A not-mucking-about blip this evening, owing to gale force winds. 90% of photos that were taken involved forcibly pinning the tripod and camera in one spot. Well, trying to. I have many photos of lights shiggering under the fierceness of the wind despite my clamping the tripod to the ground, and one where I had to catch the tripod as it started falling over.

Gave up, took this fast shot (hence the noise) and somehow wound up having a glass of wine with a French tourist, chatting about architecture, photography etc. Seemed a nice chap, if rather young-looking for someone in his mid- thirties.

Although he was only a few years younger than I am, the couple of hours I spent in his company reinforced my impression that there is a huge generation gap going on. The sweet, baby-faced French tourist (henceforth SBFFT), within 15 minutes of conversation, had given me a card with his contact details, including his phone number, email, facebook link, twitter account, webpage, flickr account etc. All using his real name, and perfect fodder for stalkers, hackers or bunny boilers. And then he asked for my contacts - so I wrote some of them down.

SBFFT: (in an outrageous French accent, peering at the scrawl of my email address) Your name eez Veeva Brisvegas?

Me: No. (proceeds to explain that the capital of Queensland, Brisbane, is often referred to as Brisvegas, and then following that up with a loud -if tuneless- local variation of Elvis' "Viva Los Vegas".)

SBFFT: (smiling politely, then looking at the Flickr link) You are Howard.... but Howard eez name of a man, no? (quick dip of his eyes to the neckline of my shirt to check there is still cleavage - possibly needing confirmation seeing I'd told him 10 minutes prior about the Gay and Lesbian, Transsexual, Transvestite, Intersex and Whatever Else 'Cos Anything Goes Parade* this coming weekend)

Me: Howard is my toy Highland cow (shows picture).

SBFFT: (looking slightly confused, but pressing on regardless and reading my Facebook link, evidently relieved to find a female name) Ah! So you are Lorelei Von Hasselhoff IX, yes?

Me: No. (cue more convoluted explanation, of which the SBFFT probably only understood 60% but which involved random picking of names from a hat, the need to incorporate Hasselhoff, a nod to Pope Gregory the Ninth, and a 'von' to prove I'm all class, baby)

SBFFT: (points to twitter link and looks questioningly)

Me: No.

SBFFT: (pointing to blip link) Pug-gle?

Me: A puggle is a baby echidna. (tangent while I play a hybrid game of charades/ Pictionary to explain echidnas)

SBFFT: But zis-none of zees - are your name. Why do you do eet? Why do you act like a creeminal? What are you hideeng?


And therein, gentle reader, may be what separates Gen X and Gen Y.... if not an unwillingness to splash my name over the online universe and give my information to anyone who walks past, then the compulsion to ask for someone's website links instead of simply asking what their name is.

As for this assumption that there is something inherently suspicious or wrong - something to be frowned upon - about someone who does not consistently use their real name in all online fora and does not have implicit faith/trust in technology... Orwell would have loved this. :-)

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* This is not what it's officially called. I'm paraphrasing.