Be careful out there in cyberspace

First I'd just like to say hello to Jane, William, Colin, Bob and Cathy.

Now as far as I knew I had a readership of around, oh, 12 people. That's a bit of a cheat as well, because I knew you all from other cyberspace outings. Plus of course, there's my mate Chris, hello Chris hope you're well and possibly Rob and Mary, hello to you two if you're reading this.

Now. We travelled up to Dundee this weekend for my Aunt Cathy's 60th birthday. It was a stonking day for a party, lovely and sunny, but not too hot and with a rather nice cooling breeze coming off the Tay.

My Uncle Bob had sent an invitation in April to the 'surprise' party, so when we got lost driving there - all my fault, stupid man frailties - I panicked a little. The party started at 3pm and there we were buggering about in Dundee city centre as the clock chimed. Now I admit I hadn't gleaned enough information as to the nature of the surprise, so I had horrible visions of everyone hiding behind sofas, urgently whispering, 'where are Nicky, Crispin and the boys, I tell you if they bugger this up I'll...'.

In the event, they'd had to tell Cathy 2 weeks prior as she was planning a trip to Malaysia, so we arrived relaxed. Well as relaxed as we could be following the enormous dressing down I'd had for getting us lost - actually we didn't really get lost, we didn't really know where we were going to start with, something I hadn't mentioned to Nic until we reached Dundee (it's a bigger place than I remembered).

Anyway that's all beside the point. We all exited the car and walked in to the house, something that now takes a military strategist to execute effectively. As we were walking in to the sitting room to dump, the car seat, the bag, the cocoon, blankets, Eben's snacks, a kitchen sink, a small Vietnamese stowaway etc. my Uncle Bob casually said 'Jane's a big fan of your weblog'.

I stopped short of dropping Louis who I had in one hand and the kitchen sink that was perched precariously on a shoulder, but turned round in what I imagine was a completely open mouthed, staggered expression. 'Pardon'

'Yes we were all looking at it last night'.

'Pardon, what, er, how come?'

At that point my cousin Jane said 'I just came across it'

'Eh!!!! How come'

'Couldn't you just google your name to find it' said my Auntie Cathy

'Well not really I've never stated my real name on there and I write under a pseudonym'

As an aside, if you do google my name you will find a website and various other references for an outward bound centre (in Scotland) run by another Crispin Heath and then 4 links down a comment I left on the BBC website regarding the Tony and Gordon 'love in' that constituted the last Labour party election broadcast. I'm really not happy that of all the comment I've made about UK news stories online, that that should be the one that google pitches up. It's an example of me at my most pompous and actually not what I now really believe. Damn the Internet.

'How did you find it?'

'I just came across it while I was surfing' said Jane

'How did you know it was mine?'

'I think I saw your picture'

Now that's double lucky, because although I have posted my picture on here I think it's only been two or three times, so Jane must have happened to land on the page on the day I'd posted my photo. Unless of course you're a really dedicated surfer and read every single line of the pages you land on. Actually Jane you can answer that one, there are so many questions I should have asked but didn't.

Just for the record, there are currently just over 88,000,000 host names registered in the world, of which around 43,000,000 are active. Add in to that the timeliness and it's a pretty random event.

So as I stated earlier welcome to the Scottish branch of my family. Really enjoyed the party.

And Jane as I said - leave a comment.