She discovered that survival was not the same thing as remaining unchanged.
What have you had to lose in order to become more fully yourself?
Author: MMMDI
-
The Phantom Has Terrible Timing. Or Impeccable Timing.
On Friday, 9 October 2026, I asked an entirely innocent question about a musical. What followed was a coincidence so theatrically appropriate that I half-expected a chandelier to fall.
I would like to begin by stating that I am a perfectly rational woman (most of the time).
I believe in historical facts, proper grammar, and the importance of fact-checking AI when asking its help to fix something on your website. I am also aware that not everything requires a supernatural explanation.
Having established my credentials as a sensible member of society, I would now like to report that the Phantom of the Opera appears to be stalking me.
Musically, of course.
It began innocently enough.
Recently, I developed an obsession to the title song of The Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s magnificent musical about a disfigured musical genius who lives beneath a Parisian opera house and demonstrates his romantic interest through kidnapping, intimidation, and the occasional falling chandelier.
One might reasonably suggest that his courtship techniques require improvement.
Nevertheless, the music is glorious.
There is something about the opening organ chords that gives me goosebumps. And when the Phantom begins singing, I am quite prepared to overlook his questionable interpersonal skills for approximately five minutes.
Naturally, my current enthusiasm for learning Italian has only made matters worse.
I found myself listening to the Italian version of The Phantom of the Opera, examining unfamiliar words, and discovering that angelo, a masculine noun, does not change when referring to a woman.
Italian grammar is full of these delightful little traps.
I also discovered that fantasma, despite ending in -a, is masculine.
Apparently, even in the afterlife, Italian nouns refuse to behave.
And so it was that, on an otherwise unremarkable Friday evening, I asked ChatGPT a simple question:
“When was The Phantom of the Opera first performed?”
The answer came back immediately.
9 October 1986. Her Majesty’s Theatre, London.
I stared at the date.
Then I looked at the calendar.
It was 9 October 2026.
Precisely forty years later.
I beg your pardon?
Of all the days I could have asked that question, I had chosen the exact fortieth anniversary of the musical’s London premiere.
Not the day before.
Not the day after.
The exact date.
I had not been reminded by a theatre enthusiast nor had I consulted a commemorative calendar.
I had simply become curious.
Forty years after the curtain first rose, I had apparently decided that this particular Friday was an excellent time to investigate the Phantom’s theatrical origins.
Now, I understand probability.
There are 365 possible calendar dates on which a person might inquire about the history of a musical. And once one begins taking an interest in a particular subject, certain coincidences are bound to occur.
But understanding probability does not prevent one from raising an eyebrow.
Or both eyebrows.
Especially when the subject in question is a mysterious masked gentleman who has spent four decades insisting that he is here, inside our minds.
Well, congratulations, sir.
You have succeeded.
I can only imagine the Phantom sitting in his subterranean lair, adjusting his half-mask, and consulting a calendar.
“Forty years,” he murmurs. “Surely someone will remember.”
And sure enough, thousands of kilometres away in Asia, a woman who has been wrestling with Italian prepositions suddenly asks when his musical premiered.
Somewhere beneath the Paris Opera House, a candle flickers triumphantly.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that the Phantom has supernatural powers.
Nor am I suggesting that the universe deliberately arranged this encounter.
I am merely observing that if one were attempting to stage a suitably Gothic coincidence, this would be an excellent opening scene.
There would be a darkened theatre.
A single spotlight.
A red rose lying upon the stage.
And somewhere in the distance, the unmistakable sound of an organ.
As for me, I shall continue listening to the Italian version, attempting to master its vocabulary, and trying not to interpret every coincidence as a message from a fictional gentleman in a mask.
Although I must admit, his timing is considerably better than that of certain gentlemen I have encountered in real life.
At least the Phantom knows how to make an entrance.
And he only took forty years to do it.
Forty years later, he was still lurking. This time, in my search history. Postscript, 10 October 2026:
Just when I thought the Phantom had finished making his presence felt, a parcel arrived from Amazon.
Inside was a beautifully bound copy of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera, which I had ordered the previous week.
Before I knew about the anniversary.
Before I asked that fateful question.
Before any of this nonsense began.
The book arrived exactly one day after the musical’s fortieth anniversary.
Apparently, the Phantom had planned his entrance in advance.
Unfortunately, Amazon was running a day behind.
The Phantom may have impeccable timing, but his delivery logistics could use some improvement. -
Somewhere, Perhaps
Perhaps you are reading tonight.
Perhaps you are standing at a station
watching the wrong train leave.
Perhaps you are laughing
in a language
I am still learning.
I don't need to know.
The world is large,
and I have stopped trying
to peer around its corners.
If our roads meet,
I hope we recognise
the strange familiarity
of arriving
without having been summoned. -
The Day My AI Nearly Deleted My Website
There are moments in every website owner’s life when she must make a difficult technical decision.
There are also moments when she should absolutely ignore her AI.
This was the latter.
I was tinkering with Monday Made Me Do It, as I am apparently destined to do for the rest of my natural life, when I encountered a WordPress problem involving the way my posts were displaying.
Naturally, I consulted my IT department.
My IT department is ChatGPT.
This arrangement has generally worked rather well, provided nobody asks too many questions about its professional qualifications.
We examined the problem. We discussed blocks. We discussed templates. We discussed various things that sounded sufficiently technical for me to believe we knew what we were doing.
Then my AI suggested that I delete something.
I hovered over the delete button.
And WordPress responded with what I can only describe as the digital equivalent of grabbing me firmly by both shoulders.
Confirm deletion.
Then:
“This block displays the content of posts and pages using this template.“
Fair enough.
And then:
“If you delete it, posts or pages using this template will not display any content. Visitors will see blank pages.“
I stared at the screen.
The screen stared back.
Somewhere, presumably, WordPress sighed.
There was even a little checkbox:
I understand the consequences.
Dear Reader, I most certainly did not.
What I did understand was that the action my AI had been confidently guiding me towards appeared to have one minor side effect:
MY ENTIRE WEBSITE WOULD HAVE NO CONTENT.
Not one troublesome paragraph.
Not one badly behaved block.
Everything.
Blank.
The poems.
The chess nonsense.
The Italian catastrophies.
The Lady of Independent Means.
The Public Hazard Files themselves, which would have been particularly unfortunate because this incident clearly belonged in one.
All gone from view because my artificial intelligence had apparently decided that the cleanest solution to a website problem was to remove the website.
Technically elegant, I suppose.
No content.
No formatting issues.
Problem solved.
At this point I would like the record to show that WordPress saved Monday Made Me Do It from ChatGPT.
Not me.
I was already standing at the cliff’s edge with my finger on the button.
WordPress erected a barrier, switched on the hazard lights, and essentially said:
Madam. Whatever that thing told you to do, do NOT do it.
I cancelled.
Obviously.
Because it had become clear to me at that point that WordPress was the only responsible adult in the room.
And then I proceeded to inform my AI that it had very nearly instructed me to delete the content display from my entire site.
Exhibit A: The moment WordPress realised it was dealing with two hazards. Its response was, broadly speaking, the artificial intelligence equivalent of:
Oh.
We subsequently found a considerably less apocalyptic solution.
No posts were harmed.
The website survived.
The IT department remains employed, largely because it works for free and is occasionally useful.
But there are now procedures.
For example:
If ChatGPT says “Delete that block,” I require supporting documentation.
If WordPress produces a warning containing the phrase “Visitors will see blank pages,” WordPress automatically wins the argument.
And if a checkbox asks me to confirm that I understand the consequences, I have learned that this is probably an excellent moment to stop clicking things.
Running a website has taught me many valuable lessons.
How templates work.
How blocks work.
How site visibility works.
How much damage one can potentially accomplish while believing one is merely adjusting the layout.
But perhaps the most important lesson is this:
Artificial intelligence can be an excellent assistant.
It can help you write.
Research.
Brainstorm.
Troubleshoot.
Build an entire strange little universe on the World Wide Web.
But occasionally it will stand beside you holding a metaphorical pair of wire cutters and say,
“Yes, cut the red wire…. I think.”
And that’s why we have confirmation boxes.
-
On the Matter of “I’m Just Bad at Texting”
There are, I am told, gentlemen who are “bad at texting”.
This is curious.
These same gentlemen appear perfectly capable of locating restaurants, ordering motor vehicles, conducting financial transactions, watching seventeen consecutive short videos, and discovering the exact score of a football match played three continents away.
Yet when faced with the formidable task of typing:
“How was your day?”
their faculties abandon them entirely.
One must admire such selective incapacity.
Still, a lady should never attempt to rehabilitate a man whose thumbs function perfectly well everywhere except in her direction.
-
The Trouble With Being Understood
My greatest fear when speaking Italian is not that they won’t understand me.
It’s that they will.
This is a problem nobody warns you about when you start learning a language.
Everyone tells you to speak.
“Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.”
“Just try.”
“Native speakers will appreciate the effort.”
Oh, they appreciate the effort, alright.
Because nobody tells you what happens when the effort works.
You spend several minutes assembling a sentence in your head. You check the verb. You check the gender. You remember, at the last possible second, that the adjective also has opinions on the matter.
Then you say it.
And the Italian person understands you.
There is a brief, glorious moment of triumph.
I have done it.
I speak Italian.
Unfortunately for you, the Italian person has reached the same conclusion.
And replies.
In Italian.
At speed.
This is where everything goes wrong.
Because the sentence I just produced was not evidence of fluency. It was a small, carefully engineered linguistic structure that took considerable planning and possibly divine intervention to construct.
I do not have another one ready.
Meanwhile, the Italian person has moved on.
Allora…
I know that word.
Something something something.
Invece…
I know that one too…
Something something domani something something lavoro something.
Excellent. Tomorrow. Work. We have nouns.
At this point, I stop listening to Italian and begin conducting forensic analysis.
I collect every word I recognise, lay them out on an imaginary table and attempt to reconstruct what has just happened.
This is surprisingly effective.
It is also exhausting.
The sensible thing, of course, would be to admit defeat.
Puoi parlare più lentamente, per favore?
A perfectly respectable sentence.
Alas, sensibility and I parted ways years ago, and that Italian person is already enthusiastically halfway through paragraph four.
So I nod.
Sometimes I say sì.
Sometimes I deploy capisco with a confidence entirely unsupported by the evidence.
This is dangerous.
There is always the possibility that I have just enthusiastically agreed to something.
I don’t know what.
Perhaps dinner.
Perhaps marriage.
Perhaps helping someone move a wardrobe on Saturday.
This is why I have developed a new theory about language learning.
Being misunderstood is not failure.
Being misunderstood is safety.
If I say something incomprehensible. the other person slows down. They ask questions, They help.
But pronounce one sentence rather well and suddenly everyone has expectations.
So yes, I want to speak Italian fluently someday.
I want to understand conversations without mentally tackling individual words to the ground as they rush past.
I want allora to be merely allora, rather than a small life raft appearing on the horizon.
But until then, I would like the Italian-speaking world to understand something.
If I say something surprisingly competent, please do not be alarmed.
It was probably an accident.
And whatever you do, do not respond at full speed.
-
On the Matter of Being Gobsmacked
Ladies are reminded that to be gobsmacked is to be so astonished as to appear metaphorically struck in the mouth.
This is an indignity.
Should a gentleman leave you gobsmacked by his conduct, his audacity, or an unsolicited opinion delivered with excessive confidence, remain composed.
Adjust your gloves.
Remember his name.
A lady does not retaliate.
She merely takes comfort in the ancient principle:
May the gob, on occasion, smack back.
-
The Day I Nearly Baptised an iPhone 18 Pro Max
There are days when one leaves the house expecting nothing more dramatic than breakfast, a little grocery shopping, and perhaps a casual browse through a phone store.
And then there are days when one nearly baptises an iPhone.
This was one of those days.
For context, I have been sick with the flu.
Not dramatically sick. Not Victorian-consumption-on-a-chaise-longue sick. Just sufficiently unwell to be coughing, sniffling, and carrying the general air of someone whose immune system has taken a leave of absence.
Still, I was feeling well enough to go out.
Which, in hindsight, was my first mistake.
Which begs the question: Why are things only 20/20 in hindsight? This does not bode well for people like me.
But I digress.
Earlier that morning, I had been contemplating whether I should upgrade my iPhone. I currently have an iPhone 16 Pro Max, which is still perfectly good, except that its battery capacity is now at 83%.
Naturally, this became sufficient justification to investigate the new iPhone 18 Pro Max.
Purely for research purposes.
Obviously.
So off I went to Machines.
And there it was.
The burgundy iPhone 18 Pro Max.
Now, I should mention that burgundy is precisely the sort of colour designed to make otherwise sensible adults start mentally rearranging their finances.
I picked it up.
I admired it.
I turned it over in my hand.
I considered its weight.
Its finish.
Its general air of expensive technological superiority.
And then my nose betrayed me.
Without warning, a large and deeply committed blob of bodily fluid flowed out of my nose.
Not delicately.
Not discreetly.
Not in a manner that could be dismissed as a slight sniffle.
It landed directly on my hand.
The hand holding the iPhone.
There are moments in life when time appears to slow down.
This was one of them.
I looked at my hand.
I looked at the phone.
And then I looked up.
To my horror, the saleswoman was standing directly in front of me.
She had seen everything.
Everything.
There was no plausible deniability.
No opportunity to pretend that perhaps she had been momentarily distracted by another customer.
No nearby explosion.
No fire alarm.
No convenient collapse of the ceiling.
Just me.
The phone.
The snot.
And one horrified witness.
I did what any mature, composed woman of dignity would do.
I fled.
I put the phone down and bolted.
Once safely outside, I immediately cleaned my hands with an alcohol wet wipe while furiously trying to erase the last thirty seconds from human history.
I failed.
And now I cannot show my face inside that Machines again.
In my mind, the staff have already created an internal briefing:
“If the small woman looking at the burgundy iPhone 18 Pro Max comes back, immediately secure the demo units!“
Perhaps my face is now the wallpaper on the MacBook demo units.
Perhaps I have been assigned a code name.
Perhaps there is now a laminated notice behind the counter.
I prefer not to know.
The most offensive part is that I was already sick.
Surely illness should come with some form of temporary immunity from public humiliation?
One would think the universe might look at a woman coughing her way through the weekend and say:
“She has suffered enough. Let her admire the burgundy phone in peace.”
But no.
Apparently the universe remains deeply concerned that I may one day run out of material for Monday Made Me Do It.
And therefore my dignity continues to be sacrificed for content.
I suppose I should be grateful.
After all, I went into Machines wondering whether I needed a new phone.
I left with something far more valuable.
A new story.
And all it cost was my dignity.
-
Table for One
I no longer lower my voice
when I say it.
Table for one.
By the window, please.
I order what I like,
linger over dessert,
watch strangers hurry home
to lives I know nothing about.
Once, an empty chair
looked like absence.
Now it is simply
a place where I put my coat.
And someday, perhaps,
someone will sit there.
He will have to ask first. -
The Night I Slept With a Stranger for a Bed
I joined Facebook in 2007.
This was back when Facebook still felt like a strange new frontier and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. People sent me friend requests. I accepted them.
Did I know these people?
Of course not.
They wanted to be friends. Who was I to question their motives?
Then I discovered Facebook games and things deteriorated rapidly.
One of my favourites was Castle Age, a game in which, as far as I can remember, having more Facebook friends meant having a bigger army. This was excellent news for someone who had already demonstrated absolutely no discernment when accepting friend requests.
Soon my Facebook friends list was populated by people I didn’t know but who were apparently willing to fight alongside me in imaginary battles.
Everything was perfectly normal.
Until it wasn’t.
You see, a few years into my Facebook adventure, I discovered The Sims Social.
I was fascinated.
Here was an opportunity to create an alter ego, build her a house and let her live an entirely different life online. What could possibly go wrong?
Spoiler alert: When you’re me, apparently everything that can go wrong, absolutely will.
I started playing without bothering to find out how the game actually worked. This has historically been one of my preferred approaches to life.
My Sim needed a house, so I built one. Then she needed furniture, so I started furnishing it.
There was, however, one small problem.
I didn’t have a bed.
I seem to remember that I needed materials or help from other players to get a bed, and I didn’t have many friends playing The Sims Social.
This became rather urgent because my Sim needed to sleep.
Why she needed to sleep so desperately, I can no longer remember. Perhaps her energy was running low. Perhaps the game wouldn’t let me do anything useful until she had rested. Perhaps I simply took my responsibilities as custodian of a collection of pixels far too seriously.
Whatever the reason, this woman needed a bed.
And I was going to find her one.
Then I noticed that one of the random men I had befriended on Facebook also played The Sims Social.
More importantly, he had a house.
And inside that house was a bed.
Problem solved.
I sent my Sim over to his house, fully expecting her to climb into his bed, have a nice restorative sleep and return home refreshed.
I was enormously pleased with myself.
Look at me, I thought. Outsmarting the game.
The game, however, had other ideas.
Apparently, my Sim couldn’t simply walk into some man’s house and sleep in his bed.
There were conditions.
Relationship conditions.
I don’t remember the precise mechanics after all these years, but I remember the horrifying discovery very clearly: if my Sim was going to enjoy the use of this man’s bed, our characters needed to become rather better acquainted.
Very well acquainted.
Biblically acquainted.
I was mortified.
This wasn’t some anonymous computer-generated character. Somewhere out there was an actual man whose Facebook friend request I had accepted despite having no idea who he was.
And now our Sims were apparently expected to consummate a relationship because I had failed to provide mine with adequate sleeping arrangements.
There are moments in life when a person must stand by her principles.
This was not one of them.
My Sim really needed to sleep.
So I did what had to be done.
My Sim slept with his Sim for the bed.
To be absolutely clear, I got nothing out of this arrangement except for somewhere for my Sim to lie down afterwards.
I believe there is a profession considerably older than Facebook that traditionally negotiates these transactions more successfully.
The worst part was that this man and I occasionally crossed paths in Castle Age.
He never mentioned it.
Not once.
To this day, I remain grateful for his discretion regarding our brief and entirely transactional Sims relationship.
Perhaps he didn’t notice. Perhaps he didn’t care. Perhaps he was sitting somewhere staring at his screen thinking, Why has this strange woman come into my house, slept with me, and gone to bed?
I will never know.
What I do know is that shortly afterwards, I deleted The Sims Social.
I had joined because I liked the idea of having an alter ego and living another life online.
Unfortunately, within a very short period of time, my alter ego had found herself exchanging sexual favours for accommodation.
It had become too weird.
Even for me.