Doing What Had To Be Done

It's 2am Saturday morning. I've just been told the woman I love is unlikely to survive the weekend following a fall from a bicycle that seemed so inconsequential. But there are three dachshunds two hours away on the other side of Dartmoor left unattended in a strange house and they have been in there for 8 hours. My car is there as well.

There's nothing I can do at the hospital, Anne is somewhere behind the scenes and I know what she would do in the same situation. Adam's world is shattered but he gets antsy so he volunteers to drive me back to Woolacombe along with Hollie who is dazed and confused realising that the woman she called Mum through love, despite the unquestioning love of her own Mum, might no longer be there for her.

We crossed Dartmoor and surrounding villages at high speed, rain lashing down like an episode of Scooby Doo, unable to reassure each other because we knew the reality. The road went on forever, the quaint villages with their traffic calming were just an annoyance, there was nothing to enjoy about the journey. At last we arrived in Woolacombe, me returning to a place Anne and I loved over several visits, Adam and Hollie seeing it for the first time.

The Quest is a beautiful house. Not in the LA spectacular sense, it's somewhere you walk into and feel right at home. Despite all that had happened Adam immediately knew why Anne and I loved the place, even in the dark and rain when his Mum was miles away on a life support machine with little hope. We walked around for a bit and agreed a time to return to Plymouth so they could sleep for a while, it had been a very long bad Friday. I didn't sleep. I saw to the dogs' immediate needs, made a lame effort at telling them what had happened in the way you do with trusting animals then walked around trying to take it all in. I saw things I hadn't noticed when I knew we had a holiday week with the boys and their girls ahead of us, a long life together, a future.

In the lounge there was a leather armchair by the bay window. Set around it on the window sill were Anne's books for the week, her photography magazines full of tips bought from Chelmsford Market well past their issue date bought just the week before. Anne had set out her spots for enjoying the beautiful view over Woolacombe Bay during the week she would not spend there. I went up to our bedroom and saw here case laying open on the floor, crushables hung up from the wardrobe handles, her toiletries laid out in the bathroom, nothing obvious but all contributing to that scent that was unmistakeably Anne. She was all geared up for that week she intended to share with me and her boys and their girls, it broke my heart. I sat outside in the garden as the sun rose invisibly behind the hill but lighting up the sky over a world that didn't appreciate, apparently didn't care what had happened to Anne. Nothing was certain so I didn't raise the alarm on my Blackberry, those that urgently needed to know knew.

6am arrived, I woke up Adam and Hollie and said I would head back to Plymouth as I wanted to be there for the consultants' rounds when they would prognosticate and report back. I offered them the chance to stay but, like me, they wanted to get back. I had a theory the route back could have been much shorter so I set the destination in my SatNav and they followed behind in their car, the dogs luxurious in my car. The route  started well, different, fast, straight country roads with no traffic calming. Then what appeared to be a side road was very much one degenerating into a track with grass in the middle and the sides closing in. It was like a nightmare in a cheap film but this was a major irritation in a real life nightmare as I appeared to be driving down a stream. I really don't need this just now.

Eventually the road let me out and I found myself back on conventionally accepted thoroughfares and onto Dartmoor, Plymouth ahead. As the sun rose and I saw the moor in the cold morning light either side of me I shook and sobbed and my mind and body accepted what had happened and knew the consequences.

What Are You Doing?

The title is the classic Twitter prompt. The popular answer is said to be "I am eating a sandwich" from those who don't use Twitter. Many Twitter users are far more creative, unfortunately many are less creative.

Twitter really took off in the UK when enough celebrities signed up and tweeted regularly to make Johnny Britisher realise they could sign up and actually know somebody on there, even if not in the biblical or down the pub sense. The famous celebrity tweeters provided insights into their day to day lives, often far more candid than anything they ever revealed through the usual celebrity publicity and self-glorification channels.

Then along came those who felt they had to establish a presence without actually having anything interesting to say. Their answer to the question "What are you doing?" would be something along the lines of "Good morning everybody!". Legendary cricket commentator Richie Benaud could get away with this at the beginning of every live broadcast as he would follow up with a series of insightful remarks on the forthcoming day's play. But not unimaginative UK celebrity tweeter (UUKCT). UUKCT would receive a flood of interesting replies and have a basis for the rest of their Twitter session. They wouldn't have to read anybody else's tweets and interact on subjects other than their wonderful celebrity self, just monitor their replies when not monitoring their group of favourite other UK celebrity tweeters. No imagination required and those who were favoured with a reply would say how great UUKCT was to all the non-UUKCTs they followed, job done, new book/CD/DVD/exercise DVD bought.

Now it seems the non-UUKCTs do exactly the same thing in ever increasing numbers. If anybody says "Good morning" and ends at that it makes me think of assembly at school when the headmaster would say "Good morning boys and girls" and we would all reply "Good morning Mr Lander" in unison, apart from the slower ones who created a slightly later "Lander" echo effect. So I don't reply, I leave their need for a response while not giving any information to their other hundreds of followers.

Similarly, if somebody says "How are you all?" there is no way I am going to give them something for nothing. If I told them how I was it would likely depress most days as I have felt pretty shit (excuse my French) for several months now and I'm not "all" anyway, I'm me. I may be British but I rarely talk about the weather for something to talk about, consider it rude to complain about my health from the off and don't believe in saying "I'm fine" when I'm actually pretty crap. If they already know about my gammy leg or rampant swine flu then they should ask me personally if they are interested, a general "How are you all?" does nothing to elicit a response from me.

So often I see a topic all over Twitter when I log in, but the punters who only ever read their personal replies don't have a clue and ask stuff like "How come I've lost 100 followers overnight?" even though it has been the hot topic for the last couple of hours and discussed in great detail.

Tell me what you are doing and it's an entirely different matter, capture my imagination and I'm in there with the best of them. I will tell an anecdote related to what you are doing, ask pertinent questions, advise how to improve the experience or even warn against if appropriate. I get to know you, you get to know me, we are no longer strangers who just happen to tweet at each other.

"What are you doing?" is the key to keeping Twitter interesting, tell everybody and it can fascinate, live life through others and they may just clam up and do the same. Interact, read other people's tweets even if they aren't in response to one of yours. Twitter are rumoured to be about to change this prompt very soon but however trite or generic it may seem responding in a creative or imaginative way to this simple question keeps it fresh.