Entry for 14th January, 2008

Welcome to the Blog of the Kindly Cuppa
40 Cups of Tea With 40 Friends
is my goal in life.
And it must be done before 10th July.
Click here to find out why.
If you would like to be my friend and earn a QCT (Qualifying Cup of Tea) then let me know.
No. of QCTs to date: 3
I've never really been attracted to sites like Bebo or Facebook. I know I blog away in here to the point of obsession, but I really regard it as a sort of personal website where I can ramble away. Only a couple of close friends have 360 sites, so I don't really do it for the networking. I really do it for the adulation of all my adoring blog fans, and the hope that they will some day realise that all the entertainment I provide them with is worth money. (I will provide my bank details soon. When the blog goes subscription only I expect each and every both of you to set up direct debits)
However, one of my pals from 360 (Sande) has a site on Bebo and, in an idle moment last night, I was tempted over to the dark side. It is easy to see how people spend hours and days and lifetimes on these places. I mean, I am officially old now, and therefore not suited to social networking on account of my bad back. But even at my advanced age I found a ton of people that I know with pages. Before I knew it, I'd spent a couple of hours checking out long lost friends. They all seem to be having a far more exciting time than me according to their Bebo pages. None of them seems to have blogs about their problems building the television unit.
As I sat there, reading about all the fascinating things that my friends from yesteryear are doing now, I began to wonder if my quest for a cup of tea with forty friends was redundant. (At this point you might want to put a sad CD on. Some Joni Mitchell might set the tone nicely). After all, on Bebo you can trace just about everyone in the world from the comfort of your leatherette swivel chair. What is the point of filling your flask, and setting out on something so positively old-fashioned as a home visit.
I went to bed rather depressed, feeling that I am like Don Quixote: a man out of time, sadly tilting at windmills. (I appreciate that a windmill is not much like a cup of tea, and this is a simile stretched almost to breaking point, but perhaps you will bear with me. You might like to think of the sails as rotating handles on a favourite old mug, and the flour inside as a particularly flavoursome loose leaf blend selected by that bird off of Bad Girls who picked the gold blend beans for a while).
But then I got to thinking: there is no such thing as a virtual cup of tea. There is no Bebo Blend. Try as they might, the virtual backscratching will never do what a cuppa can do! A steaming mug of Tetley will connect you and bind you to your friends, much more than a blinking message in your in box. And slowly, slowly, my depression has lifted. I was tempted by my spell in the wilderness (I am not comparing myself to Jesus here, that is for you to decide) but I have emerged stronger, and eager to face the challenges of another thirty seven cups of tea.
Social networking! You won't catch me on those sort of sites.