I had some bad news today and curiously it made me think about how I use twitter. Don’t get me wrong, when I got the news my first reaction wasn’t to rush to my iPhone and tweet but now, after I’ve told my closest friends and considered the ramifications of what I’d been told I didn’t know if it was right to tweet it. But I’ve got a problem, I’ve already tweeted about this subject at some length and I think I have some obligation (albeit tenuous) to my twitter followers.
So as I said, I’m now thinking why do I tweet? Why do I tweet personal thoughts and feelings? Why am I on Twitter?
I suppose most of the time I tweet I’m hoping to make people laugh. I’ve been doing that all my life and the fact that I now make a living from that is incidental. If I wasn’t joking around on twitter I’d be doing it in my day to day life to anyone who was kind or stupid enough to listen. Once a show off always a show off. At least showing off on twitter is probably the safest place of all, you can’t see people rolling their eyes and walking away shaking their heads in silence. So now we come to the other point, why tweet personal matters? This is a bit more tricky. I’ve thought long and hard the answer I’ve come up with is I basically lead quite a solitary life. I live in a family sized house but I live in it alone. I probably seem to have quite a busy social life but of course you only remember the ludicrous drunken nights out and showbiz parties I tweet from; not the days and weeks between. Now I don’t want you to go feeling sorry for me, a solitary life is by no means a lonely one. But sometimes, when I’m homo alono, it’s nice to share something and to remember there are others out there to laugh, sympathise or merely acknowledge.
Don’t get me wrong, for me (and most of you I’d guess), Twitter can also be unfathomably annoying too. Inane questions repeated again and again, people wanting to have a ping pong conversation 2 words per tweet, people being over familiar and then, very occasionally, hurtful and rude. But on the whole twitter is a good place to be, for maybe a few mins, maybe a couple of hours, maybe drunk, hopefully sober. Of course not everyone’s twitter experience is the same. If you follow 398 people and have 5 people following you it’s going to be a different experience from someone who follows 398 people but has 5,000 people following them. I occasionally have people say, “why do you always ignore me?”, hopefully the answer to this is obvious, either it’s completely unintentional or you’re a complete tit. On the other hands I’ve tweeted people I’ve either worked with once or know ‘to say hello to’ but my tweet gets lost in their 150,000 followers and I end up feeling ignored too. Either way if you’re getting no return on your twitter investment the options are there for you, leave twitter aside for a while, unfollow, block, delete your twitter account (yes I’ve done all of those!), twitter is only as crap and as good as you make it. Gosh, the more I think about it Twitter is bloody fantastic, it’s the way people use it that is usually the problem.
Anyway, I’m wandering away from the point of all this. Today I had some very bad news. News I kind of knew was coming but I tried to ignore it, hoping it would go away. Today I was told my dog, my cute, beautiful, intelligent, cheeky, smiley (yes, she can smile), gorgeous, brilliant, clever, loving and faithful companion, my Charlie, has an inoperable brain tumour.
I’ve had her for over 12 years and we’ve been through so much together, so many amazing journeys, unemployment, failed relationships, TV shows, fame (sort of), fortune (kind of) and everything in between. And now she’s lying next to me looking and sounding so very, very ill. Last weekend she had 5 seizures in 24hrs, they were more like strokes and with each one she looked a little worse. Then she bounced back Sunday night, looked a little happier, she licked my face and smiled. But it was the drugs helping her through and as they wore off, and she looked even worse, I knew she wasn’t going to get any better. The place we went to today for her MRI scan was amazing. Deep in the Hertfordshire countryside it was a hospital, not a big vet’s surgery, a full sized hospital with 6 surgeons, 11 consulting rooms, 6 wards, 50 nurses and anything up to 90 furry patients at any one time. To see so many animals coming and going, all being cared for in such beautiful, rolling countryside was a wonderful experience. But as nice as it was, Charlie won’t be going back because they can’t make her better. She may be with us for a few more months, more likely a few more weeks. The drug she is on is actually a human drug, not intended for use on animals but it’s the best thing for her, apparently. All I know, as my baby lies next to me, blind in one eye, breathing heavily, sometimes crying, occasionally trying to get up but falling down again; we’re coming to the end of our journey together. And it’s been beautiful.
If you’ve never had a pet you probably won’t understand, if you have, I don’t need to explain.
Thank you to all of my Twitter followers who have sent messages, I mean Tweets, of love and support. I don’t want to turn my Twitter feed into a blow by blow account of the last days of my little girl but I do want to show my appreciation for all the love.
Derren (and Charlie) xxx
