I've just had what is - to me - a rather odd exchange of emails.
Somebody had read my post Bugger Bognor, which I published on 31st December 2018. It's about Bognor Regis, the holiday resort on the West Sussex coast, and a visit I'd made to it.
I took for the title of my post the famous words that King George V is supposed to have uttered in 1929, seven years before he died of bronchial distress in old age. He'd just had a lung operation, and probably wasn't in the mood to be complimentary about the town. You can imagine the scene. His doctors bobbing around, deferential yet firm. 'Your Majesty has come through the operation extremely well, but a month of fresh air on the south coast would be most beneficial.' The King would have rasped some tetchy reply. 'We think Bognor might be just the place.' At this, the King would have muttered 'Bugger Bognor', the prospect of a month of being wheeled along a windy promenade, and perhaps several therapeutic cold plunges in the sea, filling him with gloom. And who could blame him.
In my post I described him as 'the severe-looking bearded gent who appeared on many of the older coins in my young life'. I also had in mind the photographs I'd seen of him in his later years, when to my eyes he looked like an impatient man with a short temper, with many cares, and not at all well.
Out of the blue I got an email from somebody who gave no name except the username they went by online. Being cautious, I might have ignored it for that reason alone, but the question they asked was reasonable enough: why had I described King George V as 'severe-looking'? The emailer thought he was 'a handsome man who looked good until the end'.
Intrigued, I decided to reply. Emails are of course one-to-one, and in principle private. So to preserve confidentiality, I won't quote any more of the emailer's precise words, just the gist of what was put to me. But I will give my own responses in full. So I said this:
Whether a man is handsome or not depends on the onlooker's own standards. If you think he was handsome, then I won't challenge your personal opinion.
To me, he is an historical figure who died well before I was born, and I can only go by reports. Apparently he was a man who took his position as monarch very seriously, and expected the same seriousness from his family: certainly not a man to suffer frivolous or inappropriate behaviour.
In particular he did not enjoy good health in later life, with chronic bronchial trouble, and I would expect the increasing discomfort and distress flowing from that to adversely affect his manner and his appearance.
I therefore chose the word 'severe' to encapsulate in one word the demeanour of a man who carried more than just the burden of being the King.
As a PS to this, I asked why he or she didn't say who they really were:
I use my real name. Why do you conceal yours behind an alias?
No matter who emails me, or what their email address is, they nearly always (if previously unknown to me) introduce themselves properly, and plainly state their interest. As you surely would if speaking face to face. This person answered by asserting that giving one's real name in an email didn't matter: it was optional. In fact he or she couldn't understand why I thought it so important. So I said:
All the same, you are still not being open with me: I don't know who you are, nor why a word I used in a blog post about a long-dead person should matter to you.
I took a risk in responding, but on a hunch that it was all right, I did, and apparently no harm has been done. But in general it's unwise to engage with anonymous (or effectively-anonymous) people, and I'm rather surprised that you disagree.
I thought that would be the end of it, but I got a final response. In it the emailer told me that she was aged twenty, gave me her proper name and one or two other details, then signed off. She hadn't expected me to reply to her original question. She also assumed that I'd never been on YouTube or TikTok, where nearly everyone people stuck to their special online names, didn't use their real name, and yet despite this, online communities got along fine without interrogating each other as to their true identity.
I do feel that I irritated the emailer. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that full identity disclosure at the outset is the proper thing to do, and that hiding behind a pseudonym invites suspicion and mistrust - even if there are strong and good reasons for concealment, and even if it is entirely normal for the particular arena in which we are in contact. That said, I must be well out of step with current online practice, which nowadays seems to shun openness and transparency, and to favour complete anonymity; with everyone's exchanges - benign, vitriolic, conspiratorial, legal or utterly illegal - cloaked in encryption. The dangers and harms of this are obvious and endlessly discussed. Because of them I don't feel apologetic for wanting to know exactly who is writing to me.
One thing that has surprised me about this episode is that a girl of twenty discovered my blog and read one of my posts! I'd assumed that my readership was middle-aged or older, and that the subjects I cover would have no appeal or relevance for a younger person. It just shows how wrong you can be.
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