In need of an identity

I am a member of a very select group within British Mummy Bloggers. I'm one of a small number who don't have a profile picture. But times are a-changing, and I thought it was a good moment to show my face.

Not literally. Oh no no no. I like hiding away behind words. And that is why I have chosen the following as my profile picture.

I played with various type faces. This one is called Britannic Bold, which I thought might be apt, but it's too brash, don't you think?

Then there was this. I can't remember what it's called, but 12-yo said it was cool.



But I decided to stick with the first, because it was the closest I could find to American cursive, which is so iconic. It just says "America" to me. Personally, I can't see the point of teaching generations of school kids two entirely different styles of writing. They learn printing for three laborious years, and then just as they've mastered that, they have to knuckle under (almost literally) and learn a completely different style. You go from what one teacher described to me as "sticks and balls" to this curly and ornate script that isn't far from copperplate. In Britain, it seems to me that you learn one set of letters, and then you simply learn how to join them up. For those of you who understand these things (and I don't include myself among you), I think I'm a fan of D'Nealian writing.

Enough of all that. In sum, I thought Iota in American cursive script would be a suitable visual cue for this blog. I used a lower case i because the upper case I in American cursive is pretty much unrecognisable (several of the upper case cursive letters are, actually, which is another of my beefs with it). A capital I looks like a T or a P, and I didn't want to become Tota or Pota.

You probably want to know why it's nailed to a tree in my back yard. Well, that's just what I did. I expect there's something sub-conscious going on. Perhaps it's religious imagery. Perhaps it's meant to be like a 'Wanted' poster. Maybe I just wanted to hang it on the tree that I look at out of the window when I sit at the computer. Who knows? I certainly don't.

So what do you think?

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Identity revealed

Here's a final conundrum.

Why did I pick Iota Manhattan as my blog-writing name?

Aha! I can help you with that one. It's an anagram of my maiden name. When I was about 14 or 15, one wet lunch break, stuck in the classroom, I and a friend or two or three occupied ourselves by making up anagrams of the names of people in our class. (I know, I know, most teenage girls talk about boys and make-up. I and my friends made up anagrams. What can I say?) I thought Iota Manhattan was so fabulous, I said "if I ever write something, I'll use it as my pen-name", and so I have.

Apart from my own, my favourite anagram name was Helga R. Cespit. Honestly. I can't give you the original name, in case she googles herself and lands here. I'm not sure we ever told her...

Iota is the Greek letter 'I', of course, so it's very apt for a writing persona. Manhattan gives an American flavour, appropriate now in a way that I could never have foreseen as my teenage self. I do also enjoy a secret ironic chuckle because, as you probably have realised, my location, though American for sure, is a pretty long way, geographically and culturally, from Sarah Jessica Parker territory.

I'm not going to respond to any guesses in the comments section, by the way. I'm not revealing my real name, maiden or married, on the blog. If you're a puzzle-fiend, and you want to have a guess, you can email me and I'll tell you if you've got it right.

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Auntie Clara

Now I don’t normally like being tagged or memed, but this one from Jo Beaufoix has tickled my fancy.

The rules:

1) players must list one fact that is relevant to their life for each letter in their middle name. If you don’t have a middle name then use a name that you like.
2) the other rules are to do with how to pass the tag on to other bloggers, but instead of doing that, I'm just going to say, if you want to have a go, please feel free, and go to Jo's blog to get the full rules. (Sorry, cheating, I know).

I don’t have a middle name, so I am going to use the name Iota.

I is for Iota. Iota is the letter i from the Greek alphabet. Iota is I. Iota is me. I is therefore also for identity. I have long been fascinated by the relationship between fiction and fact; The Purple Rose of Cairo is one of my favourite films. I’m sure any blogger will tell you, blogging means you are drawn into this puzzle in your own life. I am Iota, but it's not as simple as that. She has developed a life a little apart from mine. She has her own friends. (I think she might be rather nicer than me, actually. And I fear more interesting.) This is part of the fascination of blogging.

O is for Olbas oil. Obviously.

T, as in a nice cup of.

A might be for America, a big part of my life at the moment, but that would be too obvious. It might be for A nice cup of T, but that’s a bit repetitive, and anyway, I wouldn’t want to limit myself to just the one. So A can be for Auntie Clara, Husband’s sister, who is coming to visit us this week.

Auntie Clara plays a pretty good initial letter game herself. I played it with her not all that long ago. I got the atlas out, and we went through it, seeing how far we could get through the alphabet on countries she has visited. She is the most widely and most interestingly travelled person I know. I was trying to remember which letters she has left, and have just discovered that she has helpfully put a map on her Facebook page, with a little pin in every country she has been to. It's a pretty crowded map. According to that, she still has K, O, Q, X, Y and Z. I remember from our previous discussion that we decided she needed a trip to the Middle East, which could get her Oman, Qatar and Yemen. Then Africa for Kenya (unless she fitted in Kuwait when in the Middle East) and her pick of Zaire, Zambia and Zimbabwe (she’s been to Zanzibar, but we decided that didn’t count, although we thought it a pretty good try). X is always going to be a challenge, unless she can find Xanadu.

I’m afraid the Midwest will be very tame by her standards. She ideally likes her destination to be remote, full of dangerous diseases, a recent war-zone, and closed to foreigners unless you know someone in the Embassy. We can’t offer much in the way of exotic excitement. We do have trump cards though, in the form of a fine pair of nephews and a splendid niece. They are all excited at the thought of Auntie Clara’s visit. 3-yo has been mysteriously busying herself getting plastic tubs out of the kitchen cupboard, filling them with water, and picking leaves and grass from the garden to float in them. When these had been sitting on the kitchen counter for a couple of days and were getting to that slimy stage, I asked her “could I tidy these away now?” and she was horrified. “But they’re for Auntie Clara”.

So Auntie Clara, if you’re reading this, I’m afraid we can’t offer the kind of curious and astonishing foreign adventures that you are used to, but you do have some strange and wondrous vegetation arrangements to look forward to. Strange, wondrous and beginning to decompose.