I don’t like social media.
Apart from the obvious evils it has created amongst vulnerable young people, I really couldn’t care what Sylvia is eating for lunch at the swanky Himalayan restaurant in the Egyptian hotel on a pier in the Maldives. I don’t want to see the colour of the sea, her £300 flip flops and I definitely don't want to see her 8-month baby bump au naturel.
To be honest, I don’t know if this is the sort of thing people really put on social media because I never look. I’m not interested.
Having repeated the words, “Get off TikTok” far too many times over the past few months I suddenly realised I might have a market. If my son spends time on TikTok, then his friends do too, and you never know, they might be looking for a new book.
In September we lost our beautiful border collie Nelly. She was sixteen, and one Saturday morning her legs stopped working. She wouldn’t eat or drink all weekend so we spent many hours stroking her, comforting her and, I suppose, saying goodbye. On Monday morning she didn’t wake up. We were absolutely heart-broken because she actually was the best dog in the whole world.
I said I wouldn’t ever have another dog because nothing could ever be as perfect as Nelly.
However, two months later I caught my husband looking at the Dogs Trust website and I admitted I’d had a little peek too.
Some things are meant to be and when we met Shadow, we couldn’t resist.
Shadow is also a border collie but looks nothing like Nelly and her behaviour is… well we politely call her a ‘free spirit’.
Back to social media, our ‘free spirit’ being young, does some really stupid things, and if teenagers are bored enough to look at my puppy doing stupid things, there is a tiny possibility that, subliminally they might notice my books.
So Shadow is becoming a TikTok star. I don’t recommend you look at my videos because they’re complete rubbish, but I do think the one below is quite funny (kindly filmed by my son – as you will notice, we didn’t waste much time on it).
As the saying goes, “If you can’t beat 'em…”
It's Raining in Moscow and I Forgot my Umbrella is available on Amazon.
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