Some ramblings about stuff people put on Facebook.

Back in the days before we all had clever phones that send photos and stuff like that, we came to spend a year in Spain and my daughter signed me up to Facebook so that she could send me photos of the children. Coincidentally a friend of mine joined Facebook for a similar reason as a way of keeping track of her daughter who was spending a year in Guadeloupe and was rather unreliable about sending emails or making (probably rather expensive) phone calls.

Almost immediately I was on Facebook a host of old friends and former students, who all had my email, discovered me and friend-requested me. And so began a habit of observing the lives of people connected with me one way or another. But I do not tweet or twitter, I don’t have Instagram and I see no point in being Linked-in. Nor, despite the moans and groans of certain friends do I have Whatsapp.

However, Facebook has given me more regular correspondence with some old friends and allows me to laugh, usually in a gentle manner, at the oddness of some people’s lives.

A friend of mine, a former student, has been posting photos of her tiny daughter all dressed up to go to her nursery leaving party. Very pretty she looked too. I am rather surprised though it wasn’t called a prom! She followed it with photos of her graduation ceremony, complete with mortar board!!! And videos! Lots of tiny people wearing silly hats (but fortunately and very practically not wearing academic gowns!) scuttled across a makeshift stage to receive a leaving certificate.

All very American!

Our daughter posted a picture of the mountain of presents she received from her primary school class for the ending of the school year. A nice gesture appreciation from the parents but such a HUGE amount of stuff. Lots of wine and chocolate. Mind you, she also gave each child a small gift, as she did at Christmas. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that she also gave them Easter eggs. She has a much larger bump of sentimentality than I do.

Of course, there is a large amount of commercialisation involved in this gift-giving. The kind of shops that specialise in cards and tat (sorry, gifts) for all occasions, have been advertising certain items as ideal gifts for teachers for the last few weeks.

A thank you card used to suffice!

Which brings me to something posted by the daughter of a friend of mine. It was a piece of “gorgeous art work” made of all the hearts cut out from the cards she and her husband received for their wedding. (“They’d only been sitting in a box in the loft for the last 3.5 years anyway! And we kept the messages so can still treasure what people said to us 😊”, she said.) No, she did not make it herself. She found a local crafts business person who will make such a piece of work from any set of cards you sentimentally want to display: baby-congrats cards, christening cards, significant-birthday cards, retirement cards - you name it, there will be cards to celebrate it!

Full marks to the enterprising person making money out of people’s sentimentality but how much more satisfying to make the collage and frame it yourself!

Oh dear! My inner grump appears to have surfaced!