Friends Reunited

These days the idea of not 'Social Networking' is anathema to most. Kids who absolutely loathe me whilst being taught by me seem to feel no sense of irony in requesting to be my 'friend' via Facebook. Similarly, I feel no sense of irony when I ignore their request. Facebook, in particular, has brought me closer to old friends with whom I had lost touch. Through my Facebook addiction I can keep up with their partners, their children and whether or not they are good at WordTwist. Facebook also lost me my marriage, as it was via Facebook that my ex got together with his new girlfriend. I knew something was up when my own husband (at the time) refused my friend request and kept shutting the laptop screen down quickly whenever I came in the room.

However, when I was at University in the years 1989 to 1993, our social networking was limited to writing notes on each others' doors and bumping into each other in coffee houses / bars / megabops / the all night garage and, extremely rarely, lectures. We did not text each other. We had never sent an email. We didn't arrange events on Facebook. Nobody had a landline in their flat and in the Halls of Residence 48 people or more shared one public payphone. However, even without the simplest tools of social networking the friends I made in my University days are still some of the people I hold most dear in my life.

This weekend just past some of my closest friends and I assembled in a youth hostel in the Dales for a reunion. The spurious reasoning behind the event was that on the 8th October 1989 we started University, so nearly 19 years later we are as far away from that first day as we were the minute we were born. I did the majority of the planning and I used the social networking site Facebook to create a group for the event and email out the plans.

So what did we do over the weekend? We discussed how things had changed. The world now is unrecognisable. The last time we were all together, in 1993, the Americans had invaded Iraq and the world was going into a major recession. House prices were tumbling. Inflation was rising. How things change. Back in 1993 I was resolutely single and refusing to countenance the idea of having a boyfriend and I'm right back there again. Some of us are a bit bruised and battered by child-rearing and single motherhood. Most of us are greyer. Some of us are in the major league of blogging (e.g. Highwaylass). But, as a social network we support each other and I feel that we are all the richer for our shared experiences. Facebook might have brought us back together again but the friendships stretch a long way back to the days before any friendship was digitised. All these people were in my life long before I met my ex and I hope they will still be in my life many years into the distant future, whatever social networking looks like in those days.