Search.
I was thinking how odd it is that I nearly always write on the computer at breakfast time when I'm drinking my coffee. Whereas I would normally talk to people, from choice, in the evenings and with large amounts of whiskey to help with flow and leaps of thought. Partly it's because it is still so cold ... how is that possible? So at night I don't want to be crouched in here freezing and anyway my son is on holiday and in the middle of 'D@rw1n1a' and turns like tiger if I lay a hand on the keyboard.

But I can't imagine a real life friendship that was conducted solely in the early morning giving much impression of the 'real' me.

Anyway ... last night I was moved to go and look something up at midnight and checked my e-mails from habit and one said that my subscription to Fr13nds R3un1t3d needed renewing. I have been reunited with no one in the three years since I started but I thought 'Fuck it'. And went back one more time. In the ages since I've been there they've introduced new things including being able to put in any street name and people who once lived there have left messages under their house number. And 'G3n3s R3un1t3d' which is an anc3st0r hunting site but done really easily where you also just type in any old name and it immediately comes up if anyone else has that in their family tr33.

Naturally hours of fun immediately ensued and by two am. I had found a girl who lived across the road from me when I was eight years old; a man who had my great-grandmother in his family tree and two people who thought my father's family was connected to them in some way. How amusing is that? I e-mailed them all with the wild insouciance of the late night drinker and by tonight I had two replies.

One of the reasons that I wouldn't have e-mailed at breakfast time is that I didn't know the girl very well at all even though we were at school together and neighbours. I remembered her because she had exotically arrived in our class in the middle of term and she was DANISH and spoke not a word of English. She had white blonde hair and was very pretty and smiley and all the boys were very caring about helping her with the language. In fact she learnt at the speed of light and after a couple of months was speaking perfectly well and was really popular, much more so than me and although we sometimes 'played' after school I was never sure that she thought of me as totally cool.

The other reason was that years later, when I was about 20 and hadn't seen her for ages because we had moved schools and houses, her older brother came to live in my boyfriend's house. He had bought this house when he left university and let out rooms to students. This was while he thought what to do with his life ... and he and I set the whole thing up and ran it together for a bit. Anyway suddenly there was this gorgeous, moody older brother figure living there who couldn't even recall meeting me although I had been to their house under the 'playing' circumstances several times when I was eight. Obviously not a precociously cute eight.

He was quite scary and never smiled and played depressing music and didn't join much in the life of the house - but WAS fucking gorgeous. A few weeks after he arrived my boyfriend was wandering around late at night and smelled gas coming from his room. After banging on the door he burst it open and found the brother lying by the unlit gas fire. The door and window had been amateurishly padded with clothes and there were exerpts from 'The R@ven' written out and scattered around. But the brother wasn't even unconcious because the padding had been done so badly that there was a brisk draught of fresh air. He just had a splitting headache and felt like a total fool. But when I wrote to her I felt sure that later on he must have succeeded and I only hoped that it was long enough ago for her not to be upset by my mentioning his name.

Today - by return of post - an e-mail of amazing friendliness and charm. The fact that she hardly remembered me didn't matter in the least. She had moved back to Denmark and lived near C0penhag3n and would be totally thrilled if I was ever out there so that we could meet for dinner etc. etc. and included addresses and numbers to make this possible. And what fun that I also knew her brother (plainly not dead) who had become a famous writer (though only in Danish) and lived in a beautiful house in B@li and if I ever happened to be out THERE he would be only too pleased to .... etc. etc.

AND ... the other e-mail was from the man with my great-grandmother in his family tree. He was really sorry but he and I were not related as he was making the tree for his cousin and my family were joined by marriage only so it was pretty remote. But he had piles of research and would send it all and I sounded really nice and he would be happy to help me look for my ancestors if I liked etc. etc. .... And he sounded really nice too...

So how is that for an hour or two after midnight? And how unlike the results of an hour or two while eating toast and marmalade. Time to move my internal clock around, get an extra radiator and hide the 'D@rw1n1a' disc.
- posted by Iris @ 4/09/2005 12:22:00 AM comment