Dear Facebook

Dear John …I mean, FB

(I still like using my petname for you, because I enjoy when people get it confused for something else)

What can I say. It’s not you, it’s not me, it’s us. Something isn’t quite right anymore. We used to be so close. You were there when I woke up, waiting with your little red badge for my thumbs to gently stir you. We always promised we’d broadcast regular status updates, so I can’t go on anymore without telling you how I feel. 😃😀😊☺️🙁😞😢😩

Thank you for the last 9 years.

Thanks for sharing my brother’s photos of my niece and nephew as they grow up miles away. You were great, really great at that. Then I met Whatsapp and Skype, and well, they’re better… you know, at that thing you know I like: live voice messages and chatting via video.

Thanks for helping me keep in touch with different groups of friends and never missing a social event. It’s just, I starting using my phone to really keep in touch. I don’t know how it happened, but I like it.

Thanks for making me laugh out loud, sorry ‘LOL’ at my family and friends posting memories, of primary school pantomimes or camping trips or celebrations from years gone by. And for the regular updates of almost everyone I went to 3 different schools with from primary to secondary to sixth form. For making sure I’m up to date with what their wives and husbands look like, how many kids they have, where they are on holiday. And, how many times they got up in the night or what they ate for breakfast.

Oh wait….It’s much more than that.

When I’m with you FB I can scroll through your blue-tiful timeline and see who is sharing the minute details, transitions, milestones, of their life, for their hundreds of friends to see and ‘like’. I can see which restaurant people have checked in for dinner and who got flowers on Valentine’s Day. I can also see who didn’t, and who’s married/single/complicated. I can click on friends of friends and trace degrees of separation to realise my friend knows your friend via that friend.

Then I realised, even with all this to offer. When we’re not together ‘my boots are lighter and my mind is quieter’ (ref Oskar Schell)

I know you did everything you could to keep us together. I noticed the advertising that you’d carefully selected according to my a/s/l and from carefully observing my activity online elsewhere. Some people call this stalking but you were clearly doing it with love. After all, why wouldn’t 32 year old women want to know about baby products and weight-loss initiatives.

On reflection, It’s not you. It’s me. But just think, if you ever miss me, just remember you have 1500+ photographs right there in your data (that I can never actually delete).

You know I always struggle with endings and goodbyes, especially when the relationship has been so good. Still, Kenny Rogers taught me you’ve got know when to hold ’em…

Goodbye FB x

I Buy Books

It gets expensive. Although they’re very easy to wrap up for gifts.

Recently I’ve rejoined Derbyshire Libraries. My local one is very small and quaint, and I’ve committed to visiting regularly because I know that if it wasn’t there I’d be disappointed and quick to exclaim “where have all the libraries gone”?!

I have vivid memories of the library providing enchantment and wonder. I desired books before I could read them and would sit cross legged pretending to read the story aloud to my non-existent audience who listened eagerly. I’d spend what felt like hours sifting through the boxes of books lined up, and sometimes wouldn’t even take one out because I was overwhelmed with choice. I’d love that to be available for other children and families too.

Yesterday I spent a few hours working from Nottingham City library, chosen over buying another over-priced coffee for some free wifi. I sat on the 2nd floor and could have easily been distracted into people watching. There were people searching through old records via a machine, doing some photocopying, paying for a colour print, mapping out diagrams from various resources and using their booked hour on the Internet. Reading, researching, learning, discovering, connecting. I overheard a man from Lincoln telling the librarian that today he’d found another piece to his puzzle. Another man I sat near was researching the archives of a local club, and to my right was what I imagine is an essential resource for many a school project:
 …a whole section dedicated to the guy. Only in Nottingham. It wasn’t under ‘local history’.

What a luxury it is to have a laptop, wifi, and a printer (that scans, photocopies, and prints photos, in colour, wirelessly) at home.

What’s your local community library like?