Reflections on a new blog

I have got myself into a bit of trouble with this new blog. Some of the people concerned got very upset with my depiction of life in Bourton on Sea. However, I now believe that most people are taking my reporting in the spirit in which it is meant.

I got involved with Bourton on Sea only a few weeks ago and I have been surprised at the changes it has brought to my thinking, to my life, even to my friendships.

In that very short time I have spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on what the town hopes to gain and what the twinning movement itself is all about.

In this day of high technology communications and easy access to the world, new friendships are being born at an incredible rate. Across the internet, social communities are bringing people with similar interests together. Sometimes those people are gathered from the opposite sides of the world. I belong to one such community. In it’s title it has the initials UK and in the brief description it says that this community is for those people in the UK who enjoy this activity. Imagine my surprise when members from Australia, the USA and other English speaking countries joined up.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about this rather celebrating it.

Individual friendships can be born from within these communities which go way beyond the community itself, often encroaching into the individual lives and the very essence of what these friends and these friendships are about.

But this new found freedom comes at a price. Friendships are created between folks who have only chatted on a particular topic and often only by public community posts or email.

Occasionally, the friendship will grow beyond even the restrictions of email and will develop into chats on the telephone. The problem at this point is that two people who are half a world apart are now becoming close friends. But simply because they are half a world apart then it follows that their thinking will be half a world apart as well.

I don’t mean that this will show in big significant ways, if it did, they probably wouldn’t have become such close friends in the first place, but in little ways. One society says such and such is ok, the other says it’s not.

For example, here in Europe drinking wine at meal times is normal, totally normal. People drink a couple of glasses with dinner, maybe a couple of glasses with a second meal as well and here in the wine growing regions of France some people take a glass of wine with their breakfast. All perfectly normal.

Unless you come from a society where alcohol consumption is not so liberal, then you might start to think that maybe 3 or 4 glasses of wine a day is a bit excessive.

When friendships develop across these sorts of cultural differences misunderstandings can easily occur. And if the misunderstanding is across continents or even half a world then explanations can only be through the medium of email or such. All very unsatisfactory. A misunderstanding can occur . Maybe the person who has misunderstood then goes out for a days gardening only coming back to their computer after several hours. Global time differences play a part as well and before you know it a whole day has passed and the misunderstanding, having been left untreated, has grown in stature.

It was a shame the misunderstanding occurred in the first place but it is oh so hard to correct.

I’ve been thinking about all this whilst I have pottered about in my own garden and suddenly it occurred to me that this is exactly what town twinning seeks to achieve. By societies getting to know each other, really know each other, then these minor misunderstandings will be washed aside.

And with those minor misunderstandings will go major misunderstandings perhaps even national misunderstandings, perhaps international misunderstandings.

Now I know what I am trying to achieve – improve the relationships so that the means of communication become less important.