Tweeter needed for a new media marriage

We met on an internet dating site (bigup Guardian Soulmates). I had seen him there the year before and although he lived in France (and was therefore not even a 10% match apparently) I thought I would send him some smart arse quip about whether he was burying women under the patio. He liked it. I was attracted by his profile status. I really was. We exchanged messages, then emails. He found me on Facebook. I Googled him from afar. Then we moved onto instant messages. Then onto skype. Eventually I had the courage to actually plug in the web cam.

When we met it was like nothing I had ever experienced. I fell head over heels – a stranger to my eyes, but one I knew so well. We continued to date, making full use of budget airlines and building up some bad kharma environmentally. He told me about blogging (one of his previous girlfriends was a popular blogger) and I realised a new art form for my written word. Me a sloppy mild dyslexic, him a pedantic spelling maestro we began to put words together down the lines. We kept our love alive when we were apart with written notes and cards, but in the main with email and skype. We shared YouTube clips of our favourite comedians (Eddie Izzard featured very strongly) and music (Kloot and Elbow but definitely not Debbie Harry). Largely thanks to him, I now run an ethical communications business (which he aptly named – imediate.org).

After a year we took it offline. We have downloaded everything, taken a backup and we now live together in England (and sometimes in France). In the summer we plan to get married. We haven’t got much cash during these credit crunch times, so the wedding will be a modest affair – an exchange of vows with our parents and children and two very close friends, a walk by the river in Cambridge, a pub lunch. However, we will invite the whole virtual world to join us as we will be tweeting in celebration of our union. Whether you are a friend, family member or complete stranger you can tune into twitter.com/carolinejaine and twitter.com/jim_clennell on 16 June 2009 at 10:00 UK time and be part of it all - I promise NOT to be too cheesy. My side of the tweets will be tweeted on this page – but what we really need is someone to marry us.

So if you would like to conduct a short marriage ceremony (non religious) via twitter, please get in touch. If you are Eddie Izzard (or possibly Stephen Fry though it may be hard to get him to shut up) that would be fab, if not say why you want to wed us and drop me a line. Answers on a postcard.....erm....email....tweet....whatever.

Change or a Shift?

“Americans vote for Change” is the headline since Barack Obama made history last week. Which got me thinking. Just in my lifetime I have seen the arrival of the internet and mobile phones (even my ten year old has one), of a female Prime Minister in Britain (although I would like to distance myself from that “achievement”!) of a War on Terror and so called “global threats”. I have seen the IRA murder innocents in my country and I have seen too the conflict in Northern Ireland come to rest. My former flat mate used to keep a crumbling piece of the Berlin Wall in his bedside table and I have my own wonderful memory of myself, heavily pregnant, queuing in Trafalgar Square outside the South African Embassy together with the voters who delivered the first black President of South Africa (hahaha - my former father-in-law had said “thet will never hapin”).



But on a minute level change is a part of life, part of every moment. When I look out of the window across the road to the public house and the trees beyond glowing orange in the autumn sunshine, I do not see a static, dead world. I see a world where leaves are growing (or falling), grass is moving, wind and elements eroding paint from the pub wall, the car parked on the drive is very slowly corroding, and Steve, the pub landlord is becoming older (whether he likes it or not).

Life is a fluid thing, and how we are influenced and what we believe as we go through life changes along the way. I used to not like olives, I used to think the military was quite sexy, I used to only wear black, I used to be pretty intolerant of religion. What interests me is not change, but a global shift of consciousness – which is what I think this Obama fellow is all about.

Change is inevitable. It is The Shift which is remarkable. So be part of it.

http://www.theshiftmovie.com/