A Year of Friendship

It was just over a year ago that my friend moved away to Scotland. In order to keep in touch I added her as a friend on facebook. This one simple act has led to a year of new friendships.
In her friends list was another mum from school who wanted to beat her husband in the number of friends she had. We knew each other to nod to in the playground but that was about it. When you are in competition with children or spouses to have more friends any slight acquaintence will do!
Jane and I became friends on facebook. I regularly updated my facebook status and challenged anybody to a game of scramble and soon Jane became a regular opponent. To say I'm competitive is a bit of an under statement!
As a result we started to speak to each other in the playground. Soon she started to suggest I join twitter. She thought I might like it! At first it didn't appeal but after a while I thought I would check it out. I joined twitter and my year changed direction completely.
At first I wasn't sure what to do. I started to follow @beachhut81 and her friend @skc0602. I did the usual thing and sought out some celebrities but that was about it. I knew there had to be more to it than that though. I started to look at who else was following the celebrities I was interested in. That is how I stumbled upon @clairabellejp and @i_is_sam.They were chatting about Dr Who and BAFTA and I started to follow.
I guess I would have remained a stalker but @clairabellejp tweeted to me. She asked why I was following her. I replied that her bio reminded me of me. She said that that was ok then as I wasn't an insane stalker. I replied that I was just a nutter not insane and we have been chatting ever since.
That's how it started. I looked to see who everybody else was chatting to and started to follow their friends. It's been amazing fun. So many of these people I consider to be friends even though I have never met them. I'm interested in their work and in their lives. I worry about them when they travel, I want to help them when they have a problem and I want to share in all the fun they are tweeting.