I could be anyone..and so could you

People seem to talk a lot right now about the fact that you don’t really know who you are talking to on the net. Something particually relevent as a subject of an annoymus blog I guess. You see on this blog I am in some ways more me than in other places. I tell you things because I don’t know you. Although in fairness I am very open about my life most of the time – some would say more than I should be!



So are we ourselves here? Let me take this on a few stages. If Two people fall in love on the internet, two strangers connected only by words on a screen. If he says he is 6 ft 1 and has a jaw line to die for, and if she says she is slim and has hair so red it makes you think of a setting sun, if for two years they talk and then at last arrange to meet, only to discover he is 5’4 and has four chins, and she is actually a he..then where they ever in love? Did they just fall in love with a fantasy or did in those two years the pictures they paint represent something inside. Let me go a stage further. Two people meet in real life, she pretends to be adventurous, a can do kind of girl, and he he makes out he loves the arts. They fall in love at the opera, and over time become what they pretended to be. Have they fallen in love with each other? What is it that defines us? Am I more me here or in “real life” and how about you?



We all edit. We pick the parts of our life to display to others. When you meet someone in a bar and they say they are called brain and work for a bank we don’t question this – why should we? We believe what people tell us, we accept the parts of there lives they want to share and we mostly avoid looking in there closest. For me this blog is often that closet. It’s the dirty washing. So I wonder..even with all the self editing, even with the careful selection of what to tell you about my day…is this actually more real?



Yours truly



The Broken Man

And For Tonight's Entertainment

The long-suffering wife asked me a few days ago whether I was “up for” going to a homebirth meeting, so I said "sure"; it's always good to get some extra info as we are heading down that avenue, so to speak. So, tonight we are heading off to a stranger's house, with a group of other people who have had or are planning to have homebirths. The couple will show us their homebirth pool, the video of the delivery, and we will all have tea and maybe even biscuits.

If you just managed to read that sentence without stopping half way through and screaming "NO!! WHY??? WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT???" then you have done better than me! Let me draw your attention again to that line...at stranger's house watching a video of them giving birth while they ask if I would like another biscuit.. I am very afraid..in fact the only thing which bothered me more was when, many years ago, a female friend put on a hard core video with her in the starring...position and asked me what I thought of it (I nearly choked on my tea!). I mean, maybe..maybe it will all be tastefully filmed from the head end (the mother's – not baby's) but – okay – I am being pathetic? Squeemish?

And when I get nervous I make jokes…I try not to … but, even now, I am thinking of lines like “OUCH, that must sting", "hey, I bet that put your man off sex for ever", "I mean, wow, that’s not pretty” “are all babies that ugly when born?” “may I say, I love what you have done with your hair..”

Yours as ever,

The Broken Man