Real or Not Real

Last week I met up with a friend I hadn't seen since my sister's wedding 8 years ago.  We used to meet her and her sister every school morning at the end of their road and all cycle off together to school. Often we saw each other both weekend days as well, in the dance group of which we were all part.  Her husband was in my class - not while he was her husband, I hasten to add.  All of this to illustrate how much we used to see each other and how involved we were with each other's lives.

And then I moved away to England to university and I maybe saw her about 6 times since 1994. So it was so great to catch up again and to spend the morning together.  It was particularly special to meet each other's kids and just brilliant to see them run off and play together happily. 

Here's the thing though: we hadn't seen each other for 8 years, yet we are connected almost every day, on Facebook.  I see pictures of her kids frequently and have asked her advice on issues I face with my boys, as one of hers is a few years older and she is further down that road!  She was one of the very first people to congratulate me on the pregnancy of my second son after I posted that I had 2 heartbeats, much to the excitement of some Dr Who fans. (No, me neither until someone explained...)

So it was quite an odd dynamic, to have not seen one another really for so long, yet at the same time be quite up to date on each other's lives.  I knew that her husband is looking for a new job and that her brother's wife is about to have a baby. I knew that her other brother recently got engaged and have seen pictures of his (beautiful)  fiance.  She knew that Andrew travels a lot for his job and that we had recently been to France. It was kind of odd! We didn't need to have the huge catch up chat about where we now live or what jobs we are in... In many ways it was like we see each other often and it was much more relaxed and easy going than it might have been had we had to reconnect all over again.

On the other hand, there were things that you just don't get from Facebook.  I have never spoken to any of her kids, and I really enjoyed chatting about books with her oldest boy. He is working his way through the Harry Potter series and I have just started my bi-annual reread thereof...  So we had a great natter about this, and I loved it!  

And there are things that you don't put on Facebook.  It is not the place where I am the most vocal about my faith, so she could have been forgiven for not being sure if that was something with which I still engaged. It was great to chat about that and there was other family stuff that we shared, that wouldn't be Facebook-appropriate either. (That makes it sound much more dramatic and scandalous than anything we actually discussed...)


It's a funny one!  Facebook's ostensible raison d'être is to let you 'connect with friends and the world around you.' The wider media often talks about Facebook friends being 'friends' and posits that it isolates people and stunts friendships. An article I read in the Guardian asked: 'does Facebook really connect people? Doesn't it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk?' The suggestion further down in this article is that people now think that the more 'friends' you have, the better you are - that people aim to engage in quantity rather than quality of friendships.  

Personally, I don't know anyone who uses Facebook in that way.  Perhaps this is age-related and maybe 'yoofs' are amassing huge numbers of friends and feeling like they are very popular this way. Very few of my friends have an absurd number of 'friends' and they seem to me, as an outside, and occasionally nosy, observer, to genuinely connect with people rather than just garner hangers on to feel good about themselves. As someone who has lived in a few different countries, it has allowed me to stay connected with people I genuinely know.  In all honesty, I would be unlikely to email, phone or write to them. But here is an easy and often fun way to (re)connect and share with them. 

Friends is a big word to apply to absolutely everyone with whom we are connected in this way, of course.  It is quite a loaded word and has perhaps been devalued since the dawn of social media.  But I absolutely disagree with the suggestion that Facebook disconnects us from people. I can think of a few people that I see frequently, whom I have got to know better since being connected to on Facebook. It turned out that we had more in common than we realised, things that we might not have got round to chatting about, and it has genuinely enriched rather than impoverished a new acquaintanceship. 

I am not suggesting that it substitutes real life connections and that someone sitting alone all day sharing and posting to friends on Facebook is as good as meeting a few pals for a coffee.  Of course it's not!  But it's surely equally ludicrous to suggest that connecting to people on social media will somehow diminish your real life contact with them. Unless you are genuinely a hermit who has 2000 Facebook friends and no real ones - but this is surely not representative of the majority? Or do I just happen to have sensible friends and have a very rose-tinted view of the whole phenomenon?

Meeting up with my old schoolfriend was fantastic and could never have been substituted by a Facebook chat, clearly.  However, I would say that our connection on Facebook added hugely to the likelihood of us getting together to begin with and to the quality of the time we spent. We both commented on the unusual dynamic of feeling like we had very little catching up to do, although this wasn't really entirely true.  It was in many ways a shortcut, and one that was good and helpful.  And a tiny bit weird...

And anyone who gets the reference in the title of this post gets promoted instantly to bff, on Facebook and in real life.

How Many Times?

Came across this on Pinterest yesterday and, apart from the dubious use of the word 'awesome', I completely agree.  Except I think that '5th time' is quite a conservative number to choose!  50th?

I have a friend who absolutely cannot get her head around the fact that I reread books.  She very very rarely revisits a book she has read.  She tends not even to keep them - well, why would you?  She and her sisters give them to each other and then pass them on.  She is totally baffled by the idea that you would read a book again, once you already know what happens.

I can't fully understand why this is so odd to her.  I have never NOT reread!  All kids read their favourite books over and over again - usually they know them off by heart!  In fact my parents have a recording of me 'reading' the Christmas Story to my Dad when I was about 2 and a half.  It was my absolute favourite and I demanded it every night apparently.  Maybe that's where it started!

I find when I first read a new book, I fly through it - especially if it is gripping and the plot unfolds unexpectedly.  I expect I do read too quickly that first time around, just to find out what happens.  So re reading makes sense in that context and I go back and rediscover or notice new things the second time around.

The bit that my friend really finds odd is that I have several authors or books that I reread endlessly, probably annually if not more often.  These are the 3 authors I probably read most frequently: Brookmyre, Heyer and Rowling.

The 3 couldn't be more different really. Georgette Heyer writes historical fiction, mostly set in the Regency in London or Bath  Her plots don't tend to be terribly complex, but her use of language and her historical accuracy and detail are just spellbinding.  Her characters are also generally very likeable and I love sinking into her books.  These really are comfort reads and I know them so well!  When a new Arrow edition was released of them, I spotted several errors in one book and wrote to the publishers.  They sent me the corrected version and a load of free books too!  One reviewer wrote: 'I have read her books to ragged shreds' - I have too, as evidenced below.  Many of the books were my Mums, but most of them are now falling to bits, by sheer overuse. I feel as though you could set me down in Bath in 1815 and I would know exactly how to speak, dress, where to go etc. It's a wonderful world to fall into and my ultimate comfort read is These Old Shades.  

 Brookmyre on the other hand writes stinging Scottish satire - full of biting one liners, blood, gore and no-holds-barred language. Some of his books can be quite political - they are always funny, full of cliff hangers and quite outrageous. The thing he does actually have in common with Heyer is his characters.  He has been compared to Carl Hiassen in terms of his satirical writing, but I have always found Hiassen's characters to be slightly too bizarre to relate to or really root for. Brookmyre on the other hand paints portraits of people who are real, conflicted, flawed and loving. The best example of this comes in the first Brookmyre I read: A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away; the books starts with Simon Darcourt's contemptuous dismissal of all things suburban and middle class.  Reading this can make you feel a bit defensive and, well, suburban and middle class.  But as the book progresses, the character of Raymond Ash comes into it and his relationship with his family is warm and feels true and realistic.  Before this sounds too slushy, this is to the background of a terrorist plot to blow up a hydroelectric power station, foiled by 2 school boys, an English teacher and a female police officer.

Hilarious in places, biting in others and with a cute twist at the end. 

 Harry Potter  was the third series in that picture of books I reread often.  I genuinely do read all 7 HP books at least once a year.  I LOVE them. They are just so clever and satisfying in their construction.  I love the way insignificant events in book 2 come back to have huge repercussions in book 6, or the details of the magical world.  I remember reading each new book as it came out, almost worried that it wouldn't live up to the previous ones - but this was never the case.  Take away the magic, the spells, the broomsticks and you are left with a boy who wants a family and I find that JK Rowling never lets the setting of the books overpower the characters. So I am always happy to return to the world of Hogwarts and never find the stories getting old.  In the words of alan Rickman: "When I’m 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I’ll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me, 'After all this time?' And I will say, 'Always.'" If he's not sick of it, after starring in all 7 films then clearly I have barely scraped the surface of my potential enjoyment of it...

A new contender for rereading is the Hunger Games Trilogy.  Very compelling, quite dark and violent, but powerful.  Another 'different world',which reminded me of Nazism, North Korea and Rome all at once.  Sounds very gloomy, but, again, it's the characters that add the warmth.


The final group of books I would add to thisis Steig Larsson's Trilogy, The Girl With...   Those books blew me away and I love the fact that one was a thriller, one was more of a detective novel and the third was a spy novel. Yet all with the same characters and the unfolding story of Lisbeth Salander. Brilliant...


In writing this it seems as though it's not so much revisiting the plots as meeting with favourite characters that pulls me into these books time and again. I don't see why I would ever stop wanting to come back to them over the years ahead. 
If you haven't read these books: do!  And then read them again.