Friday 4 January 2013

Twitter ye not, Missus ( with apologies to the late great Frankie Howerd)

Well, I made it, sort of anyway, I am now on Facebook and Twitter.  Officially of course this is all for work but I have lovely photographs of my daughter and me in various gorgegous places from last year so that every time I turn on Facebook it makes me smile. I don't think I've quite got the hang of Twitter. It's like working down a mine, I can't see anything and am not quite sure where to go. I feel like just staying in bed and pulling up the duvet and saying, 'I can't do this.'
Have you read Sue Townsend's book, The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year? I bought it for Katy for Christmas. I haven't read it yet but I take the sentiment to heart. Bed is the place for me. Some years ago I bought myself a large expensive bed and a large expensive mattress. When all else fails I do the Marian Keyes bit and have duvet days. The joys of working at home. I remember hearing about one guy who used to do his ironing naked while doing a radio show. You could be playing Angry Birds, I know I do. It knocks all the aggression out of me without involving anyone else.
Also I listen to Rebus.Does Bill Paterson have the sexiest voice on earth or is it just that I am a sucker for  his northern accent, having one myself though not nearly as attractive as his. Edinburgh ain't Durham. I think we speak here what they call low Scottish. Do other people notice these things?  Writers do of course, even the slightly deaf ones like me.
 When Katy was little we used to play a game when the adverts came on television. Whose voice is it?  I alter my voice all the time. Not necessarily consciously, I just pick up the cadences of other people's speech. I wish it meant I could speak other languages but it doesn't seem to work that way. Six years of french at school and I have about two dozen words.
When I go back to Tow Law, the pit town I grew up in, I'm indecipherable to the world beyond. In London I'm being professional and upgrade it a whole load. When I give talks I try to be their writer. I can be pet and love and ducks and even darling but not flower. I hate flower.
When I was a journalist at twenty I had a horrible boss and he had this awful sarcastic way of making me feel incompetent by referring to me over the telephone as flower. I wasn't the world's best journalist but I was not much older than a kid and could have done with a bit of encouragement. However, I did learn later that he left journalism and went off to run a post office and somehow that made me feel better, at least he wasn't bullying some other cub reporter.
I went off journalism, I hated the way it went round and round. My writing goes round and round too but since I have no idea how the process works I'm still fascinated and glad to be in the circle and glad now to to be in the facebook circle and the twitter - can you call it a circle?
Pigeons fly round and round. When I lived in Crook which isn't far away from here I used to go down to the river with my springer spaniel Timmy and walk him there and on sunny days the pigeons would be out of their crees and flying in circles in the sunlight white and silver. I love the sound of pigeons cooing and of gulls crying. It makes me think of my favourite places,  countryside and seaside. And pheasants up in Weardale where my family comes from, they make that lovely hoarse sound as they strut about the fields. the most incongruous or birds, they look like exotic visitors. I love birds so yes, I think I'm going to like Twitter if I ever get the hang of it.

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