Yes, the picture had to go - as one of my email correspondents pointed out to me the other day, why make the effort of obfuscating your place of work and co-workers names when you've got a mug-shot taking up pride-of-place at the top-left of the page? And there was one request for a crab photo, but I figured this was a nice compromise.
The switch was spurred on by a near outing in the weekend when I was catching up with some pals at a cafe down Cuba St. One of my good friends - 'Roslyn' - is an avid reader, and always (much to my pleasure), brings up my latest stories when we sit down to gossip. It's nice for me, as I'm not much of a talker, Roslyn does all the work of actually telling the stories, and my rampant egotistical streak isn't so apparent when it's someone else doing the hype.
Anyway, after a couple of stories, a middle-aged lady came over. She was almost certainly old-school librarian: pink suit, shoulder pads, sensible shoes...
"I couldn't help but overhear you talking about Natalie Biz," she said, "are one of you her?"
"Ah...no," I stuttered, casting a few complicitous glances around the table. "We just, er, read her blog."
"Yes, she's quite entertaining. It's a small old world, isn't it? You'd never think you'd hear people talking about a blog you read yourself at a local cafe. Anyway, sorry to have interrupted."
Quite entertaining? Humph. The Pink Librarian went back to her table, from where I noticed her quietly checking us all out. Argh! The photo. Thankfully I was wearing my glasses, had some outrageous pillow hair, and the glitter-speckled blusher I'd put on my cheeks the night before had spread like some sort of sparkly skin disease around my face. And despite the fact that the old photo didn't look like me in the first place, I shuffled my chair around so my back was to her, and frizzed up my hair a little bit more.
So yes, a more anonymous image for now. Having reviewed the last couple of months worth of posts, I'd hate to have to front up to my boss to explain how my blog is just an embellished re-imagining of my workday life, when, in fact, it'd be pretty easy to make a case for saying that a good deal of it is exactly how it happened. Ah, it's
a fine line to tread, this blogging caper...
