Antisocial August

I have been drawn ever deeper into Twitter over the last year (and to a lesser extent Facebook). This social media engagement has ramped up since I bought an iPad, as a tool to work on a mobile-platform project that has since stalled. I did not buy it to sit on all evening exchanging smirky views with football fans and comedians that I have never met. And yet that is how I spend my time, increasingly.

I have sent nearly 8000 tweets since I joined in 2008 - some of them have been a quick response, but for some of them I have actually done research. Many's the time I have been about to fire off a statement or reply, and then thought "I'll just check that on Wikipedia", or even "I have the exactly right pic to illustrate that, I just need to find it".

And then there is the time you spend taking your 165 character tweet and whittling it down to fit the 140 character limit.

So influenced by my social media circle (namely @pmattessi and @jmac) I am giving it all up for August. I am not donating money to anything or expecting to be made a better person. I do not feel that my addiction is harming my loved ones. I just want to see how I go.

If you are on Twitter I am @4boat  and I promise I will be back in September so feel free to follow me.

I will continue blogging here and also at TTBB, where I try to direct all my footy-related thoughts nowadays. 

And just to blow that particular trumpet, here's a sample of the terrific supportive community I will be missing over the next month.

I like @dugaldjellie's writing - all whimsy, reverence and longing. But @4boat takes the prize this week... http://t.co/kY7kqE5O3Q
— FootyMaths Institute (@Footy_Maths) July 28, 2014

Another scene

For some reason I found myself in another emotional scene today. Well, I was emotional. My friend that I was kicking out of the house took it pretty well.

I have a friend with kids at the school, who likes to drop in with them on their way home on Wednesdays. Wednesday is my only pick-up-from-school day, when I finish early at work, stride up to there as fast as I can, and bring the boys home in the car I cunningly leave there in the morning. An afternoon at home is a great opportunity to get things done around the house, spend some time with the boys, walk the dog, or even just let the kids do their thing while I have a coffee and sit in the sun doing nothing. None of which will happen if we have visitors.

My friend's little girl who is Michael's age loves to see Winston. They don't have much space or sunlight at their small place up the valley from us. My friend doesn't work, and doesn't get to spend all that much time with other adults. I understand all that, and I have only twice knocked back requests to visit (with the reason that Marcus has important homework to concentrate on).

Once, they had just arrived, when my friend asked would it be OK to leave the kids with me while he went downtown on the bus to do something (doesn't drive). I think I was open-mouthed for a while but then said yes. Today he asked at school if I would take them up to our place while he walked in the other direction to return some DVDs. I said yes, but decided on the way home (driving slowly so I wouldn't have a collision causing the airbag to decapitate Marcus) that this would be the last time.

After a while he turned up. Usually I make coffee but today I was determined to hold him to his suggestion that they wouldn't stay long. I did the dishes while he hung around. Outside, Michael and the visiting kids were stabbing a cardboard box with pencils. I was just working up to saying "no more Wednesday visits" when the boy, who is Grade 6 and should know better, pretended to stab Michael in the head with his sharp pencil.

I went ballistic. I have got quite used to parenting my friend's kids in front of him, as he doesn't seem to care how they cross a road, or eat a piece of drippy fruit. In this case I gave his son a dressing down while both father and son looked at me blankly.

With my dander up, I told my friend that we needed a break from visits, that daylight time at home is precious in winter and there's no way I can do anything that needs doing etc and so forth. He said that was fine, and didn't seem to take offence, but continued to hang around for another fifteen minutes.

I don't know. Was I being unfair?