Being a Virus

I don't want to be a virus. A virus is chaotic, unstoppable and makes you sick.  I want to be calm, organised and fun to be around.

My letter to Mr Gove was a popular blog. It was re-posted several times and had ten times more page views than any of my other posts.  "You're going viral," said a friend, commenting on how many times it had been re-tweeted and I confess that I panicked a little bit. I re-read it, to make sure I hadn't said anything too contentious, nothing that would mark me out as a target for the secret services.  I didn't want to get accidentally pushed under a tube train the next time I visited London or sacked from my job.

As the number of pageviews went higher and higher I couldn't stop looking.  I felt my chest tightening I imagined the whole world reading it and that was scary.  People wrote lovely things as they shared it; they called me clever and said things like, "If you read only one thing about education today, make it this," and I started to think that maybe I was a bit of a genius. What if someone thought I was the font of all knowledge and I suddenly found myself on the This Morning Sofa next to Katie Hopkins?  Then there'd be trouble.

That evening I was meant to be arranging music for the band but I was being distracted by my own imagined genius.  The Long Suffering Husband was sulking because he had wanted to go to the pictures and I had turned him down for an evening with Sibelius so I said, "Come on let's go and see that time travelling comedy."  Such sudden decision making frightened him slightly, "Are you sure? You said you had lots of work to do."  "Yes definitely," I replied, "it might be the last time I can leave the house without a paper bag over my head."

Checking my hiding from the papparazzi look.

Three days later, I was still feeling the pressure.  I wanted to blog again but was fearful that my new-found followers wouldn't like it or that it wouldn't be very good or that it would be too good and even more people would read it.  Could I really follow Dear Mr Gove with a piece about getting a dress stuck on my head in a changing room?

I needn't have worried.  If I was a virus I was a very short-lived one; the kind that makes you feel a bit under the weather for a few days but with no dramatic symptoms.  My pageviews are back to normal.  I am able to write for the fun of it without trying to please anyone and I am comforted by by daughter's intitial response to my fear, "Don't worry mum, you're not that good."