Facebook, Marmite, love it or hate it?...

I've always been a bit (lot) anti Facebook. I have always been pretty bad with firing back emails and regretting what I'd written, to the extent that all professional emails I used to wright got dumped in the drafts folder ready for rereading at suitable intervals prior to sending. Facebook was just a bit too instant for me. Potentially dangerous.

Everyone knows someone with a horror story to tell. A colleague at a different branch to mine was forced to hand in her notice after her boss (and Facebook friend!) read that her status had been changed with the note 'got in to work late again today, cried like a baby and got sent home - result - off down the beach!' - I kid you not. 

I've been a big fan of internet forums though where you can be part of a community with common interests and often similar aspirations. I like the way you can almost change your persona with the click of a button go from discussing the repercussions of mooring changes imposed by our new waterways charity, to how many miles per gallon your Mazda bongo managed and who hates old MacDonald most (one of my recent online guitar lessons). Forums (or are they fora) can get a bit clique-y though and very frequent posters can try and steer the way it all flows. 

Just Canals is a really good forum but I mainly read rather than write. There is nowhere better to go for technical queries and some of the advice I have received has been priceless over the past couple of years. I even posted my whole 'lives board' budget to find out if I was on the right lines and that was before we started looking at boats. I even took it on the chin when I got laughed at for budgeting £160 per month for food (managed £139 in January!) But sometimes forums can be a little formal and that's where Just Canals Facebook page comes in. I resurrected an old unused Facebook account recently so I could ask a question that I really needed a quick answer to and the replies were practically instant no doubt because a lot of Facebook users use smart phones rather than computers. Reading recent posts it was obvious that it was all a bit more relaxed. There are no separate sections that relate to different topics they just come one after another. 

So the next post on my blog is a request from a couple of people for my welsh cake recipe after I posted a quick picture a couple of evenings ago. 

Yum Welsh caked for supper!

PS I like marmite :-)