Blogger Love.

I have been blogging now for about 5 years and over that time I have built up a steady and loyal readership of which I am very proud. Each time I see another person has clicked to follow my blog my heart takes a little leap!

One of the reasons I started to write was as a way of releasing my emotions. I've always done this - when I was at university many years ago I wrote depressing poetry in reams!!! The difference now though is that whereas when I was at university, alone in my little concrete room, nobody read what I wrote, nowadays not only do people read it, they reply.

My last post was a cry from the heart, a release of my angst over the trials of motherhood, and from out there in the ether you came to help me. I was and am so touched by the care and friendship shown by people I have never met. This world of blogging gives us all a link and as we write about our everyday experiences, whether they be good, bad, joyful or sorrowful, it helps us to understand each other. Whether we live in the Home Counties of leafy England or half way across the world there is an understanding that fundamentally we are all pretty similar. We all have good days and bad. We all benefit from a hand that reaches out in tenderness.

Your comments made me feel good about myself. Your comments made me brush myself down, pick myself up, take a deep breath and carry on being a mum. I cannot thank you all enough.

Facebook - another layer of friendship.

I am lying on my bed taking a break from my latest essay. Its about the competing models of boyhood in Little Women and Treasure Island ... yes ... I know ... that's why I'm taking a break ...

And I got to thinking ...

About Facebook really ... I have friends on Facebook who would not be my friends if Facebook did not exist. By that I mean that we would have, did, drift apart, but Facebook brought us back together. I don't mean that we are back together in a deep and meaningful friendship where we spend weekends strolling on beaches or evenings playing chess and talking about world politics - I mean that we ... well we kind of stalk each other.

God that sounds terrible. When I say say stalk I mean that its like we are on a night bus, on the way home and we have the chance to glimpse inside the lighted windows of the houses we pass. We can see the people sitting down to dinner, or taking photos or having BBQs. Maybe its less like stalking and more like supporting from a distance or like taking an interest without intruding too much.

Facebook has created a new layer of friendship that just wasn't there before. There are people that you like, people you worked with or went to school with, but you were never going to be that close to. They might have moved away, gone abroad. They might be people who you really like, but probably spending an evening down the pub with them just wouldn't quite work ...

So Facebook is perfect for dipping. Of course there are still the real friendships which can co-exist alongside the dippers. I have real life day to day friends who are also my Facebook friends. And I certainly don't have anyone as a friend who I don't actually know in the flesh, so to speak.

I just love being able to see holiday snaps straight away, nights out ... In many ways I can be a better friend because I can see when something has happened in someone's life instantly. They don't have to phone hundreds of people - just post an announcement and the world of friends are there in an instant to help.

The concept of social networking does not diminish the idea of friendship, it deepens it, adds another layer. There are people who have become far closer friends of mine because of our use of Facebook than they would have been if we only saw each other on high days and holidays. I can pick up if someone is feeling down and send my love and they can do the same to me.

My Facebook is not the cyber bullying place of teen angst and keeping up with the Joneses. It is more a comfortable middle aged place where the people watch out for one another. Is that a naive view? Maybe ... but I don't think so. These things are what we make them. The users create the atmosphere and the rules. Like attracts like. For me Facebook is a place to publicise charitable events, a place to chat, a place to laugh. Yes I know - I am sounding very middle aged and this is probably the death knell for Facebook as I type.

How strange to think that the dream of a young American student has spread to leafy English suburbia and has become a phenomenon in terms of friendship that was non-existent only 7 years ago. As I say - its not a replacement for friendships, its another layer, a way of keeping in touch, of sharing and supporting. And surely that can't be bad?