I first heard the term this morning, someone used it in a comment somewhere, while at the same time bashing the very trolls who make “Net-Nazis” a necessary evil, so I can only assume that one or the other part of the comment was sarcastic. Which part, I’m not sure.

Yes, evil, apparently, that’s what we are. We, the mods and admins of the web, the blood-thirsty, power-crazy bastards who dare to wield madly abusive and restrictive rules like ‘PLEASE STOP TALKING ALL IN CAPS’ or ‘do you think you could possibly post a message that isn’t made up solely of smileys and animated GIFs?’. I know, it’s like living in a police state.

I’ve been a mod or admin on various forums and message boards over the past 12 years, and a simple member on yet more of them. And the weird thing is that no matter what the subject of the board, no matter how nice the 99% are, there will always be 1% to ruin the whole thing for everyone. And it’s quite freaky to see how the same patterns keep repeating themselves on completely unrelated sites.

A few people start bending the rules further and further, a mod steps in and asks them (politely) to stop, they scream that they are being oppressed by the system and bend the rules even further, the mod asks them (a little less politely by now) to stop or they will get kicked off the boards, then they storm off, leaving bitter messages and inflammatory PMs telling everyone they have been persecuted by the mean old mods and they’re going off to start their own boards. And then they start poking and prying and plotting in their own little corner, obsessing over the “old boards” and ranting on and on about those bastard mods and how evil they are. In most cases they will secure the new boards just enough for leaks of what they are talking about to get back to the mods and let them know they are being talked about.

And as much as I have seen this pattern happen over and over again, I just don’t get it. But then there are many forms of offline dickishness that I don’t get either. I try to live my life by Wheaton’s first law (don’t be a dick), it’s not easy, we all have inherant molecules of dickishness (antiwheatonian particles), but it can be done. But what on earth can drive a person to “tracking down their enemy” (i.e. entering their screen name into google) and digging up personal stuff about them? This is also part of the same old repetitive pattern of board trolls, and if, like me, you’re a fairly public person on the web, there’s a lot they can find.

Thing is, I don’t care. I put that stuff there, I know it’s public and I haven’t posted anything that I’m ashamed of. No doubt when they come across the photos of me eating spit-roasted babies for breakfast, or discover my first prize in the puppy-kicking world championships of 2003, they’ll be reassured that I am the evil heartless despot that they always figured. But hey, it’s my past, and the interwebs will keep it safe and public until the end of the world (Only a year to go then, eh…).

I actually tried it myself, when I heard they had been “researching me”. It dug up some strange old stuff.

Like the details of how Dear Husband and I were desperately trying to have a baby back in 2004. I can’t believe I actually told people what day my period started on. Who the hell wants to know that? Weird. The basic google search brings up this blog, of course, my twitter profile, my flickr account (both of which are also available via this blog) and a bunch of volley ball videos which have nothing to do with me. Pure evil.

The thing is that as much as I don’t care what they get up to behind my back, it still hurts to be treated like an evil bastard when you were just trying to get people to stop bugging other people. I didn’t even use pepper spray! The thing is that mods are people too. When you spend hours and hours helping to build a community and then someone comes and pushes you around and calls you names for no reason, it hurts. When they then go around telling everyone that you are an arsehole and that you’ve been bullying them, it really hurts. And the thing is, I’m sure they think they’re in the right and that you really ARE a heartless oppressive bastard. And that’s what hurts the most.

I have seen nice people, really NICE people who become mods and who get completely crushed by this kind of behaviour. People who end up crying themselves to sleep at night, worrying about the prying and the feeling of violation that can come from knowing that someone, somewhere is looking into your every action on the web and any scrap of personal info they can find with malicious intent. As I said, I am quite a public person, and I know what I post and who it’s accessible to. But some people are more private, and don’t appreciate being poked at on the web.

I hate bullying, in fact I hate anything that even vaguely resembles bullying, even the consensual kind like dressing people up for their hen or stag nights and parading them around town. Even when it’s supposed to be fun. It makes my skin crawl. And this just feels like the nastiest most insidious form of bullying. It was why I have stayed away from forums for the last few years, until I got dragged back in to a situation recently, trying to help someone who was going through exactly this. And it’s also why I now have no patience whatsoever for people who behave like this.

So if you’re reading this and you have ever been in a situation like this, on one side or the other, take a deep breath and walk away. Move on. Don’t be a dick.

For a long time, I have loved them from afar, simply sampling the odd smoothie when I had the chance, laughing at the quirky labels and enjoying the wonderful fruitiness of their wares. Then I got into branding and copywriting. One of the first things that happened when I started to express my interest for those subjects was that my manager Paul gave me a book to read. Now that’s not an unusual thing, hardly a day goes by that a new amazon box doesn’t grace his desk. It was a book about the innocent story. It told the tale of Jon, Adam and Richard, three friends who had started a business together, gotten rather good at it, and become the wonderful company that innocent is today.

A wonderful company. You don’t really tend to hear those words in close proximity these days. The Man is the all powerful and intrinsically evil power to fight against, corporations are dragons to be slain and bosses are blood-sucking vampires intent on crushing the souls of their employees. But the only thing these guys seem intent on crushing is fruit. Not only do their products taste good and do you good, but they make you smile and they have even built generosity and fairness into the very fibre of their company. The overall impression is one of overwhelming loveliness.

But does the reality live up to the image? Well, I was lucky enough to be picked to go along to the innocent AGM this year (and take Husband with me). I have to admit that getting that golden ticket caused me to jump up and down excitedly and scream like those people on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition*. So we packed our bags, jumped in the car and drove up to the big smoke.

I’ve mentioned it before: there is always a certain apprehension when meeting ones heroes. But once again my lucky streak held out, and innocent did not disappoint. Far from it in fact. From the second we walked through the gate into the beautifully renovated canal-side courtyard to the last goodbyes, the day was filled with nothing but smiles. To the point that my cheek muscles were aching by 2pm. Every single innocent person was beaming with pride and happiness, from the 3 big bosses to the lady who took our coats. They were all chatty, friendly and incredibly straightforward. At the Q&A, the questions were answered openly and with a great sense of humour.

As for the offices, well, what can I say? In the very same way that they get every single tiny thing right on their packaging (down to the “don’t look at my bottom” on the bottom of the bottles), they have managed to fill the offices with pure innocent spirit. Every tap, every bit of wall, every cupboard door has a little innocent touch, in a way that is cheery but not overwhelming. The layout and furniture is all funky AND functional. It’s an interior designer’s dream. And there is grass on the floor. Yes, really.

So, I have met another of my heroes, this time a collective one, and loved every second.Thank you innocent people for such an amazing day.

They have an open door policy at fruit towers, they say pop in any time, and they mean it (they have a wall full of polaroid snaps to prove it!) so if you’re near Ladbroke Grove in London, do yourself a favour and pop in. They are lovely people and they always have something nice to drink on hand. After all, any company that has a walk-in cupboard labelled “biscuits, etc.” can’t be bad…

*Except of course I’m British, so this was in fact expressed by a small high-pitched squeak and a wide-eyed stare at husband while pointing at the email on the screen.

The week before, 4 planes crashed in the USA and everything became rather weird and surreal. When the first plane hit the first tower, I was at work in Toulouse, France. We stood around each other’s screens, watching the news feeds going mad and wondering what the hell was going on.

That was the week before. On September 21st, at 10:17am, something went bang. It was a weird bang, like something big landing on the flimsy tin roof above us, or a giant firecracker going off in the car park. Heads rose from screens, bemused looks were exchanged. The office rumor mill started turning slowly. We walked around, looking out of the windows, checking the office. One ceiling panel had fallen down, but given the state of the offices, that could have just come from a rat’s fart.

The first rumor from the outside arrived: on the radio they had mentioned the airport. Toulouse has a huge aeronautics industry, including the Airbus factory. We started to feel scared.

Other theories were coming thick and fast; a bomb in the town centre, a gas main explosion, the chemical plant down the road, the fertilizer plant, a plane crash near the airport… The only thing in common was that the media were all saying they didn’t know. That in itself is scary.

After a few more agonisingly long minutes, the radios and TV feeds began to agree and provide verified information: the fertilizer plant had exploded. People were being told to go home. No, they should stay where they were, and stay inside. No, they should go home. There were reports of a huge cloud of unidentified gas spreading over the city. The boss decided to send us all home.

I don’t have a car, so I hitched a ride with a colleague of mine who lived right next to my sister’s place. Home was too far away and on-one else from the office lived nearby. I managed to get my husband (then boyfriend) on the phone, he was ok, but he had just seen every window in the area explode outwards, everything was a mess. He was near home, he could see that our windows had been blown out, so he was going to go up and make sure the cat was ok and try to board up the holes.

My colleague Andy and I sat in the car, hardly saying anything, listening to the radio and hoping that the “use internal ventilation” button on the Punto would be enough to keep out whatever the hell that gas was. The traffic was hardly moving. Everyone wanted to go home. As we moved slowly along, we could see plenty of shops and houses with broken windows, and a few people with cuts and bruises walking the streets. We were miles from the plant. THe phone lines gave up at that point under the sheer number of calls.

On the radio, the descriptions of events at the scene felt strangely detached, as if we were hearing about a war in Africa or some faraway events, but we knew it was just the other side of town. People were dead, many were injured, buildings were crumbling, cars were smashed… It was the end of the world, and we were stuck in traffic.

By the time we had crossed most of the city centre and were nearing our destination, the radio had informed us that the cloud was ammonia gas, not deadly but very irritating if it got in contact with the eyes, nose and throat. Still not pleasant. We were within walking distance of my sister’s place, so I bid Andy farewell and jumped out of the car. The air was fine, it had a slight tang to it, but it was perfectly bearable. I walked up to my sister’s building, in through the open door and along the corridor to her flat. She was fine, she had been working on the computer and hadn’t noticed anything was wrong.

We turned on the radio and sat and listened. They still had no idea what had happened. Had it been an accident? Was it a bomb? Rumors kept filtering in about other incidents, although they were usually dismissed as being either false or caused by the shockwaves from the original blast. The metro had been closed, the airport was on red alert, planes had been grounded… After a while, things calmed down, the phone lines opened up and the traffic subsided as people gradually all reached their homes (or in some cases what was left of them). I can’t even remember how I got home after that.

A few days later, we were driving along the Rocade, the big ring road that circles Toulouse. The section near the plant had been closed while the debris and bodies were cleared and structural tests were done to ensure it wouldn’t collapse. The plant looked like something out of a WWII photo. The huge red and white striped tower that had spat out its disgusting yellow fumes for so long was now still, and it had a huge gash down one side. The large warehouses and factory buildings were in bits. Then we saw the crater. The huge gaping hole where warehouse 221 had stood. As we passed it, we slowed down and stared. So did everyone else on the road. Rubbernecking was a reflex. The sight was breathtaking. And once we had passed the factory, just across the Garonne river from it, we realised that the chemical plant, that produces delightful things such as mustard gas, was so very, very close.

Ten years later, we still don’t really know what happened, although the theory of an accidental mixture of chemicals is still the most prominent. The city has healed, the ground has been cleared and the buildings fixed or replaced. But the people haven’t.

Having done the big move before, I had learned a few things: for a start, I had a job lined up and a house to move into. And more importantly I hadn’t forgotten to take plenty of stuff with us to keep us entertained until we got our TV back from the movers. 6 weeks of having nothing to watch but Chitty Chitty Bang Bang because of a box-labelling incident had made damn sure I got that bit right this time.

One thing I had somehow managed to forget, however, was what it was like to live on a campsite in France in the middle of the summer holidays. Maybe my brain blocked it out from sheer trauma. Maybe it didn’t seem that bad to me at the time. Or I just didn’t notice because I was too busy sulking, being a teenager and all that. Whatever.

To be completely honest, and accurate, I actually quite like campsites. The one we stopped off at for the night, just outside Calais on day 2 of our big migration, was well equipped, modern, clean and quite pretty as campsites go. No, the thing I don’t like is the kind of people who go on holiday to campsites. And the fact that there is only a fabric or tin wall between you and them at the best of times.

For a start, when you arrive, they stare at you. Of course, the spot we had been given was right at the back of the campsite so we had to wind our way along the narrow road to get to it, passing almost every other plot on the way. It was like walking up to the front of the room in school assembly. And with our tacky old caravan held together with duct tape and prayer, it was like doing that in the worst Christmas jumper ever and with a suspicious-looking wet patch on your bottom.

We parked the caravan and the car, and set about pitching our tent. We had learned a very valuable lesson the night before: cheap single-layer tents don’t have very good ventilation. In fact, if you forget to pull the small side vents open, the condensation on the inside will eventually create an airtight bubble and you’ll be breathing carbon dioxide. It’s not pleasant. Especially in the middle of the night when you wake up gasping for air and wondering what the hell is wrong with you… So we opened the vents nice and wide. Then we fed and walked the cats (yes, WALKED the cats), and went for a bite to eat.

The small snack bar was next to the small and overcrowded swimming pool where half a billion children were running, dive-bombing, dunking each other and generally disobeying every poster you have ever seen at a public swimming pool. We ordered our food and sat down, only to be trampled by a continuous flow of shouting parents and screaming kids running toward the pool or being dragged away from it. Husband’s beef burger turned out ok, mine on the other hand resembled a small microwaved piece of carboard placed between 2 pieces of microwaved sponge and dollopped with orange-coloured sauce. It wasn’t good.

As the evening went on, the screaming at and of kids continued, pretty much unimpeded by the impressive soundproofing qualities of a thin sheet of plastic tent, and we finally fell asleep late, hoping we wouldn’t “get a thrashing for staying up past our bedtime” or any of the other delightful threats we had heard the evening.

I already confessed in the previous post: I’m a complete snob. I expect people to live by the same standards as me and I am disappointed when they invariably don’t. I also like my privacy at the end of the day. I like being able to snuggle up in a comfortable bed and talk to my Husband about whatever the hell I like without everyone in a 50m radius being able to hear my whispers. And I don’t like getting drenched when I have to get up in the night to go to the loo.

I’m just not cut out for camping.

No, seriously, there are some important bits earlier in the story that will need to be told, but right now I want to talk about this particular bit. Deal with it.

We left Dublin on the early morning ferry. The crossing was pleasant and we had a lovely cabin to relax in, so all was well. We landed in Hollyhead, and after checking on the cats, we drove off in our old second-hand Passat, training our even older fourth-hand caravan behind us. It was a lovely day, the sun was shining and the views of the coast as we drove through north Wales made us promise ourselves that we would come back and visit some day.

We took it easy, driving for hour-long stints and checking on the cats every time we stopped, to give them food, water and cuddles. They had a nice big cage each, in the caravan, but they were still understandably unhappy about being kept cooped up and bounced around. Eventually we arrived in South Cerney, our first stop for the night, and the venue for my godfather Raymond’s 70th birthday.

I could write a whole post about my dear godparents and their lovely family. But this post is going to be long enough without me going on about them, so let’s just say that they have a very special place in my heart. And so does the village itself. I grew up there until I was 7, and it has always been the closest thing I have to a home town in the UK.

My godparents’ house is in the heart of the village, and not just geographically. There’s always something going on there, it’s always busy, there’s always someone around and someone popping in. The house has changed a lot over the years, rooms have been added, changed, renovated… And yet it somehow remains exactly the same as it has ever been. If I was in Lost, it would be my constant.

We parked our decrepid convoy in the small field behind the house. I say behind the house, I mean behind the house, the 2-part main garden and the orchard. And next to a forest of sweet peas. After popping up the pop-up tent we would be sleeping in and inflating the air bed, we walked up to the house to have a much needed shower and change of clothes. Caravanning is not an activity for those who wish to look classy. Or even just clean.

The party was a barn dance and a pig roast. Country chic. And oh boy was it the most idyllically beautiful event ever. We sat on straw bales and watched people learn the intricate folk dances with the help of a most amusing gentleman with a microphone and a fedora. We wandered through the garden in the twilight under strings of fairy lights, sipping our drinks and watching groups of people talk and laugh. We queued in a spontaneously quiet and orderly fashion for our food, talking and laughing with the other people in the queue. And we scoffed our incredibly delicious food, perched on the straw, under the trees.

The meat was chin-coatingly juicy, the baps soft and floury, and the apple sauce was just divine. It was followed by an array of fragrant cheeses and sinfully yummy desserts. Then there were fireworks. The whole thing was a picture postcard of loveliness. At one point, as we watched the dancers stumble and fumble and laugh and clap, Reg turned to me and said “Are you sure we didn’t stumble into a Hobbit village by mistake?” And I laughed long and hard because it was so very true. It was like something out of a book, a fantasy of country life.

I think that was when I truly understood what my mother means when she says that leaving there broke her heart. And it also occurred to me that it’s probably why I have such ridiculously high expectations of my fellow humans – which are always inevitably dashed to smithereens on encountering real life. I just expect everyone to be like the people in that village. Simple, straight forward, civilised, couth, friendly, relaxed… and flawed. Because nothing and no-one there was perfect, but flawed in a way that embraces cracks, loves frayed edges and rejoices in wonkiness.

I think rejoicing in wonkiness could be the answer.

And then, there are chores you love so much that you look forward to them. To be honest, there aren’t many. But sorting out the socks is one that Husband and I have even made a game out of. And here’s how it goes.

• Sort out all the dry washing, fold and put away everything but the socks. Leave them all in a big pile in the middle of the bed.
• Round 1 is the pairing. find the twins, fold them up together doing that pop-inside-out thingy. The one who matches the most pairs wins the round.
• Round 2 is the sorting into his/hers. First one to get rid of all their pairs wins.
• Round 3 is the shoot-out. Sock drawers are opened and balled socks thrown at them in turn. Misses are picked up and thrown again until successful. First one to get all their socks in their drawer wins.

How about you, any chores you’ve managed to make fun? Please share…

• Don’t retweet yourself.
• Don’t repeat exactly the same thing in the same or a slightly different way.
• Don’t repeat the same thing over and over again.
• Repeating yourself is annoying and boring, so don’t do it.
• I don’t care if you’re famous, whether I like your books, movies, series or whatever, if you want to make it in twitterville, you’ve got to be interesting. That means not just retweeting people saying you’re fantastic. You know who you are.
• Similarly, just because I unfollow or don’t follow you on twitter, doesn’t mean I don’t like you as a person or as an actor/writer/musician/whatever. It just means that I don’t enjoy reading your tweets at the moment. Sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s you.
• Famous or not, if you sound fake, you sound fake.
• Don’t ask for followers.
• Don’t beg for followers.
• Don’t threaten to kill yourself if you don’t get more followers.
• Don’t keep moaning about how many followers you have, have gained or lost.
• If you complain that I’ve unfollowed you the second I hit the button, then you totally deserved to be unfollowed.
• Also, don’t repeat yourself, only less often, hoping people won’t notice.
• Just have fun writing your tweets, if you would enjoy them if someone else wrote them, then the chance are, other people will like yours.
• Don’t ever take Twitter seriously.

Those are mine, what are yours?

10. Get a job that involves writing a lot so the last thing you want to do when you get home from work is write some more.

9. Get a job that requires you to do long, tiring hours and numbs your out-of-work brain into a pulp.

8. Give in to the laziness pixie who sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear that you can always do that later.

7. Accept an offer of a job abroad which will mean you will have way too much organising to do to have time for blogging.

6. Join a gym (and actually go there regularly)

5. Pick up other hobbies that take up precious blogging time.

4. Change the situation that first inspired your writing. Like losing the awesome people you used to talk to every day and who gave you plenty of food for thought.

3. Do something dumb like reducing your 90 minute train commute to a 15 minute stroll. You can’t type or read while strolling and 15 minutes just isn’t long enough to write blog posts.

2. Start doing posts that are entirely made up of lists

And last but not least:

1. Write posts about how you haven’t been posting lately, coming up with excuses and vowing to do better.

We had heard about them of course (conventions, not Germans. Well of course we had heard about Germans, but that’s not what I’m talking about. You know what I mean.), seen them in movies and series, but we really weren’t sure exactly what to expect.

Admittedly, the main reason for us to go was the amazing list of star guests. People we had grown up watching on TV, like Scott Bakula, Dirk Benedict and especially Richard Dean Anderson. He’s rather special to us both it has to be said. We were both big MacGyver fans in our teenage years, and at uni we would always be down in the TV room, same time every week, watching the re-runs. It’s one of the reasons we got to know each other. So we were also a little apprehensive of actually getting to meet so many big names.

In the end, it turned out to be exactly as we had imagined. The costumes were awesome, hilarious, breathtaking at times. The merch stalls were huge and most bountiful. The panels were most amusing. The Germans were rude and the food was sausagey.

But most importantly, all the guests, even those we weren’t expecting anything much from, were amazing.

I have been so very fortunate so far, when meeting those of my “idols” that I have been lucky enough to meet. They have all exceeded expectations of loveliness and then some. And this time was no exception.

As we flew back on Sunday, we were both left with a wonderful comforting feeling of having the confirmation that the people we have looked up to and admired all these years are actually nice people.

More photos from our FedCon XX adventure.