Internet friends and lovers



Jeez, he looks grumpy!

Adrian is perplexed.  While he’s been in Moscow, I’ve been meeting my Internet pals.  He just doesn’t *get* my love of internet ‘relationships’.  Yes, he blogs, he tweets, he FBs – but only because he feels he ‘ought to’ for work.  He frowns at tweet-ups, he doesn’t remotely understand why I keep meeting people I haven’t, er, met.

‘It’s like online dating,’ he said, sitting on the end of the bed.  ‘Except without the sex bit.’ Shaking his head.  ‘I don’t get that either.’

‘Aha,’ said I, sitting up and adjusting the SP.  ‘Now, see, if I were single, I’d do that like a shot.’

‘God no.’ He shuddered. ‘It’s not natural.’

‘Oh come on.  It’s practical.’ I put down my coffee cup so I could wave my arms around. ‘Look. Imagine I don’t exist.  Nothing nasty – I haven’t died or anything.  I’m just Not Here. In fact, let’s take James out of the equation too and make it simple.  You live here. Alone. Who you gonna date?’

‘I’d move,’ he said briskly. ‘I’d go to…hmm….Bristol. I’d go to pubs and clubs…’

I raised an eyebrow.  ‘No, you wouldn’t.’

He shrugged.  ‘Okay, I’d go to pubs and museums. I’d stalk women in military museums.’  Dear God.

‘Right.  But say you couldn’t move.  Say you worked here?’  I named names. He looked alarmed.

‘See? It’s not easy once you’re out of your twenties.’ I keep saying this to my mate who just wants a nice man with a labrador.  She doesn’t buy it, the Internet dating thing – but then she doesn’t do Twitter or FB or anything other than the odd brusque email.  Maybe the world is divided into those who click and those who don't... ;)

‘And it’s the same with friends,’ I continued.  ‘I know lovely people here but I can’t always talk about the stuff I need to – about writing, about books, about mad spiritual/mystical stuff.  They’d think I’d gone bonkers.’  His turn to raise an eyebrow.

‘Hence online friends.’

‘Okay, I get that,’ he said.  ‘But then you go and meet them.’
‘Not all of them,’ I pointed out.  ‘But yeah, why not?’

See, I’m fascinated by people online and particularly by how online personae can be so different from RL.  I was talking about this with Jake and the lovely M (his wife) yesterday – how some people are exactly the same on and offline while others are, frankly, unrecognisable. 

‘Anyhow,’ said Adrian.  ‘If you were here alone, who would you shag?’ 

Shag?  Don’t you love the way women say 'date' and men say 'shag'?  He named names.  My eyes widened. 
‘Oh, I don’t know…’ I said with an evil smirk.

He lobbed his croissant at me. The SP neatly intercepted.  I grinned and picked up my coffee cup.

But, seriously…if you wanted to meet a partner, would you consider Internet dating?  Anyone tried it and a) loved it b) loathed it?

How many of your online friends have you met in real life? Were they how you imagined?   

And, before I go.  The ila competition.  I decided, in the end, that I couldn’t just give all that gorgeousness to one person. So I talked to ila and we split the prize.  The SP was the most fragrant creature I could find so he plonked his paw on these guys:  Zenandtheartoftightropewalking, Tiger Princess, Posie and Preseli Mags

London calling

I arrived at Tiverton station and felt a lurch in my heart as I spotted the small figure charging over the bridge.  My boy hurtled down the platform towards me, paused and then just threw out his arms and sank into me, in our usual embrace.  How lovely that he feels he can still do that, at the grand old age of twelve.  I wonder how much longer he will fit so I can (just, with a bit of a stretch) rest my chin on the top of his tousled head?  Not that long now before our positions will switch and I will rest my head on his chest. 

Adrian ambled behind, looking surprisingly chipper given he’d spent the  weekend with the King of Extreme Alcohol Intake (aka Big Chief Sitting Birch) and we commenced the handover.  A briefing on what was going on on the home front; what was needed; what might occur.  There was I back from London, not even home, and he was going straight off to Moscow.  Modern parenting, eh? 

James hates it.  Can’t bear the way we’re always flitting off here, there and everywhere.  But, really, what can you do? 
‘Dad said we won’t eat while he’s away,’ James said, as soon as we got in the car.  
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘We’ll eat just fine.’

And, when we got back to the Bonkers House, I opened the fridge door and, lo and behold, two vast bars of chocolate and a huge box of chocolates – a present from Switzerland from BCSB, who works over there.  ‘See,’ I said to James, brandishing a bar the size of my arm. ‘We’re sorted.’
'I rest my case,’ said James.

‘Oh, that reminds me,’ I said cheerily. ‘Apparently lawyers are a dying breed, as well as journalists.  You can get a divorce online now, or so Jane says.  And there’s going to be no more Legal Aid.  You’re going to have to rethink your career choices.’
He shrugged. ‘They’ll always need private corporate lawyers.’  Ye gods.  Oh well, maybe it doesn’t matter that my pension is fecked.  My darling son can pay for my retirement grape peelers. 

But anyway.  London was fabulous.  I got massaged within an inch of passing out with pleasure. I met men with prosthetic boils on their heads and bolts through every part of their anatomy.  I walked into my past time and time again.  I had lunch with my lovely agent and I met an angel (no really, I did) in the British Museum.  I ate Japanese, and Lebanese and Greek and French.  I scribbled like a madwoman and bought more books.  I fell in love with a memory mattress.  Oh and I read Bradley Wind’s fabulous novel Bulb on my Kindle. 
‘You know what?’ I said to my agent, Judy, as we hugged goodbye on Hampstead High Street.  ‘I could just handle a pied-a-terre in London, then we could do this every week.  How about a stonking deal for the Samael series?’
She grinned.  ‘Now there’s a plan.’ 
Maybe, just maybe (if the angel was right) James won’t need to sell his soul to keep me in old age luxury…

PS – there’s still time to enter the Ila competition on the last post….just leave a comment here.  I’ll close it on Thursday.