I could have been a novelist instead

I went to the cinema to see the Facebook movie last week, which I wasn't planning to do because I usually go to the cinema to get away from Facebook, but I liked it despite myself. It's a good film — I think the correct term is "zeitgeisty" — if a bit depressing. Is this it, I thought afterwards. The art of our decade: social networking? Sometimes I wish I'd been born in the forties instead. I could have been a novelist or a punk or... or a beat poet! I think I'd have been quite good at going on and on about myself in a café dressed up in a leather waistcoat.

But it's not the fifties and I'm not a beat poet: I just went to see the Facebook movie, and I'm a blogger. On Wednesday I'm going to be part of a "blogging panel" at Fingal Writers' Festival, in which we will introduce an audience of actual writers (who, I assume, write things to be published on paper) to the joys of putting it all over the internet instead.

I feel a bit shifty about this. Surely I should be the one attending a festival in which a panel of actual writers introduce me to the joys of locking myself away in an empty room for five years with no internet access so that I can write a book instead?

I actually started writing my first book when I was nine years old. "What kind of a book is it?" my mother had asked, hovering in the doorway. "It's a novel, for teenagers," I had explained, showing great patience at the interruption. "About death."

"I see," my mother had said, showing equal patience. I then went on to regurgitate the entire first chapter of Judy Blume's Tiger Eyes, only relocating the story to rural North Wales instead.

Fifth Gear

Of course Megan went up to fifth gear. She did it out on the dual carriageway early one morning when there was nobody else around.

“But it was only for a minute,” she consoles me. “And it was only the once, I swear.”

I look back at her glumly. Fifth gear! Without me! I haven't ever gone over 60 kilometres an hour — even being in fourth gear feels a little reckless to me. I used to have to get the bus, now I just get overtaken by the bus.

“What was it like?” I ask, curious in spite of myself.

“Terrifying," she says. Although she doesn't look terrified. In fact, she looks quite excited.

“Well,” I say. “I hope you never do anything as foolish as that again.”

Megan looks at my cross face and laughs. “Oh, come on,” she says. “We can't spend the rest of our lives driving around like elderly people. Watch out, Granny Annie is on the road again!”

She rummages in her bag for a flyer and hands it to me. DRIVE LIKE A MANIAC, says the headline. ON OUR PURPOSE-BUILT RACE TRACK. Underneath, a picture of two young men leaning on a go-faster-striped Ford Fiesta grin at the camera.

“What do you think?” says Megan, her sudden enthusiasm for speed alarming me.

What do I think? Obviously what I think is that there is no way in hell that “Granny Annie” wants to “drive like a maniac” on a “purpose-built race track” with two young men wearing “baseball caps”. And so I say, in no uncertain terms: “Er, alright then.”

“Great,” says Megan. “I'll book us in.”

There are too many exclamation marks in this post, I'm aware of that.

"What is this Street View thing that everybody's talking about?" asked Carla in work.

"It's a new online map," explained Anna. "That means you can look at your own street in three-dimensions."

Exactly. You may have thought the point of Google Street View was to look at other people's streets in three-dimensions, but no. I've spent seventeen hours on the site so far and I've only looked up two addresses: the street I used to live on, and the street I live on now. Needless to say, they are both fascinating. There's my car! On my street! It's almost as if I stepped away from my computer for a moment, opened up my front door, and looked outside. Thrilling!

"They must have taken the images on a Tuesday," observes my good friend and neighbour, Rosie. "Because the bins are out."

Yes, she's right, there are the bins out on the footpath. I had been somewhat disappointed that my lover's car wasn't parked outside my house the day they took the images, too, but seeing the bins makes up for it. I feel disproportionately excited. And there's my car, still there! And the road! And the walls and the windows and the front door!

"Did you hear that Twenty Major saw himself?" I say, slightly breathlessly at this point. "And he wasn't even on his own street!"

Rosie looks awed, if a little jealous. Then she turns and looks back at her screen. "It's just like a giant Where's Wally," she says, happily.