For those observant blog readers out there, you may have noticed that I posted my first blog reply recently (click here to relive the glory and scroll down to read the comments)… this really was an amazing feat let me tell you, and I sincerely congratulate all of you who actually post blog comments… because it is scary!

You see, in order to post this comment, I had to register with the site, and I have to admit that I have a bit of a phobia about passwords, and about creating registration details for web sites. Well it is not quite a phobia because that is described (thanks Wikipedia!) as 'an irrational, intense, persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, or people’ and that is not exactly how I feel about it. I would call this small-scale phobia more of a mild annoyance, like when you get a coffee that’s not quite hot enough, or when they run out of the ‘gift with purchase’ offer at the Clinique counter, or when you walk around all day with your dress tucked into your undies (yes, this has happened).

You see, when I see ‘log in here’ when visiting a web site that I am not registered to, I immediately freeze, lock eyes with the offending screen and, just like you would if you saw a snake, I begin to take slow, careful steps in the reverse direction before getting the hell out of there. I just don’t know about all this ‘being a registered user’ stuff…I prefer to be a little free spirit, even if it does mean that I only get restricted access to sites. That’s fine with me, as long as I don’t have to spend 20 minutes thinking up a user name and password combo that hasn’t been used before (can people please stop taking princesssophie? That’s mine!)

So, as I have been going about my daily rounds lately, I have also had one brain cell devoted to solving this problem and have managed to boil it down to this. I have a problem with log in names and passwords. The problem is after a while, they all begin to sound the same to me and then I forget which combination of Sophie and Marchant I have used. And then there are the times when I try and get all tricky and sophisticated so I also throw in my middle name Louise for a bit of good luck. I also like to make up a new password every time I make a log in name, so I am beginning to have a problem there as well because they are all starting to sound the same too. I counted it up the other day, and I think I have about 25 passwords and log in names to remember, which probably explains why I couldn’t remember my own phone number the other night when I gave it to a poor unsuspecting young male who I met on Saturday night who now thinks I am very rude. Someone got a very lucky (if contextually confusing) text that night, let me tell you.