who

Blogging, like buying Coldplay albums and voting on Big Brother, is something best kept private, preferably secret; the internet precluding both, I'll settle for anonymity. But why, my as-yet-imaginary audience clamour, jaws slackening keyboardwards, eyes wide with wonder? I have my reasons.

Computers held for me a deep and disenfranchised fascination growing up. For what seemed like forever, we couldn't afford a VCR, let alone a PC; for what seemed like the next forever, we had both badly. The first came from a local electrician's, missing various buttons and proportionately temperamental; it rarely recorded anything and memorably played Wayne's World 2 (and only Wayne's World 2) at double-speed. The last came courtesy of my mother's office, and lacked a CD-rom, the internet unconscienable. The one floppy-disk game I had (definitely about dogs, less definitely free in a cereal packet) wouldn't install, so friends and I amused ourselves by creating complex Paint and Word documents to look like the internet instead. Even at richer friends' houses, I remember little beyond the strange hissing of a dial-up connection and aimless perusal of (looking back, decidedly paedophilic) chatrooms. Like piano lessons, the internet was something I didn't think I'd like but bloody well wanted to have like everybody else did.

When I was 14, on the autumnal eve of a new school year in a new school, my wish was granted. I set up about a dozen different email addresses and read the complete archive of the Offspring website (perhaps you are beginning to see the need for anonymity - although it did get me into AFI, NoFX and most importantly The Lunachicks and L7, who got me through the rest of my teens). Then I got everybody else's email addresses and favourite sites, and thus began my interminable initiation into chain letters, chain questionnaires and "funpages", which generally consisted of row upon Orwellian row of dancing, rotating, singing, winking yellow smileys and a trite assurance of friendship 4 eva.

The chain questionnaires were the worst, though. I dread to think how many hours I wasted filling in my favourite colour, soft drink, season, chocolate bar, TV show and animal - although, given so many demanded a start and end time (always understated, always a jaunty 18:28 instead of half-past) I could probably check. But it was the insidious beginning of the public facebook profile that gets you fired for statusing a sickie; it was too much information. Over the years I have, like many of my generation, created variously revealing tripod websites, myspace profiles, and livejournal accounts. They're great to show off and reinvent yourself and rant and flatter, but even better to reveal unnecessary details that no-one really needs to know, and that you certainly don't need them to. I never did emo on about relationships or post webcam self-portraits pouting out from under a fringe (well, I've never had a webcam) but I got bored.

There is only so much pith and anecdote one person can wittily produce, and only so much self-restraint this particular person can exercise when faced with the temptation to write. But I know I need to, not least because it feels sometimes like I have so few secrets left to lose and I already have a diary for my real life, the one inside my head that keeps me up at night. I like writing, I need writing, but what's the point if I can't be honest? Well maybe "I" can't; but you don't know who "I" am. And that is why I am starting a secret blog in the middle of the night that nobody may read, much less feel bound to validate with reciprocal pith and anecdote. And suddenly, I feel much better.