Egg Banjos and Other Exploding Myths

What is it about people who don’t do Twitter?. Unfortunately their knowledge and understanding is fuelled by a sceptical establishment media in freefall who can’t find the ripcord and the tedious celebrity tweeter, equally clueless for simply putting out and not giving a whole lot back. Non-Twitterers assume it’s all about [insert celebrity Twitdiot of your choice] and/or telling people ‘what you‘re having for breakfast’. Well, it might be for some of the people some of the time, but certainly not for all of the people all of the time.

I’ve spent just over a year on Twitter; including the first 4 months forgetting I’d actually signed-up, initially following footballer twitter accounts (they of course have since been all but closed down) and wondering why anyone would want to know what I had for breakfast. Then I had some sort of epiphany, nigh on blind panic, that in my job, it was my job to get onboard and actually learn and experience the sharp-end of social media. The first fumbling steps are but a dim and distant memory, but I’m more than certain that they were just that. The treacle we’ve all got to trudge through in the early days sucked at my legs drawing me ever deeper into the mire of ‘can’t be bothered’.

Then something started to happen after near enough 2 weeks of solid commitment. I had done the usual and followed like crazy in the hope that a beam of light might be reflected back whilst fearing I was too fragile to survive any knock-backs. I started to feel the cool, cynical and sassy ‘love’ that Twitter gives back. People didn’t really make allowances for my kindergarten skills, but by the same token re-span my plates just as they were in severe wobble mode. I would get paranoid if I didn’t get any @ replies for a few days and would think that someone who had @ replied me once then not again for a while actually thought I was a knob and regretted ever speaking to me. Of course the Holy Grail of a Re-Tweet was never even on the agenda.

I started to organize myself into little groups of chums aligned to different interests I had. Then started to find some unbelievably funny, peculiar and most of all creative people. Playing with Twitter, pushing the boundaries, turning it into something else that worked for them. Some amazing Twitter ‘brands’ started to emerge, true characters with burst mains pipe personalities gushing out of them. I’ve seen information, enlightenment, cause and effect all coming to the fore and most importantly the Twitter ‘touch’ - like a roadside telecomm box of a thousand coloured wires pulsing with connections.

So there you have it, not at all about fuckwit celebs or foodstuffs. Having said that, a frequently recurring question I get is ‘what is an Egg Banjo?’ as most Saturday mornings, my itinerary Tweet of the day often includes ‘..lunch (egg banjo)’. It’s actually a term me and my surfing mates used to use (although I’ve since found out it’s a well used phrase in British military circles) for a fried egg in a bap, baguette or sliced bread, often scoffed ravenously in the back of a Camper Van after a dawn patrol. The beauty of it is that when you first bite into it the yolk invariably bursts dripping under gravity onto your shirt which requires the banjo action of one hand to brush it away. Simple and fun really - why not give it a go.