Many of you will have read the recent news item concerning a blogger called La Petite Anglaise and, I'm sure felt an empathetic twinge of pre-recognition. The sad story of Catherine Sanderson resonates with us bloggers because it is constantly being played out deep in the primal reaches of our own reptilian brains like some awful and repetitive Oedipal dream - the terror of discovery, the unmasking of the shadow self - in short, being caught bang-to-rights and revealed as being someone you are not, and (worse still) as someone who is infinitely more interesting and witty than your are in real life.
Well, that sad day has come to pass here at Swipe Towers too. No longer can I walk the streets of Twickenham free from the fear of being mobbed by delusional schoolboy/girl bloger/ettes, desperate for a barbed one liner tossed in their vague direction by yours truly to sustain them through the dismal days of their schooling. No more can I drift through the sea of fek-blood spattered goth girls, safe from their terrifying talons behind my painted-on-smiling Roberta mask. No, the game's up and, glad though many will be, I have to confess a certain sadness and self-recrimination that I allowed the mask to slip for just long enough for those bastards at The Grauniad to pay me back (with a hefty dose of interest, it must be said) for every inane and ruminative non sequitur I've left on their comments blogs over the years. They've certainly had their pound of flesh and - Christ, who'd be a journalist?? - I'm sure there'll be a few Farringdon Fucker-uppers downed tonight in honour of the hack who lucked out and - s/he must have been pissed, or stoned or something - happened upon my iTunes account details to find, there staring him/her in the face like a ball pleading to be kicked into an open goal - the work email address of the real, meat space ME! The little tyke pulling the levers behind the gargantuan persona, the Wizard of Oz - The Wizard of Roz!! Shit shit shit shit shit and dammit too!!!
Well, needless to say, the retribution's been swift and (disproportionately, I'd say) draconian. Employers have been notified and the HR locusts have been swarming around. They're even discussing a question in the House about it - is such criminally irresponible use of funds meant to secure the education of our best and finest widespread? How many other Bertas are lurking out there, doing little more than posting up inane drivel in the hope of impressing a frizz haired singleton from Bristol? When she's not queueing for hours on end to buy tickets online for the Arsenal, that is (three bloody hours today - and then they said that due to a technical error they were closing the box office until further notice and thanked me for my patience...) It was a nice little job too, on the odd occasion there was something that actually needed doing. And losing it now with the mortgage on the new house kicking in tomorrow, well - let's just say the timing could have been better...
So, fellow bloggers be warned. As you sit there wittering on into the ether, remember the sad story of the real Roberta. A grand doesn't come for free. The hardest way to make an easy living, and probably several other album titles by Mike Skinner & the Streets. Just go careful out there is all I'm saying - don't let what happened to me happen to you.
In the unlikely event that anyone's interested in what happens to me next, I'll fill you in on the likely denouement. The legal bods are saying that it will be pretty hard to counter the prosecution case with the best part of 400 posts cluttering up etherspace like a pair of bright red hands clutching a bag with 'swag' written on it (and believe me - they are the best part too - you really don't want to see the stuff that didn't get posted.... I did consider the nuclear option (delete blog - it's tempting at the best of times, isn't it?) but after you all losing Brian the same way and what with The Spinster emigrating to Thailand to become La-di-da Gunner Footman's pencil sharpening bit of rough, I decided I couldn't go through with it. Besides, I guess I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. In any case they say that with good behaviour I could be out by 2037.
Obviously prison's not going to be a bed of roses. I'm reminded of my mate Rob's appraisal of the Jeffrey Archer incarceration - "he'll come out of there with an arehole like a blood orange" - hardly a recommendation is it? For all that, I must be positive. And, bearing in mind the current lax state of the institutions at which this here latest recruit to Blogs Eleven will be residing At Her Majesty's Pleasure, it's not altogether inconceivable that I may even be blogging again within the year. Apparently, most of them are wi-fi enabled now (well, it's for the illegal immigrants - they wouldn't come here otherwise but go to Sweden to run their sex-slave industries instead....a sort of not very sophisticated version of the brain drain, apparently...) and I'm told that you can even get your bandwidth upped through the judicious trading of your amphetamines allowance. (In fact, for a Henry of sensimilia you can get a bloody chainsaw and a pump action hand gun...)
Anyroad, I just wanted you to hear my side before, in its mis-spelt and politically correct fashion, the Grauniad breaks the story nationally...
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