Press Publish and Be Damned
“Things are going to happen that you’ll want to put on your Bebo” says a favourite family member, “But you’ve not to, okay?”.I don’t point out to her that I’m not on Bebo, and that what I do is called a Blog, for I know what she means and I don’t want to come across as argumentative as well as horrifically indiscreet and all loose cannony.
I am to go to a family event where members of an extended family whom I’ve never met but I am assured are wild and colourful and BLOGGABLE will be there. It’s going to be too much to bear but I am used to having to stifle the blogging urge when anything good happens. I worked in an FE college for six years for goodness sakes, every day was a blog I couldn’t write.
Effectively there’s only three sets of folk that I am allowed to take the absolute rip out of:
Set One: Me
This week someone who blogs to great acclaim got a similar yet far more official type of warning. NightJack the formerly anonymous police blogger had his identity outed by a journalist and was told to blog no more lest he lose his job. In fact, he’s already been given a written warning.
On finding out he was to be outed NightJack tried to get an injunction to stop his identity being revealed. However the judge saw no reason why anyone who chose to write about their life on the internet should be given any kind of privacy or protection. What a shame this is. Mainly I think for the police force itself. What amazing PR the NightJack blog has been. The police have a hard time gaining public sympathy and the fact that someone was blogging about what it was like at the sharp end of regular policing seemed to me to be a vent for unofficial view about what police officers have to face on a daily basis and a commentary on how they really feel about government law and order initiatives and news coverage of what they do. This is not only compelling for a reader but, secretly, I bet every police officer who read it was silently cheering NightJack on for putting their point of view across.
Another excellent emergency services blog (and latterly a book), Random Acts of Reality, written by an ambulanceman got the full backing of the Ambulance Service for that reason.
I can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand a no holds barred account of policing gives a view into a profession that those not in it will never otherwise empathise with, but on the other hand you could argue that the views represented are not being sanctioned by the police PR machine and may even prejudice court cases in more extreme examples. NightJack was always very careful to make sure no prejudicial details were included and that no names were ever used, but you can see the danger nonetheless, I suppose.
I’m sure that the police force were secretly happy to let an anonymous police officer blog in the way NightJack did and were privately pretty pissed off when his identity was revealed. As soon as his name was in the public domain they had to do something about him and more importantly, be seen to do something about him.
What I really don’t understand is the motives of the journalist who outed him. I can only assume they concern professional jealousy of his award winning success. How would that journalist feel, for example, if his sources were revealed? It’s a shame that the judge didn’t look upon the blogger’s anonymity in the same way.
Anyway, it’s the blogger’s lot; publish and be damned…or lose your jobs and friends if you write up the really juicy stuff. All the best subjects are ones which you shouldn’t really touch. Like family events which are like an episode of Shameless.
Still as long as I’ve got Meeester taunting me to blog about him with japes like this to catch my attention, then I’ll never be short of material.
Meeester’s latest cry for blogattention:
Putting fake flowers in the shrubbery
Cock of the North
I met Meeester when I was twenty-three. That’s young I suppose, although for me, it felt like I’d waited ages to go out with someone who didn’t turn out to be a complete arse. I won’t go into who each of the aforementioned arses are; some are worthy of a blog post of their own, some have been the subject of a complete blog post of their own, and others I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of having the steam off a complete blog post.
I don’t know how many women Meeester could write blog posts about, but I suspect it is many. About five years ago we holidayed in Scotland, which is something we don’t normally do, as it rains a lot and we already know the quirks of the locals and do not find them as cute as the quirks of foreigners. And the food is generally garbage and I could make that myself at home.
It was the summer of the birth of my daughter, the baby who was to become Junior Misssy, destroyer of freshly completed decor and devourer of expensive lipsticks. The babe in question, my son Indy, Meeester and I started our journey towards Mull, home of the prototype for the Highland midge, the beast that has seen more foreigners off our premises than the Picts. This was a wholesome family holiday if ever there was one. I’m not ashamed to say we were towing a caravan. One husband, two kids and a caravan- it’s like I had read a manual on how to be average.
It is a long way from Aberdeen to Mull; 154 miles to be exact. Then, if you factor in that we left Mull after three days because we couldn’t leave the caravan after 5.30pm for fear of being eaten alive, and went to Crieff, where the midge does not roam. That’s another 141 miles. Then, if you add the distance from Crieff to St Andrews, where the midge is seen off by the cold North Sea blast and posh ladies in tartan skirts with tearooms to run, and where we went to meet up with my sister and her family, that’s another 41 miles on top of that.
That’s a lot of miles, a lot of Scotland, and a lot of Scottish towns and villages for Meeester to make this comment as we went through them:
“I once saw a lassie from here.”
Aberfeldy: “I once saw a lassie from here…”
Auchtermuchty: “I once saw a lassie from here….”
Oban: “I once saw a lassie from here…..”
Glenrothes: “I once saw a lassie from here…..”
Perth: “I once saw a lassie from here….”
I’m sure we even did a detour north to Braemar just so that Meeester could say: “I once saw a lassie from here.”
The journey’s becoming like a Scottish A to Z of Meeester’s conquests. I’m seven years and two babies into my marriage at this point and town by town the “lassies” that have been before me are stacking up. I feel like I should have one of those clicker machines, but that Lynx deodorant advert won’t be out for another three years, so I don’t think of that. I keep count by carving binary numbers into my thigh with a Swiss Army knife.
On meeting up with my sister and her husband in St Andrews I tell them that we have been on a world tour of the hometowns of lassies that my husband, the newly crowned “Cock of the North” has “seen”, “gone out with” or “known”. All three in a Biblical sense, I’m certain.
I feel slightly like Warren Beatty’s wife.
Poor cow. At least I don’t have Madonna in that number.
Or DO I?? Meeester….!!!!?
Don’t ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!
The Wasp Factory
When I first met Meeester we had both just graduated from our respective Universities. I had slunk home poverty-stricken to my parents after an ill advised spell in a Spanish language school, and Meeester was putting off the inevitable career in teaching to trying his hand at being a rock star full time.
Given that the market in Rock Stars wasn’t as buoyant as it is now, this meant that Meeester never had any money. In fact, he didn’t actually officially have a home. He was just staying with friends on a sofa located in their cottage porch. This should have been a temporary solution to Meeester’s housing problem. In fact, it was temporary solution that lasted 18 months.
Meeester’s stay in the porch is now the stuff of legend amongst our circle of friends.
Given that I stayed at home with my folks I could often be found sharing the sofa of a night. And given that we had just met, not to put too fine a point on it, that sofa saw a lot of action. As did anyone coming through the front door into the porch.
Oh the shame.
Here’s a list of people who I still can’t quite look in the eye:
“Fuck-Off” Davey
The young lad next door was known to all of us as “Fuck-Off Davey”. Davey was a teenager who would routinely pop in to get one the cottage dwellers to tune his bass guitar and then never leave. Hence the nickname. I think Davey might have seen my lady bits. But he can fuck off.
The Best Man
T, was the official recognised tenant of the cottage and would become Best Man at our wedding. T was also the bass player in Meeester’s band. Did that guy have some stories to tell in the speech at our wedding? Oh yes he did. Revenge is sweet. Especially when is is done in front of parents and grandparents. The explaining I had to do…
Sorry T. No-one should have to knock before putting the key in their own front door.
Ian, the Minister
Ian also lived in the cottage and later became a minister. I think we may have driven him towards God, to be honest.
Meester and I once used his bedroom to get some privacy as we thought he wasn’t coming home and the porch was a little draughty. As he walked into his bedroom to see Meeester’s bottom in the air, I swear I heard him bellow, “May the power of Christ compel you!”
I have never been so embarrassed.
Donny
Donny would turn up every Sunday to whisk Meeester away to do a sing along at a sick kids’ hospital he worked in. He was once a nanosecond from whisking the duvet off a naked, sleeping Misssy, thinking I was Meeester (Meeester had very long hair at the time). Instead, I woke up just in time, saw a leather clad figure still wearing his bike helmet with his black, gloved hand extended towards me. Still half asleep, I thought I was about to be exterminated by Terminator and nearly hit the roof.
This is one of Donny’s favourite stories, I believe.
Wasps
As no-one could afford to call Rentokil to get rid of the wasps’s bike that also inhabited the porch, we were also watched by the five thousand wasps that would fall onto us as we slept, The fact that neither of us went into toxic shock is a mystery.
A sure fire way to rid yourself of a wasp phobia is to have fifty of them in their sleepy and angry death throes land on your face of a morning, with your mouth slightly open.
Gerald the Cat
Gerald was the thousand year old cat came with the house and viewed us as his tenants. Gerald was so big that you would think you were having a heart seizure when he fell asleep on your chest. He was probably an actual puma.
An expert hunter, who laughed in the face of actual shop-bought cat food, Gerald would often drag a twitching, half-dead rabbit into the porch to eat on top of you in the middle of the night as you slept. The sound of a brittle bunny skull breaking under the brute force of cat mandibles, two inches from your head is something that will live with me forever.
I still pass that cottage regularly in my car and I smile.
Then I wince.
Then I smile again.
Don’t ever miss a Misssive. Subscribe!
