That Blog What I Wrote

Hello friends.

How are you? You look well. Did you do something to your hair? You washed it? That must be it!

Now, I feel I must apologise to you, my loyal following (of about 2.4 people) for my absence. I promise it's nothing you've done. It's not you, it's me. I'm sorry I've seemed distant but I want you to know that I want to change, if you'll let me. I hope you can find it in your collective hearts to forgive me.

Maybe I should start off by explaining why I've been so aloof these last few months. I've been meaning to write, honest I have - there's so much I've been meaning to tell you. Like, get this right, I wrote a text... ha, ha... to my friend Emma, but... ho, ho... I sent it... tee hee... to ANOTHER Emma by mistake! Mwah ha ha! I know, I know. I'm sorry you had to miss it too. It was a hoot. But no matter how good my intentions to write have been, whenever I sit down in front of my laptop night after night, my fingers poised over the worn-out keys, nothing happens. Sometimes my hands try to trick my brain into thinking it's about to write something of merit but the only buttons that they ever touched were f..a..c..e..b..o..o..k.

It was as if every lazy, boring fibre of my being sprung, or sludged, into life stealing my brain and leaving cotton wool in it's place. I felt mindless and numb, wading through photographs of people I used to go to school with, but don't actually know anymore, drinkng and falling over and out of their clothes in a variety of venues. I felt like a woman possessed, as if Facebook had me under a hypnotic spell where time sped up and my thoughts flatlines into white noise. Time: 8.34... maybe I'll just check my profile... Time: 11:42. Appauling behaviour. Spending, wasting, pissing (preverbally) my time away, convincing myself that being on a social networking site is anything other than anti-social. I have no interest in "networking". Cyberstalking the girl who used to poke me (in the proper-old-fashioned-non-facebooky-wooky sense!) in the back all the way through assembly when I was six is all I care for!

This isn't the first time I've fallen out of love with Facebook. I often deliberate deleting my profile altogether or at least culling people from my list that I can't actually legitimately call my friends. But then my ego takes over. You'll never be able to re-tag yourself in all those photos... How will you ever build your number of friends to over 300 again?! So I continue with my trip down the Self Loathing Highway, destined to watch idly by as all my 'friends' get married and have children and travel and be exciting and beautiful and I just sit in a darkened room getting older, and more bitter, and dustier until I'm just an old, dusty pint of bitter.

But for now I am young and interesting and relatively carefree so living my life through a website seems fine for now.

Anyhoo - a couple of weeks ago my Dad, who goes through books the way he goes through packets of Marlborough Lights, came into my room carrying a book in each hand. "Jen, I'm finished with these. Do you want 'em?" In the left was a copy of "Sound of Laughter", Peter Kay and in the right "Look Who It Is!" by Alan Carr. (I ask you at this point not to judge my Dad's choice in light reading.) I glanced at my bedside table. Piled high were books that ranged from "almost finished" to "barely thumbed". (Any jokes about my bedroom behaviour at this point will be strongly overlooked).

"Yep, thanks. Pop them on the pile." I told Dad, and went back to poking my friend Tom. (We haven't seen each other for months, but we find the odd poke every now and again really keeps the friendship alive). But the tower of books loomed over me, almost blocking out the slither of natural daylight that dared enter my room completely. I stared at the exciting covers, the witty titles and rave reviews. I meant to read them Guv'nor, honest I did. But I had jolly good excuses why I never have done.

For example, among the titles is Dawn's French's autobiography, "Dear Fatty". I bought it in the the WHSmiths in Paddington train station to keep me company on the three hour journey back to the West Country. However much I complain about it, there are some good things about living out in the sticks. Besides the whole fresh air, less pollution, longer life expectancy thingymajiggy. you also need to go on lots of long train journeys to visit non-country-bumpkin folk. Therefore lots of time to be spent on expanding your mind with music, books, newspapers and the like. My love of The Adam and Joe radio show (STEPHEN!) grew over months of commuting to work by train. I parked my bum in my allocated seat, with my book in one hand and a goats cheese panini in the other and was ready to laugh, cry and gawp and photographs of Dawn's private life. Then I heard a giggle. The sweet innocent giggle of a girl being entertained by her Dad on the seat adjacent to mine. Then, aah, my old friend paranoia. Is she laughing at me? Oh God. Dear. Fatty. I'm reading a book with "fatty" in the title, written by Britain's most loved fatty, whilst looking like a fatty eating my fatty sandwich. I promptly closed the book, tossed it in my bag and decided to enjoy the landscape instead. You'll be pleased to know I finished my sandwich.

Back at home the book joined the leaning tower of novels, subcategory: barely thumbed, and I carried on with my little life happy in the knowledge that it was "next on my reading list". A couple of days later and I met up with one of my most favourite people, Ian, in Bristol to celebrate the day of my birth. The first port of call: coffee. Over the years me and Mr. D have shared more cups of coffee together than Starbucks have even made. The hours we spent talking bollocks and eeking out the one large Mocha we managed to buy with our student loans each week could have spent towards something more useful, sure, but I think we truly answered life's great mysteries. Like, which Eddie Izzard tour was funnier and why people actually prefer it when you don't get a 1st in your degree. (Subsequently Ian actually got a 1st. Maybe taking me out for coffee was a ploy to make me not study?)

"Oh, what's in here?" Ian reach into his bag. It was three wrapped packages of different shapes and sizes. My birthday presents. Hoorah! "Oh you shouldn't have!" I say, sort of meaning it, sort of too busy unwrapping the presents to make the modesty sound genuine. Two mixed CDs - bingo, great present. An Adam and Joe DVD - this fella KNOWS me. The last present - two books. Oh no! I've managed to convince one of the people who knows me best in the world that I'm a book person. Maybe it was all that talk of "the book pile" and "reading lists" that confused him. Don't get me wrong, I loved the gift. I loved opening them, holding them, kidding myself that I would read these in a week and we'll be discussing them the next time we shared coffee, but it was short lived as I could already envisage them on the pile of books on my bedside table. I'd throw them on, the paperbacks would groan and tremble like the twin towers on their descent. They'd tumble like dominoes endlessly, suffocating me till finally - my just deserts. Death by unread books.

It's been a week since I started properly doing the reading thing, replacing my Facebook fix with literary loveliness. It's bloody good you know. You should try it. Yeah! Dimwit. It wasn't easy as first. My brain was confused. Where are all the pictures, the sparkly icons, the live-feed, the visual noise, the lethargy, the self hatred? Slowly but surely my mind adapted to letting it imagine again. So conjure up images and scenes on it's own, not relying on photographs detailing every inch of every day of everyone's existence. Being away from the evil ugly site has filled my thoughts with life and creativity again, giving it enough time to type away at this splurge of drivel. Hooray - I'm back! My fingers are slamming the keys once more, gaining speed and aching as I try to keep up with this silly stream of consciousness.

My first entry in month. Aaah, great.

Now just a quick look at Facebook and I'm off to bed!