Keeping me safe

Some people would, I suppose, say that I have been lucky to have had my credit cards misused on only two occasions (so far). The first occasion could have been embarrassing but wasn't. It happened one Easter when the Old Bat and I were staying on their farm with my cousin and her husband. We had taken our hosts out for a meal and when I went to pay the bill there was a slight problem. May card was declined with the request that the merchant phone the credit card company. I was distinctly puzzled as I knew full well I was nowhere near my limit on the card. That has been set at a ridiculously high figure, high enough for me to use my card to buy a car - or even two small cars! I never get anywhere near it so I knew the problem that evening could not have anything to do with that. The phone was passed to me and I satisfied the credit card company that I was the person named on the card. The transaction was authorised but I was asked to contact a different department as soon as possible. Back at the farm, I phoned the number I had been given and I was asked about one particular transaction which had, I gathered, taken place on the internet. As the card company suspected, this had nothing to do with me. They didn't tell me what aroused their suspicions but they immediately blocked my card and I received a replacement a few days later.

The second time this happened I spotted four entries that had nothing to do with me when I went online to check something. Three of the entries were debits while the fourth was a refund of one of the debits. I immediately rang the credit card company and the reversed the three debits straight away and blocked any further transactions on that card. (Despite my pointing it out, they never did take back the credit entry so I ended up about £90 better off.)

I am one of those people who uses a credit card for nearly all my purchases and to be without one even for a few days could cause considerable inconvenience. It is because of that that I have a second credit card. I have considered keeping one for purchases over the internet and the other for things like supermarkets and restaurants but somehow I have never got round to putting this into practice. I also have three debit cards, one for each of my two English bank accounts and one for my French account. This does lead to a numerical headache as, of course, each card has a different PIN. Fortunately, each PIN is reasonably easy for me to remember for one reason or another but I have devised a way of keeping a note of each of them in a form of code, a code which is not obviously a code, although I don't keep this list in my wallet with the cards.

This question of PINs and passwords is becoming ever more difficult to resolve. I would find it difficult to even guess at how many different web sites require me to enter a password - banks, building society, credit cards, blogs, on-line stores and so on. We are told we should use a different password for each, but how I could ever remember, say, 24 passwords is open to question. Then I would have to remember which password goes with which web site - and remember to change each password every few months. I do use more than one password and I can generally remember which password goes with which site but I haven't yet done what a friend tells me he does. He uses a different password for each site - but he keeps a spreadsheet detailing all of them. Admittedly, that spreadsheet is also password protected but it still seems a bit dangerous to me.

I heard of another idea recently which I might one day adapt and bring into use. This involves thinking of a password of eight characters rather than the more usual ten then, for each web site, put the first letter of the name in front of the basic password and the second at the back. For example, if the basic password was 12345678 and the web site was Blogger, the full password would become B12345678L. There are, of course, a number of ways that could be adapted and I rather like the idea. The challenge is to remember, while gradually changing over to using this system, which sites have the new password and which the old. Still, that's a challenge easy enough to surmount.

What I have yet to crack is the problem of remembering the answers to some of the security questions. OK, my mother's maiden name is easy enough to remember (and easy enough for half the world to find out) but a "memorable place"? What should I choose? And when, four or five years later, I am asked what it is, will I remember?

Life must have been a lot easier when people were paid in cash every week and they just walked down the road to the parade of shops which sold everything one needed, but somehow I don't think we could go back to that style of living.

That's another one over

I groaned when I opened the curtains yesterday morning, the day of the Lilac Lark. This is a fete which, for the second year, was arranged jointly by the Friends of Withdean Park and Brighton Lions Club. The Lions stepped in last year when the Friends decided they were unable to muster enough volunteers to run the event so now we take over some of the planning and administration, bring along a few extra stalls and share the proceeds. What we Lions have ended with is a community service activity which also raises money for our charity trust fund. But back to yesterday morning. I heard the rain before I actually opened the curtains, hence my groan. Last year we froze (and the Withdean Park lilacs were not yet in bloom), whereas this year we looked like being washed out - and the lilacs are definitely past their best! But by the time I had seen to the dog and made the Old Bat a cup of tea, the rain had stopped. I started again just before I set off with the dog for a walk round the park where I had to pin up notices warning people of possible moving vehicles ('elf and safety being what it is). That was a fairly brief shower and, after that, it was pretty much sunshine all the way. Good crowds who seemed to be enjoying the sun and spending their money. The book stall seemed to have crowds of browsers all afternoon and took over £100.



We don't yet have the final figures but it should have been a good result.

Busy weekend

What with the Lions' book fair yesterday morning and the Lilac Lark taking up most of today, it's a busy weekend for me. The next couple of weeks will also have a fair number of Lions events. I am doing the blind club transport on Tuesday and bingo on Friday, then the following week I have the stroke club transport to do on Tuesday followed by the Housing Society AGM and a Lions business meeting on Wednesday. I suppose if nothing else it will keep me off the street corners!

Scenic Saturday - Lancashire

Number 40 in the series.



Lancashire these days is considerably smaller than it once was, having "lost" Greater Manchester and the area around Liverpool. But what it has retained is the most scenic part of the old county. The eastern border of the county is in the Pennine Hills, an area which is more often associated with Yorkshire even though Lancashire has its share of the moors and dales. It is here that we can find Pendle Hill where England's most famous witches lived in the early 17th century. On the opposite side of the county, on the coast of the Irish Sea, we have Blackpool, probably England's best known seaside holiday resort, while to the north we have part of the beautiful Lake District.

Although there are many country scenes I could choose for this week's picture, what we have is the famous Blackpool illuminations.

Being picky

I don't want to be picky, really I don't, but...

The television news last night and this morning's paper report what amounts to a third version of the event in Abbottabad last weekend when American special forces stormed bin Laden's "fortress" and killed the world's most wanted man. Or so we are led to believe.

I do feel that this could have been handled better, by which I mean the announcements. Now I'm not suggesting that things would have necessarily been different had it been forces from any other country who had done this and the news had therefore been released by a different authority, but surely in these days of instant communication we could have been given the definitive account at the outset? We were told at first that there was a 40-minute fire-fight and the bin Laden cowered behind one of his wives. Then it transpired that he didn't cower, the wife concerned had tried to rush the attacking forces. Now it seems that only one of bin Laden's supporters opened fire.

The differing versions of what happened do tend to lead to questions and doubts. Personally, I have no doubt that bin Laden is dead: if he had been in hiding somewhere else, he would surely have arranged for video footage to be released showing him with a newspaper dated sometime after his "death". But I don't think that will stop others questioning the reliability of the reports.

I have also to admit to some discomfort over what amounts to his execution. We are told that there were guns within easy reach but he was shot before he could grab one. Maybe he could not have been taken alive - and I'm not sorry he is dead - but I have to wonder if his capture and subsequent parading before a court would not have been more disheartening for Al-Qaeda.

As I said at the outset, I don't want to be picky, but I do find myself with, if not doubts, nagging questions.

A puzzle

There are a few other blogs I like to look at on a daily basis. I follow these through my dashboard and the reading list produced on it. There is, however, one thing about this which has me puzzled.

Nearly all the new posts on the blogs forming my reading list are shown there almost as soon as they have been posted - it seems to be pretty much instantaneous. Except for one blog. Why Uncle Skip should be singled out for special treatment by Blogger is what is puzzling me. Take his post yesterday. It is timed at 5.50am. Since that is Californian time and I am in Merrie England it works out eight hours later for me, say 1.50pm on Wednesday 4 May. Yet according to my reading list it was posted just an hour ago - 11.00am Thursday 5 May. But in the meantime I have gone direct into Skip's blog and found that post. Weird.

Don't take it for granted

There was a time when younger son worked at a posh hotel in St Albans, a city the other side of London. One time he came back home by train - I expect his car was out of action as it so often seemed to be. (All the AA patrols new him well, he broke down and called them out so often.) Now, there is a direct train from St Albans to Brighton which passes through London, crossing the Thames on Blackfriars Bridge. The views of the river, both upstream and down, as the train crosses the bridge are very good and YS expressed surprise that he was the only person admiring these views. I pointed out that many of the other travellers had seen the view so many times that there was no interest in it for them and they just took it for granted. I knew the feeling as I crossed that bridge twice a day on my way to and from work.

I hope that I never reach the stage where I take for granted the view from our house. I find it fascinating to see the changes of the seasons - and even of each day. Take, for example, these two pictures. The first was taken yesterday evening at about 9.00 while the second was taken only about five minutes ago.





But it is even more important that I never take the Old Bat for granted. This was brought home to me in a message from Les, Tina's husband. Tina has been a friend of the Old Bat since they were in Guides and is one of a group of five who, over the years, have got together on about a monthly basis. Tina was diagnosed recently as having a brain tumour and the prognosis is, frankly, not very good. Les's words: 'To the men I would say, treasure your wives and do not take the days for granted'.

Amen to that.