“To say hello from an old friend”  – that was the heading of the email awaiting me in my e-mailbox this morning. “How intriguing,” I thought. “How fascinating and exciting…” I gushed to myself. “Who is it from?” I wondered. The sender’s name (a man, naturally) rang a bell…”Of course, Ian”, Gorgeous Ian, the swimmer and beachboy I used to know. I haven’t seen Ian for over 17 years – since before I was married. How did he get my email address? I don’t know. Do they give them out over the Internet? Was it even the same Ian? It had to be. It was! He wrote…

Hello Sally
I was looking on the net for “artist” and you came up, good to see again. So you are still painting, that’s good to see… and living in Dawlish.
I am still doing some painting in Acrylic & watercolours. Are you on Facebook? I am.
Love from a old friend,

Ian ……. x

Wasn’t that nice? Needless to say, we are now “old friends” on Facebook and I’ve quickly caught up with what has been happening to Ian in the intervening years. I’ve seen his photos. He’s still handsome, if a little greyer than when I last saw him, and very fit and sporty, by the looks of it. There was even a photo of Ian taken before we first met on Dawlish beach (I remember he wore an Australian t-shirt and he was brown and hunky). I saw photos of his friends and present girlfriend (not married then).

I rather dread what Ian will think if/when he looks at my Facebook photos because my nieces and nephews are apt to put vile photos of me on Facebook and I don’t know how to get rid of them! Thank goodness I’m already married and don’t have suitors trawling through those nasty Facebook photos. On a whole, I’d prefer that he went to my blog where all photographs are carefully selected by me. But if he reads my blog…

Dearest Ian, if you should find your way to my blog and read this, I hope you don’t mind that I’ve shared your private email with my huge readership – I just couldn’t resist. By the way, I’m not nearly as ugly as those photographs on Facebook suggest!