A Little Bit of Honesty to Start 2011

Okay, so 2011 is the year that I have decided to call myself a writer and am committing to write at least 200 words a day so that by 31-12-11, I will have 73,000 words and something that can be mangled into a book. At the moment, most of the words that are in my head are "and", "but", "the" and "ergo" but the longer ones will come and the story is there. I am not going to tell you the longer ones until they're finished but, Dear Blog Readers and Twitter friends, please nag me because I need every bit of encouragement I can get!

2010 was a hell of a year. It started, as most years do, on 1st January which was momentous as that was the day that I moved with my son to London in order for him to start at his new school. That move nearly split my marriage but the gods of dead controlling mothers-in-law must have been grimacing at me because husband and I still appear to be together! My instincts weren't awry. The school in Bournemouth that I took my son out of is now officially failing and the lovely journos at The Bournemouth Echo pointed out an article about it published on 14th December 2010. On the last day of 2010, they pointed me in the direction of a further article written about a local Bournemouth councilor's views on Bournemouth education. I despair. I offered to write an article for them 14 months ago which perhaps could have benefited Bournemouth kids in achieving the education that ALL kids deserve but The Echo's editor was "a bit nervous" about it. It's not my place to ask why but, heck, I'd like to edit that newspaper! The journos there deserve a bit of bravery! That article became my blog ... "The Lunatics are Running the Asylum". 14 months is a long time for any kid to have a rotten education and the journos at the Echo must have found their editor's decision NOT to go with my article rather frustrating. Never mind, my son is now happily installed in a most wonderful London school and is thriving. It doesn't stop me from feeling bad about the kids he left behind at the school from which I removed him.

My blogs in the past year have been spasmodic to put it mildly - not least because I've been busy getting son settled into his new environment, buying a house and generally getting used to living back in London. Well, I say London ... we're in Essex. At some stage I will get it out of my head that I'm no longer a NW8 girl or even a SW7 girl and at some point in the near future I will, in order to fit in, have to dye myself orange and start speaking broad Essex. This is never going to happen. I may live in Essex but the accent won't adhere and nor will the colour be tangoed!

Twitter has remained a lifeline for me and I still join in as much as I can ... but I've discovered a few realities about myself. 140 characters are not enough to be anything other than completely honest. The bullshit shows through so very clearly and I've hardened myself to the fact that I have a very long memory and am pathologically incapable of not checking facts. I don't think I am anything other than the person I am in real life when I tweet or blog. I don't pretend and I don't bullshit and in 2011, if my followers do, then they can expect me to pull them up on it. I'm all for "creative writing" but if someone blogs about something as FACT and it isn't, then it sort of makes my skin crawl. Write creatively, by all means, but head it up with "I made this up" so everyone knows where they stand.

Can I manage without Twitter? Of course I can, and in the next year, I will be so doing as writing a couple of hundred words a day is going to restrict my time there but, I'll be around because I would miss my friends too much not to be.

So 2011 is starting on a very honest note. If that honesty upsets anyone then I apologise but honest I am and honest I will be.

I wish you all the 2011 that you wish for yourselves. Mainly I wish for health, happiness and peace for us all. (Oh & I also wish for people whose careers are writing schtick to stick to that and give themselves a quick kick in the shins if they start writing about politics about which they know nothing ... but that's a story for another day!).

about Acronyms and Meaningless Hashtags

Twitter’s the place for people who have leanings towards media, all things literary, technological, News and Current Affairs, right? I’ve come to look on it as a social media site that is somewhat more grown-up than Facebook ... more for “thinking” people – but these days, I’m confused.

Acronyms such as LOL, ROFL, ROLMAO and even the blasted “hehee” have been appearing within those precious 140 characters and I’m wondering why people are wasting their character allowance on using mindless abbreviations when, patently, most of them are capable of expressing themselves in far better ways.

I never did like Facebook very much. It seemed, to me, to be full of people who knew people who I’d only ever met once or twice – and some who I’d never met at all – wanting to be my friends and then having the utter temerity to wish me to view their holiday photos. Soon after joining Twitter, I closed my Facebook account as I was really only ever using it to play Scrabble with a friend who lives less than 2 miles away from me and I truly didn’t wish to be friends with people of whom I’d never even heard let alone met. I was also plagued by the “gifts” that these unknown “friends” kept sending to me ... “Here, LOL, have a model Beefeater to make your day” and “Hehee, don’t forget to send a gift back to me”. Go away. Leave me alone. They wouldn’t – so I closed my account and shuffled in a relieved but adult fashion back to Twitter where I could actually form relationships with people who are capable of expressing quite complex, interesting and often witty thoughts in a succinct manner and who didn’t Laugh Out Loud at everything and anything that anyone said.

But what’s happening now on Twitter? The LOLS, ROFLS and hehees are creeping in and the succinct expressions of intelligent thought are on the decline and, what’s worse, I’ve even started to receive Direct Messages from people who are sending me “cuddly duckies” and such like with requests for me to send Direct Messages containing cute teddy bears back to them. But at least – as yet – I’m not being asked to view the holiday photos of people whom I do not know (and probably do not want to know). I enjoy looking at the occasional, amusing or interesting Twitpic but thanks heavens – as yet – no holiday photos.

Something else has started to happen on Twitter that is beginning to get ever so slightly too far lodged up my nostrils for comfort and that is the advent of the #verylongandoftentotallymeaninglesshashtag. Oh – and the swearing. I’m no prude. In fact I can – and often do – swear like a trooper but I’m not going to waste my 140 characters at proving this dubious talent to anyone who might happen to be reading what I write. I’ve been known under very stressful circumstances to use the occasional asterisk if I want to make a point very rudely but it’s not something I do often as I believe I am more than capable of expressing displeasure using other words than the usual F***s, C***s and whathaveyous.

And all of these annoying little factors are being sent by people who I genuinely thought knew better than to do so.

They know who they are and, without wishing to be a killjoy, I wonder if I may politely ask them when they’re going to stop or – if they don’t want to stop, perhaps they could restrict these inane practices to Facebook where I think they more rightfully belong.

You see, I am not LOL-ing, ROFL-ing, ROFLMAO-ing or even heehee-ing and I suspect quite a number of other people aren’t either.

about the New Blogger in her Family

All I really wanted to do today was stay in bed. Ha! Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

I seem, from somewhere – I know not where – to have acquired Mark II of the dreaded lurgy and am staggering around, off-balance, with earache, backache and just for good measure a throbbing headache. I think I could just about cope with one of the symptoms but all three together are just about flooring me.

Anyway, the school holidays are upon us, Josh needs occupying and OP is busy for which, of course, I am very grateful but – as he’s been pretty busy for what seems like an eternity (for which, of course, I am even more grateful), I seem to have been doing the lone parent thing for an awfully long time of late.

So, at crack of sparrow’s fart, I arose and started to make inroads into the ever-increasing pile of admin in the chamber of doom otherwise known as “my office”. Readers of my blog will know that I’ve become somewhat phobic about actually venturing into the doom chamber, so chaos would be a welcome sight on entry. The reality is that the mess in there has gone way, way beyond chaos and I have to swallow several Valium before crossing its threshold.

The Joshua was having a “lie-in” after yet another far too late a night and I thought that I could make use of the silence in the house by getting ahead with some admin without being perpetually coerced into conversations that oftentimes I don’t even begin to understand! I managed about 17 minutes in there before my darling child arrived on the scene. I am talked at and if I’m not paying attention, I am nudged until I do.

Today, Joshua had decided was HIS day for following in his mother’s footsteps and he wanted to start his own blog. In all fairness, he has worked away at it all day long and I’ve barely heard a squeak out of him – apart from being asked to check a few spellings and to look at his punctuation – neither of which, I was pleased to find, needed too much attention or correction.

I managed to get all my invoicing done and my EmoKiddy (yes, he now has his own Twitter account [very heavily monitored by me and, for obvious reasons, he is not allowed to “follow” me!] and that is his Twitter name) has thought long and hard about content and has actually written a very passable critique of one of the works of his hero, Jhonen Vasquez. And I am but SO, SO proud of him. So my 21st century boy-child is venturing ever further into the world of cyber communication and is far better at it than I could ever hope to be. And OP, needless to say, feels just a little bit more “left out” of things than he did yesterday. I can live with that!

This is a shameless bit of familial promotion. You can find Josh’s artwork on http://joshjdtv.deviantart.com/ - do take the time to scroll back – even if I say so myself (and, of course, I would say so, wouldn’t I?) – there’s some very good stuff on there, if you hunt for it! You could, if you’re patient enough, follow him on Twitter – he’s @EmoKiddy and, if you’re in the mood for reading yet another blog, his is at http://joshology.wordpress.com/

So, does the Redman family have the web covered? I’m sure for the time being it does – and unless by some technological miracle, OP suddenly becomes computer literate, perhaps all this “will do” for the time being?

A Touch of the Old Domestics

I've been very conscious of the fact that I haven't added a new post to this blog for several days and now that a dear subscriber has nudged me, I feel compelled to write a little something regardless of how uninteresting it may turn out to be. If I get too boring, please feel free to throw rotten tomatoes and abuse at your computer screen!

I've spent the last few days concentrating on all things domestic. Twitter ensures that I am constantly behind in keeping house and home in any state of "togetherness" and towards the latter end of last week most of my tweets were tinged with guilt at not having made any inroads into tackling the European Ironing Mountain that had grown organically in my kitchen. I did climb that mountain on Friday and it took so long that, in the surreal world of Twitter, search parties and St Bernard dogs were being sent out to look for me. I also managed to vacuum before DH arrived home from Berlin so the weekend got off to a serene start. DH has mastered the art of "looking at me with a tone in his voice" and I grudgingly complete most acts of domesticity in order to avoid these. On Friday, I succeeded and DH was delighted to be home and to be fed a home-cooked incineration in a clean and tidy house. I have nominated myself for Stepford Wife of the Year and fully expect to win!

Josh had a sleepover on Saturday night at a friend's house which afforded DH and I the rare opportunity of going out for a meal without the family comedian in tow. I can't say I noticed any discernible effects of the current economic crisis in Westbourne where we had to wait for over half an hour to be seated in our favourite restaurant. It was heaving with people who didn't appear to have a care in the world!

Sunday comprised a quiet "family" day which we all enjoyed and I was even quite pleased to note that I didn't have any apparent withdrawal symptoms from not having been on Twitter for nearly two days in a row. Monday was designated as an "Admin" day which is probably why I'll be concentrating on admin this afternoon!

DH went off to Basel yesterday morning and I had been "volunteered" to help with catering for about a hundred people at a gathering last night. I spent all day sauteeing chicken, dashed home to collect Josh from school, showered and dashed back out again to "serve up". I was truly exhausted by the time the day was over. It was actually very enjoyable but I'm glad it can now be referred to in the past tense.

There were a couple of evenings that developed into "nights" that were truly manic on Twitter last week. It's very rare that I laugh out loud at anything in this miserable world. Television and radio programmes sometimes raise the glimmer of a smile on my face but there was some absolutely outstanding quick witted banter happening on Twitter. Side-splitting stuff ... the kind that makes me grateful that DH was abroad as he would have been truly disturbed to hear me cackling like a loon at some of the 140 character "one-liners". It's magical when that happens but quite a strange feeling to be in the middle of a truly outrageous comedy show! I've also started to follow and be followed by some really interesting people and I'm amazed and grateful that I can learn so much from so many in so short a time.

I've noticed on Twitter that one only has to mention (or "tweet") about a subject briefly before one is followed by a myriad of other Tweeters who are either interested in the same subject or hoping to sell something in connection with it. I happened to mention Berlin in a couple of tweets and almost immediately was followed by what appeared to be the Tourist Office there. (I say "appeared to be" - the follower tweeted in German to me and too many decades have passed since I sat my German "O" Level and I'm afraid I didn't actually understand a word that was written). I must hone my tweeting skills to be followed by people who are actually in a position to pander to my exact tastes. This week I shall be endeavouring to mention MacLaren F1s, Manolo Blahnik shoes and mews cottages in south west London. Follow me, follow me and send free gifts!

I made a couple of "observational" tweets to the BBC's Director of News who tweeted back that I should work for the BBC. I informed him that I used to work for the BBC. I said that I wouldn't mind returning to the Beeb on contract as I'm a "rare breed" and "I know about broadcasting". I've heard nothing further from him! There's no place at Auntie these days for an aged person who speaks good, grammatical English in "received pronunciation" and who has a good grasp that News bulletins should be for the unbiased reporting of the News and that Current Affairs programmes should be for commentary and analysis and that there should never, ever be any "fuzzy lines" between the two. When fuzzy lines occur, the public feels that the broadcaster can no longer be trusted. There have been far too many "fuzzy lines" of late - not only from the Beeb but also from ITN and most satellite News channels.

So I've arrived in the middle of this week without really knowing how I got here. The News is so rotten I'm only dipping into it when I feel strong enough but if anything grabs me about anything, I'll no doubt blog again before too long!