I'm back

[shildonlad]

Back in the rivals.net days, Uncovered had a chatroom. I once went in there to find Pete and Ted having what seemed like a private conversation, making arrangements for something or other. This was twenty years ago so I don't remember the details, but whatever it was I felt like I was interrupting something. The fact that "they" chose to have this conversation in a public forum (when they could just as easily have done it in private) lends support to the theory that Pete and Ted are one and the same.

Around the same time, Pete offered me a lift to an away game (I forget where, but I'm going to say Grimsby), which I had to decline on account of being a 12-year-old who'd been offered a lift to Grimsby by some bloke off the internet. The fact that Pete found it so bizarre that my Dad had forbidden his 12-year-old son from accompanying a middle-aged stranger on a day trip (to the point that he even poked fun at me for it when I briefly met him in person a few years later) marked him out to me as someone who was a bit detached from reality. While I'm sure that Pete's intentions were entirely generous and well-meaning, at a time chatrooms were relatively novel and online grooming was prominent in the news, you have to wonder about a person who doesn't see the issue there.

Can I imagine such a person lurking in a chatroom, logged in on two different accounts to give the impression to anybody else who happened to log in that he was in the middle of important discussions with his imaginary friend?

Maybe it's a stretch. Maybe not.

All sounds a bit weird, so they have been trying to meet for donkeys years yet still nothing! Has anyone actually seen them in the same room together?