Hello lovely readers, I wanted to write a short post about how much I love the internet and being able to go online. Well actually, realistically, if you know me – it’s really not gong to be that short is it? I do have a tendency to waffle a bit. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know, but that’s me!

I do wonder sometimes, how different life would be if we didn’t have the technology that we have. Let’s face it, we can do so many things with one device that we never, ever would have dreamed of, say twenty years ago. We are able to control our heating via our phones when we’re not at home, we can turn the lights on and off and even see who is ringing our doorbell when we’re nowhere near.

I can sit, as I am now, in my living room on my iPad and I could probably find out the answer to any question I could think of, just at the click of a button. It’s amazing isn’t it? In fact I don’t even need to type a question into my iPad, I could just ask one of my non-human buddies such as Siri or Alexa. I’m just going to try something out…

So – Woo Hoo! Look what we’ve got to look forward in the South of England next week 😀

Things have changed so dramatically in the last few years. I remember as a kid we had teletext or Ceefax where you could look up things such as the weather on the TV. Do you remember? You had to put the channel on – that was easy enough as we only had four channels – named originally one, two, three or ITV and four – actually I remember having only BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, it was really exciting to get Channel 4, although the only programme I really remember watching on Channel 4 was Brookside. Ahh I used to love watching Brookside! See what I mean about waffling!

Anyway back to the subject in hand, I was talking about Teletext wasn’t I? Different pages were on different channels and you had to remember the page number for what you wanted to know. I think you could look at things like news stories, holidays and football scores, that type of thing. How much easier is it now to just ask Siri…

He would have told me every score of every match if I wanted him to. TBH I didn’t really want him to though. Don’t get me wrong. I love watching the England matches but I’m really not interested in the others. It’s funny isn’t it, I don’t ever watch any football usually but when the World Cup comes around it just feels completely different and really exciting!

So, the wonderful internet…if I want to buy something, how great is it to be able to find reviews and opinions about it, before I spend my hard earned cash. Obviously I don’t google every single thing that I want to buy, and I love nothing better than browsing a shop full of pretty things and picking out lovely things for the home. If I were to make a larger purchase, such as a new Hoover for example, you can bet your bottom dollar that I would do loads of research first. I love also that we can get inspiration for our homes and gardens, whether that be on Pinterest or Instagram or google, oh I love it!

Long gone are the days when you used to sit in the hairdressers salon looking through magazines to find a hairstyle you think you might like. OMG actually have you ever looked through one of those hair magazines? Who on earth has their hair like that anyway? Some of them are really lovely styles but some of them are so way out they are just styles that have been created for hairstyle competitions and shows…anyway now you can browse online to find exactly what will suit your hair texture, colour, lifestyle and save the photo to show your stylist exactly what you want.

One of the things I think is truly wonderful is that we can find friends online who we would never have had any likelihood of coming across, if it hadn’t been for the internet. I know it might be a bit of a taboo subject but people can find boyfriends or girlfriends online through dating sites or otherwise. I know there are a lot of horror stories and you do have to be very careful but there are equally many successful stories. I actually met my boyfriend online. We weren’t on a dating or matchmaking website, it was literally on a chat room where there were lots of people all having a laugh together. We just got chatting online and it went from there really, that was over twelve years ago!

It is lovely to be able to make friends online. Geography and circumstances generally dictate who we become friends with. When you are at school, you tend to become friends with the people who are in your class because they are the people you have been put with and spend the most time with. The same goes for college or university. When you start work, you (usually) make friends with the people you work with as you are spending most of your day with these people so it makes life a lot happier if you are friends with them. Wherever you live, friendships and relationships develop because life lived harmoniously is more favourable than a life lived with awkwardness and problems. If you live in Scotland, chances are your best friends aren’t going to live in Cornwall.

Making friends online is wonderful. You have complete control over who you choose to talk to. If you don’t like what someone is saying, you don’t have to interact with them. If somebody says something horrible to you or tries to criticise or put you down, you can mute them or block them. Hey wouldn’t it be brilliant to have a mute or block button in real life! People open up about themselves, share the things they like, share their innermost feelings and ask for advice. You can really get to know things about people. You can choose whether to talk to someone if you like the sound of them, you can have a laugh with people and try and help each other out. You may mutually enjoy doing or liking the same things and can support each other with this too.

Obviously there are some people who may portray themselves as nothing like the real person so you do have to be careful and regard the internet with some caution. You do also need to be aware that some people might put a photo on that isn’t even a photo of them.

Generally though I think it’s such a positive thing and it brings you together with lovely people who you would never have come across otherwise, never in a million years. Think about the blogging community, most of us are so so supportive of each other, people post tips and tricks to help other, we read and promote each other’s blogs and compliment each other, it’s so lovely. I think online friendships are special and I am so proud and fortunate to consider some of you wonderful people as friends ❤️

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