Fiona wrote: <Oh, guys, this HURTS. This really, bloody hurts.>

No, no, Fiona, please DON'T feel that way - I don't think anyone meant that that's what you were doing - as I said, I KNOW the serious posters do not intend to make me feel anything of the sort. And lot of the time I enjoy a great deal of the same discussion, without the "ummm, that's me we're talking about" feeling creeping in.

I'm not for one minute *blaming* anyone for the way I sometimes feel, any more than I would feel to blame if I accidentally bumped someone's corn that I didn't even know was there. It's just that - being the way I am - sometimes that is what it feels like *to me*. That's what I was trying to explain, and why I react with a deflecting joke rather than a serious comment.

Again, let's go back to the nature of the medium, the web. Were we in Neil's actual rather than virtual pub, and this hc discussion started, and I started feeling a bit over-analysed, you'd be able to tell far better and without words - voice, body language, the way I suddenly found a pressing appointment elsewhere :-) - and metaphorically 'back away' a bit. On a computer screen, it's very much harder to get signals about what the person who wrote the words is feeling, especially since we all have different levels of comfort with different types of discussion, as we all have different senses of humour.

And no one can get the nuances all the time; no matter how sensitive we are or try to be, words on a screen are rather bald, catching what's underneath is hard.

Ob B7 - why then do I find it so great to watch My Darlings fight up hill and down dale, when I hate it so much myself? No, I don't really need the answer to that one ...

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