Thanks to Rachel

Shark, Squirrel, and Tiger look at me sternly and say, 'Mummy, never meet anyone in real life that you know only on the Internet'.

Pah! What's with the finger wagging? I know lots of people on the Internet! Of course I'm happy to meet them in real life!

Anyway, here's no danger: the person I've arranged to meet can't be a stranger. Because for two years I've read her blog, alright? She let me see pictures of her kiddo covered head to foot with sand. I know which of her shoes feels comfortable. She's wondering if it would be cool to live in Vietnam.

This is what it is, I'm telling Shark, Squirrel, and Tiger, to live in the Kingdom of Blog. We pick our paths. Let dialogue change places. Rest in someone else's space. We can come and go. Most important, we can pick the blogsters who generally don't just tell you want you want to hear. They do their own thing, observe life, tell it how it is, what it means to them. Making it easier to wave, and say, Hi! If you're passing, would you like to sit on a bus?

That's what we do today. We blog-crossers and life-tellers, US to UK, we exchange paths and saying hello, face to face. We sit together on a bus, travel up a mountain, ride a tram, walk round by a beach, eat dinner.

There, I tell the kids. What went wrong? Absolutely nothing. She didn't step off the ferry with a rolling eye and a shotgun; I didn't turn up with my face in bandages and ten police in hot pursuit. No. Everything was fine. And, thanks to Rachel, I'm now wearing a fantastic new hat.

(Tales of wall eyes and no teeth are merely part of the mythos)