Hex on Health & Safety

So, a bright and shiny day on Saturday and a perfect opportunity for Mr P to get out into the fresh air together with his trusty camera and get some material for his portfolio which is required for college.

I had a remit: find him somewhere 'different'; with atmosphere and spirit; standing as solitary as possible; few people about and interesting. I considered the local pub before opening hours, but that wasn't quite what he had in mind.

Picture of Bunbury Graveyard courtesy of Mr Parsnip, Photography for Fun

So, after some thorough research which took me about 0.8 minutes, I found Peckforton Castle which is about 30 minutes drive away and also on the way to St Boniface's Church in a village called Bunbury, which has some rather creepy gravestones and gargoyles.

A wedding was taking place at the castle (indeed, there were two that day, and grand events they looked to be) and I saw a woman walking around with a flower arrangement of lilies, spleenwort, roses and all sorts of paraphenalia for the next hour. She wouldn't put it down. Everywhere she went, she held the arrangement in front of her. I wondered, idly, if she was a gate-crasher and if it might be acting as camouflage, but the thought seemed too ridiculous really considering she was also dressed like a peacock. I suggested to Mr P that he removed his wedding ring (I was wearing gloves) and we pretended to be newly affianced and seeking a wedding venue. Then we might get access to the battlements and turrets for better photo-opportunities. He did so for a grand total of 60 seconds and then I snapped at him to put it back on as there was no point lying. I don't see why he should get chat-up opportunities and I can't...

As it stood, nobody is allowed on the battlements for 'Health & Safety' reasons. 'Health & Safety' in the UK is the biggest single kill-joy known to man. Children are no longer allowed to play 'conkers' at school in the autumn; office chair racing is banned; lunchtime drinking is banned in most places of work; bonfire night, in certain parishes has been banned in case sparks fly from the bonfire and burn a passing kitten or old lady...and the list goes ever on. I believe H & S's Top Secret remit is to turn us into lifeless imbeciles who sit in front of the telly (but not with it on in case we get some form of radiation sickness) and never budge outside our front doors. They really are the biggest bunch of jobsworths the Government has ever seen fit to create and we should all stage an uprising against them.

Latest scandals to come out of the Bureaucracy of Berks led to the patron of a pub being forced to sign a disclaimer when she took her leftovers home for the dog. In the event that the dog got ill, the pub's chef would not be held responsible. And then a nutter who wanted to cut down all the palm trees in Torquay due to the falling palm fronds..."They're like tigers," he was quoted as saying, "Beautiful to look at, but you wouldn't want them wandering the streets. 

Can anybody tell me where this chap got his whacky baccy from? When was the last time you saw a palm frond stalk its prey, leap atop its back, attack the jugular and disembowel it slowly and with great pleasure? No, I can't remember, either, and I really have wracked my brains.

So, chances are, there will be a number of people on November 5 this year having to watch a large screen TV in the freezing cold showing images of a roaring, crackling bonfire. That's what happened in Ilfracombe, North Devon in 2006. 

In the 1970s, when I attended Junior School in our village, we had a concrete playground, 'monkey bars', an open drainage ditch which was fed by the effluent from the large sewerage works a mile away, British Bulldog was positively encouraged (where kids smash through a chain of hands using anything short of a hacksaw) and the autumn conker championships saw the teachers running a book with best odds on Warbie's vinegared and baked prize winners. Last time I visited the school, in passing (as I never did return my Mental Maths book), I noticed that all the concrete had gone (that silly rubbery stuff now), no monkey bars, the stream had run dry due to the closure of the sewerage works with the rill itself cordoned off and there were no conker trees in sight for miles around.

And people complain that all their kids do is sit indoors and watch telly or play video games?

What else is there to do? Every bit of fun is taken away. A makeshift swing only has to be roped up to the branch of a tree and some do-gooder comes along and cuts it down. All children must apply their own sunscreen at school in case a teacher is accused of abuse...and I am so glad #2 is old enough to apply it herself now as in the past, she would definitely have squirted it onto her crackers and eaten it.

A turn-up for the books, though - our local off-license has the Remembrance Day poppies in today. And we have pins again - hurray! Last year, Health & Safety decreed that poppies could not be held on your lapel with a pin - in case someone 'poked their eye out' (has this ever happened to anyone?). So we all went round with poppies stuck in our zips. Which made for some interesting flies on the men at our office...

At least Health & Safety couldn't complain about that...

Hexing House-Keeping

In my wildest dreams, I want to be a Retro-Housewife. It is my ardent desire for my darling husband and two beautiful daughters return from their respective places of work and school to a perfectly coiffured wife/mother, sporting a 1950s frock, nipped in at all the right places and lipstick applied without a single smudge. The house will be gleaming like an advert for Glint, it will NOT smell of my Lambert & Butler smokes (1950s housewives only smoke in the evenings alongside their Martinis, replete with green olives) and the healthy, but sumptuous, dinner will be ready to dish up as I twirl around the kitchen, my dirndl skirt flaring out provocatively, yet efficiently.

God! Reality bites hard, doesn't it?!

For health reasons, I have not been at work for some time and have thus had Mr Muscle, Flash, Zoflora, Cif and Domestos at my disposal on a daily basis. The house has shone but due to aforementioned health reasons (let's call them HR, because we all know a bastard in HR) I have not been quite as diligent as usual. The place is clean, but the lustre is not there. It's tidy, but it's not immaculate. This annoys me immensely, but for the time being, it will just have to do.

However, baking and cooking still must be done.

I am too much of a cheapskate to pay for mass-produced cakes and biscuits and will therefore make my own on a regular basis. It is rare for us not to have at least one flavour of home-made cake in a plastic bag on the kitchen worktop. Indeed, at the moment, we have coffee and walnut, and lemon and coconut, which I smear with raspberry jam. I tend to get free-range eggs via a contact at work, but as I am not in touch with him at the moment, eggs come from Eddie the Grocer, round the back, who leers at me whenever I walk into his shop. He looked a bit glum the other day, so I brought him round samples of my cakes (in the hope that he'd offer to sell them for me). He just looked furtive, slipped them into the stock room, mumbled something about it being a good job he was married and then ducked as his Mrs stomped around the cleaning products aisle.

Despite my best intentions, something ALWAYS goes wrong with my baking. The last two times I have made triple chocolate brownies, they have ended up like breeze blocks and thus landed in the bin. My quiches burst through the ceramic beads which I ladle on to prevent the pasty rising during blind-baking and look like the surface of the moon, and I can regularly undercook the veg. Last time I made fresh bread, instead of using Bread Flour, I reached for the regular Plain. And then one of Mr Parsnip's teeth cracked as he took a bite with his tomato and basil soup (home-made!). That cost quite a lot of money in dentistry a few days later...

Today, as #1 is off to Normandy at 4.30am tomorrow, I decided to make a lovely 'Ta-ta, See You, Hello Peace & Quiet Dinner' to see her off with which involves chicken casserole and something I have been threatening for a while: a baked chocolate and mint cheesecake.

Now, normally, my cheesecakes turn out spectacularly. Even #2, who is averse to anything not wrapped in plastic, enjoys them. I have turned out Baileys, Tia Maria and fresh lemon ones to date. So, off I toddled to the Co-op and spent about £8.00 on the ingredients. Philadelphia Cheese (low-fat); Fair-Trade black chocolate (so I am not exploiting the workers); free-range eggs (so those poor chickens' bums get a break); 'Light' sugar (for obvious reasons); and 50% extra free McVities' Digestive biscuits...cause I am a cheapskate and always look for a bargain. Despite not wearing the 1950s frock, having contemporary music on very loud and being caught boogying dramatically by Mr P wherein he made me jump out of my skin and blush somewhat at the movements I was then making with my hips, I did twirl around, got the dirty dishes done as I whisked the mix, melted the chocolate and made the base...

I had a spring-form tin ready for it all. It was looking fantastic. I even got adventurous and 'marbled' the mix with the melted chocolate, forming a cobweb of patterns. My smile of pride stretched from ear to ear!

Then I picked the tin up to place into the pre-heated oven (160degC) and the f*cking bottom fell out of the tin. I had got the wrong 'bottom'. 

The squawking out of me was both blue and desperate. Thank God #1 walked in at that point and offered to assist as I was covered in raw chocolate/mint cheesecake mix. Mr P, with the doors thus being wide open, heard my expostulations, came in, saw the mess and set to to help me clear up.

#1 told me it was OK to cry. And I almost did. Purely for the former beauty of the thing. 

However, it's OK to cry over spilt milk, but not over spilt cheesecake mix. 

It was salvaged, turned into a gloop and baked. So we now have chocolate/mint 'crunch' for pud tonight.

During the mop-up operation, #2 came in to snitch on her sister who had used some rather nasty profanities on her while my back was turned. And for once, I simply couldn't be fagged intervening. White mess dripped from the worktop, down the cupboard doors and onto the floor which I had scrubbed twice yesterday (twice because the bloody kitten decided to pee on the lino in the evening). I snapped at her to sort it out herself and she stared at the mess.

'Has it gone wrong, then?' she asked.

'No, it's bloody marvellous, isn't it?' I retorted, somewhat obviously sarcastically.

Mr P was on his hands and knees at this point, mopping up the gloop. With reassuring 'shush-shush' noises and an explanation to #2 of how sarcastic angry women can be, she vanished with a bit of a flounce of indignation.

So, the proof of this pudding is certainly going to be in the eating. It looks like a nasty brownish/grey mess and I am still heart-broken at the loss of my cobweb. Mr P is going to have bacon butties at early dawn tomorrow since we have to get up at Stupid O'Clock. I'll probably bloody burn those, too. 

One of these days, I will produce a meal fit for a Queen. I just hope it isn't Queen Anne I.

Hex My Express

There is a newspaper here in the UK called The Daily Express. Most UK newspapers are only fit to be torn into strips and used in the outhouse toilet when the Andrex has run out and the Express is no exception.

It is a pathetic Tory comic designed for the un-thinking, aspiring middle classes who pretend not to enjoy gossip about Z-list celebrities, such as most of those retards found on Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity, Get Me on the Ice With a Strictly Come Off It Salary; it bear-bates the current government (which most of the British population now do, anyway, so that's possibly an unfair criticism); it provides no balance; scare-mongers and purports to be fighting the good fight for us Stiff-Upper-Lip Brits. 

It's tripe.

But. It has a fantastic General Knowledge crossword on Sundays in the supplement and I do succumb most weeks in the hope that one day I will complete it without having to refer to Google for the answers. I mean to say, who knows the answer to this one: *In Greek myths, one of the three Erinyes or Furies, along with Megaera and Tisiphone (6). Responses in the comments box, please. * For the impatient amongst you, the answer is right at the bottom. I am teasing you all...

When picking the fluff from my navel, and watching paint dry has ceased to amuse me, I will flick through the rest of this magazine. And without fail, every Sunday, my blood starts to boil at the article written by one of their 'new' columnists, Mindy Hammond.

Who?

Mindy Hammond...

Do you know what she is famous for? 

She is famous for being the wife of Richard Hammond of Top Gear fame. And how did he become really famous? He did it by almost killing himself in a high-speed crash whilst filming for Top Gear. There was almost a public mourning, he received so much publicity about it. But the fact was, he was doing something which gives him an erection (driving high-powered vehicles) AND pays him bloody good money. OK, he's a nice enough chap, but he hasn't got the irony and wit of Jeremy Clarkson nor the charm and good temper of James May, who co-present the show. He's a stooge, basically. He's the good-looking short-arse who wears the trendy clothes, looks a bit bewildered at times when Clarkson is tearing a strip off him, and provides a bit of eye candy for the women who have to watch the show with their blokes.

So, about three months ago, there was an article written about her - how brave she had been through Richard's crash; how her beauty was 'luminous'; photos of her walking in her bare feet across an emerald green pasture, leading her white charger; how stoic she had been during the photo shoot in the bitter cold weather, never losing her smile (it was the thought of that fat pay-cheque which kept her going) and then, the stupid rag announced that it was proud to present their new columnist, Mindy Bloody Hammond.

She has the page 5 spot, straight after the contents and masthead. Pole position, as Richard would probably say. And she writes complete and utter Mills and Boone, schmaltzy, cheesey, gut-wrenchingly awful drivel. And it drives me berserk.

This week, she recounted us poor blithering idiots with a tale of getting on Richard's brand new Harley for a romantic get-away for two, sans kids. But they were constantly beseiged by set-backs, such as no petrol in the tank (*gasp, horror!*), getting lost in the dark (but Mindy did her Girl Guide thang and navigated them not only by reading her map in the dark, but fumbling for her mobile phone and speaking to the Hotel Staff.) *swoon* My Heroine. I'd never have thought of doing that. To add insult to injury, the heavens had opened and she now had rainwater in her biking boots. That must have been bloody awful for her.

Richard became 'gloomy'. He thought he would have to have room service rather than patronise the restaurant (never lose a photo opportunity, though, Rich?). But Mindy came to the rescue! She stripped off her leathers, and there underneath the biker gear was her LBD. She fluffed up her hair, wiped her smeared mascara and "Wow," said Richard (I always thought 'Wow' would have an exclamation mark after it, but obviously not in Mindy's world). "How did you do that? You look like a girl and everything." (Eloquent, eh?)

"You'd be amazed what you can get into a handbag," I smiled. [Insert: *smugly*]

I get 40 fags, my mobile, my cash card, shut-up grub for the kids, 5 lighters, 4 lipsticks, keys and my purse into my handbag, when I can be fagged carrying it, which is almost never - back-pockets do me fine. I don't tend to cart Gucci dresses around with me...

Another thing which drives me bananas is her name. She was Christened Amanda. She is in her mid-40s. What middle-aged woman walks round calling herself, Mindy? MINDY! I ask you. Mandy I can cope with. Mandy is a normal derivative of Amanda. But Mindy?? Oh, come on. 

My real name, which most of you have been waiting for with bated breath is...NOT AGNES...Nope. And I have had a few cutesy-piekin nicknames in the past from soppy blokes, all of whom have been given short-thrift the minute they bastardise my name. Ok...*deep sigh*...it's really Alison. So I was called Allsy-poo, Ali-babes, Allsy-Wallsy. 

No. Just stop! Right there...

It is simple: A-L-I-S-O-N. My middle name is Ann. I can cope with Annie, too, from people very close to me.

Just because she is short, petite and has 'Titian hair and an aura of goodness' does not mean she can toy with our affections and worm her way into our hearts with her silly, coy name. She can't even write well. Her tales are bland, boring, 2-dimensional and so 'ordinary' (apart from the fact that she lives in a dirty big castle) that I get angry. I get angry for us struggling bloggers who'd love to be published on our merits - not because we happen to have shagged somebody famous and got their rings on our fingers.

How many of us have to face traumas through our lives? Fatalities, deaths, soul-destroying illnesses, terrible set-backs which can leave us depleted? Do we get paid for writing about it? Do we all WANT to write about it? (and you can call me a hypocrite for writing Annie's Rexia, but it's not being done for commercial value!).

And I wouldn't mind if she was a decent writer and had something of intelligence to say. Then I wouldn't be on my self-righteous rant...

Although not taken last night (my face-pack was brown then), Mr P tells me this is very reminiscent of my scowl as I expostulated about Mindy Bloody Hammond. My own 'luminous beauty' came after the pack was washed off...

PS. The answer to the crossword question is Alecto, the Goddess of Constant Anger. That pretty much sums me up, eh?!

A Little Toilet Humour for the Day

So, a day which started off with drizzle, turned to rain, then a deluge of such intensity that I have just seen every animal on God's damp planet strolling in pairs towards an old gentleman with a long beard who seems to be in a hurry to get his Ark cruise underway.

Conversation in every local shop went like this:

-Turned bitter, hasn't it?

-Brrr. I know. Had to stick the heating on last night it was that cold.

-I didn't. I wore two jumpers, a T-shirt, a fleece, jacket, thermals, jeans, three pairs of socks...*pause while they think of something else to have worn*...AND my wellies.

-Just never seems to have stopped raining. All it did all summer was rain. Now autumn's upon us and it's just bloody raining. All the time.

-Turned bitter, though, hasn't it?

-Brr. I know...and ad infinitum...

Mr Parsnip decided he was going to be My Hero and do all the ironing - of which there appeared to be an awful lot. I found this an extremely generous gesture until I really got thinking about the motives behind it. Mr Parsnip likes to watch trashy horror movies - anything with a Zombie in it is right up his street. He also knows that an evening's viewing of these is just not going to happen in this house. Not unless I was suddenly hospitalised for a mysterious tropical illness or Jonny Depp called to see if I wanted a pie and a pint down at The Gate. But when he irons (and I will generally prostrate myself to anyone who offers to do this chore for me) I scurry out of the way sharpish and he is thus left to put on any DVD he wants.

I caught a snippet of one such film yesterday as I was walking through the lounge to get to the kitchen. At this particular juncture, the two main characters appeared to be learning how to conjugate the verb, 'To f*ck'. I am sure any old English masters would have been impressed by their enthusiasm, if not the actual conjugation. There were also too many split infinitives involved...

Thus ensued a philisophical debate about why on earth these characters were trying to kill Zombies when Zombies are already dead. I argued back and forth that it was impossible to kill something which is already dead, ergo, Zombie Movies are utter codswallop. Mr P looked at me enigmatically, raised an eyebrow and said, Ah, therein lies the question. Which basically means he hasn't got a clue, either.

When it was time for bed, we decided to take our books upstairs together with a hot drink (and the cigs...yes, disgusting to smoke in bed, I know, but I pay the bills on this house, not you) and have a read. Mr P enjoys Fantasy Fiction books. You know the ones I mean? They involve characters called Skilgarrion The Impaler; Garth The Destroyer; Horace The Pencil Sharpener...that type of stuff.

I prefer autobiographies, travelogues; anything factual, really - but my preference is for humorous anecdotal tales. So, I picked up Bill Bryson's The Thunderbolt Kid. I got up to chapter 4 and I don't think I have cried laughing at a book as much as this. At certain parts, I wasn't sure if I was going to make the toilet on time. I giggled, guffawed, chuckled and howled at the prose. I don't recommend it, though...why should he get a plug when he's already loaded? (Note to Mr Bryson: If you ever stumble over this blog, I think you are marvellous and would love to be your highly-paid researcher. The above was only a joke - see, I have even put a photo on...I love you, really, I do xxx)

In one of the chapters, he tells the reader of a kid called Lumpy Kowalski - so-called because he always had a lump of poo in his pants. I think every junior school child knows a Lumpy Kowalski, don't they? I certainly did. His name was Stuart. He was a slobbery, loving child, goofy and fussed over by his mother who was a bit ineffectual and probably never raised her voice in her life. Almost every day, Stuart would 'have an accident' and until one of us alerted the teacher to the God-awful pong, Stuart would sit there on his own personal cushion of warmth and stench, oblivious to the gipping noises and fainting children surrounding him.

Miss? Stuart's pooed his pants again.

*a weary sigh*

Come on Stuart, let's get you a new pair of pants.

And Stuart would return ten minutes later wearing a pair of Lost Property shorts.

As soon as his mother saw him at the school gate, coming ambling towards her wearing pants designed for a boy way much bigger than he, she would also sigh wearily and say: Ooohhh, Stewdle, Not Again.

'Stewdle' would just grin amiably and rattle off about his day of needlework, maths, English and all the other dull subjects to which 1970s teachers subjected us poor children.

Another boy at our Junior School (and he was a bit tough, so I shall not be giving out his real name here) was nicknamed 'Warby'. Warby stank, no matter what time of day. He was grimy from the moment he got to school and got worse as the day wore on. He had badly crossed-eyes, chipped teeth and knuckles which looked like they were made of India rubber, they were that calloused. The stains on his clothes were quite remarkable. In fact, I am wondering if he was attemping a Map of the World, they were that interesting. They were certainly reminiscent in their size, shape and different colours, to the fascinating countries on my globe at home.

One fateful day, and again, it was raining, therefore 'Wet Playtime' wherein the teachers locked themselves into the Staff Room with their coffee, tea, Digestives and a bottle of Gordon's Gin and left around sixty under-11s to their own devices. I was sat at my desk drawing, as usual and Warby sat on my desk lid. I politely asked him to move (I was a very polite child, and also, it didn't pay to anger Warby). Surprisingly he did, after shoving a grimy finger into my sketch and demanding to know 'Warrizit?' 

A thermo-nuclear reactor for a supersonic warhead, I responded.

Borin'...and thus he left...

And left me with a smear across my desk.

I am a wimp. I don't like nasty smears and smells, and will always tentatively sniff the dishcloth before each use, just in case it has gone a bit 'foisty'. I don't like mucky toilets; I don't like sticky splashes...and I certainly don't like smears on MY desk.

I ran to the toilet, got a handful of wet paper towels and the ubiquitous Buttermilk soap which was found in every cheap school toilet in the 70s (and probably still is now) and scrubbed at my desk until it gleamed. I dried it off, and then proceeded to sniff it vigorously. I continued to sniff it all afternoon until Mrs Brown squawked at me to Stop That At Once Or You'll Get A Smack (that was how she also dealt with the OCD kids). I was utterly mortified. I thought I might get Warby's Disease (which is what we secretly said behind his back if he touched you or any of your possessions). And Warby's Disease meant that you got crossed-eyes, black fingernails and smelt for the rest of your life. Not nice.

An expression from #1 and #2s junior school days has also entered this household: The Alvanley Poo. God help you if you leave an Alvanley Poo in the toilet here. This entered the Mildew-Parsnip vocabulary via #2 who was revolted by the Alvanley Primary infant school children who simply 'forgot' to flush the toilet after going for a poo. The poo thus squats in the bottom of the pan, 'frays' and leaves a pool of brown water surrounding it. This is an Alvanley Poo. It can happen frequently in our house as the water pressure (despite all the bloody rain) isn't that marvellous and there can be a few escapees. #2 is unforgiving. She doesn't give a damn about water pressures, United Utilities, second flushes, high-fibre diets. She DOES NOT want to sit atop An Alvanley Poo. And therefore, the perpetrator (and a first-class interrogation will take place) is discovered and frog-marched to the toilet to Get Rid Of It. Invariably, she is hopping from one foot to the next by this stage, desperate to go, but refusing to use the downstairs, outhouse loo, which is always spotlessly clean, but there are some rather large spiders who like to over-winter in there and I do, therefore, empathise with her on that score.

So, if you were to ever visit our house for a nice piece of home-made cake and a large glass of whiskey, and get caught short, please, please, ensure that the toilet is empty before you leave. And always change the toilet roll when it has finished. Thank you.

Herein 'lies' Lady Gregson

Right, so this is my second post of the day, and more in keeping with HexMyEx...I hope!

I am sure that many of you receive Spam emails from allegedly extremely rich people offering to let you have a share of their vast wealth as long as you reply to their personal email address providing them with all your financial information, full address, date of birth and inside leg measurement. Anybody who does this has to have a vacuum located between their ears, in my personal opinion.

Generally, I just hit delete on these and think no more about them, but the following (together with my 'comments') really tickled me and I saved it for future reference. Please note, the appalling grammar and spellings belong to Lady Gregson - I have left them in intentionally!

Here writes Lady Dianne Gregson, suffering from cancerous ailment (sounds like she has started writing her epitaph already). I am marriedto Sir Richard Gregson an Englishman who is dead (who, not unsurprisingly, has ever actually been alive, according to my Google research! (this also sounds scarily like she has kept him sealed in a vault somewhere in her house)). When my late husband was alivehe deposited the sum of 20 Million Great Britain (Britain??) Pounds Sterling (I would herein state that this is one of the most fantastic uses of tautology I have ever come across! The only thing missing is the £ sign...) which werederived from his vast estates and investment in capital market with his bankhere in UK.Recently, my Doctor told me that I have limited days to live due to thecancerous problems I am suffering from (I would thus assume that, since I have held onto this mail for a while, she has now snuffed it. RIP).

I have decided to donate this fund toyou (She's trusting, isn't she? How does she know I won't do a runner and buy myself a Mini Cooper S?) and want you to use this gift which comes from my husbands effort to fundthe upkeep of widows, widowers, orphans,destitute, the down-trodden, physicallychallenged children,barren-women (Well, I think I'd just hook the orphans up with the barren women and kill two birds with one stone...) and persons who prove to be genuinelyhandicapped financially (I definitely fit this description.)

I took this decision because I do not have any child (Hmmm. I am also getting the impression she didn't have much of an education, either...Do you think she'd like an orphan?) and my husband relativesare bourgeois and very wealthy persons.I do not want my husband's hard earnedmoney (er...hang on, she's just told me that it was derived from his 'vast estates' and capital investment - I wouldn't reckon there's much hard work going on there would you? Ask the National Trust to look after the estates and get your stockbroker to invest wisely. Then he can clear orf to his Club and play billiards...I wouldn't mind working as hard as him, either...) to be misused or invested into ill perceived ventures hence the reasonfor taking this bold decision.

As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the Bank inUK (The Bank is a very famous one you know. Almost as famous as The Agnes Mildew Banking Corporation). I will also issue you a Letter of Authority that will empower you as theoriginal beneficiary of this fund (Ooh, ooh, ooh! I am getting excited now! I am to be the original beneficiary! Strange, though that my email address wasn't in the 'To' line of the mail...just 'undisclosed recipients'. Do you think she is having me on? Cheating old witch!).

My happiness is that I lived a life worthyof emulation. Please assure me that you will act just as I have statedherein.Hope to hear from you soon (She's starting to sound a bit more chipper now, isn't she? I almost expected a 'Cheerio!' then!).You can contact me through my personal email address: dgregson02@googlemail.comMadam Dianne Gregson (She told me she was Lady Dianne Gregson! She's either fibbing or the cancer has made her lose her marbles...)

So, am I a hard-hearted cynic and this lady desperately needs my help, or am I sharper than all the knives in the cutlery drawer? I don't even think that question needs dignifying with an answer!

Sometimes Spam can be SO much fun! At least it makes a change from offering to extend my penis...