Before every party, I Google my guests

The spy who went out in the snow.

Ssssshhhhhh..... the neighbours might be listening!

There are moments when I think that it would have been wise to have thought about this whole blog thing prior to starting it off. At times I have my regrets that I have used my own name and used photos of myself and the kids and all that malarky, and obviously if I had done that I could talk about anything I like without worrying about people I know either Googling me and finding out things about me that I wouldn't really want them to know, and I could have a good old moan about all the people who thoroughly annoy me, and I could talk about other things that I'd like to talk about but which I am rather reticent to because I want to keep some things a little more private.

But I didn't. And it's not that big a deal really. Sometimes though there are little moments when people say things to me and I jolt thinking, "How did you know that?". Sometimes I am surprised by the people I know from real life who read my blog. It's never who I think it would be.

Last night I spent some time trying to find out how strangers see my 'timeline' on Facebook. That was a whole lot of not much fun. For yesterday afternoon we went to a New Year/New Baby/New Neighbours party (yes, really, it was 3 times the fun) downstairs in our building. And about 30 minutes after we arrived the hostess and I had the opportunity to chat for a bit and her opening line was "I know your daughter is at the British School, but your looking at ###### School, aren't you?".

I couldn't help but be shocked and ask "How did you know that?". There was a slight pause and then she gave me an answer which didn't really answer my question, and eventually took it off topic. I could have pressed her, but my brain had already bolted back upstairs and was logging into Blogger, searching posts for references to this. It was just my body that was locked into being polite, and stayed drinking coffee for a while longer, and comparing apartment sizes with the rest of the neighbours.

For there is no way that this woman should know this. I haven't mentioned my plans to any of my neighbours, and I don't believe that we share any friends that would have mentioned this fact. So, the first thing I did once we got home after stopping Orla from crying, getting Hamish a drink, making the dinner, getting the kids ready for bed and settling Hamish down, was check out my blog and when I found no reference there, I checked Facebook. And then I considered that the apartment might be bugged. (Which led to some really bad dreams)

So, I might be a little more cagey about what's happening with us and our staying/going/relocating plans for a while. At least until things are little more settled.... and I have checked the lightswitches for tiny microphones.