My adorable regulars will know that I recently got a nasty bit of junk mail – the spam of doom. Probably most people would have deleted this without blinking. With my history, I proved effortlessly that a grown woman can go from nought to jelly in 0.000001 seconds. I freaked.
Once I’d stopped gibbering, lots of lovely people pointed out that it was just a new spam scam. But by that stage, I’d already reported it to the police.
I felt a bit shame-faced when I got a message on my machine from the local police station expressing concern, telling me it was probably a scam, and suggesting I shouldn’t stuff the unmarked fivers into an attache case any time soon (do attache cases still exist? It would probably be a laptop bag now, maybe even one of those really nice stripy ones from Paperchase, and I probably wouldn’t be able to bring myself to hand it over when the crucial moment came). The policeman didn’t leave a number, or I would have rung back and said thanks, but I’d now had a long lie-down (and a vat of medicinal Chardonnay, and a lot of lovely support on my blog) and was feeling fine about it all.
I thought this would be the end of the matter, but then I got a letter. ‘We are very sorry that you have become a victim of crime,’ it said. ‘We have enclosed a leaflet, ‘Victims of Crime – support and advice.” There was no leaflet in the envelope, but there was another letter, beginning, ‘Dear Victim of Crime …due to a supply problem we are unable to enclose the leaflet at this time. Contact the Victim Focus desk and we will send one when we receive further supplies.’
Oh dear. I was now feeling very guilty about not being enough of a proper victim. I’d had a shock, but I’d calmed down and a lot of people had been nice to me. ‘Dear Hysterical Woman,’ might have been closer to the truth, though I don’t suppose they would have a big uptake on their Hysterical Woman leaflet (possible suggestions for dealing with us could include: ‘throw cold water over the hysteric. If this doesn’t work, slap her around the face. Should all else fail, administer chocolate and position the hysteric in front of a TV costume drama’).
I’d just about got my head around it all again when the phone rang. It was another kind PC, checking I was ok and making sure I hadn’t been bumped off. How kind. I explained the whole thing was just a nasty case of spamming and that if you googled ‘hitman’ my exact same letter would pop up (thanks so much to everyone who told me this). At the end of our chat, the PC said he was glad I was ok and said, ‘God bless you.’
Awww. Thank you, police! I’ll try and get a grip now.