Clare Teal: I'm finally getting the message about the world of Twitter

This is a huge commitment for someone who finds "keeping in touch" a virtually impossible and endless activity, who runs away from ringing telephones (including my own mobile) who can easily take a week to address an envelope and a further month to locate a stamp.

I don't know why I find it so hard; after all, I love meeting people and although I find making small talk very difficult, I do enjoy conversing with folk.

But if it wasn't for Muddy we'd have no social life at all. I don't know how she does it; she remembers dinner dates, birthdays, anniversaries, openings, launches and, weirder still, all the phone numbers necessary to keep these lines of communication open.

As everyone, including my mum, knows, Twitter is a social networking and micro blogging service, where anyone who chooses to can read your messages or "tweets" comprising no more than 140 characters in real time.

I found that a lot of jazz musicians like to Twitter. On the whole, they are a very witty bunch, as are writers journalists and comedians. It's like having an ever open window into people's lives, and although there is a lot of inane "just had breakfast" or "it's a sunny day" tweets, there are some very interesting nuggets of information.

My friend, Mike Gorman, uses Twitter to share with the world some of his fabulous recipes. Today, there has been a fascinating to-ing and fro-ing on the subject of risotto and how to make decent stock. While this might not be to everyone's taste (pardon the pun) you can choose your own people to follow.

The idea is to collect as many followers as possible. Stephen Fry, for example, has 1,757,534 followers. Currently I have er…77. But even though I am over a million times less interesting than Stephen Fry, I am enjoying my Twitter experience – as is Muddy who joined to keep me company.