Archive for the ‘Friends’ Category

Friends met and unmet

Friday, January 20, 2012

People not on Twitter won’t get this.

Because Twitter is a real-time/near-real-time communications medium, it is remarkably easy to establish relationships with Twitter ‘friends’.

I have been on Twitter since 31st March 2008. Since then 345 people have found and followed me and, because it is a social network, I have (usually) followed them all back.

Social, it definitely is. A network it is too.

I have gone on to physically meet *counts quickly* 40-ish Twitter friends and, without exception, they have all been lovely people.

Yesterday evening I drove in to London, because one of my Twitter friends had been taken ill, whilst at work, and had been admitted to UCL Hospital for tests.

I pitched up outside UCL at 6.15pm and waited in my car, listening to music and, erm, Tweeting, Texting and receiving updates on his progress, as he moved through the medical system.

I’ve had enough hospital admissions to know that medical staff are reluctant to discharge someone from their care, and have that person set out on a significant public transport journey home.

I thought that if he was allowed home, he’d need a lift. It was that simple.

About 9.30pm he was moved to a hospital ward and I was invited up for a chat. I accepted and yes, we physically met for the first time and we chatted about many things.

And he is, indeed, a very nice guy.

As the clock ticked on, the nurses started saying things like ‘And in the morning we’ll do more tests’, so it became clear he wasn’t going to be allowed home.

But we chatted on.

At 11pm a real-life/Twitter friend of his (who was also an unmet Twitter friend of mine) pitched up with overnight supplies for him.

The three of us chatted some more, briefly, before being thrown out by the nursing staff.

I gave the (previously unmet) Twitter friend a lift back to her home in Fulham, then headed back to Witney, getting home about half-past midnight.

I hope he – the Twitter friend in hospital – is good this morning. I hope he’s fit and hope his prognosis is excellent.

But this activity? This is the kind of thing we do for our friends, isn’t it?

Whether they’re unmet Twitter friends or not.

Posted in Friends, Twitter | 6 Comments »

And?

Friday, October 21, 2011

Despite last night’s cider and almost-frozen vodka chasers, I feel remarkably excellent today.

Finding myself partially-dressed, when I got out of bed, confused me slightly, but we’ll just gloss over that for now.

My Twitter stream, from last night, seemed terribly amusing at the time.

Slightly less so, in the cold light of morning.

Oh well.

Heike went to bed complaining about the food baby she was carrying.

Yes, I’ll admit I got the quantities of last night’s Chinese sweet and sour stir-fry a little wrong.

But she hardly eats enough to keep a sparrow alive, so it’s not really my fault, is it?

Today I’m going to be madly busy.

And we’re going to a gig this evening to see, amongst others, Black Hats (a fine trio of energetic talent, who purvey musical thuggery for their own enjoyment, as much as for anyone else’s).

The chaps have promised to ply me with alcohol.

Pints of crème de menthe and crème de cacao have been mentioned.

*shudder*

Heike leaves tomorrow.

This makes me sad; her company (not to mention her arse-kicking) has helped put me on the right track, and helped do it much quicker than I should reasonably expect.

I’m spending tomorrow (Saturday) night in Peterborough.

On Sunday I have an afternoon meeting in Lapworth.

And in between these things I have the usual domestic and equine duties to crack on with.

Sadly, on the equine front, the Vin-related news is not good.

The vet has said that the entire left-half of his head is paralysed, due to nerve damage.

We’re giving him a week before the vet comes back for another look.

But if there is no improvement, the prognosis is terminal.

I want to say something really profound here, but the bottom line is that we wait and see.

Wait and see.

Posted in Drunk, Friends, Horses | 6 Comments »

A nice day out with a friend

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

I decided that my German houseguest needed to see more of the UK than just Oxfordshire, so we took a trip down the A40 and I introduced her to Wales.

The first stop was Raglan Castle which looks remarkably like this:

Raglan Castle

Or, from another angle, it looked like this:

Raglan Castle - bird's-eye view

 

Then we hit nearby Abergavenny for some spicy mushroom soup. Well, we had spicy mushroom soup, we didn’t go there just for that, obv. Anyway. That looked like this:

Spicy mushroom soup

 

Then we went on top of the Blorenge and, with great predictability, the weather clamped down and tried to blow us/rain us off the mountain.

We retreated.

We got down to the Usk valley and felt the need for coffee.

I decided to try and put another part of my past behind me, so we went to Llansantfraed Court for refreshments.

That’s where Sophie and I got married.

And yes, it did feel like closing another door.

We had a bit of a chat, Heike and me, as we sprawled across the couch in front of the log fire.

I tried to explain how having another human being around has helped keep me sane during such a critical week.

She looked faintly embarrassed.

I tried to teach her how to pronounce Llansantfraed.

She kept making it sound like ‘handsome Fred’.

Sigh.

Anyway, we are home now.

We’re going to watch ‘Paul’, then eat the vegetable stew that Heike cooked yesterday, and then we’re going to watch Grosse Pointe Blank.

We seem intent on drinking much cider.

I might be asleep before the evening is concluded.

Posted in Friends, Wales and the Welsh | 4 Comments »

A bit about Manc

Thursday, October 13, 2011

On Tuesday evening I drove up to Manchester.

I didn’t really want to have to get up at stupid o’clock on Wednesday morning, to drive up to the Comedy Conference 2011.

Registration started at 9.30am and I wanted to arrive at the venue feeling relaxed and chilled.

Or what passes for being relaxed and chilled in these altered times.

Because I’ve had a total shit couple of weeks, Perp had encouraged me to push the boat out, give myself a real treat.

‘Fuck it’, I thought. ‘I could be dead next week. Let’s be miserable in comfortable surroundings’.

So I did as he advised.

I took a suite at The Lowry.

The Lowry doesn’t need free advertising so I’m not going to bang on about it. And besides, for the amount of money  that suite cost, the advertising needs to be paid for, baby!

But it was nice, yes.

The restaurant was excellent, I had a little forage with the wine-cellar and the Jameson’s White Label I had before, during and after the meal took the edge off the day.

Breakfast, the following day, was taken in my room, as I nestled inside a bathrobe the size of Newport.

Fuck it, it’s only money, right?

Right.

I may come to regret thinking like that, especially as I had resigned, with immediate effect, from my job the day before.

But fuck it anyway, right?

Right.

I’ll do the Comedy Conference in a separate post; I don’t want to get the subjects mixed up.

At the end of the day, when I was done with both Comedy and indeed Conferencing, I met up with the lovely Vicola and her puppy.

Vicola is absolutely gorgeous.

She is, honestly, one of the nicest, coolest, most straight-thinking, clear-cut people I’ve had the good fortune to meet.

We had a very long chat, during which I told her everything around why my world suddenly turned to shit.

I didn’t leave any single detail out, and even passed on a couple of pieces of information that I haven’t published here.

Yep, she got the full, complete and unexpurgated truth.

I loved the way she listened, I loved the way she talked, I loved the questions she fired at me and I loved the compassion and sympathy in her voice when I nearly fell apart in front of her.

I know!

Vicola, right?

That foul-mouthed, intolerant, irascible, highly-opinionated blogger?

Well let me tell you, my friend, that yes, in real life, Vicola is absolutely delicious, and unfuckingbelievably nice.

It helped, talking to her, it helped a lot. Her questions were keen, searching, testing, but always delivered with sympathy and understanding.

Vicola cleared areas in my head, gave me new thoughts to think and new questions to be answered.

I pulled myself together, we hugged and I drove down to Worcestershire where a mug of tea, a sympathetic shoulder and a fried-egg sandwich were waiting for me.

I spent 3 hours with V; it wasn’t of the same high quality counselling as Vicola, but it was still nice to get emotional support from another friend.

By the time I got home it was late, but I dashed off an email then fell in to bed.

Despite not having an alarm, I was wide awake at 06.00 this morning.

Today I’ve pottered hither, thither and indeed, yon.

I had a phone call asking if I was free to judge a dressage section at Saturday’s Broadway One-Day Event.

Which was nice, obv.

I’ve said yes to it, but I have a house-guest arriving from Germany, for a week, on Saturday evening, so I’m going to be doing lots of last-minute rushing around, to get the house ready.

And that’s it, really.

I’ll do the Comedy Conference in a distinct post; it deserves it.

Posted in Friends, Travelling | 4 Comments »

And breathe…

Friday, November 12, 2010

Life’s rich tapestry just keeps on happening, viz:

  • got up at 3am
  • wrote stuff
  • did work-related stuff
  • made breakfast and tea
  • took it upstairs
  • gave Soph hers
  • got back in to bed
  • ate mine
  • fell asleep
  • woke up
  • came downstairs
  • edited, edited and edited again
  • wrote more stuff
  • edited
  • emailed an over optimistic screenplay to C4
  • did work-related stuff again
  • received a skype IM from someone who said they’d be arriving in 30 minutes
  • panicked
  • showered, shaved, dressed (she was late anyway)
  • received the guest
  • received 1x skype call
  • received 1x phone call
  • made coffee
  • chatted
  • showed the guest around
  • chatted some more
  • ate a couple of sandwiches
  • chatted again
  • noticed that the piece I wrote for Shouting At Cows had gone live (you should go there and read it, otherwise Mr SAC is going to drown kittens)
  • recorded the second hour of tomorrow’s radio show
  • started to think about how I’m going to shoot the performance video for the band
  • built a playlist for tonight’s podcast

So yeah, busy.

You?

Posted in Friends, Music, Podcasting, Writing | 1 Comment »

MIA

Thursday, November 11, 2010

…_ …_ …_

Me left. Him right. What a pair of fresh faces!

[former] A8106419 Sergeant Jones (T), Royal Air Force…

Call me. Lost your details.

Soz.

Posted in Friends | 3 Comments »

Taking the mick?

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

I shall keep this generic because I don’t want to embarrass anyone…

We are complex animals, us human beings. We’re capable of being simple at times, but the naked truth is that we have more levels of – at times conflicting – personality that sometimes even our best friends don’t know us.

And that’s part of the ‘being human’ thing, that’s part of what makes us tick.

Just when you think you know that person at work, you discover some totally left-field thing about them that forces you to re-evaluate your entire perspective.

It may be a good re-evaluation, it may be not good. My point is that an unexpected piece of information is revealed and you’re suddenly looking at a person who isn’t quite the person you thought it was.

But it doesn’t only happen with people at work, does it? It can happen with anyone, anywhere, any time and, sometimes, for the most unexpected reason.

You might think you know everything about me but…

You may or may not know this, but I host websites for people. I do this as well as most of the commercial webhosting concerns – and better than some!

My hosting is inexpensive, ultra reliable, provides a 24/7 helpdesk (which, frankly, is so seldom used it’s actually gratifying) and has annual downtime which, for the current year, is being measured in units of 1 second.

And, because I’m occasionally (as Ian so elegantly put it in a recent email to me) soft, I will take a view on what my hosting service costs people.

Some months ago I took on a young guy – he’s in his 20′s – as a hosting ‘customer’.

He produces a daily conversation-based podcast and, due to a variety of reasons, he had run in to a number of issues with the company who hosted his podcast website.

There were unpaid bills and, as corporates do when bills are outstanding, they took his website down. This had the effect of removing him – and his podcast – from the internet.

Because I liked what he did, I offered to take him on.

So I bought a new domain name for him, I set him up with a hosted website, I gave him unlimited webspace, I gave him unlimited bandwidth transfer and I gave him an FTP account and a bunch of email addresses.

The key word here is ‘gave’; I have not charged him for any of these things, it never was my intention to charge him for any of these things and that’s an understanding that we both have.

Had.

Last night I visited his website, just to see how he was doing. While I was there I noticed that on every single page he has a funding widget.

The text in this funding widget says:

Running Costs:
It takes $1,000 per month to run (name of his podcast/website). If you enjoy what we do, please think about supporting us.

Hang on one cotton picking moment!

He produces a conversation-based podcast. What that means is he sits in front of a microphone and he talks.

He has no costs.

He has no Performing Rights Society licence to buy, he sits in the attic of his parents’ house and all of his content is self-produced.

Anyone who listens to his podcast knows these facts.

And for the grand sum of no pounds and no pence he has a free domain name, unlimited webspace, unlimited bandwidth, a bunch of email addresses and an FTP account.

But he doesn’t tell his website visitors or his podcast listeners that he has these things for free.

Instead of telling them this fact, he has put up a funding widget that says ‘it takes $1,000 per month to run’ his project.

And yet he has, on a number of occasions, told his listeners that my organisation hosts his show.

Therefore, by clear implication (in my head at least), he’s telling people that his hosting costs are $1,000 per month – not free as they actually are.

Be honest folks.

Am I justified to feel a sense of outrage at what he’s done?

Do you think I have overstepped the mark by writing to him, telling him that my organisation is going to raise his hosting costs from £0.00p to $1,000/month to keep in line with his funding widget?

Do you think I should continue providing a service for nothing while he tells people that his product costs $1,000/month to run?

Come on, be honest.

Because even now, 12 hours after discovering his funding widget, I am still fuming about this.

You’re going to have to talk me down.

Posted in Friends, Internet | 12 Comments »

People Problems

Monday, June 21, 2010

I have a friend, let’s call her Amanda Nicol, who, in 2003, wrote a highly insightful and devastatingly emotional novel about a young guy and his struggle with mental illness.

But it’s not fiction.

Everything that the main character – ‘Dan’ – describes and experiences, is what Amanda Nicol went through, as she struggled with swings of extreme hypomania, bipolar affective disorder and manic depression.

Amanda’s description of her/Dan’s psychotic symptoms, delusions and hallucinations are, surely, educational and informative.

It is compellingly chilling to read of Amanda’s/Dan’s loss of control as she/he gradually becomes aware of periods of episodic behaviour that have occurred during frequent mental blackouts.

I got to know Amanda very well, we became truly close and, if this doesn’t sound too weird, I started to love her.

It was a good, a healthy, a non-sexual love, but yes, it was a kind of love above friendship, and it had sprung out of the devastation that her words – that the vivid description of her illness – had inflicted upon me.

This week I became aware that a person I know, a person I have immense professional respect for, has been battling – not too successfully – with bipolar syndrome.

I can understand a little of where she is, the person behind this new discovery. I can understand some of her confusion; I can appreciate the periodic snaps of her loss of direction.

But over and above these things, the one feeling I’m struggling to come to terms with is an overwhelming sense of devastation that a person so young – a person with so much of her life ahead of her – and a person so full of such obviously outstanding talent, is desperately trying to deal with such a debilitating mental illness.

And I feel for her.

Posted in Friends, Health | 1 Comment »

Absent friends, not close enough to touch

Monday, May 3, 2010

I have a friend. Her name is Ruth.

Ruth has been a gossip buddy for many years – since before Daughter was born (though Daughter would probably insist that nothing existed before she was born because she is, after all, the Princess of the Known Galaxy).

Ruth has been funny and serious, she has teased me she has supported me. She has held my metaphorical hand and, at times, kicked my metaphorical bum.

Ruth edited and proof-read my first novel, and what a pair of hellish tasks they both must have been.

Ruth has helped shape my writing, in long and short format.

A few weeks ago, over the Easter weekend, Ruth was unexpectedly admitted to hospital and underwent immediate, and very serious, surgery.

Surgery that only someone like Ali Booker, or Ruth, would be able to fully understand.

It was a shock to learn of it, but it must have been a thousand times more shocking for Ruth, to be the subject of an emergency admission, to have had such a terribly interventionist operation when, up until that time, there had been no inkling… No idea that something was so wrong.

I have never met Ruth.

I feel as if I know her so well, we have shared secrets that only two people who have never met can share.

I kind of love her. Quite a lot.

I have thought of Ruth, and her illness and the trauma she’s been through, every day.

I can’t comprehend it fully.

But that doesn’t stop me from thinking.

And wishing.

And hoping.

I know she has her family and they will help and support and, more importantly, will be there for her.

I can’t be there for her.

But that doesn’t stop me thinking.

And wishing.

And hoping.

Please get well Ruth.

Posted in Friends | 3 Comments »

On… Breasts

Sunday, March 14, 2010

I was browsing through this evening’s TV schedules when a programme called ‘My Breasts Could Kill Me’ leapt out from the electronic page.

Possessed of inquisitiveness (yes, it really is a word) I delved deeper and discovered that the somewhat populist title masked a two-part documentary on breast cancer.

I’m annoyed, and I’m annoyed on two levels.

Level The First: I’m annoyed that the television-makers have set such an obvious trap.

Level The Second: I’m annoyed that I fell in to the obvious trap.

Do you see what they’ve done? They’ve taken a body part that more than 50% of the population is attracted to, and created an attention-grabbing tabloid headline-style title around it.

Is it big? Is it clever?

Yes, I really am annoyed that I fell in to such an obvious trap, but the point is, it worked, didn’t it?

The trap – the tabloid headline-grabbing programme name – caught my attention and made me delve deeper.

So what is the lesson to be learned here?

Is it that I’m not as erudite as I think I am? Or that I am as susceptible to schoolboy diversions as, well, a schoolboy?

Or is it that I am relieved that I won’t run the risk of suffering from breast cancer, unlike my childhood schoolfriend and still very good friend Lesley, who underwent treatment so punishing that the cure almost killed her.

Pauses for a long, deep thought

Whilst education – and the programme in question is undeniably an educative tool – is important, I can’t help wondering if, in the interests of sexual equality, the makers of My Breasts Could Kill Me will be filming My Cock Could Kill Me, or My Prostate Could Kill Me…

I doubt it.

Tabloidism begins and ends with breasts.

I must drop Lesley a line. We haven’t had one of our world-famous catchups for ages, and we’re massively behind on our emails.

The last big catchup we had was when she flew over from Texas to Eire and I flew over and joined her and we talked, almost non-stop for 24 hours.

Posted in Friends, Television | 4 Comments »

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