The people who live in my computer are fucking awesome!

Sometimes, life is shitty. We’ve all been there I think, when things are ok, getting on with things, its all not bad and then Wham…..something happens to just smack you in the face. Those are the times when you need your friends, the ones who will listen when you cry, rage with you when you’re angry and will lend you a rusty knife to kill the arsehole who’s upset you……Perhaps that last one is just me. I dont really have a rusty knife, I hid it after the last kill …..

But the point is, when the shit hits the fan, we all need someone. Or in my case about 100 someones. My ‘internet friends’. The folk who for the most part I’ve never met, but who know me better than some people I see every day. There are those who will say that internet friendships aren’t real. That you can’t know someone you’ve never met face to face or even spoken to on the phone. I say to those people; come and look at our group of friends and tell me those friendships aren’t real. We bicker like children at times. We piss each other off, we get on each others nerves. We love each other, we laugh, we talk nonsense, we talk about important shit. And when times get tough as it did for one of us this week, my friends fucking out did themselves. We came together, we decided to help the best way we could, and that’s what we did. People took their time and money to help a friend to the tune of a fairly substantial amount of money in the space of a few days. That friend now can breathe a bit easier, life will be a bit less difficult and we did that as a group. Sounds pretty damn real to me, wouldn’t you say?

more than a little bit of truth in this……

And this isn’t the first time. As a group we’ve helped when one of our kids was really sick in hospital. Helped one going through chemo. When another was alone with 3 kids, a new baby and a sick ex we stepped in to make sure she was ok financially. Countless collections for new babies, for weddings, for condolences. From a personal point of view, when I was skint and my relationship was failing they paid for me to go out and treat myself, just cos they could. One of us semi-jokingly said we could set ourselves up as a charitable foundation: Where Parents Come When the Crap Flies and You Need Help.

Why does it work? I don’t know. We’ve been a group for roughly 11 years now. Some have left, others have joined, but we’ve watched our kids from babyhood to starting secondary school together, and that kind of bond seems to last.

So, this is my up yours to those who say internet friends aren’t real and to tell my girls that I love them. As long as no one tries to fucking hug me, we’re good for a long time yet.