ME and Ophelia

BLOGGING PEOPLE'S SECRETS ON CARDS
Guilty secrets and a public pleasure

Doesn't it bug you when someone reveals they have a secret but won't tell? An old friend who used to tell me everything - and I mean everything - once told me (whenever I asked about why the chap she was living with left town) that she could never tell me the real reason. When I asked her why, she said the secret was too big and it wouldn't be good for me to know.

Naturally, I was curious to know what made her not feel able to confide in me. She said she had promised him she wouldn't tell. Fair enough. But she hinted at danger and other people being involved. It sounded sinister but somehow not criminal. I knew he hadn't disappeared and was in work at the new place he moved to, the location of which was in another country but not a secret so if he was in trouble he could have easily been arrested. She joined him a year or so later.

Years later we met up again and whenever we'd had a few drinks and started reminiscing, she would fluff over that chapter in her life, and I would remember the secret and ask her again, incase time had made it less important. Her reaction was as emphatic after 20 years as it was the first time I asked. She never did tell. And sometimes, when I remember her secret, I wonder what it was that she took to her grave.

Want to see an ingenious way of using a free Blogger BlogSpot? Click into Frank's PostSecret blog. The visuals are mesmerising. It will make a neat book.

"A website that allows people to share their own - or their friends's - secrets is a surprise hit," writes Sam Coates in The Times May 23, 2005.

He says it is more convenient than the confessional, more trustworthy than your best friend and infinitely more satisfying than keeping it to yourself.

This card at PostSecrets jogged the above memories of my friend



P.S. As I knew my friend very well, and I knew the chap quite well, my only theory on the secret is that he turned out to be an undercover police investigator involved in some sort of sting operation or something. It's the only thing that makes sense. If my theory is true, and I think about who all could have been involved, I can understand why my friend was never able to tell me. And I get nervous even recounting this story here. Heh.
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Bird Flu

UK blogger Mick Hartley has just posted this:

Over at Metafilter somebody - well, Asparagirl - has been doing a lot of homework on what could be a massive outbreak of bird flu in the Chinese province of Qinghai, which the Chinese authorities seem, predictably, to be covering up.