Pisa - the action, or Florence - time for bed

Blogs here are a bit like my Italian – fairly scarce in the existence department; the following is a partial remedy. S and her sister kindly arranged a short break in a Pisa hotel and we (accompanied by my brother-in-law, of course) duly flew from Bournemouth International (15 minutes away) to Pisa (2 hours away) at a quarter past bleary-eyed-and-bodied o’clock on Monday morning and returned last Thursday evening. The whole (bed & breakfast and return flights) shebang (all booked on the intermanet) was remarkably cheap. Unfortunately, none of us had an O-level or GCSE in Italian Menu Translation, so eating out while we were there was a kind of culinary mystery tour. The Leaning Tower was:- (1) marvellous and (2) a bloody long walk from the railway station. Several hundred Japanese people will hope to fool their relatives into thinking that they were holding the tower up – no doubt with hilarious consequences. Florence was:- (1) very lovely indeed and (2) extremely tiring to walk around. We certainly did not regret the decision to take two open-topped bus tours around and above the city. It was nice to have a sit down for a while – both tours took an hour each. You paid on one tour bus and the ticket was valid for 24 hours on either of the routes covered. This lessened the impact of the €20 per person charge somewhat. For now, you will have to make do with just a handful of pictures. First, a view from the hotel swimming pool. A fine pair of knockers in Florence. A lovely holiday spot. Can you help? I can’t for the life of me think of a limerick using this as a basis. Remind you of anyone? There could be more!

Reading out of all proportion

One of the bewildering twists and turns of my 37-year local government career actually resulted in my going berserk at Reading (Berks) – as opposed to Reading (Books). It was a simple chain of events. Oh, and the Books thing was just a cheap joke. I worked in Rochdale for just under six years from 1974 to 1979 then got a job back in Bournemouth, where I was born and had begun an illustrious local government career in October 1966! As you may have already read, there were some initial advantages to the job at that time! Upon the return to my home town, there was a recession in the North West and thousands of workers were suffering a three-day week. The property market was therefore pretty stagnant in that area and I spent the next two years (the time it took to sell our house) travelling backwards and forwards on trains. The one I mostly caught (on every other Friday) was the daily 09.26 service (or was it the 09.24? it seemed to matter in them days) from Bournemouth Central to Manchester Piccadilly, which took a cross-country route (thus involving no changes in London) and took six hours or thereabouts. One of the scheduled stops was Reading and, if memory serves, it was not long after the introduction of the wizzo Inter-City 125 service (so-called because the trains actually went 125 mph – well, when there wasn’t dust or jam on the track), one of which passed through Reading (without stopping) on the way from London to Exeter (I’m sure Hutters or Mr Hedgehog will confirm or deny the factual nature of these witterings). It was, however, quite impressive to see one of these new machines thundering through the station at a rate of knots! Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, going berserk. On my first journey on the jolly old 09.26, we duly arrived at Reading (forwards). Can you see where this is going? I thought I was going to be able to at the time. After some rather unnerving joltings, the train began to leave – arrrgh! – backwards!! Coupled with the entirely irrational (I accept) need to sit facing the direction of travel and the resumption of the journey in a direction completely opposite to that which had been hitherto prevalent, my senses took a turn for the berserkness. I could not understand why we were going in the opposite direction – obviously I was on the wrong train and goodness knows where I would end up, or how much more it would cost me (times were hard). For a short time, I ran amok with a mental machete, chopping the heads off passengers and an assortment of British Rail (remember them?) employees for not telling me I was on a train that was going anywhere other than my desired destination. After I found out that Reading was where the diesel engine was replaced with an electric one and, via a system of intricate points and other nifty railway-type devices, we ended up going in a north-westerly direction as planned, my running amokness subsided and I returned to my seat, mentally apologising to all the people I had hacked to death in my railway information vacuum. When all's said and done, it had been an unnerving experience. Funny how the mind plays tricks.

The Refreshment Break Scam

When you first started in local government (and, I suspect, any other similar job), you were the lowest form of life, the office junior. You did everyone else’s filing, had to go to the public counter when someone buzzed, answer the telephones and nip out to buy fags for a superior. However, all this administrative drudgery paled into insignificance when compared to the brilliantly conceived but frighteningly simple Refreshment Break Scam. The former junior (promoted to Plan Folding once you had arrived) would instruct you in the finer points of this lucrative process which would supplement your salary of £385 per annum. It is probably best explained with an actual worked example and, as I recall the details for the purpose of this blog, it has just struck me that, of the 16 employees in this particular office, none were women (well, not during normal working hours anyway) – a fact that has never occurred to me before. But that is not part of my tale. You took orders for tea, coffee, plain buttered rolls and cheese rolls in the morning and just tea in the afternoon, then took a tray with teapot/coffeepot to the canteen across the back yard of the building where your orders were filled by Alice, the cook, who always had a cigarette hanging from her mouth, the ash always at the point where it was about to drop (and frequently did into whatever she was cooking, presumably). I don’t know who was worse, Alice or her successor, Betty. After Alice left, you always knew if suet pudding was going to be on the lunch menu because Betty used to walk around wearing just one elastic stocking. But I digress. Supposing that you had taken orders for 10 teas, 6 coffees, 5 buttered rolls and 8 cheese rolls. You would actually order 7 teas, 4 coffees (measuring quantities was by no means an exact science), 8 buttered rolls and 5 cheese rolls. On the way back from the canteen, you would redistribute the cheese from the cheese rolls to populate the 3 buttered rolls needed to make up the number of cheese rolls ordered. When you returned, you always had enough tea and coffee to fulfil the number ordered in the office and the right mix of plain and cheese rolls. Thus, you made a tidy profit and the poor fools suspected nothing!

The Power of Advertising

The other day, I received an e-mail from dabs.com, containing an offer for the Motorola RAZR V-3 mobile phone (black version). It said "Lois (yes, really!), by virtue of an arrangement we have made with ‘Dialaphone’ ('the UK’s leading direct mobile phone specialist'), you can pay us just £4.99 per month for 8 months, then £30 a month for the remainder of the period for which you must contract to us (4 months) to get this marvellous piece of kit which is worth – for insurance purposes - £450 or more. You will also get a car charger, a Bluetooth earpiece, a dashboard carrier and, of course, many months of happiness playing with a device that will enable you to capture digital images, connect with your compluter, thus allowing the interchange of sounds and pictures and facilitating, for example, the sending of multiple (or single, of course) text messages using a PC keyboard. You will also receive 200 minutes of free calls per month (any network) and 50 free text messages per month". I was putty in their hands! I have said many times in the past that I probably couldn't justify a mobile phone on contract because my (outgoing) usage does not warrant it. However, this seemed an offer too good to refuse, and I took them up on it. And I have had the phone for almost a week. And it is a luvverly piece of gear. And I have sent a text message to everyone in my address book notifying them of my new number. And I have been walking and driving round Hampshire with an earful of Bluetooth to apparently no avail. Not one person has rung me yet! I’ve even forgotten what the ring tone is! Oh well, who knows? It may prove to have been worthwhile in due course. And perhaps I can go back to Pay As You Go after 12 months! I think I might be a sucker, though!

Down In The Forest III – Recovering the Cache

On Sunday, I was mostly wading in a stream, fully clothed (or thereabouts), but more of that later. There is other information to be imparted first. Background: On Saturday, there was a barbecue at the pub for *ahem* a few geocaching friends (you have to be careful what you say in public, you may be accused of belonging to a seekrit society and ostracised as a result). Omally was the in absentia evil mastermind behind the three-part multi-cache and, following reconnaissance missions by him, me and Lorry, his evil helpers, we (with admirable help from KronA) set the cache on Friday evening, cunningly using two bikes between three of us – which involved KronA doing a lot of running! During the journey, and on her turn with a bike, Lorry approached a large patch of mud with the remark "Ooh! Look! Mud!" which you would expect would result in a tactical avoidance of same – noooo! She ended up sunk in the middle of it with tyres and trainers liberally covered! Omally was otherwise engaged at Donnie Osmond Park to watch people on motor bicycles going brrm! brrm! and mrowwwwww!. And he got one set of co-ordinates wrong! Ner! Swedish monarchs aren’t necessarily perfect! He will deny it, of course. But, apparently, Corals are offering 12-1 on it being true! Ooh! *bets £20 million* As the evening wore on, it got quite dark (especially amongst the trees) because the second stage took quite a long time to execute by virtue of its extreme cunningness, with wires and canisters and things, but the deed eventually was done and the helpers repaired to the Best Pub In The Universe to: (a) drink and (b) practise their evil gloating. Anyway, as I said earlier, I was wading on Sunday. This is because a number of clues had been magnetically attached to the metal supports on the underside of a bridge and which needed to be retrieved. Well, when we placed them, the bridge spanned an arid expanse of pebbles. What happened on Saturday night and Sunday morning? Extensive precipitation, that’s what. So I decided to wait until much later in the day to venture into the forest. The weather duly cleared up and I embarked upon my mission. When I arrived at the bridge, the stream had returned, courtesy of the aforementioned precipitation! Realising that I had been entrusted with a task the importance of which was akin to a quest for the Holy Grail, I gritted my teeth and feet and threw off my slip on/slip off trainers and began to wade. Because of the aged and decrepit nature of my body (and the irritating varifocal spectacles I have to wear), I was unable to contort to an extent sufficient to identify all of the magneticlues and I could only find six of the eight originally placed. And I girded the legs of my shorts so that I could kneel in the water as well! Is this above and beyond the call of duty, or what? On top of that, I had to explain to three sets of muggles why I was wading in the stream in the first place! The rest of the geocaching impedimenta was easily recovered and I returned home, whereupon, following an unusual burst of enthusiasm, I cleaned both bikes! It was all worthwhile.

Passports and IDs

Left: 1973 (wasn’t I luffly?), Middle: 1996 (errmm…), Right: 2005 (eeek!)

Down In The Forest II - Mud In July?

Yesterday, we carried out some proper reconnaissance, not like the rubbish variety found in Devon! There is a geocaching gathering at the pub for a barbecue next Saturday and a cache is being set for the day: Omally is the evil mastermind behind it and I and Loretta are his evil helpers, although, I hasten to add, much of the evilness is attributable to the Swedish element of the team. Unfortunately, Lorry could not be with us on this mission as she was *ahem* busy. We met at the Best Pub In The Universe for sustenance as usual, and then repaired to my garage to transfer two bikes from it to the rack on the back of the car. I reckoned that, if I was going to sweat around the forest again, I might as well get to where we were going and back as quickly as possible. Plus, in some places, the wind on the downhill bits might cool me down. There’s nothing like coasting down a forest track with the wind in your hair. And, of course, as most of you will realise, nothing could make that happen! Near the end of the journey, I spotted a chunk of rutted, uneven ground on the path and braced myself as I rode over it. I sank! Well, the bike did, but I just about managed to keep the machine moving. We arrived at the road and as I set off for the car, I felt two dirty great chunks of mud hit me in the back and heard a horrid, evil chortling behind me. Trust Omally to manoeuvre me into the only patch of mud currently in the New Forest.

The flying cat and War of the Worlds

You might not think that there was the remotest connection between War of the Worlds and flying cats, but a link – tenuous though it may be – does exist. I suspect it may be argued that you could make something link to anything else if you put your mind to it; hey! I was bemoaning the lack of bloggage on here the other day and now I’m going to write about something I’ve only just remembered while writing about what I was actually going to write about! I remember reading in a book about a game which I cannot remember the name of just at the moment, where one person says a word and the other person has to say a word with absolutely no connection with the first person’s word. Now you may think that sounds quite boring, but the fun part is the challenge! The challenge, that is, of the first person who must maintain that there is a connection and proceeds to describe the thought processes involved in linking the first and second words with, of course, hilarious consequences. No? Oh well. Just bear with me. For example, the first person might say “Camilla”. Now, clearly, the second person could not say “horse’s arse”, for example. But he (or she) could say “Superman”, fondly imagining that the first person would certainly fail in the attempt to establish any kind of link between the two. The first person, however, is probably made of sterner stuff and, although possibly stumped momentarily, would undoubtedly respond in magnificent fashion by revealing the following intricate mental itinerary not envisioned by the second person: Camilla – Parker Bowles – Lady Penelope – over – 6 balls – Superman. Get the idea? Oh, please yourselves. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the flying cat. My eldest son Andrew and his girl-friend have two kittens, Fruit and Nut, and no, I had nothing whatever to do with that. They all live in the flat over the pub, so all the rooms are, as you would expect, on the first floor of the building (or, if you are a Merkin, the second floor). Well, to cut a long story short, Nut jumped out of the lounge window onto the (concrete) forecourt. Without a parachute, the descent did not take too long and I was surprised Andrew got down there before she ran off in a panic (or in a strop because she had not been issued with a parachute in the first place) but he managed to retrieve her and she seemed relatively unharmed although she sported a cut lip. When she seemed to exhibit somewhat sleepy tendencies, they began to worry and took her to the vet straight away. She was given an injection for the cut and, apparently, no bones had been broken. This morning, she was chasing her sister round the flat as usual. The connection? Well, it happened last night and we went to see War of the Worlds last night. It was very good, actually.

Down in the forest...

Hurrah! I am a temporary Grockle. Allow me to elaborate. Omally and Pharisee (two of the real and permanent Grockles) had the good sense to come and visit the Best Pub In The Forest yesterday (Sunday), accompanied by the delightful and effervescent Tammy, the love of Omally’s life! No beer was consumed at all, oh nooo, we just sat in the pub garden for an hour or so, chatting of this and that. The decision was taken to do a spot of geocaching and we set off in the direction of Smuggler’s Road with a view to extending the trek to take in Mr and Mrs Hedgehog’s Ziegler Passage. Although I am still a *ahem* Young Man, I admit I am not as fit as I once was and it was very tiring watching Tammy running up steep pathways and sitting at the top, gloating, whilst others crawled breathlessly onward and upward.

We reached a point where a decision had to be made as to whether to do the half-mile or so to Ziegler Passage, taking in Smuggler’s Road on the way back, or do Smuggler’s Road (which was only a few hundred yards away) first. I began to formulate a cunning plan and suggested that, as it appeared I was slightly *ahem* injured, we should go for Smuggler’s Road and, as I had done Ziegler Passage previously, I would make my way to the car park above it and await collection. This was agreed and I punched the air with a mental fist – the fools had failed to spot the evil cunningness with which my plan had been imbued. The cache was found quite easily eventually – oh all right! Omally – damn his unerring sense of detectiveness (he must have had his caching nose screwed on really tight) – found it! He also saved Tammy’s life by preventing a branch from falling on her, using his head to hold it up while he calmly and coolly made notes on how to prevent it killing him when he moved.

I struggled manfully up the track leading to the car park and sat on a grassy bank nursing my injured erm…thingy, you know, the muscly thingy down by the wotsit bone – it was agony, I can tell you, and I had to spend a good fifteen minutes or so sat sitting in the bally sun while a deliciously cooling breeze swirled about the place – sheer hell! The Omallymobile duly arrived and we made our way back to the Best Pub etc. where it was necessary to imbibe some more cooling nectar to refresh the parts before saying farewell. What fun!

Medication, medication, medication

Hello, Lord Julian, in the lack of direct news to himself, did not know another now. I’ll overlook your discourtesy, so I will. Blood, whose mood seemed to be snappy, done him a monstrous injustice. She remembered words he had used: skirmish, although it wa…… In case you were wondering if I had taken leave of my senses and might possibly be sitting here with peanut butter spread all over my shaved naked body, yodelling the “Drinking Song” from The Student Prince, that introductory load of bollocks appeared as the header (in the preview pane – it doesn’t appear anywhere in the actual message – how do they do that?) to yet another e-mail offering me pharmaceuticals: Cialis, Viagra and Valium this time; oh, and many other (sic). I get them every day. By the way, if Brigita Love is reading this, I am not Sohrab Pierson – perhaps I should forward it to him (her?) – the poor devil’s probably at his (her?) wits’ end if I am getting his (her?) messages by mistake. By and large, the intermanet is a wonderful thing but sometimes it really gets on my wick.

Minutes of the Football Club Committee

Not actually Minutes, just a resumé of the Committee’s reaction to proposals that the Chairman was foolish enough to be persuaded to bring before the Committee by Simon and Ariadne earlier in the day. I suppose it was inevitable, really: sport is fairly high on Simon’s list of Things I Would Rather Not Do If It’s All The Same To You; I should have been alerted to this when it emerged that he thought Henman was a half-man half-chicken superhero. So, to the proposals. The first was that the Club should provide topless cheerleaders to encourage the team during the match. I reacted to this with considerable enthusiasm and Simon displayed a rare empathy with such an obviously sport-related matter. His keenness dissipated somewhat when I suggested that, to save money, I could perhaps be one of them. The Committee felt that, whilst they would undoubtedly encourage the players, it would not be to play football. Not approved. The next was to use a duck as the ball. The Committee was less than receptive to this, firstly as the proposal seemed flawed in that the report failed to mention whether the duck needed to be dead or not and, dead or alive, a duck was unlikely to possess the bouncing qualities necessary to make a positive contribution to the game. Not approved. Next, the goalkeeper should dress up as a clown and dance the lambada during moments of inactivity. Amazingly, the Club was halfway to achieving this as the present incumbent’s performances gave the impression that he was dressed as a clown and he already danced the lambada incessantly, even during moments of activity. No approval necessary. Lastly, I put forward one of my own suggestions: that the traditional half time oranges should be replaced by flagellation with birch twigs. This was approved unanimously. So the two hours spent in the chatroom weren't entirely wasted.

A New Forest Pathway

…a picture of which I took, is now occupying a spot amongst a cast of thousands on the BBC Digital Picture of Britain thingy. I followed the example of Aoj and, well, there you are, and, in case you are remotely interested, here it is.

Tank goodness!

It was a momentous day down in the Forest yesterday when the paths of Loretta, el10t, el015e, Sam, MMM and the Milk Monster crossed mine – and it was deliberate – hurrah! It was great to put faces to names and to meet some more lovely people in the *ahem* flesh. We were getting a bit worried when it got to 1.45pm and MMM hadn’t turned up (she said she’d arrive by 1pm) but, apparently, she was held up by some soldiers near Salisbury. She thought she’d better not argue with them as they had really big guns on their tanks. Almost as scary as trying to order food from my line manager after 2pm! (it was a narrow squeak, I can tell you). We had a good chinwag and guffawed a bit (mostly at Sam’s jokes – not necessarily the punch-lines, actually, but perhaps more of that some other time!) and Jess learnt how to execute the time-honoured manoeuvre of getting to the top of the slide by walking up it instead of climbing the ladder, which is as yet beyond her capabilities, but only because of the size of the gaps between the steps (they are almost as wide as she is tall)! And, guess what, MMM encountered another tank on the way home, but this one let her through! We have lift-off!

Irregular Blogging and Bank Holiday Bouncing

I have recently mentioned somewhere else about the infrequency of this blog’s updating, and its sporadic nature is a constant source of irritation to me. I would like to be able to make a daily entry but I seem to have been conditioned to expect myself to write several hundred words instead of just a few dozen. Other people manage nice little chunks on a regular basis and they still make them interesting and/or humorous. Anyway, that’s enough whingeing for one paragraph. But I promise to try and make more regular entries, whatever their length. I was in charge of the Bouncy Castle at the pub last Bank Holiday Monday and I was sitting in the warm sunshine all afternoon without a hat. By tea-time, all my extremities were a bit red and I must have massaged a good half bottle of After-Sun Cream into my noddle when I got home – it certainly stung for a bit if I touched it! Loretta came and visited me for a couple of hours during the afternoon and, about halfway through the proceedings, felt it incumbent upon her to advise me of the caution needed to be exercised in acceding to the numerous repeated requests from little girls to put their shoes back on after their allotted bouncing sessions. Well, they kept asking me, bless ‘em! They obviously love me! And what little girl worth her salt would ask anyone to put her shoes on other than a kindly old…*ahem* Young Man with brightly-coloured extremities?

All fired up!

At the place where I worked, I was, for several years, a "designated officer" when an evacuation of the building happened to become necessary for whatever reason. There was a set procedure when the alarm sounded. You had to run down to reception (they never did tell us where to go if reception was on fire) and collect: (1) a little card with a particular task printed on it, and (2) a bright yellow tabard. There were several disadvantages to being selected for this job:- if you didn't time it right and purposely hung back to get 'Task No. 8 - Using fireman's lift, ensure all decent looking typists are taken out of the building then take the best one out for a roistering good time', you’d have probably ended up with ‘Task No.5 – Find all suspicious-looking bombs and defuse them by cutting either the blue or yellow wire [good luck with the choice], then station yourself at the south-south-easterly footway access point, reference AP.9, to prevent the public entering’. Also, there were never any XL tabards (you needed XXXXL in winter when you were wearing a thick overcoat as well and everyone used to laugh while I struggled to don an item of clothing (luminous to boot) that had probably last been worn by one of the Seven Dwarves, whilst running round trying to borrow some wire-cutters and desperately wondering where south-south-easterly footway access point AP.9 was). And nobody ever told you when the emergency (most often caused by a workman in the basement smoking a large cigar) was over, so you paced up and down at the entrance to the rear car-park for several hours trying to placate a growing (I think I might mean growling) queue of foot-tapping members of the public. And you couldn’t do sensible things like vital last-minute shopping while everyone was milling about by the War Memorial. It didn’t seem to matter if you went missing because nobody seemed to have the faintest idea what was going on and who was supposed to report that so-and-so was still in the toilet (“Sorry, from the sound of it, they couldn’t be interrupted. Evacuation, though an entirely appropriate word in the circumstances, would have been taken out of context”) or out on a site visit or on holiday or standing in another Department’s specified assembly point. I could go on. And you didn’t get paid. Talk about unsung heroes!

A Cautionary Tale

Once there was a bald publican, and he decided that, as he was beginning to replace previously lost body weight, it was about time he got back on his bike for some regular exercise. One fine morning, he set off to do his 6-mile stint. He had almost reached Poulner Baptist Chapel when there was a deafening explosion from somewhere down between his legs. This violent activity in the nether regions was not something to which he is normally accustomed in these latter days and the sudden eruption of sound rather unnerved him. After a few seconds, he had calmed somewhat and, as he had felt no pain, assumed that his front tyre had ruptured. Upon closer investigation, however, he discovered the cause of all this emotional trauma – the lid of his water bottle had blasted open. The moral of the story? Do not use sparkling water in your water-carrier. Tchoh! Amatuer.

It's Who You Know

Well, would you Adam ‘n Eve it? A couple of weeks ago, during the day that I was sweating through the New Forest with Omally and Loretta, I learnt something which has proved to be to my advantage insofar as my geocaching activities (infrequent though they may be) are concerned. Apparently, the manufacturers of my car deliberately coated all its windows with a special GPS signal-blocking material (or athermic coating) so that I have been unable (for that hitherto unknown reason) to fully enjoy the thrill gained from following a pointing arrow or watching the little triangle moving along a map (as opposed to watching the road through the windscreen). My eTrex Vista would continually lose satellite reception. However, being A Person In The Know, Omally told me what I needed to rectify this and, of course, over the next couple of weeks, I duly forgot what it was. So, yesterday, I had a rare lucid moment and, via the medium of electronical mail, I asked Omally what was the gizmo that he had said I needed. He duly responded with the words: "Well, if I am not very much mistaken, that bad boy would be the RRAD-45 Re-radiating Antenna, available for a mere 37.32 GBP exc. VAT, 43.85 GBP inc. VAT from GPS Warehouse, www.gpsw/thisisthecritteryouneedetc.com." He was right! GPS Warehouse relieved me of the readies (plus 3.95 GBP postage) with little or no pain and they kindly sent me a message this morning saying my purchase had been despatched. I can’t wait to get my hands on its polycarbonate radome enclosure. And, who knows, I may even go out geocaching with it!

An Anagramapoem for LOISINTHEFOREST

THE SINISTER FOOL 

Continues with his plan 

IN FOOLISH STREET, 

While kindred souls log on - 

FOOLISH INTEREST! 

He wishes that one day they all could meet. 

TO THIS FINE LOSER 

Go the spoils of senseless conflict; 

IN TOOTHLESS FIRE 

That burns with empty flame, 

THE LOONIES FIRST, 

And then the sane, achieve his heart’s desire 

SENIOR THIEF, LOST, 

Who steals the love and wanders 

IN THE SOFTER SOIL: 

The dirt that’s left unturned, 

FILTHIEST SOONER, 

Cleanest later, the dream must never spoil. 

ON THIS SOFTER LIE 

Rely, but know the truth of it: 

THE SNORT IF I LOSE, 

The cheer if I win, 

LONER OF THIS SITE 

But owner of the fight that I will choose.

I am not a Number......!

Apparently, I have a Long Penis. Well, it came from the intermanet, so it must be true! Yesterday, I received an e-mail purporting to be from Paypal. It was addressed simply to “2”. It told me that I was to treat the communication as a receipt for the payment of $1,825 which I had just made via my Paypal account to “sexito@yahoo.com” for the undermentioned item. It had the Paypal logo on it and everything and it looked quite plausible. The ’undermentioned item’ was that best-seller, the ever-popular Long Penis / VS 2480 (Item # 75977994). You know the one? And there was a hyperlink to a website with an incredibly long URL. And no, I didn’t! Deep down, I suspected the message’s veracity, but it unnerved me for three reasons: (1) had someone hijacked my Paypal account? (2) would I now have to spend a possible fortune on some Huge Underpants? and (3) would it fit through my letter-box? I must admit I panicked a bit, because I wasn’t really sure what to do next. First, I telephoned Trading Standards and reported it (I should have done that last, really). I then logged on to my Paypal account and changed my password and security questions; while I was doing this, I spotted something that reassured me somewhat: the debit card associated with the account was an old one (I had not used the account for ages) so the money could not have been taken anyway. I then telephoned Paypal where a very nice Irish lady called Anne-Marie told me that what I had done with my account was correct and confirmed that such an amount of money would not have been authorised to be deducted from the account as it was still classed as “unverified”. She also asked me to forward the e-mail to them, which I did. Whilst writing this, I have received a reply thanking me for reporting it, saying that they were investigating the matter fully and confirming that the e-mail had indeed not emanated from them. The people who sent the e-mail obviously hoped to gain information about my Paypal account, and also that, out of the thousands of people the same message was sent to, at least some of them would have a small penis. Ner!

Electric Shopping

Our local Waitrose supermarket recently re-opened after a major refurbishment and I now do my shopping with the aid of electrickery. You have to have a John Lewis Partnership credit card (which a very nice lady let me sign up for when I went in the store a few weeks ago) and you go to a bank of scanners and swipe the card down one of the slots. A screen says “Welcome, Lois!” (marvellous!) and one of the scanner cradles lights up, showing you which one to take. When you pick it up, the display on it says “Welcome, Lois!” (how can it get any better?) The first time you do your electric shopping, they give you 4 jolly good quality bags (2 large, 2 small) into which you bung your provisions after you have scanned each item. How does that nice Mr Waitrose know you’ve scanned everything in your bags? Well, he trusts you. But sometimes, if he’s feeling a bit tetchy and suspicious, he’ll come in unexpectedly and turn your trolley over. He will repack the bags for you, though, and very nicely, I am reliably informed. When you scan certain items, the device will emit a loud danger signal – it frightened me to death the first time it happened – but this simply means the item is subject to some sort of special offer: £1.50 each, buy 2 for £2.75 (ooh, beep! beep!); 3 for the price of 2 (ooh, beep! beep! beep!); I’m sure I can hear Mr Waitrose on his way to the bank, guffawing rather loudly. Well, when you’ve finished cramming stuff into the luvverly green bags, you go to the Quick Check Counter and complete your transaction, all without having to talk to a single soul. You can studiously ignore any of Mr Waitrose’s Little Helpers even if they ask if you need any assistance or wonder if you’re having a nice day. You just stick the John Lewis card in the slot and a message on the screen says “Well done, you’ve finished your shopping, Lois, and Mr Waitrose says thank you and hahahahahahaha!” or something like that; then it tells you to take out that card and insert your payment card (of course, it can be the same one, if you like); it thinks for a little bit, then prints your receipt and gives your card back. Fantastic! You almost want to stay a little bit longer, and you feel as if you’ve been cheated in some way. Which of course you have been, otherwise you wouldn’t have bought 249 items for the price of 250 and loads of food which will be well past its eat by date before you’ve eaten all the other food. Still, it’s marvellous what they can do with electrickery these days.