you any favours. And actually, when the person you’re dating guesses, all you do is make yourself look like a bit of a shit and ruin what could have been a decent friendship, had you only not tried to replace the lack of affection from one person, with the potential affection of another. It’s emotional deception and it’s quite hurtful that someone I had grown to care for would basically use me as a distraction.

Now let’s not get all hatey and stabby towards this bloke, he’s not a bad person and I’m sure most of us have tried to get over one person by getting involved with another – hell, I know I have – but having been on the receiving end, I know I won’t do it again and I really hope he doesn't do it to someone else either - it's just bad manners.

Twitter blah blah blah.

I realise I am a complete cliche for starting a blog within a year of joining Twitter but who gives a fuck, you don't have to read it. I've had a shitty couple of months and Twitter has been at the heart of it all. Both my nemesis and my saviour, if you will.

I used to have a different ID and was merrily going along gathering followers, swearing profusely and generally getting to grips with having to use astrisks to get my point across where mere words would not suffice. Then someone wrote to my employer to alert them to my Twitter use during working hours. Well you might say, fair enough, I shouldn't be tweeting in a personal capacity during working hours. You'd be right. I hold my hands up to it - nevermind that I don't know a single person who doesn't tweet, facebook, email, text when they should be entering a formula into a spreadsheet, writing a strategy document, developing a marketing campaign or whatever it is they do to earn a living. Anyway I got a slap on the wrists, a kick up the arse and I've learnt my lesson.

What frightened me was this. The Person who contacted my work sent copies of the letter and pages of my tweets to every member of the senior management board. They did this anonymously and left no contact address. They had clearly spent many, many hours, if not days monitoring my output on Twitter specifically pulling out the tweets they thought would do me the most damage. They had even gone so far as to highlight some with a Sharpie. You won't be surprised to hear that I know who is behind it and why they did it. Suffice to say, I don't believe I deserved it. My only crimes were to not be who The Person wanted me to be and to stand up for my principles. Hell hath no fury like a....no I can't say it.

I deleted my old Twitter account as soon as the shit hit the fan and then a couple of weeks later, rejoined as @bear_faced_lady. Word had got about that I'd returned under a new guise and it was quite something to be welcomed back and *hugged* and *kissed* and generally made to feel like a long lost friend returning from the trenches. At first I locked my account, frightened that The Person would start 'twitter-stalking' me again, but then I thought fuck it. If they're that sad that they have nothing better to do than sit in front of a screen feverishly monitoring the endless drivel I spout then frankly, they're welcome to.

I really like being on Twitter and I get something from it that I don't get elsewhere. I get to be coarse and crude or I can shout or cry and generally be the emotional blunderbus I don't get to be in real life (sorry, IRL). It was horrible to think that some one would take advantage of that bond of trust implicit in any kind of social network - virtual or physical. Maybe I have been too trusting and a bit naive in opening myself up as I have on the social web. Maybe, knowing the sort of person The Person is, I should have seen this coming and been a bit more canny. Probably, yes. But the thing is, I have friends on Twitter as well as followers, some started off as followers and became friends, some I've met and some I never will, but friends nonetheless. Friends the likes of which The Person never was and never could be, to me or anyone else.

So I think that really, at the end of the day even though it's a fight I never sought, in the battle between The Person and The Bear Faced Lady, I WIN.