In praise of Facebook

Yesterday was my birthday, and it passed uneventfully, more or less. Much like any other day, apart from a mini-crisis at 3 a.m. when I awoke from a dream that I had grown a beard.  A bad dream, of course. Reassured myself and went back to sleep. Went to work and put my three cakes out in the kitchen. The first hour passed in a whirl of people saying mmm, delicious and happy birthday, and I was almost enjoying myself. Then the Monday routine set in and there was little to do but polish my stapler and think of happier times. It struck me that the older one gets, and I speak here as a woman (how else could I), the more people praise your youthful appearance. All three birthday cards from the children (and they were lovely ones) included the words 'you are not old Mummy' or ' you don't look old at all'. Mr Doom wrote that he couldn't see any wrinkles (doesn't count, as he has been prescribed glasses recently). One starts to hear the dreaded words tacked on to the end of a compliment - "for your age". You see it in the media all the time. Older woman, who in years gone by would have had grey hair in a bun or a blue rinsed perm, now glamming it up at 50 plus. Everyone raves about how great she looks - for her age. Funny, for unlike turning 40, I found that 41 was a bit - well, boring. What's the point of worrying now? No amount of moisturiser is going to stop my neck getting scraggy. My elbows will probably always be red and dry. (I'm thinking arid desert landscape). I blithely ignored all that stuff in my twenties. Thus all the attempts to reassure me fell on deaf ears. I am lucky, in that I have a beautiful, youthful mother, who cannot help being 25 years further down the line than I, and has seen it all before. Every time I moan to her about some new sign of ageing she can usually top it with a better one. Not that you can tell by looking at her. Yes, time will slowly take its toll, but meanwhile let's have a ball.

I often find myself defending Facebook, or at least the advantages thereof. Generally speaking, the people who claim to hate it are not members at all, or (and I sympathise with the latter) have had some kind of unpleasant experience with it. I think Facebook is great. In this day and age of no time to do anything, the FB post has replaced the traditional birthday card. Not only that, but it means that even people who would never have dreamed of sending you a card now put fingers to keyboard and write you a cheery little message. Believe me, when you live somewhere like Bovinia, the sight of all these messages one after the other, from all over the world (or at least, my world) is most heartening. Ah yes, I say to myself. The bigger picture. It's still there. So thank you, everyone who wrote to me!  The cockles of my heart are still glowing.