editorialgirl

The other day I noticed something strange in my blog stats – I was getting referrals from the Birmingham Mail website. Turns out my old pal Victoria Farncombe, journalist, new mum, blogger and all round nice girl, had linked to me in one of those “answer these questions and pass it on” posts. A pleasant surprise, considering I had no idea she even knew about my blog, never mind read it.

In all honesty, I don’t normally like these sort of things, but for the last couple of days I’ve been off work, sick. (I don’t mean feeling-a-bit-poorly type sick, I mean actual-physical-pukey sick. Horrible-moany-want-my-mommy sick.) I’ve no idea what it was, but I’m very glad that it appears to be over, and today I’m just moping around trying to get my strength back. And I’m bored, bored, bored.

So here we go.

What were you doing five years ago?

Oh. Actually this isn’t as cheery as I was hoping. Five years ago, I’d just been made redundant. It wouldn’t have been as bad if circumstances were different, but a year or so before, I’d moved to Glasgow with my job and even bought a flat there. I’d yet to make many friends and suddenly being out of work made everything a whole lot trickier.

So five years ago I was temping – doing admin at a company that makes deodorant and fly spray – and wondering what to do next. It would be another six lonely and confusing months before I decided I wasn’t going to make it work up there and managed to sell up and move back to Brum. In hindsight, my move to Glasgow triggered the biggest bout of depression I’ve ever suffered (it lasted for about four years). No offence to Glasgow – it’s a fantastic city and I miss it in many ways – but I’m very glad I came home.

Right. I’m sure that wasn’t really what Vic had in mind when she tagged me. Let’s hope the rest of these questions are a bit more lighthearted…

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

Being poorly (did I mention I’m poorly?) my to-do list for today is fairly laid-back:
Replenish my fluids. I’ve had two pints of water and three cups of tea, which I’m sure isn’t enough, but it’s better than yesterday.
Eat something. Yep, I managed some scrambled egg on toast for lunch and I’m getting hungry again now, so that’s all good.
Tickle the cat. Check.
Read the popbitch and b3ta newsletters. That’s my reward for when I finish this.
Try not to get jealous knowing that all my friends are in the pub. Hmm… not so easy, but I think I’ll cope.

What are five snacks you enjoy?

Snacks? As opposed to food in general? Ooh, I dunno. Crisps and sweets don’t really do it for me. Don’t get me wrong, I eat loads, but usually at set meal times. So the only two I can think of are:
Peanut butter and jam on toast. Free at work! God love my employers and their feeder ways. And
Giant pots of Greek yoghurt with honey. Nom nom nom.

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?

I’m afraid I can’t agree with Vicky, who said she wanted to “end world peace”. (Hormone-addled brain, you say?) Yes, I think creating world peace might be better all round. Saying that, I’m not sure how my being a billionaire could have any sort of an effect on world peace, so I’ll stick to:
Buying nice houses for everyone I know. Does that count as one thing?
Employing the services of a cleaner. I could have done with that today. It’s funny how you don’t think about cleaning the bath until you really need a bath, and you only really need a bath when you’re too poorly to stand up in the shower, never mind clean the bath.
Private healthcare. Am I getting old? And did I mention I’m poorly?

I can’t think of any more. I’m actually really bad at spending money. Hey, there you go – that can be another one:
Employing the services of a personal shopper. Or two.

What are five of your bad habits?

Now, I thought I would be able to answer this quite easily but it turns out to be quite difficult. Maybe it’s because I’m quite happy with my lot at the moment.

I’ve just quit biting my nails, so that’s one gone. I don’t smoke any more. And I quite like drinking beer, so I don’t count that as a bad habit. (Apart from giving me a bit of a beer belly it doesn’t seem to have any adverse effects.) I speak to my parents every week and I’m quite good at remembering birthdays (thanks to Facebook, mostly, but who’s checking?)

I’m sure if I had been at work, I’d have had a few ideas from my colleagues. I talk too much, I hum tunes that get stuck in people’s heads, I tell the same old stories… But I’m not at work, I’m stuck at home, tickling the cat and drinking alka seltzer.

Whilst pondering this question last night, I asked my boyfriend. “You don’t have any,” he said. Oh, come on. “You can’t just be nice because I’m ill,” I pointed out. “It must be annoying when I sing along to that advert.” (You know, the one for the bank. With the cartoon train and the singer with a very high voice.) “Nope,” he said, “that’s endearing”. Really? “You can be honest with me, I promise. Anything. Anything at all.”

There was a pause.

“Well…” he said, “you do use a lot of towels.”

What are five places where you have lived?

Glasgow, Kilwinning (don’t ask – I needed somewhere to stay when I first moved up north, and this seemed to be the only option at the time), Chicago (for a month – does that count?) ermmm… Kings Heath, Moseley…

What are five jobs you’ve had?

Apart from owning a vintage clothes shop for a short time when I was twenty, and the year of temping I mentioned above, I’ve had a fairly straight career path: proofreader –> editor (for print) –> editor (for web), so all my jobs have been along the same lines.

Funny, really. If writing for the web had been a career option when I was at school, it would have been just what I wanted to do when I grew up. If only I’d known, I might have been a better student.

…………..

Well there you go. Done. Now, apparently, I have to tag five other bloggers to do the same. (This is “tag” in the schoolyard sense, not in the keyword/metadata sense.)

Who should I pick? I figured they should be (a) people I’ve actually met, if only once, and (b) as varied a bunch as possible. And boy is this bunch varied.

So, apologies to (in no particular order):

Amin, TWM Driver, Julia, Kris and Andy

…but “you’re it”.

“Doesn’t it piss you off when you are sitting in a pub telling people about a cracking cat you met that there isn’t an objective standard to gauge how good it is against another cat? People can rate hurricanes but not cats. That’s ridiculous, I see loads more cats than hurricanes. I intend to redress this imbalance by making a universal standard of cats.”

It was only a matter of time before Daz created Meowseley, a “cross between Warcraft and Top Trumps, but with cats”. Featuring the gorgeous Edward, of course.

In other news: a sad day for followers of loldeirdre. All the (copyrighted, to be fair) photos of Deirdre have sadly disappeared from flickr, leaving behind a couple of shiney peepl and a lonely Mullaney. Oh noes :(

I’m led to believe that this isn’t the end of the road, however, so keep an eye out in the usual places.

I’m hearing the phrase “ambient intimacy” a lot these days. Ambient intimacy is a term coined by Leisa Reichelt last year to describe the kind of relationships that the internet allows you to have with people. She describes it as “being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.”

I’ve been wondering how to describe these types of relationships for a couple of years now. I like “ambient intimacy” but I think it’s a bit of a mouthful. But there are people that I only know like this, so it’s becoming more necessary to find a phrase.

Take my relationship with Pete Ashton. Pete’s always been on a couple of the same local interest internet groups that I’m on, so his was one of the first blogs I knew about. When I first started reading peteashton.com regularly, though, it surprised me with its openness. He kept a record of not just interesting links he’d come across, but where he’d been, what he was up to and, more importantly, how he felt about things.

A short while later Pete and I became contacts on flickr – so I got to put faces to names. We met on a flickrmeet and commented on topics that we’d already discussed online elsewhere. After that, we became “friends” on facebook, even though we’d only actually met once.

Now that we follow each other on Twitter and mix in many of the same circles at work, there is a real sense of the ambient intimacy Leisa talks about.

I feel like I know Pete pretty well and yet, when I found myself next to him in a queue at a cafe one lunchtime, I had to look twice to be sure it was him. (Then, of course, I had to introduce myself as “editorialgirl” rather than Emma – which felt a bit silly, but elicited an “ohhhh!” and a big hug, which was lovely).

So I don’t think that having ambient intimacy with someone means that you know them. Pete knows a lot of people and I can guarantee he’s met them more times than he’s met me. If someone says “do you know Pete?” it feels slightly stalky to say yes and realise that I know what he’s listening to, what he’s working on and what he had for dinner. Because we don’t know each other.

So I need a phrase or a verb to describe a relationship that’s been formed almost entirely via the internet. “I know him, but only ambiently”? No.

Really; it’s getting tricky. I met my current boyfriend online. I read his website religiously and we chatted on various groups for a good six years before actually meeting up and gedding it awn. But when I tell people “we met on the internet”, people make assumptions of dating websites or seedy chatrooms. “I got to know him ambiently“, I want to explain. The truth is, I got to know him bit by bit, through websites and forums, comments and groups. But there isn’t an easy way to say that.

Perhaps it will become so commonplace that I won’t need to worry about it. Perhaps friendships like the one I have with Pete will become the norm and everyone else will meet their partners online, just like I met mine.