Maybe it was ...

... the shock of being up and out of bed by 08:00 on Thursday that did it - I dunno - but I didn't last long on Thursday evening, that's for sure.

And I don't know why I was up before the alarm went off but anyway, so I was.

The morning I spent working on my website and in the afternoon I went on the internet and did a huge pile of housekeeping, getting all kinds of stuff ready for my trip to Canada, sending out piles of reminders and the like. But the most important part was actually closing down my electricity account in Brussels. On the phone, as you might expect with it being Belgium, no-one was interested. "Can't be bothered" is the phrase. But eventually I worked out how to do it on the internet and after much steam and heat, it's now concluded. Mind you, there is a delay of 6 weeks in bringing things up to date, so I'm told. Only to be expected, I suppose.

But there is something quite sinister about something else. There's a site on line where you can obtain phone numbers in different countries and have all the calls transferred to another number of your choice. And so I registered a really good Halifax, Nova Scotia, number with them.

And then I had an e-mail ....
Due to some discrepancies on your account 418767, our automated alerting system has placed it on hold.

I am very sorry for any inconvenience this interruption in calls may cause. Customer Service will review your account soon, but you can act now and speed up this process.

For fastest return to active service, please email us a high quality image of both the front and back of the credit card used on this account and your government issued ID. Please also email an high quality image of the government issued ID of the credit card holder if the credit card holder is different than the account holder. 
... and do you know - I suppose they even get people who do this too. Anyway it's an American company and the FBI have a decent cybercrime unit and so I made a report to them.

I was still working in the evening too. I've bought a big, well, enormous chest of drawers in the IKEA sale the other day and now that's up here, built, installed and filled with clothes. No wonder I crashed out.

And so today I was up at 06:48, but that was to go for a gypsy's. No way I was staying up at that time of the morning. 09:30 was much more realistic and after breakfast I was back on the computer.

Later I was outside working on the wiring in the barn - there were a few things I needed to do like install some crocodile clips for charging spare batteries and the like. And then I emptied, cleaned and tidied Caliburn.

After that, I came up here for an early finish and watched a film. And I'm annoyed with myself for when I was in Brussels I threw away a huge pile of videotapes with loads of good stuff on them, on the grounds that they were recorded in Long Play. But I've just discovered that this tv/video player that I bought at this brocante - it plays Long Play tapes. No wonder I'm upset.

But this phone number scam is interesting me. What's it all about?