Yes those were our instructions. We heard them loud and clear.
Nobody in carriage D of the 07.43 London bound train from Norwich was to utter a word about it. All of us had silently sworn ourselves to the secrecy.
"Its just between me and you Pippa , do you understand?" spoke the women sat across the isle from me into her mobile.
Pippa must have been in absolute agreement for her reply was prompt
"That's perfect, really perfect! Not a word now Pippa"
The revealing pre-cursor conversation with Pippa had interestingly started just before we had approached Manningtree in Essex. A picturesque part of my journey to London; often I look up from my laptop and out onto the estuary. My eyes follow the inlet of the meandering River Stour, from the deep mudflat tributary swirls, out to the great expanse of the North Sea, as far as the eye can see. Here I always breathe in a calming breath, before the mad day mayhem takes its hold.
But on this particular occasion, my attention was else where. An usually tall lady, in her mid 50s sitting across the isle from me had taken a call on her mobile.
Her voice was deep, penetrating, loud if not a fraction booming.
It was a call to her Doctors, not that it mattered one iota who she was calling, for in that short call she had revealed a) her full name, an unusual surname spelling we thought, only because she had kindly spelled it out loud and clear for us all. Let's be kind and call her Rosemary to protect her. Rosemary also released b) her date of birth c) her home address and d) her mobile phone number. All in the space of 2 minutes, carriage D had more information than we needed. Four pieces of identity information.
But there was more. "I am off work with stress, please arrange my Sick note as soon as possible - Thankyou" she proclaimed. Did I think poor Rosemary ? fraid not. Not not sure why. Call it intuition.
Lost in a world around her self, this happens often to the self obsessed, Rosemary returned back to her Harper and Collins magazine, rapidly thumbing through the interior design section.
I silently pondered, who is this Rosemary? Very tall, authoritative, domineering... a barrister perhaps, with country home? A holiday home in the Swiss Alps, children at boarding school? Who knew? But we would all know very soon.
Returning back to my work, I smiled. Resolved myself to the fact Rosemary would be a complete mystery.
All of a sudden Rosemary threw down her magazine, very theatrically of course; a drama queen that she is! that the suited gentleman opposite peered over from his broadsheet at the sudden commotion.
"Pippa!" She exclaimed into her Mobile. "How is life at the college ?" In a very one way conversation, we picked up further information on our Rosemary. She was not a Barrister, but was connected with an adult college of all things! The adornment of ethnic Moroccan scarves should have given her away really. I imagined her kitchen full of terra cotta tangine crockery pots and colourful mosaic dishes, beaded separator curtains and the latest in swedish minimal white furniture design. Her conversation seemed very abrupt with poor Pippa, who hardly got a word in edgeways. We learned many things about Rosemary in that time. She had now started teaching English as a foreign language to 30+ Arabic ladies, all coming round to her home. I imagined the colourful tangine pots being in full use. All these gatherings had started up 2 weeks ago, since signing on the sick. Money is very good we learn and now her Monday class will be extended to Thursdays as well. But of course she is off on the sick and therefore we "must not tell a soul" Got that? "It's just between me and you Pippa, understand?" Yes absolutely! Pippa, myself and the entire personnel of carriage D understand, perfectly!
Well what to do with all this information, you may well ponder?
Google it? Bing it? Twitter it? Facebook it,? PInterest it? Flickr it? Photobox it? Linkedin it ?Friendsreunited it? Street map it? Mouse Price it, Photobox it, Meetup It ? On and on - For the list is endless!
And if we did in no less than 5 minutes we would find:
Rosemary is an Oxbridge highly educated Classics graduate, teaching Modern Languages at her Adult College now after a successful career being a curator of museums.
There is a Mr Rosemary too, also in education. Runs private tuition lessons, especially for the state educated, who" may struggle to make the grade with the current system"
There are baby Rosemary's too, two girls 15 and 21 respectively, all still living at home, but each have a huge circle of friends who use colourful language amongst themselves which would raise an eyebrow or two.
Our dear Rosemary runs a Reading Club on Tuesday nights. Very popular meet ups at the village hall. Next week they review Wuthering Heights. Last modern chic - lit not a total success really, the classics are the best as shown by their pole of 14.
Rosemary is a keen amateur story writer too. All her own work of course. Dabbles in abit of selling her own work now.
Give us another 10 minutes and we would tell you about her holidays in the past 5 years. She's been lucky with the weather, save for last year. Total downpour in The Orkneys, but they really enjoyed it the same, so her photographs show.
Then there's the cycling.... poor suffering wife. Dragged around the Scottish highlands every autumn. She struggled up the last big hill, her heart work rate really deteriorated, but it was a steep gradient. She doesn't look the sporty type really. In fact she confirms she never was.
Politics? Confirmed champaign socialist!
Then there are the dinner party friends. Rosemary is such a social animal! She practically runs all the tweet up gatherings single handed. Her social scene circle has been growing and growing but then she does play golf so it's expected.
But there we have it, we pretty much have our Rosemary sussed and stitched up, but do we?
I was left pondering would Rosemary make a call to Amazon complain about the broken manicure set she ironically gave a 5 star review on ? Reveal her credit card details, repeat the last 5 digits, just in case we didn't catch them and then there's the passport office - didn't quite hear the last 4 digits, please can you repeat them again, there's a dear ?
Pretty scary and pretty creepy eh? But then who is the real Rosemary? Are we to believe all the information in the public domain, that she and her "connected tangled web" put there for us to find? And more to the point, did we really care about it all? Rosemary, a nobody to us, yet a somebody to many. Her identity could be stolen by anyone one of us in carriage D.
No longer a nobody, no longer an anonymous person, no longer a person called Rosemary.
Who needs the right to privacy and the data protection act when we have the lovely Rosemary and we have brave gallant people of Carriage D?
Rosemary on behalf of carriage D, thankyou for making us more aware, that our identity is not for sale and definitely should never be compromised.
No Rosemary, we won't tell a soul, after all we don't know who you are.
No Rosemary, we won't tell a soul, as we have no mutual, physical or spiritual connection between us
No Rosemary, we won't tell a soul, but we will protect our own soul :)
“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
― William Shakespeare
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