Caroline Verdon: In a cold sweat at thought of shutting down social media

This week we learnt that pub giant JD Wetherspoon has called time on all of its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

The very thought of shutting all of mine bring me out in a cold sweat. They’ve said it’s for a variety of reasons including abuse of personal details and trolling but Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin also says he is concerned about the “addictive nature” of social media.

Without a doubt I am hooked and I know I’m not the only one. Facebook is the last thing I look at at night and the first thing I look at in the morning. I remember being a teenager well before mobile phones were a regular feature and daydreaming about meeting ‘the one’ and how it would feel looking into their eyes as I drifted off to sleep and then again how it would feel being able to wake up next to them every morning. I met and married ‘the one’ but we’re both too focused on our phones to appreciate the fulfilment of that teenage wonder.

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Last year I spent a bit of time at the LGI seeing consultants and having various nerve tests. I was quite worried that something was seriously wrong as I’d begun to lose feeling in some of the fingers on my left hand. Turns out the problem was a compressed nerve that had most likely been caused by too much time with my arm bent as I held my phone whilst going on social media. I ended up having to wear a splint to keep my arm straight for a while - it was like the human equivalent of those collars they give to cats and dogs after operations to stop them being able to lick their stitches only it prevented me from holding my phone close enough to get my Facebook fix.

It wasn’t just the physical effect it was having. My then 1 and a half year old would frequently say “no phone Mumma, no phone” because I just wasn’t present in the moment. We’d play Playdoh or read books or draw pictures but as soon as my phone beeped I’d check it and then disappear down a warren of Twitter feeds for ten minutes at a time. Occasionally it still happens now although less so. We have a drawer in our house and when I get in from work, I put my phone in it to remove temptation. We also have a strict ‘no phones at the dinner table’ policy as well and it’s all helped. I still think social media has a place and I still use it frequently, but just in different ways. When I first had Arthur I found facebook groups like The Motherload invaluable for offering support at 3am when he wouldn’t sleep and I couldn’t figure out why or when utter exhaustion hit and I felt like a failing zombie mum. It also continues to be a great tool for me to keep in contact with friends and family even when they’re the other side of the world.

News this week said that one third of the content on the average woman’s Facebook page was ‘a little white lie’.

A survey revealed that millions of us edit and un-tag ourselves in pictures, change ‘check-ins’ and share links for the purpose of making us look intelligent or funny - or to appear more interesting online. I am definitely not part of that third. I make a point of trying to be as honest as possible about the ups and downs that life throws at us. Over Easter we took our campervan to the coast and had many great times and made many great memories and I put those photos on Facebook.

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I also took the photos from the renamed ‘daytrip from hell’ where we took the toddler on a steam train because he’s obsessed with them and we thought he’d love it. We were wrong. I don’t know whether it was down to tiredness, over excitement or just the terrible twos but he spent the majority of the 40minutes journey being really angry that we wouldn’t let him climb out of the window/stand on the table/steal the hat of a stranger sitting on a seat behind us. I took photos and they went online and I actually think they’re some of my favourites from the trip. My boy has got the bottom lip cross face off to a T! I know Facebook is sort of like the shop window of our lives and there’s an expectation of it being shiny but I’m perfectly happy being real. Life isn’t easy and it gets messy from time to time and there’s no shame in that.

Finding paint inspiration

We’ve got the decorators round this week and theyre painting our windows and doors.

You’d think it would be a relatively easy thing for us to organise but no. The decorators were sorted weeks ago but it’s choosing paint colours that we struggle with. In our old house when it came to picking colours for the kitchen we knew we wanted a duck egg sort of colour but it turns out there are thousands of options for that in B&Q.

We’d arranged to meet my mum for dinner and just popped into the shop to have a quick look. Ninety minutes later she’d driven over to join us as we were taking so long. We were in the middle of a full blown row on aisle nine about whether we should go with ‘first dawn’ or ‘blue thistle’ when my Mum handed us a sample card for the paint called ‘keep calm’ as a joke.

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We took it as a sign and rolled with it. This time it was yet again parents to the rescue. We’d been to look at paint three times and had hundreds of colour cards but we still couldn’t decide.

We’d tried them under the different light bulbs in store and even taped a few together and stuck them to our door incase that helped. It didn’t. We popped over to the inlaws for a cuppa and sat down in their conservatory and suddenly inspiration struck. The colours on the windows of the doll’s house they’d spent the last year building were perfect!

We got the colour chart out of the car, matched them up and bough the paint! Sorted! Is there nothing a cuppa tea can’t solve?

The tightest person in Leeds

We were talking this week about those people (and we all know at least one) who are just inexplicably tight.

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My dad knows exactly how much it costs for him to live in his house each week - how much it costs to have a shower, use the telly, keep the fridge on, the works.

Last year he did an OAP coach trip to the Lake District that he saw advertised in the paper purely because it was cheaper than staying at home. He went on it twice.

Karen in Bramley has a mate who showers at work so he doesn’t have to pay for the hot water and Claire in Drighlington who went on a date with a guy to a Sainsbury’s and when he asked what she’d like to drink she said Lucozade but he refused to buy it as it was 50pence cheaper in the store than in the café.

She didn’t see him again after that!

Caroline Verdon is one half of the breakfast show on Radio Aire. You can hear Caroline and Ant between 6-10am every weekday morning.