Wahey – Easter is upon us and aside from being the second mini consumer-fest of the year (after Valentines day), it’s the first proper holiday of the year too. I’ll be making the trek up to Scotland to spend some time with family and friends and hopefully enjoy some mild weather.
I have a sneaky suspicion that I wont see any of the latter, but it cant hurt to hope!
Have a good one, where ever you are :o)
“Does this go to Glasgow?” I asked. “Near a station?”
I had stressed the second part like a typical briton on a foreign holiday, trying to make a local understand them by talking louder. It wasn’t really necessary in the event, as the driver had replied in such a thick Glasweigan accent that Rab C Nesbit himself would have struggled to pick it up.
“Aye – goestae Central – Glasgae Central!” He spat, stressing the last part in case I was a foreigner.
“Thanks – I’ll just have a single then.”
“Tae whair?”
I blinked once to see if he was taking the smeg, but he wasn’t so I told him “Glasgae Centrul” in the best scottish accent I could muster. It came out like a bad impression of the driver.
Why is that? I wish I could understand why my scottish accent is crap whenever I’m trying to put on a scottish accent. I know I spent three years in Cornwall, but that was fourteen years ago now and I’m well aware that I have a scottish accent of sorts.
Anyway, I sit on this bus after quite a surreal adventure involving crossing a field in what appeared to be the middle on nowhere, but turned out to be right beside a dual carriageway. I had turned up at the bus stop, via the field, clutching a recently burned copy of Windows 98 with absolutely no idea where I was or in which part of Glasgow.
An hour and a half before I had struck up a conversation with a stranger in a computer shop in the city. I had told him that my developers copy of Windows 98 had expired and he offered to drive me to his place and give me a copy, which was nice.
I didn’t realise at the time that the 30 minute drive was a one way trip and that Mr Helpful would bid me goodbye with a brief wave in the direction of civilisation and one of those head-tilt-wink things that scottish people do when they say “Seeyie”
Last night I checked out my bank statement online. On Friday of last week a ?399 transaction was made in payment to BT Cellnet/Internet.
My mobile is a vodafone one, and although my internet service is provided by BT it costs ?385 a month less than the amount withdrawn. So I called BT this morning, then BT internet – both of whom denied taking the money from my account. So I called my bank and asked them to investigate the transaction.
At just after four pm they called me back and explained that my details had been used to purchase a couple of mobile phones from a BT Cellnet shop in Leeds.
I have never been to Leeds and I was freaked at this point.
Turns out that something in my rubbish was used – like a bill or a statement that has accidentally been thrown out. The fraudster called the shop and arranged payment over the phone, then turned up with the bill on them to prove their identity when they collected the purchase.
Pick holes in this plot if you like, but that’s the way my bank pieced it together.
Aside from being quite a cool crime, it’s something that could have gone undetected for almost a month if I did not have internet banking set up.
So, just to let you know, this is obviously a new-ish type of crime… get shredding your paper rubbish.