The Origins Of Ged & Daisy, Bali, c10 December 1993

At some point during our stay in Bali, in December 1993, Ged and Daisy “arrived”.

In fact, the first of our characters to arrive were The Clanricardes – Hugo, who is the Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife, Celia, the Marchioness. Lord & Lady C seemed to find the heat and the dust of the tropics terribly, terribly tiresome. They were barely able to find the energy to call upon the servants to do their bidding for them…not that there was much bidding to do, given that they were all on holiday in a hotel.

The Clanricarde’s servants, Ged and Daisy, emerged towards the end of our stay in Bali. Sweet and simple both, Ged and Daisy are a very willing pair…although perhaps more willing towards each other than towards Lord & Lady C. In truth, Ged and Daisy turned out to be quite bolshy towards The Clanricardes, somehow ensuring that the choicest privileges accrued to themselves, while Lord & Lady C had to make do with the lesser pickings.

Ged and Daisy, perennially 20 years old, remained pretty much a private matter for many years…

…until my involvement started with the Middlesex Till We Die website, around 2004, when I decided that Ged should represent my less serious side as a web presence. 

Writing under Ged’s name was also supposed to help keep my genuine identity a mystery to most people around Lord’s and Middlesex. But it is hard to be a nom de plume laden, international man of mystery, when someone like Vinny Codrington, the Chief Executive of Middlesex at the time, would holler, “hello Ged” at the top of his voice whenever he saw me. 

Then when Facebook came along, it seemed to make sense as a medium for keeping in touch with younger people, such as the nephews and nieces (remember when Facebook was for younger people?), so it only seemed right in those early days for their Facebook friends to be similarly young and less obviously their uncle.

On Facebook, for many years, Ged seemed able to remain 20 on-line in the same way as he remained 20 by assertion in the real world.  In 2007, when Ged started on Facebook, he claimed to have been born in 1987. For several years, on his birthday, he rolled his birth date forward a year, so he remained 20.  Facebook would ask the occasional “are you sure?” type question, but would always allow the roll…until 2014, when Facebook refused to allow Ged to roll forward the year. An error message solemnly decreed that Ged Ladd had changed his birth year at least three times and that he needed to write an explanation to Facebook Central to get permission if he wanted to change the year again.

So Ged’s Facebook birth year has remained 1993 since 2013. How did those Facebook people know that the character Ged Ladd really was “born”, in 1993. Those Facebook algorithms must be truly remarkable.

Subsequently, of course, Ged’s Facebook presence has fallen into decline. It is mostly on cricket websites such as King Cricket and such places that the nom de plume Ged Ladd persists.

Meanwhile the sugary icons that are Ged and Daisy (see top photo and again below) entered our lives atop my birthday cake in 2012 and certainly represent what is left of the sweet side of our natures, 25 years on and counting.