Thanks for all your lovely concern about my vile spam of doom. I had a reassuring voicemail today from a policeman telling me I now have an incident case number and everything, which makes me feel miles better. Ah, the comforts of bureaucracy. I was listening along, thinking how pleasantly my policeman sounded like Gene Hunt of Life on Mars fame – you know, all rufty-tufty and macho-swaggery but with, I could tell, a heart of gold – and was even beginning to wonder why I’d never married a policeman (I bet they put the rubbish out without being asked and everything) when he added, ‘and you should probably not consider paying the $10,000 at the moment.’ Oh, right. Well, actually, since all my lovely, clever, thoughtful and reassuring blogger friends sussed out the scam in two seconds flat on Google, no, Mr Hunt, I am not going to get my chequebook out yet.
This is particularly true as the chief suspect, who sprang to mind as soon as I read the horrid email, would never actually waste $10,000 on bumping me off. I realised this when I’d calmed down a bit. It just isn’t in character. I can imagine him clonking me over the head with a shovel, for free, but forking out for a hitman? Nope. Would he even clonk me over the head? Well, let’s put it this way, I won’t be strolling down the spade aisle in B & Q with him any time soon.
But, on a lighter note, I’d like to report an outbreak of law-abidingness (if that is a word) in my beloved Dulwich. Child Two was woken, the other night, by a disembodied electronic squeaking. It turned out to be her GoGo pet hamster, Chunks, which she had badgered me to buy, played with for two seconds, then hurled into a cupboard. For some reason, Chunks had woken from his many months of slumber at 2am. She did what any normal child would do and threw him out into the corridor, where he woke up the rest of the household by running up and down in a manic fashion and piping his signature phrase, ‘go, go, go’ in a madly irritating way. This continued for some time, and I was several times on the verge of stirring myself and jumping up and down on the thing, when thank goodness he ran out of steam. In the morning, all was forgotten. The next night, of course, he started up again.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I don’t know any children of the right age to appreciate him – or, that is to say, I don’t know any children with parents I want to alienate completely by donating to them a malfunctioning hamster. I’ve just had a death threat – I really don’t want any more. So Child Two decided to leave Chunks out on the wall outside the house, for any passing little one to take home and love. And there Chunks has stayed, resolutely untaken. Either the good folk of Dulwich are the most honest in the land (quite possibly true, we are a lovely lot) or everyone else already knows that Go Go hamsters are a total menace and shouldn’t be touched with a barge pole. Gene Hunt and I will continue our investigations and let you know in due course.