Auntie Elsie had an open wood fire, a large garden with a jungle and a lion (that we never actually met), and cats who would scarper from anyone else; a kitchen that smelled comfortingly of gas and bacon, a downstairs loo that smelled of perfumed soap; quilts, books, old furniture, and a room full of teddy bears.

She also had a music box.

***

I’m very bad at keeping in touch with people. I have great intentions to, but something scares me off; and the longer I leave it the more I panic about it and do nothing. I’ll feel guilty at the drop of a hat, yet I seem to do everything in my power to exacerbate that.

I have a cousin with a severely handicapped son, who I keep intending to contact but don’t. Other members of the family have been going through rough patches and I’ve meant to get in touch, but haven’t. Auntie Elsie was herself ill for a while before she died and I desperately wanted to see her or contact her, but I didn’t.

***

A little while after the funeral, my name was drawn as the happy recipient of the old music box. I was delighted, genuinely excited: I was going to have it restored, and I was going to put the tunes on the internet for the family to hear. Instead I let it sit forlornly in my office for four years.

But now I intend to get off my backside and do something with it. It’s the least I owe the family, and in particular my Auntie Elsie.

It does need restoring: bits are broken, one lever has snapped off (although I was told by an expert just after I acquired it that it wasn’t beyond repair), and I’ve a horrible feeling that one of the bumpy bits was pinged across the room when I tried playing it just now. I’ve also no idea any more what each lever does, and flicking them didn’t seem to have much effect, so I’ve no idea of the order of the tunes.

Thankfully the long-yellowed track listing, still coated in ancient sticky tape (not so sticky now), continues to hang loosely from the inside of the lid: sadly I can’t understand a word of it. I think some of it’s in French, but it’s also in a beautiful calligraphic hand that I can’t decipher (yet).

But no matter. Here, for your delectation and wonder, is a tune from Auntie Elsie’s (as yet un-restored) music box:

Auntie Elsie’s Music Box track 1

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This post will appear particularly self-indulgent: it’s trying to articulate something that I haven’t managed well out loud. It’s also one of those awkward situations where the post is really meant for a specific group of people but is on a public blog. And besides, I’ve only dared to write it because Nick told me to. So do feel free to leave at this point.

After my marriage broke up three and a half years ago I didn’t really have any friends in Birmingham that I could just drop in on (or maybe I did, but I tend to need explicit permission else I feel intrusive). They are all in couples and some have children. And most are mutual friends: I didn’t want to put them in the awkward position of being in the middle (and I felt awkward too) so I would just hide away from them. And in any case they are rarely free at weekends.

They would encourage me to try and meet people. I really wanted to but I didn’t know how, and would just wander around town drinking coffee, reading, watching people, and berating myself for never talking to anyone. I did that pretty much every weekend for three years, to the point that I hated weekends.

Then one evening a friend invited me to a pub to meet a few Birmingham bloggers. I had a blog that I updated about as often as my cat went outside (she hates going outside: I have to chuck her out the front so that she has to walk round to the back to be let in; it’s the only exercise she gets). I had also tried dabbling with Twitter, but I updated that even less frequently. So I went along; partly out of curiosity, but mainly in order to return the camera that my friend had accidentally left with me. I felt awkward, presumed I’d made a tit of myself, and eventually went home wishing I’d never gone and vowing never to go again.

The next morning, to my great surprise, I discovered that the people I thought I’d made a fool of myself in front of had started following me on Twitter. So I followed back.

Since then I’ve been involved (admittedly with varying levels of reliability on my part) with Birmingham bloggers, Birmingham Social Media Cafe, Eleven hours on the Eleven Bus, Twitpanto, Big City Talk, Digital Mentors, We Share Stuff, Rhubarb Radio, 4am Project, BARG, and any number of other activities that result from a criss-cross of each other. And more importantly I’ve found a lot of friends, including some that I hope will allow me to call them fairly close friends.

I won’t name people because it wouldn’t be fair, but I could easily list twenty who I see fairly regularly and would regard as friends; and seven or eight of those are particularly important to me. And bear in mind that I’m not usually good at thinking of people as ‘friends’. I tend to love people and want to befriend them, but presume they don’t feel the same; and I get very low if I think I’ve upset them or said something stupid (which happens pretty much all the time). So it takes me a long time to feel comfortable with people and to presume I’m worthy of being labeled their ‘friend’.

Except, with the speed of conversation – both inane and important – that happens on Twitter, friendships flourished much more quickly than I could have imagined.

But, like I said, it’s not just down to Twitter. It helped the process, and without it I would probably never have met these people; but the people had to be there in the first place. And lovely people have lovely friends, and so the networks grow.

And that’s the tangible part. Since meeting these people a mere eight months ago, my social life has transformed. In a good way, because I have lots of friends and people to go drinking with.

However it’s also very strange, because I still don’t understand what people see in me. (I’m not trying to be pittyingly self-effacing, this is leading up to something; bear with me.) I love interacting with these people, and I think every one of them is pretty remarkable.

But not me. I’m just me: bumbling, insecure and too scared of change to do anything at all (except escape my house as often as I can). So when someone made a website in tribute of me I didn’t really know how to deal with it. People affectionately (I believe) posted up stuff that I’d done or said.

It’s very sweet, but why me? Why not one of the others? I can think of plenty of people who are way more worthy. The thing is, do they see it? I don’t see what’s so special about me; in fact I’m convinced that nothing is. Apparently some people disagree with me; but would they recognise themselves as being special? Probably not.

So I want them to know that – for every one of them who has posted to that site – I would have had it the other way round.

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So here, sort of in response to Ellie’s list, are 18 to add to my previous seven. I am not doing any more though, so if someone comes along with an even higher number they can bog off.

1. Unlike Ellie, I’ve never cracked my head open; but when I was very young I had a number of operations to try and correct a club foot. They worked pretty well, but I have very little movement in my left ankle and I can’t balance on my left leg. Apparently surgery has moved on a lot since the early ’70s.
2. I’m 36. (People keep asking, so it clearly has a place in this list.)
3. I’m a Virgo and I think it says a lot about me. Except it can’t because I don’t believe in horoscopes. Or rather, not the generic nonsense you get in newspapers. I did once reluctantly let someone do my horoscope properly, looking up birth times in a book and everything. It was frighteningly, uncannily accurate: she told me things about my personality that I’d been trying desperately to keep hidden. I refuse to believe in them though, because it would mean accepting that we have no control over our destiny and that our creativity is merely illusion.
4. I’m a perfectionist but not a completer-finisher. In other words I will leave things half-started because I’m terrified of them not being perfect. So I end up creating half-baked rubbish. Oh the irony.
5. I had a pet rabbit when I was a child. It was vicious: we had to wear gloves to feed it. I don’t think it was happy. When we got him he had to travel a few miles to our house, so I named him Gulliver.
6. I’m always falling in love (whatever that means). I never let on though, and seem to have a built-in panic mechanism that means I run away if anyone shows interest. Maybe because friendship is very important and I worry about ruining that.
7. I learned to type at school, on a big, commercial, manual typewriter. Tipp-ex paper was the cool product, and much easier to use than an eraser. But if I was carbon-copying I would usually forget to erase mistakes from the copies, and end up making a bigger mess – by typing over the mistake – than I had to start with. Now I have a ‘delete’ key and seemingly unlimited ‘undo’ and ‘redo’. Magic.
8. I played percussion badly in a South London concert band a few years ago. For two London Marathons I crashed my cymbal through countless Souza numbers, at the side of the road.
9. I, too, like buying books but rarely read them. I’m good at starting them but bad at finishing them. I read Crime and Punishment until a few pages before the end, then never picked it up again. I’ve since seen it on telly so I know the ending now.
10. I too was a member of the Young Ornithologists’ Club: yay! I still don’t know anything about birds though. But I do remember a trip to Regents Park and seeing Canada Geese for the first time. Now they’re bloody everywhere.
11. I’m very indecisive. But I suspect you know that already.
12. I love people but I’m terrified of them. My default presumption is that they think I’m an idiot, and it takes an awfully long time to persuade me otherwise. Which is possibly partly why I sometimes come across as arrogant (I don’t mean to), because I presume people have already decided they don’t like me and so I have nothing to lose. I’m going to regret writing this I think.
13. I was brought up as a Quaker. I’m lapsed now (if it’s even possible for a Quaker to lapse).
14. I’m married, technically. We’ve been separated for over three years and just haven’t got round to ending it officially. It took a surprisingly long time to come to terms with.
15. Social media terrifies me. Yet I evangelise it, and here I am telling personal things to anyone who’ll listen. I really am an idiot.
16. I’ve worked for my current employer for 13 years.
17. I love rice cakes. I’ll eat them dry if I have to.
18. I didn’t go to university. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life (I still have no idea, and it keeps me awake at night). Going to university for the sake of it (which is what a lot of people appeared to do) seemed pointless and a waste of time and money, and I knew full well that I wouldn’t do any work even if I did go. A couple of years ago I came very close to applying for an MA course in graphic communication, but I chickened out.

End of meme. Don’t even think of asking me to write more.

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I’m not as brave as he is so I’m going to revert to the original premise of this ‘chain letter’ rather than follow his example. Bruce wrote about seven things you didn’t want to know about him: all you’re getting from me is seven things you may not have known before.

1. I built a Punch & Judy booth and I know how to use it (sort of).
2. I play the guitar a bit. I spent a lot of evenings in the mid-90s accompanying Irish music in London pubs. I wouldn’t mind joining with some other semi-musicians but I’m too afraid to ask (except publicly, here, of however many random people might be passing).
3. I once made a tie out of paper and wore it to a small evening do with the likes of Cherie Booth, His Honour Justice Hooper, Lesley Macdonagh and Sue Cook. Maybe not my finest hour but I think I got away with it. And definitely no regrets.
4. One of my favourite places is the Round Room in the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, although I know precious little about art. The place is never deserted but is pleasant and generally peaceful, and has interesting things to look at.
5. I have two nieces. One of the best bits of Christmas was discovering the younger one under a layer of yoghurt.
6. I too can have a temper: it tends to be used in outrage at others’ injustices and internally on myself; I can also get argumentative and pedantic (but most people reading this will already know that).
7. I love reading out loud. Give me an attentive child and a book and I’m happy; so long as I can give at least one of them back afterwards.

And that’s it. All that’s left is for me to link to seven other people who are expected to do the same (ie list seven things about themselves that others may not know).

And the lucky winners are: Pete Ashton, Nicky Getgood, Nick Booth, Jon Bounds, Shona McQuillan, Clare White and Laura Whitehead. (I’m not sure what happens if these people have already been got to, but that’s not my problem!)

Update

Since I wrote this, Ellie Lovell has gone and tagged me with a chain letter that requires twenty five items. So I’ve added Eighteen more things you didn’t know about me. That’s it though. If anyone comes along with a request for even more they can bog right off.

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