My name is Catherine Sanderson.
Petite Anglaise was my online pseudonym from 2004 until 2009. For the first two years, I blogged anonymously about my life in France and parenting a bilingual child. Occasionally an anecdote would feature my (also anonymous) workplace as as backdrop. It was the latter that landed me in hot water, costing me my job.
A French employment tribunal ruled that I had been unlawfully dismissed and awarded me compensation, because writing a post about falling down the stairs in my unidentifiable office and snoring while I was out cold was embarrassing, in a Bridget Jones kind of way, but not in breach of any code of confidentiality. Whatever the rights or wrongs, getting fired was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, and if I could turn back the clock, the “working girl” category of this blog wouldn’t exist.
A number of journalists were regular visitors to the blog, and the story of my sacking appeared first in the Daily Telegraph, then went out across the AFP wire, and travelled all around the world. Who knew it would be so newsworthy? This resulted in the loss of my anonymity (which I regret) and a bidding war among several publishers (somewhat surreal, to say the least). I pocketed a tidy sum (which I couldn’t help feeling I didn’t really deserve) and took some time out from office life to give writing for a living my best shot.
“Petite anglaise”, a memoir based on the experience of writing this blog, was published in several languages and countries around the world in 2008. I still get a warm feeling every time an email lands in my inbox from a stranger halfway around the world who enjoyed reading it. Sales were respectable enough for a first time author, but far beneath my publishers’ expectations.
I also tried my hand at writing a novel, “French Kissing” (my title was actually “Rendez-vous”, the name of the fictional Meetic-like dating site at its core) which, let’s be honest, still borrowed heavily from real events and was populated with characters based on people I knew.
With hindsight, personal blogging lost much of its attraction for me when I could no longer hide behind a pseudonym, and although after the ink was dry on the book deal I felt obligated to continue updating my blog until the second book had made it onto the supermarket shelves in 2009, my heart was no longer in it. I no longer felt comfortable writing about my own life or borrowing from the lives of my friends.
These days I have very little internet presence. But, having weighed up the pros and cons, I’ve decided to leave my blog online, intact, for posterity. Readers of my books rather like to be able to visit to sift through the original source material. And my daughter still gets a kick out of hearing the song she made up about splitting her lip just before her fourth birthday.
Above all, if the story of how an anonymous blog once cost me my job is to hang around in the internet ether to haunt me for many years to come, I feel I shouldn’t allow only second-hand accounts tell my story.