Friendship Book

I've just sent an email to my old pal, Sylvie. Sylvie, girl, although you're my little sister...

I was reminiscing about Friendship Books, or FBs. Sylive and I used to swap them. They were hilarious, fabulous and often outrageous.

A few people wrote to me because of my entries in them - and it was good at that age to find out about other people, their lives, their horrors, their dreams... And to make a few friends on the way.

It wasn't all fabulous, though. I once received a Friendship Book with a letter. A very strange letter. It was photocopied and had a picture of the devil on it! I could see it was in Spanish, but my Spanish being as terrible as it was, I had to get my English/Spanish Spanish/English dictionary out. These were the days long before I had a computer or even heard the word internet! Online translation was not an option!

Turned out, I was an obvious homosexual! Fancy that. All the things I liked were admired by gays! Shock! Horror! Jimmy Somerville! I must be a gay too, and the Devil had taken me for his own! I was going to drown in a toilet!

Very odd. I can laugh now, but as a nine year old boy, I was quite shocked and upset. Ok, I wasn't nine... I must have been in my early twenties. Not sure... But I didn't think there were people in the world like that, people that would write with such venom, such hatred. I just couldn't understand it. Why waste your energy like that? I still don't get it.

I really enjoyed the whole Friendship Book/Freundschaft Buch/Livre d'Amitié thing. Sadly, the internet and email were nails in the concept's coffin. I'd love to get into it again just now. I loved making and designing them. I don't think it'll happen, though. No-one exchanges them anymore. The internet is everything to everyone.

Or do they? Have you ever had/sent/exchanged/made a Friendship Book?

Christ, I have to go. Dannii Minogue has been on the phone (again). She's at Portobello beach threatening to drown herself because people are laughing at the tracklisting she's proposed for her Greatest Hits offering. I told her not to do it, but she never listens. If Love's On Every Corner is on there, she'll make a complete fool of herself!