My love/hate relationship with Facebook.
14 June 2020
Sadie Windmill
It’s fair to say that as much as I love some things about Facebook, other things leave me fuming with rage.
Twelve weeks ago when someone from Love Island committed suicide, hundreds of thousands of Facebook profile’s changed to ‘Be kind’. A few weeks later some of the same people were making unacceptable comments about the physical appearance of the chief medical secretary and horrid statements about Dominic Cummings. Profile pages changed again, to ‘Stay at home, Stay Safe, Save the NHS’, but then people posted pictures of them meeting up with friends in busy places and driving out when we were asked to stay at home. Some posted ‘Clap for the NHS’ and yet went on marches potentially threatening another spike and the lives of our health professionals. And finally we had ‘Black Tuesday’ posted by some people who voted for Brexit so we could close our borders to refugees and immigrants.
I can’t bear the corny quotes ( e.g: “I am not perfect, but that’s okay”). There is so much fake news that sometimes I struggle to work out what is real from fantasy. Then I shake my head at the quizzes which give everyone a 100% pass rate. I once wasted 10 minutes taking the same quiz three times, giving different answers. Amazingly I got 100% each time!!! Then I ask myself why, when someone finds a dog, purse, phone or bus pass, they post that they have the item rather than hand them in to the local police station. I really hate, “I am a poorly child, say Amen and pass it on” and I can not bare ‘what word do you see first’ as apparently that describes the sort of person I am. This morning I am a wolf! (I must admit I am getting a hairy chin during lockdown). If I can see the ‘d’ amongst all the ‘b’s in a word search then I am among the top 37% of people clever enough to see it, but by the list of comments it would appear that everyone actually managed it! I am sure than many people can identify with some of these, and like me, wonder why you scroll through so much rubbish every day.
Despite all that rubbish, I find Facebook a brilliant way to see what is going on in the lives of my friends and family. I love hearing what people are doing; learning what music they like; places they have visited; what books they recommend; and seeing pictures of their pets, gardens and people having fun. I like reading about the charities they support and knowing about the things that interest or bother them enough to start a petition. So this week’s blog is about some of the many positives on Facebook that have cheered me over the last 10 days and reminds me why it can be such a positive resource.
Ozias Smith. I got to know a delightful family at my last teaching post. I taught the eldest son and one daughter RE GCSE and they were a real delight. Last week I was in tears as I listened via Facebook to Ozias’s account of identifying as a man rather than a woman. At school Beoforleah (or Chelsey as we all called her) had a good group of friends but didn’t always find things easy and spent a lot of time in my or my friend Liz’s office. On Prom night, she took us all by surprise in her beautiful dress, and for the first time ever we didn’t have to fudge the prom Queen results. She wore the dress as it was what was expected, and she did not want to miss the right of passage from secondary school to college, but Ozias described how awful that night had made her feel. She didn’t fit in or feel right in the dress. She identified as a lesbian, but knew that deep down that was not right either. In the last ten years Ozias has taken the steps to identify as a man. He has started hormone treatment and described with humour how his voice broke and body changed. I cried as I heard how he wished he had had someone to show him how to shave, or be with him as he went out in gender affirming clothes for the first time or had to visit the toilet. Throughout all my treatment, Ozias has kept in touch. I would encourage Crestwood staff to watch this video. It has made me wish I had known more and done things differently, but most of all I am just full of admiration for the courage, determination and honesty that Ozias shows. I checked with him first that he was happy for me to write this section of the blog, and typically he was quick to reassure me that we couldn’t have done anything differently.
MacDonald’s. I have to say it has made me smile seeing the videos of the queues for MacDonald’s when they opened their drive throughs. I was really impressed by the true to life cars that some kids had made out of cardboard boxes in order to get their Big Mac fix. It delighted me to see that after hours of queuing like everyone else did in their cardboard cars, that their ingenuity paid off and they got served by the staff. In Yorkshire we don’t have a MacDonald’s for many miles, but what we do have is ‘Drive through Cream tea’, which I mentioned to my mom and sister. The next day they were on the case and had placed their order and driven for collection. For less than the cost of a Big Mac you got a little box with scone, homemade jam, clotted cream, napkin and wooden knife. The little village of Sinnington, where the “drive through” is located, is delightful. You can take your takeaway cream tea down to the waters edge, and sit with your feet dangling in the river as you eat. They also sell fresh strawberries, picked that day from their fields, and their homemade jam. My mom surprised us by making us a Victoria sponge, piled high with their strawberry jam, clotted cream and freshly picked strawberries. What a treat. Now that is what I call a takeaway, and delivered straight to the door!
I have loved to see where everyone has walked during lockdown. Mossy, Helyn, Fiona, Tre and Phillippa regularly post pictures of their walks, runs or bike rides. We have enjoyed seeing pictures of all our old haunts and miss walking along canal tow-paths as we don’t have any up here. Sue has been posting pictures of her picnic spots which have bought back childhood memories of summer holiday outings to Carding Mill Valley and the Long Mynd. We didn’t have much money growing up and so Mom would make up a picnic and we would go out for the day walking, before relaxing with lunch following by a book or playing ball games. On one occasion when I was in my teens we went walking on the Long Mynd before our picnic and I had one of those comedy moments where I managed to slip in very runny cow pat and literally covered myself form head to foot in poo. Mom made me strip off to bra and knickers in the car and drove to the local village which had a charity shop. I ended up spending my day in a very short denim skirt and a knitted cardigan that smelt of old people. So much for a good day, I imagine I spent it sulking and wishing I had stayed at home.
This week we managed our first walk by the sea in over 10 weeks. There was something spectacular about seeing Robin Hood’s Bay as we went over the brow of the hill. We walked for 5 hours and I have to say the beef sandwiches and Mom’s cake tasted divine in the salty sea air.
I am on a number of patchwork sewing sites, and it has been great to see what people have been making during lockdown. Top designers have been so generous, giving away free designs and patterns. We have never got through so many ink cartridges! One designer always sends her parcels in her iconic red and white spotted paper and once a month people who have ordered her kit show pictures on Facebook of their gorgeous looking parcel. I had two parcels arrive through the post, which looked too good to open. They were off my friend Sue loaded with all sorts of goodies. There was material, patterns, key rings, East of India gifts and TeaPigs tea. Then the same day another friend posted a picture of a summer Sorrento bucket hat she had made. She very kindly shared where she got her pattern. Mine was not as good as hers, but I had an enjoyable afternoon making my first hat, and I was delighted with the result. Now I have to search for pirate material for Jules and perhaps matching bandanas for the salty seas dogs.
My Nan used to love the saying, ‘a minute on the lips and an inch on the hips’. Facebook has inspired me to cook more than usual. If I am not seeing daily Facebook videos from my new friend Jamie Oliver, I am seeing loaves of bread by Jo, cakes by Colin, homemade chorizo sausage from Liz and all sorts of delights from Mark in his cobb cooker. Yesterday we had fresh scallops delivered, straight from the fishing boat. My Facebook friends suggested different ways of cooking them. Mark suggested Nigel Slater’s recipe with honey, chorizo and spring onions. I have to say it was delicious, especially as Asda came up trumps and did not substitute normal sausages for chorizo as they did a few weeks ago.
Janet, Bridget and Phil have been sharing pictures of their garden which has been so vibrant and a mass of flowers. My friend Sarah has delighted us with video’s of her squirrel sitting on his miniature picnic table she has made. Phil posted pictures of her I lupins, and after admiring them a whole envelope arrived yesterday of seeds from her plants. Jo has posted pictures of the National Trust garden she has been helping out in, ready to get it open to the public this week, and our village has posted pictures of wild flower meadows. We live in a lovely village where the village Hub is very active. In November the local committee start putting up Christmas lights for the December switch on, which encourage lots of tourists and in early Spring they think about flower displays. They posted a packet of wild flowers through every door earlier this year to encourage the bees. The local shops were encouraged to display all things ‘bee related’ in their shop fronts. The WI had been busy knitting and crocheting bees to dot around the village. The packet included Corn Chamomile, Corn Cockle, Corn Marigold, Corn Poppy and Cornflower and we are now being urged to send in our pictures for the Britain in Flower Village Competition. We planted our packet next to the bird table, and think the little blighters have eaten the seeds too, as there is no sign of anything but weeds!!
Our friends Bob and Basia live in Guernsey and have been posting pictures each weekend of their sailing over to the other islands. The Channel Islands have had very few cases of Covid and only a handful of deaths, and so lockdown has not really happened in the way it has in England. An acquaintance we met in a Malta has posted pictures of his sail from Tunisia to Corsica and friends we met for a brief spell have posted pictures of their lockdown on their boat in the Pacific. It has made us very envious of all they are doing, and also determined that when it is safe to do so, we need to get out there and continue our journey. After all Patch needs to get his sea legs and Tinker has asked to go to sea once more before she is too old. Jules’ accordion lessons are going well, and this week his guitar arrived. He has practised so much that he should be able to earn us a fortune when I send him out busking in every foreign port. People will play a fortune for him to stop playing!
This week has shown how people really do care. I have been asked by friends on Facebook to sign petitions for opening zoos and banning the use of Nitrous Oxide as a way to get a high. Last week there were images of parks with bags of empty canisters that had been swept up after being left on the grass. We added one ourselves, and asked people to sign one about the 90 day rule in Europe after Brexit. Despite so many people raising this up and down the country with their MP, we doubt things will change, but we may well have been shown a way around it!
And finally it was Facebook that tipped us off that it was National Gin Day yesterday. After a wet start we sat in the garden in shorts in the afternoon, and Mom came round to deliver plants, strawberries and more cake. We had a wonderful few hours putting the world to rights - naturally over a Bombay gin and tonic.
In honour of all these wonderful things shared on Facebook by so many friends and family, Jules and I decided to do a mad thing last week. We haven’t been using the van and have saved petrol money, so we decided to show a little kindness for all the joy your posts and pictures have bought us in a week when the weather has not been kind and the news even worse. We sent out 75 bars of chocolate thanks to Amazon prime. Some people got small ones , others got larger, some dark and some milk. We ordered whatever Amazon allowed us to before telling us we were banned from ordering more of that particular item. Thank you everyone, and let’s keep facebook shining with all the positive stuff.... pictures, stories and kind acts.