Small World

Helen invited me to lunch today prior to playing bridge - a 'light' lunch as usual, the table positively heaving with food -  and she'd invited another friend to join us. As we were introduced and shook hands we both looked at each other and said "I know you!". But could we work out where we'd met before? We went through everything we could have in common, but nada. And so we set upon the food, the two of them telling me about scams that had emptied their bank accounts of thousands that same week. The friend, Barbara, had had one of those phone calls supposedly from the bank's fraud squad, telling her she had been hit by hackers and asking her to call them back on the number on her statement so she would know it was a genuine call. When she did, they identified themselves as the fraud squad, but in reality when she put the phone down they had stayed on the line and she had just got straight through to them again. She lost over £6000. Helen's was a different scam, with someone intercepting an online purchase and clearing out her account, again of over £6000 which was on the way to her savings account. They were both devastated, even though they would get their money back. They felt violated, idiotic. What horrible people there are out there.

We got onto other stuff, as you do, and eventually as usual I had to tell Helen that we had to be out of the house in 10 minutes or we'd be late for bridge. She knows I'm never turning up late again and having all the other members glare at us as they have to rearrange the whole system. So we gathered ourselves up and prepared to go when Barbara suddenly said to me "Are you an usher at Snape?" That was it! We hadn't actually manned the same door but we'd been on duty together. What a relief. And so she said "Did you hear about the Romanians?" No, I told her. What about them? A troupe of Romanian musicians had been hired for the second year running to perform at the Snape Proms, despite having stripped the dressing rooms before they left last year! They took towels, soap, irons, kettles, mugs, dressing gowns, mirrors - you name it, they took it. And they did the same again this year! And to make matters worse, they had a row on stage in front of hundreds of concert-goers! It wouldn't happen at the Albert Hall.