Its strange the way you think you know someone -
but then you barely know them at all,
We shared so much we knew each other well
…but that was all so long ago.

we grew up and then we grew apart
I should’ve kept much more in touch!
There’s surely something more I could’ve done
I guess I didnt care enough…

I didnt know you were in hospital -
I havent seen you now for years.
I dont want to see you like this now,
a wooden cask obscured by tears.

Tamsin Luke was my best friend in school; juniors and seniors – she liked to spell her name Tamsyn even though that isn’t how it went on her birth certificate; kids are funny like that.

I ran away from home when I was about 9 or so, I had just had a fight with my brother (another one) and mum had sent us both to bed; grounded.

I was indignant because HE started it, and it meant I couldn’t watch the film we’d been promised that was on TV… some science fiction thing (even then I liked that kind of stuff)
After sulking in my room and feeling much abused and hard done by I decided I’d had enough – a neighbour, Dianne, had come round to visit mum and I could hear them talking and laughing.

I put my trainers on (the pink ones with the velcro fastening) and stood on my bed looking out of my bedroom window, Ricky McCormick who was my age and lived dead opposite had told me about his cousins jumping out of their window when they’d been grounded, I decided I could do it too. I managed to lower myself onto the porch.. The whole time I was glancing around nervously expecting to be seen and grassed on, but for once the road was clear – it was an incredibly sunny day – the kind you hear about now but think of as a figment of your imagination (in manchester anyhow) and suddenly the drop looked too far, I tried to climb back up into my room but couldn’t.

I was stuck.

All I could think of was the trouble I’d be in if I was found like this, so steeling myself, I jumped, trying to aim for the grass and hoping the curtains were still closed in the front room to shield the TV from the sun, my luck on that front held, was not so good on the other though – I landed awkwardly and cried out in pain then curled in a ball hoping no-one had seen or heard me..

I then limped across the main road (forbidden territory) to my best friends house.

After lying convincingly to Maureen (Tamsyns mum) that my mum had walked me just up to the bollards separating her estate from the main road (you could just see their drive from there) Tamsyn and I went into the den to watch the film my brother had stopped me from seeing (at least that’s how my mind saw it) afterwards we went out to our secret hidey and I told Tam everything and said I was never going back – we made a plan, I was going to stay for tea then when everyone had gone to bed, I’d be let into the house by Tam and she’d sneak me into their loft – it was a converted one that we had spent many an afternoon playing games and talking about nothing in – as well as reading the books we sneaked from her older brothers room (my older cousin, Lorraine, was in the same year as him and when she babysat for us we’d tease her unmercifully claiming she fancied him…)

About 2 hours later I was starting to feel guilty and decided I wanted to go home and try to sneak back into the house before mum noticed I’d gone.

We crossed the road again – I was still limping and in great pain when I saw Edna and Dianne (our next door neighbours) walking towards us, we hid behind a car and snuck around the back so they wouldn’t see us, sadly Edna caught sight of me and shouted, Tamsyn hid and Edna grabbed me and shook me all the while shouting that my “poor mother was worried sick and what did I think I’d been doing” etc. etc. etc.

By this point the whole neighbourhood knew I’d been found (it turned out mum had decided that we could watch the film after all, she’d gone to tell Richard who’d cried himself to sleep then when she came to get me, found my room empty and the window wide open, the entire neighbourhood had turned out to comb the area for me – no one thought I’d be brave enough to cross the busy main road) I remember being dragged up to my room being soundly beaten and put to bed.
I shouted through the door that she’d always hated me and buried my head under my pillows and then cried myself to sleep. I was taken to the Doctors the next day because my foot had swollen to about 3 times its natural size, I had a hairline fracture right the way across. It still bothers me now in cold weather.

For weeks after that I avoided Tamsyn – I still don’t know why, shame possibly – she finally cornered me and asked if I was upset with her for being caught, we made friends and did everything together again for a while.

Sadly we lost touch when we were at college – unforgivably through a boy.

She’d always fancied my first boyfriend and never tried to hide this from me – I always felt she liked him more than I did but it hurt that he used to call her a slag and all sorts – I have this habit of worshipping my closest friends and it was hard being in the middle..

Anyway – long story short, he and I split up, he asked her out. my mum took great offense to this and basically made it so uncomfortable for Tamsyn that she stopped coming round and I stopped going round to hers.

She went off the rails and left Daventry when they split up, a few years later I moved to Manchester.

I was living with my dad and attending college (performing arts) Mum called me up when I got home from a rehearsal… Dad had already warned me she’d rang 3 times previously so I was prepared to deal with her, (at the time I had many ‘issues’) what I wasn’t prepared for was the blunt “Vicky – Tamsyns dead” I got when I answered the phone. apparently all the blood drained from my face and I dropped the receiver as I sank to the floor, praying I hadn’t heard her correctly…

I managed to get myself together enough to pick the phone up again – Eileen (my step-mum) had jumped up to try and catch me as I fell and she was making all kinds of sympathetic noises while my mum explained that Tamsyn had come home after the new years eve drinking session and had felt ill so had taken paracetamol, she took some more when she got up because she hadn’t felt any better – then got rushed to hospital when she collapsed. apparently it was liver failure.

I went back to Daventry for the funeral – I think dad paid the fare for me, and I was just disgusted that my mum planned to accompany me there – In my irrational state of mind, I felt that Tamsyn and I had lost touch in the first place because of the way ‘mommy dearest’ had treated her.

Anyway, we get there – I’m wracked with grief just like everyone else, We stayed a bit back from the family and watched the coffin buried… as Maureen walked past she saw me and stopped to give me a big hug, we both started crying and she begged me to go back to the house for a private family wake. I said goodbye to my friends and joined everyone at the Luke house, only to discover I was literally the only non family member there.

Maureen took me upstairs to show me Tams room, on the wall by the bed, just underneath the hundred or so photographs she had pinned to the wall was a scrap of paper I’d completely forgotten about – in my handwriting was the date, the place, and the words
“this should be worth a fortune when I’m famous… for my bestest friend Tamsyn Luke”
and I’d even signed it… she wanted me to know that Tam did still think of me as a friend despite the whole Steve fiasco.

We had a cry and a laugh, reminisced about all kinds of things – the abortive running away from home for one… then we went back downstairs, where I was treated by everyone as though I were a member of the family and it dawned on me just how much of my childhood had been spent with them, I’d even gone on visits to the branch in Cannock – they all remembered me and we spent time reminding each other of various exploits… I didn’t want to go home.

In true Luke family tradition the wake became a party – much drunken singing – many tears but almost equal amounts of laughter… everything seemed changed when I got back to Manchester.

I hadn’t seen Tamsyn for the best part of 2 years, but I missed her – so badly, I still do now sometimes… it sounds stupid but I sometimes write her letters and I talk to her, like we used to – I especially missed her when I split up with Ian; he was a little like Steve; only in looks but that was enough to remind me of her and the things we missed out on sharing.

This is a kind of re-post as I’ve preciously mentioned Tamsyn and shared that poem but this is the full story as I remember it; warts and all.

Still miss you Tam.

I wonder when someone will resurrect murder she wrote and use this premise for a kidnap or murder victim – if you can’t prove when someone actually went missing how can you even think to find them?

..and what about my previous idea of how twitpic and similar mobile photo sharing sites could ruin a persons life if a total stranger took your picture and tweeted that if they shouldn’t make it home then the subject of the image would be to blame – it’s a scary world in which we live now folks, the paranoia crew can seriously mess with your mind ;0p

Before the internet and this new ‘open social’ approach to sharing the minutiae of your life, you could meet and talk to a new acquaintance without many preconceived notions about them – and vice versa.

Now, the colleague you have barely exchanged 3 words with will suddenly reference a personal event in passing conversation leaving you with a slight gut punched ‘how did they know about THAT’ sensation.

It lasts a brief second before common sense kicks in and you first mentally revise every conversation you’ve had within their hearing and then the inevitable realisation that they must have read about it.

Early on in my online life (pre-blog) I was stopped in the street by a total stranger calling me Rosevibe instead of my name (hi Mark) who informed me that he lived a few doors away in my block of flats, he knew my taste in books and films, my occupation and various other items I’d posted to my profile.

It completely freaked me out at the time.

Yet now I have given complete strangers far more than a profile to go on. This and my other blogs give insight into my thoughts and feelings, my twitter stream and facebook detail my activities and my wishlists show purchases I plan to make – I’ve created the textual equivelent of a reality tv show without the excuse of a pay cheque and in doing so have given the psychological upper hand in any social meeting in the real world to the person who reads any of this.

It’s insane yet I continue to post; why? Well to be honest the ‘damage’ is already done; Almost everything I’ve written over the last 6 years has been cached somewhere and while a few of my views may have changed, those posts won’t.

To stand any chance of not being embarrassed by stupid things I’ve said or done I need to KEEP putting myself out there so that in this day and age of search and virtual reputation, prospective employers don’t judge me on events long past.

Like 99.999% of the human race I have issues – quite a few of ‘em, but I’m far too British to ask a headshrinker to sort me out, I’ve always gone down the ‘bottle it up til you can write it down route.

I cringe to think of my naivity during the ‘early years’ of my virtual life. I started a blogger blog at the prompting of a friend and got so into it I also decided to transfer my diary online where it was ‘safer’

My thought process was; paranoia that family member/ other half would find my paper diary. Same applied to a file on my pc so far better idea to start a seperate blog, mark it private and keep everything online where those it may feature could never find it.

..Was a great idea until it started getting comments and my stat counter revealed the extent of the unexpected traffic.

I felt violated despite knowing that the only reason those private thoughts had been observed was because i’d put them on display.
The blog was deleted in its entirety.

That was my initiation into the reality of the web; the realisation that NOTHING online is private – no matter the passwords and settings you apply there is always the chance of someone finding it, either by innocent accident or malicious intent.

I can’t take back anything I committed to the electronic aether but I can temper the past with revelations of the present. It’s too late for me to completely audit my online presence because I’ve already put too much information out there, to you, the person reading this – learn from my mistakes; think twice before sharing anything online because the person you are becoming may not appreciate it being put before you out of context 2, 5 or 10 years down the line.

You see those grades? they’re mine they are *grin* ok, ok so what if it took me an entire academic year to do it!
..Considering I’ve had 75 days of it (that’s right, just over 2 months) bedridden by fatigue (and that’s not counting any crashes prior to the diary count starting mid January else it’d probably be at least 3 or 4 months lost because I had to defer the above modules due to an uncounted relapse in November that lasted right through December)

..and god knows how many other days of productivity I’ve lost to the joys of brain fog (I’m never mentally aware enough on those days to think of keeping count!)

To be honest I’d say I did really bloody well.

Lets put it this way – I’m on track for a first class honours in my specialist degree subject so it’s worth the blood sweat and tears of studying with ME/CFS (and a toddler)

As Chris said on my Facebook page: Vicky rocks!

So, what now you ask? Well, on top of actually being a mum again instead of a snappy, stressed out work beast;

• I’m re-designing and updating several websites (mine and other peoples)
• updating and improving my knowledge of wordpress for this very reason (so a fair bit of reading)
• researching and organising ideas for my final year project (which funnily enough involves the need to understand wordpress VERY well)
• creating several ‘how to’ videos for the ESCAPE project at uni using Camtasia.
• making time to re-read my notes and try to keep what I learned to get those A grades fresh in my mind (important to do when you have CFS memory to contend with)

I know, you’d think I’d kick back and relax wouldn’t you – but I really don’t dare to. One thing I learned this year is that I can pace, but I can’t stop; If I stop I lose any headway I’ve made.

So, gotta keep the momentum going (without over doing it) because I REALLY, really want to be able to get a job at the end of all this.

Oh.. and for those of you interested, here’s the video part of the DES assignment that netted me the top mark:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t want to have several sidebars overrun with advertisements and reciprocal links, I don’t want every other word in my content underlined to trick the unwary into looking at something unrelated to my thoughts and even though some extra cash would be nice; I like having this space as a place free from marketing.

I get emails on a weekly basis from people wanting to pay me to advertise for them (part of the territory when you hit the Google top spot for your real name AND your pseudonym) But I won’t do it. This is where I play and I’ll keep it as a playground for as long as I can.

I think sometimes folk forget that there’s more to life than wringing every penny they can from it. If all you ever think about is monetisation then I feel for you m’love, I really do.

This is why I have just thrown up another theme that was literally created in 5 minutes over at cool template and I think I may keep it for a while until I’ve learned how to scribble the code needed to throw one together myself from scratch (I have more than enough books and tutorials now so if it isn’t done by this time next year I’ll quit talking about it) creating is fun and I should really take the time to get back to loving my own site as much as I do other peoples.