If only all my evenings were this entertaining

It’s not often that I write a blog post. But every now and then something happens that I think ought to be shared and this is one of those occasions.

Three evenings ago my husband Peter, and I had eaten and settled down for a night of comedy on the goggle-box. A little while into the jollity, my phone buzzed to tell me that someone had sent me a message on Facebook. My tablet was on the coffee table so, intrigued I went to look. The message was from someone I barely know. She and I are – or rather were – Facebook “friends”. A couple of years back I started a project, which some of you will remember, to produce an anthology of short stories based on a theme. The entries were wildly varying in quality but almost nothing was turned down given that I was not intending to showcase literary genius but, rather, to demonstrate the wonderful ways in which the human brain can demonstrate vivid imagination. The book was sold entirely for charity and was a great success. My “friend”, let’s call her Hazel (not her real name) but apt since she turned out to be a complete nut, wrote one of the stories in that collection.

Hazel’s Facebook message to me began with a question. Why had my publisher – who is now producing a similar anthology of his own, also for charity – told her that a story she wrote for him had been accepted but it hadn’t been published in the book which is now for sale. I realised straight away what had happened as I had volunteered my services as an editor on the book. There had been a dreadful computing error just weeks before publication and some data was lost. Graeme, my publisher, worked very hard to recover it all and thought he had but, unknown to us, this one had slipped through the net. I apologised to her and explained about the error. I also said that if she could send me her story I would ask whether it might be possible to produce an updated version of the book with her story included.

What followed was an evening of vitriolic and sustained abuse by Hazel who came up with some amazing accusations, once again proving that human imagination is a miraculous thing. She said that I, together with another contributor to my earlier anthology, had conspired to blacken her name thereby persuading my publisher not to include her story. That was followed by another piece of pure fiction to the effect that we had also purposely left one individual’s name off the author list even though she had written one of the stories. Are you, dear reader, asking yourself why we would do that? I did, briefly, but couldn’t come up with a sensible answer. Now, the person she cited in that particular slur happens to be a personal friend of mine and I know that she did not, in fact, write a piece for the book. I gently pointed that out to Hazel who then came back with a weird list of people (including said friend of mine and others I’d never heard of but whom, she assured me, were all famous) who would verify, if I contacted them, that she is not a child and is “legit”. Don’t ask – I have no idea.

It got even more bizarre. She told me that she was the former girlfriend of some man I’d never heard of. I thought maybe she was messaging more than one person at the same time and that this part of the message wasn’t intended for me. I pointed it out. The reply that came back was to the effect that the message was meant for me and that her ex-boyfriend had now been released. Are you getting confused? I was, and had to think about it. Ah! Perhaps it was intended to be a threat. Bless her. She can’t even make a threat with any degree of plausibility.

Next came a real doozy. She knew for a fact that we had something against her because not a single person from her State (I won’t tell you which one) had a story included in the new book. I thought fleetingly of asking her how she could possibly know that. But I abandoned that idea. I mean it would be a pointless waste of time and energy to ask a complete idiot a question that required a logical and believable answer. It would be akin to asking Donald Trump why he believes himself to be a decent human being. He would undoubtedly give you a shedload of reasons but you’d have to be as stupid as he is to give them any credence.

Now, I really wouldn’t like any of you to run away with the idea that any of this upset me, or angered me, or made me feel nervous. In fact it was the funniest thing I’ve experienced in a long time – far more humorous than anything on TV that night. No – indeed this kind of thing is exactly why I love the internet and social media. I mean you get to meet people and to experience all kinds of things that would never cross your path in the real world. And this is a perfect example. No one in real life would ever hurl abuse at me in that way – I’m no way near interesting enough for that.

I have now, you won’t be at all surprised to hear, unfriended and blocked “Hazel”. I’m almost sorry though – I might be missing out on some valuable blog material. Anyone else like to throw some stuff my way?