The title is the number of subscribers WP tells me I have. I once went through the list and deleted a lot, but these days I don’t have the time. Quite clearly it is a fiction and at least 2,550 of them aren’t pulling their weight. Such is life on WP. Most of them, I seem to remember from checking last time, only visit once.

Julia, on the other hand, just went to the shops and it took her ages because she kept bumping into people she knows. We’ve only been here a year, how does this happen? She’s a lot more sociable than I am, and a a lot more friendly, but it still seems like a lot of new friends.  I could go to the shops in Sherwood, where I lived for nearly 40 years , and maybe nod to a couple of people. At least you know every one of those people actually exists.

Then, when I’d finished digesting this, I went to find Laurie Graves on Facebook. She’s retiring from WP. You can get friends on Facebook. I did once, when I first signed up for it, but then I realised how pointless it was. Viewed as statistics they are meaningless and viewed as actual friends they are pointless. If I ever met most of them we wouldn’t be friends in real life. At least, with the conversations we have on WP I can be fairly sure that everyone I think of as a friend on WP would be reasonably pleasant.

A decorative touch

One entry I found, whilst trying how to become a friend of Laurie, has been suggested as a “friend” by Facebook. It’s one of the bleakest things I’ve ever seen, and probably a pointer to the direction society is taking as we all sit by our keyboards. I actually know him in real life and we have probably been put together via the Numismatic Society. I have changed his name, just to be on the safe side.

“Albert Bates” the entry says “has 2 friends.”

Pictures are from December 2019 when we spent Christmas in Suffolk. Except the heart-shaped one. That’s going to be used in the next newsletter of the Nene Valley Railway, in which she pretends to be Winnie the Pooh. It’s hard finding a fresh approach each month.