Who *was* that masked mongoose?

Thing 4 – and Ms Mongoose is having an identity crisis …

This all began way back when the internet was New and Exciting. Webpages looked like this; e-mail clients were named after literary figures; and my little 286 processor could barely cope with all the rec. and alt. groups I signed up to. Not wanting to reveal my work address, I adopted a pseudonym which I reasoned would make me look mature and thoughtful, and render homage to a great figure of our time …

Image by Remko Tanis on Flickr

Miffy was a surprisingly tenacious alias, but after about a decade I felt the urge to move on. Information seeking and discovery were by now emerging as important characteristics:

Cover image from Barnes and Noble

The trouble with being Nancy Drew was not so much the endless parade of suspicious characters trying to sabotage my blue convertible as the multiplicity of other Nancys out there. For a while I added an extra layer to my disguise to become Nancy’s Aunt Eloise – but despite living in New York Eloise doesn’t have a lot of fun unless Nancy visits, at which point she usually gets kidnapped.

And so by devious routes – including, in one particularly tortuous byway, Agatha Christie – I arrived at my current existence as librarian-goddess-represented-by-inquisitive-mongoose (not, as the Trainee Mermaid suggested on first look, an overfed hamster). Ah, but here’s the rub: as a Cam23 admin, I’ve been forced to cast aside all disguise; I owe the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume, and my real name adorns the 23 Things blog.

And now when I comment on other people’s blogs, half the time I end up logging in with my Cam23 self and the other half as Ms Mongoose. Confused, dear Reader? Not half so much as I …

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