It's strange to find myself grateful for a libel recently published on this site by David Bussell but, in publishing it, he's solved a long-standing mystery for me.
A few weeks ago, Mr Bussell posted a message telling the world that he'd been told our late lamented friend Ming was, in real life, 'a creepy, despicable shit' and that posting set me thinking.
I wondered whether or not, as well as maligning poor old Ming, someone from the Internet might also be maligning me to everyone who'll listen and, do you know what? It explains a great deal.
The fact is that, in real life, I'm just about as nice a guy as most others you're ever likely to meet but sometimes, on writing websites, it seems as if one or two complete strangers have something against me - something that goes far beyond whatever might be caused by forum banter and disagreements.
I then thought 'Who could possibly be spreading this bile?' and the answer came to me like a bolt from the blue.
You see, some time ago I had a friendly relationship with a woman on another forum and she wanted to extend our relationship into real life. I'm not talking about meeting for a drink: she wanted a full-on sexual relationship even though she was married and I too had a long-term partner.
I refused her kind offer and she wasn't pleased. She wasn't pleased at all and I believe she's the one responsible for the subsequent character-assassinations.
So, if you've heard anything from someone who claims to know anything about my real life, please have the common sense to wonder about their motives before believing their spiteful outpourings.
P.S. The beauty of this posting is that, if I'm lying, nobody can possibly be offended by what I say because it never happened and, in any event, I'm not identifying anybody as the alleged culprit. Essentially, this posting can only possibly give offence to someone who ( a ) knows it's true and (b) knows she's the person I'm talking about.
