I Don't Like Christmas...

I have a confession to make.  I have an opinion on something.  It's not a popular opinion.  It is mostly against the flow of most people's opinion on the subject.

I really don't like dinner parties.  I only EVER go to them for Sharon.

There, I said it.  I'm sorry if that offends, but it's how I feel.  Let me clear this up straight away , it's not that I don't like my friends or family or seeing them.  Or that I don't like their food. Far from it.  I LOVE my friends and family, and the time I spend with them is some of my favourite time spent.  They are also all good cooks. But why do I have to eat with them?  What's wrong with having your tea at home and then meeting for a couple of drinks in the pub?  Why do I have to go round to your house and eat there and then sit in your living room, watching your TV, or listening to your music, or making conversation, or whatever else people do to at these events?  It's not that I don't like your house or you, but I like my house more.  That's why I live there and not with you.  So we have two issues I have with dinner parties.

Firstly, eating at your house.

If I eat at my house or in a restaurant with Sharon and I am not that hungry and I leave some of it, then it's my choice and it's fine.  If I eat at your house and I don't really eat much you start asking what is wrong with me or, more worryingly, what is wrong with your food.  This puts pressure on me to eat everything put in front of me.  Me, pressure and eating do not go well together.  If you give me pressure and food, I don't really feel like eating the said food.  So, a dinner party at your house almost instantly means I am not hungry.  That is not a good start.  So I spend the meal making polite conversation and pushing my food around my plate (even if it is the best meal EVER) and try and make it look like I've eaten more that I actually have.  All the while I am nervously drinking the wine/beer you have graciously provided.  Result, I am pissed and my stomach feels poorly sick.  Or, quite often when I have eaten I like to just chill out and say or do nothing for a while afterwards and let my food digest.  Making conversation and effort isn't considered chilling out for me. So either way this is not a good night out for me as I then have to spend the rest of the evening (because you have to hang around for hours after eating and make yet more polite conversation.... why?) feeling pretty crappy stomach wise.

Secondly, being at your house.

You have a lovely house.  I like what you've done with the living room, etc. But it's your house.  Your house is just like my house only I'm not quite as comfortable.  Whereas my house, is my house.  I am comfortable there.  I could live there.  So I am somewhere that I am less comfortable than I am at home.  Basic maths shows you I will enjoy this less than being at home.  Again.  It's not your company.  I love being out and about with you and seeing you.  I just don't like being in other people's houses much.

What is wrong with everyone having tea at their own house and then meeting in the pub for a couple of pints?  If I'm leaving my house, why not go somewhere different from my house? We could go to a restaurant?  Actually, no.  I sometimes just like to go home after eating in a restaurant.  So, although it is preferable to a dinner party, I still may feel trapped there afterwards.  Unless it's just me and Sharon.  She has somehow broke through all my strange neuroses about this and my desire to be left alone for large amounts of the time and I LOVE eating out with her and generally being around her.  Whenever I say I would rather be home alone or eat alone or whatever alone. I mean, just me and her. I should marry that one.  So, for my comfort we could all eat at home and meet up for a drink, or me and Sharon could eat out and you meet us later. Maybe, if I'm in the mood.  Sometimes I may just like to go home. Sorted.  Errr, ok, probably not.

There are a couple of other people who have broken through my strangeness on this issue.  My Dad.  Every Saturday dinner I have bacon and eggs with him at his house and I enjoy it greatly.  Also my Mum and Nan.  Every Thursday I have tea at my Nan's with my Mum.  I also enjoy that.  I put this down to 2 reasons.  Firstly routine.  I have said it is about my comfort zone and there is nothing like a routine to give me a comfort zone.  Secondly, I can leave whenever I want.  Straight after eating if I want.  Not hanging around someone elses house making polite conversation all night.  I can go home.  Bliss.

So, you would think from all this that I would insist on dinner parties being at my house.  It's my food, usually cooked by me and I can eat what I want of it.  It's also my house and my comfort zone.  Nope.  I'm not a big fan of people coming round to my house either.  In general.  I have to make conversation and make an effort and find it difficult to relax.  If it's just me and Sharon and I'm not in the mood then I can sit not saying much all night and it's fine.  Can't do that with guests.  It's bad enough with planned ones, but the unplanned ones.... JESUS... GO AWAY!!!!  It can be my most favourite person in the world, but if they didn't tell me they were coming, then in that few seconds between them ringing the bell and me answering the door, my brain starts calculating if they can actually tell I am in or how much trouble I would get in for simply ignoring them because I am obviously in.  I am too nice and polite for either of those unfortunately and so answer the door and make polite conversation while hoping Sharon will do most of the entertaining and wondering how long is too long to take making them a cup of tea.  Is an hour too long?  Would it be wrong to finally show up with a brew for them as they are putting on their coat to leave.  I understand your dilema though.  If you ring and ask if you can come round, I will almost certainly say no, so you have to arrive unannouced.  My top tip would be to ring Sharon.  She gets her friends and family in the door all the time.  Anyone coming through me will struggle.

So yeah, the blog title.  That was just me trying to get your attention. I do, of course, LOVE Christmas.  I love giving and receiving presents.  I love seeing my friends and family.  I love the talking and the laughing and the eating and the drinking.  BUT, I have to go and eat meals at people's houses. And go and spend vast amounts of time at people's houses making polite conversation and pretending I find the Emmerdale Christmas special entertaining, when I really would just like to be on my couch, eating my food, drinking my beer, watching my Star Trek, on my TV.  Or the other thing that might happen is, because everyone is at home and bored for a week, they might decide to call round and see us unannouced.  NIGHTMARE!

I have issues.

Now, I realise  I may appear selfish here.  But we are all selfish in our own way.  I can't help feeling like this.  I just do.  It doesn't mean I don't enjoy your food or your company.  And because you are my friends and family and I love you and want to see you I will do all these things and will enjoy bits of it, sometimes all of it.  It's more about that I can sometimes, without warning, really not be in the mood. I may get into things later on.  I almost always don't want to go out anymore just before it's time to go out, but I push on through because I usually get into it.  That happens much much less with dinner parties or going to people's houses.  More importantly Sharon will enjoy all of it, all the time, and so I do it for her.  So please don't take offence and shun us because of me, because she loves coming to see you all and have you come to see us.  

I will be in the kicthen making you a brew.

Or, let's all eat at home and meet for a couple of pints in the pub afterwards.

Social Networking

As the title suggests, this is a blog about social networking.  Or at least, the small pocket of social networking that I take part in.  I engage in three aspects of social networking and they are as follows:

Blogging

This thing you are reading right now.  Unless you have already got bored and have stopped reading before this point, in which case you won't be reading my blog right now.  But that means you wouldn't have seen my statement that you were reading it right now.  The word we are all desperately searching for here is, anyway.  I very occasionally write random musings on this blog.  And occasionally one or two people seem to read it.  I don't necessarily write it to be read, it's just kind of nice to get my thoughts down in script sometimes. But it is nice that SOMEONE reads it. Otherwise it would be almost a fruitless exercise for me to keep it not very personal, if not fruitless to write it at all.  What is social networking without the social or indeed the networking? So when someone says they read it and enjoyed it or even requests I write another one (thanks Bev) I won't lie and say it doesn't please me.  I enjoy writing and this is a good place to write things.  The problem I have is what to write about?  I mean, I am currently writing a blog about writing a blog. Probably not for the first time.  I guess that is probably barrel scraping in blog land.  So, sometimes something will come to me, or something will happen (the fence saga), or I will get involved in something (running), or I will simply force it because I want to write and then I write a blog. It doesn't seem to be really acquiring any followers, but it serves me for what I want from it and that is somewhere to get my thoughts down in more than a 140 or 420 characters.

Facebooking

This is undoubtedly my biggest and most successful venture into the world of social networking. For about the past 3-4 years every chance I've had to get on a computer (which is a lot) I have been going on there updating my status and commenting on other people's.  And since I got my iPhone it is nearly always accessible to me.  I use Facebook for a few reasons.  Firstly to keep in touch with people I know/have known in the real world, but almost never, if ever, see.  It is nice to have rekindled some friendships, in an online fashion, and enhanced some friendships of people I rarely see, on there.  Secondly I use it to post photos and very occasionally videos of my life so people can see them.  Thirdly I use it to try and be funny.  I quite often think I could be taken as being rather annoying on there, and I'm sure to some people I am, but it is surprising to me how many people say to me when they see me in the real world how much they like the things I write on Facebook.  I'm sure part of it is the sheer volume of stuff I write, some of it is bound to appeal to someone, if only by the law of averages.  Having said that, it gives me great pleasure to write on there and I very much write things on there to be read and responded to.  I like getting into exchanges on there and I almost always go for the gag if I can.  Some people use it to be really quite serious, and I have the occasional rant myself, but Facebook for me and how I choose to use it mostly isn't like that.  That doesn't mean they are wrong and I am right. By no means. The serious posting people may find my constant irreverence annoying, and that is their choice.  It is also their choice to unfriend me if they don't like what I write and a number of people have.  I am completely fine with that.  I do it to people too sometimes.  If someone is filling my feed with stuff I don't find interesting, if it's a game I hide that (I'll come back to that), if it's their general status entries, they go.  So if you are still my friend on Facebook and you post on there you can be certain I read most of what you write and am almost always entertained by it one way or another.  Knowing the little things about people's lives is interesting in the extreme.  How would I possibly know that someone I haven't seen in years has just been to see her son in the school nativity play and he was a dancing shepherd without Facebook (a post today by someone)? Brilliant!  That to me is where the social side of it comes in.  And I completely use Facebook to be social.  Not the networking though. I don't use Facebook to make new friends with people I've never met.  It just doesn't lend itself to that for me.  It's just too open and personal for that.  Then there are the games.  Annoying fucking things that fill my feed.  Farmville... FUCK OFF! Again, if that is what people wish to take from Facebook then who am I to argue?  And now I can hide the games posts it doesn't interfere in my Facebooking or bother me in the slightest what games my friends engage in on there.  In the past I would have ditched someone for playing too many games and clogging my feed.  And then there are the people who post lots and lots of youtube videos of the the songs they think people should be listening to.....ARRGGGHHH!!!  STOP FILLING MY FEED!  One or two songs are fine.  I do that sometimes.  It's nice to share.  That is why we are on Facebook.  But 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 songs?  10 FUCKING SONGS!?  You've just completely filled my feed and I can't hide that without hiding you!  I may as well unfriend you and if you continue to do it, I will do just that. I seem to have taken a turn towards ranting.  Let me reel it back in and return to my point.  Facebook has many uses for many types of people.  Sharon uses Facebook mainly for inbox conversations, predominantly about netball I think and also for playing Bejewelled Blitz (which she is astonishingly good at).  She does not use it at all like I do, but she still gets something rewarding from it.  I like Facebook for this.  It is versatile and different people can all get what they want from it, whilst still being social with each other and living in harmony on there.  

Tweeting

My latest venture over the past year.  And what a year it has been.  Celebrities, new friends, spending sometimes frustratingly long amounts of time shortening things I want to say to 140 characters or less.  A whirlwind of a year.  Ok, I'm making it sound bigger and more exciting than it actually was.  It's not like I'm @theashes (a girl in America who happens to have chosen that name and got propelled into Twitter stardom recently during the cricket. She now has 14000 followers simply because she got angry at getting cricket tweets, but eventually took it as a bit of fun and was offered free flights to Australia to watch the ashes unfold with her very eyes).  But I have learned a lot about Twitter and what I want to take from it.  Again I go on there pretty much every chance I get. On a computer or on my iPhone. The first lesson to learn is, it is NOT Facebook.  Nor does it try to be (although people may claim Facebook is moulding itself more to be like Twitter in some of it's recent incarnations. But this isn't a blog about that). The second lesson is, you can't read everything that everyone writes and you will miss stuff.  A lot of stuff.  Lists quickly became handy, I have one with the few people on there I know in real life.  I don't want to miss their stuff as much as I can help.  When I first signed up I did what everyone else did, I followed @stephenfry and then set about following every celebrity whose work I liked.  And this was fine for a while, and when I occasionally got a reply from a celeb I was incredibly happy.  @simonpegg being about the biggest.  But I was missing the point (or the point I have found for myself on Twitter).  The point is the real people on there . Although I must confess to being rather chuffed to recently being followed by the lead singer of The Zutons and the brief exchange I had with KT Tunstall today.  Back to my point.  The point is the people you don't know or haven't heard of that also get what it's about and are very entertaining.  Sometimes mudanely, sometimes cleverly, sometimes outragously, but always entertainingly.  It's hard to find them because you don't know them and haven't heard of them, but they are out there and eventually you find one or two and they will lead you to more.  The people hovering around the 2000 followers mark are great to follow.  They are normal people who have got far purely by being entertaining on Twitter, and not because they are entertaining on the telly or the radio.  That is very much the point.  Sure, I still follow rafts of celebs, but not nearly as many as I did.  Some are on there purely for self promotion and I don't want to know about that.  Some are on their with their name, but it's their PR guy.  B-O-R-I-N-G-! Paul McCartney springs to mind.  It's the ones that are themselves and using twitter the same way as us mere mortals that are the ones to stick with, because they too have got the point.  It's not about constantly telling us about your latest book (although you'd be daft not to mention it occasionally if you did have a book out.  Just don't be @lord_sugar about it), it's about connecting to people.  Yes networking.  Social networking.  Twitter is probably the social networking site that most lives up to its remit.  To get the point of twitter is to be social and to network.  I am still only just finding my feet.  It's a long process, but it is worth it.  I still have very few followers and my main conversations are with people I know in the real world, but there are some people who I am starting to have conversations with who I have no idea who they are and that is great fun.  It's always nice to make a new friend.  Even if it is on an almost anonymous superficial level of randomly sharing a joke on the Internet.  In fact, I think that makes it all the more worthwhile.

Social Networking is also becoming remarkably powerful.  The sheer volume of people means it has a voice in the real world.  Get a few high profile celebs or a hell of a lot of people (amounts to the same thing) to make stand behind or against something and it has been seen to affect the media, and even the law and politics.  To ignore it or underestimate it's power would be a mistake in my mind.  And as more and more people are turning on to it, it's power can only increase.  Just as long as there is still a place for a picture of child screaming as though being murdered because they are sat on Father Christmas's knee or me to sneak onto Sharon's profile and write "I fucking love boobies!" as her status then all will be well.