It’s been 12 years since I first started my Twitter account with no idea what I wanted to do with it. Followers have come and gone but I have retained some of my earliest followers, including the very first who has continued to follow me on Bluesky.

I had trouble getting to grips with Facebook. I started using it again after a couple of years absence, only to be immediately suspended! Nevertheless, I’m continually receiving notifications from my original FB account which used my default email address. Most notably from someone I don’t know personally although I’ve met his daughter, I accidentally friended him by mistake instead of his nephew. His brother was once married to my sister.

It took me 12 months to reach 100 followers on Twitter, I’m suspicious of accounts that immediately acquire hundreds of followers and those who fail to acquire followers after several years of negative comments. I simply shared stuff that interested me and people started following me because they were learning something from my tweets of which they were previously unaware.

This is particularly the case with petitions. I no longer thank people for signing a petition I’m promoting, although I do acknowledge it. People are more likely to thank me for raising awareness of on an issue.

Things took off once I reached my century, it seemed that having lots of followers was the way of getting lots more. I still haven’t figured out when I was merely sharing articles with which I agreed.

The #SocialistSunday hashtag opened up a new ball game and I was in from the start. If I didn’t share this blog I would still have to give a shout out to my comrades.

We need to distance ourselves from politics occasionally, which is why I share music videos that are often, but not always, protest songs. I have for 12 years posted a collection of images of Yorkshire every Friday and share some old ones again on Monday.