ENGLISH MUM: never knowingly undercatered

Obviously sharing the Disreputable One’s genes, as I do (him being my Dad and all, natch) I have today composed a letter to my email provider asking where the hell their promised ’spam filter’ is, as it certainly hasn’t been busy anywhere near my email recently. The Disreputable One is a complainy-letter-writer extraordinaire and has been known to wangle all manner of freebies just by writing to complain in the most fervent and disgruntled way possible. Hubby believes that I have inherited the ‘complainy letter writing gene’ and I have to admit, I’ve found I’m rather good at it too.

Anyhoo, digressing again. The problem is that I am currently being inundated by the most outrageous amount of crappy spam email imaginable. Since being back online I have received the following:

1. A heartfelt plea from the son of the former rebel leader of Sudan who has 27 million dollars to invest and needs me (ME! Who’d have thought it) to handle his projects as he doesn’t trust middle men. In fact, he needs me so much he’s tracked me down at two separate email addresses.

2. Various notices to inform me that I have won the ‘British Lottery’ not once, not even twice but six times! What are the odds eh?

3. A sweet little message from a lovely Thai lady who is apparently very lonely and wishes to chat to me at her website. Uh huh.

4. Various offers of prescription drugs, including Viagra. Hmm, better get my order in fast.

I mean, leave me the f*** alone, why don’t you. Living in the midst of cows, midges and lots of grass means that impending emails are quite an exciting prospect. Nothing beats logging on and finding a little cluster of news (olds in the case of the Disreputable One as he tells me everything several times), gossip and general chit chat from friends and rellies. It’s so demoralising when half of them turn out to be this load of old cobblers. Honestly, who are these people that sit at home dreaming up these emails to send to people? And do they actually think we’re stupid enough to believe them?

Frankly, I can’t be arsed to help the Sudanese chap spend his dosh, I’m having a hard enough time choosing light fittings, and as for the ‘British Lottery’, dahling nobody says British any more, we’ve gone all patriotic and say English and Welsh and stuff instead. Plus, even more frankly, I’ve got a feeling the real National Lottery might actually bother to spell-check their emails before they send them out. I’m not quite lonely enough to need to chat to the poor little Thai girl (or any of the veritable smorgasbord of other nationalities I’ve received personal invitations from) and being only 36.95 plus postage and packing (thank you Bea) I don’t think I’m in Viagra territory quite yet. Now if the son of the former rebel leader needed help drinking his red wine collection, or the nice Thai lady wanted to offload some vaguely useful kitchen gadgets it might be a different matter, but until that time comes I’d rather my email service did what it said on the tin and bloody shift them out of my in-box. Dear God, I’m turning into my father.

Yours, disgustedly

Cantankerous of Cavan