dolorosa_12 | (Reply)

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It's nice that you're able to make friends through Twitter. I have met a couple of great people that way (to be honest mainly through shouting Remain-y things constantly over the past few years), but for the most part those brights spots are drowned out by a deluge of stress. So it's really great to hear that solid Twitter friendships can be done.

I've gone on holiday three times with people I know 97% through social media, but with just enough reality that I know they are for real. It's always been excellent. And some of them have been rocks in this last year, whereas people I know through more conventional routes haven't all been great.

This is my experience with a lot of internet friendships, although my equivalent would be the people I met through Philip Pullman fan forums thirteen years ago. I've travelled all over the world and stayed in the houses of these people, gone on holiday with them, helped them with uni stuff — one of them was my bridesmaid at my wedding. If you meet the right people online in the right circumstances, the result can be incredible.

One of the few genuinely good things about the last few years has been anyone who I knew in June 2016, I know whether or not we have some basic worldview in common.

Oh, indeed. (And, because I know how people voted in my constituency, I know that I'm not walking around day by day, surrounded by frightened racists. 73 per cent of voters — which obviously doesn't include the large number of non-Commonwealth immigrants who couldn't vote — share my worldview. That was enough for me to know that this place is home.)