Tag Archives: telephone scam

Tuesday 26th February 2019 – I REMEMBER HEARING …

… the water heater switch itself off this morning at 06:25 but if anyone thinks that there was a possibility of me leaping sprightly out of bed at that time of the morning, they are totally mistaken.

Instead, I turned over and went back to sleep. 08:25 is much more like it for someone recovering from a viral bronchitis.

Plenty of time though, to go off on a few little voyages.

We started off on a big ship last night and sailing down some channel, and a few fires breaking out here and there, including a large one that, in order to put this one out, I had to sail the ship into the lee of the shore. I was tempted to laugh off these attempts and dismiss them, pretend that they hadn’t happened, but somehow there were too many witnesses and there were too many signs of damage.
A little later on, I was wandering over some kind of park supervising the cleaning. There were papers littering the place, torn ones of the kind that would have been the track of a 1920s paperchase in a Public School. One of the young gardeners had made very little effort to clean them up, and I wondered why. He exlained to me that his blower wasn’t working properly so that there wasn’t very much that he could do. I asked him whether he had reported the matter or taken the machine to be prepared, to which he didn’t respond. So I gave him a little lecture.
Later still, I was in a room in my house. This was somewhere round by the east end of Crewe by where Nerina’s family lived. I had to go off to the south of the town so I wheeled out the old Honda Melody that I had when I first moved to Brussels. I wasn’t sure how much fuel was in it, and whether I ought to go down Earle Street on it to the cheap petrol station or down Macon Way to the petrol station on the roundabout by the station. The latter was a shorter route by a couple of hundred metres but the fuel was dearer, and bearing in mind the fuel consumption of the Melody, how much difference would it make? And then I had the big motor-scooter – a four-stroke foot-first thing that ought to have a run out too. There was also a bike lying on its side on the floor of what I imagined was my bedroom. The wheel was wedged up against the wall so when I moved it, the wheel spun round and the dynamo front light illuminated. And I couldn’t understand why there was sand all over the floor.
Finally … “thank God” – ed … I was at the seaside. We were sitting in a coach that was being used as a waiting room. A discussion broke out amongst a few people about some kind of pink pottery on board a ship and that corresponded with some kind of nocturnal voyage on which I’d departed years ago. I tried to insert it into the conversation but no-one paid any attention. So I ignored the conversation and tried to read the newspaper. But reading a newspaper on a coach even when it was stationary was rather difficult. Eventually I looked up to see that the people to whom I’d been talking had all moved on. Instead, there were other people, talking about Mr Soandso whose car had just been badly damaged by some kids whose sled had gone out of control and collided with the car.

I eventually crawled out of my bed and went off to sort out my medication and some time later, I went back for a pile of porridge for breakfast.

And having done that, I had some errands to run.

Not that I managed to go very far.

There has been some work going on at the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs for a few days now so I was interested to see what was happening.

It looks as if they are replacing the window seals around the dormer windows in the roof by working on one of the mobile platforms that they had out here over the early part of the winter.

On the way down the hill I met the “electrician” from the other day. Busy erecting wooden shuttering around an empty shop front.

Just as I thought. Some electrician.

First stop was at the estate agent’s. I’d had a reminder about a bill that I’d missed and I needed to find out what.

Seems like I have the dustbin tax to pay.

Second stop was at the Mairie. I’ve decided to take the Bull by the Horns and tackle Madame la Maire about my little project.

It’s not easy because she’s busy, but it you don’t try, you don’t get.

I made it past the downstairs and as far as her secretary, and the latter took a pile of notes. We shall see where we go with this, but at least I’ve put my feet on the road.

Final stop was at the bank – firstly to pay the dustbin tax of course, and secondly, to find out why my telephone provider had sent me a reminder for a bill.

It seems that it’s not from the telephone provider at all but, as I suspected, one of these scams that is going around.

I checked at the Telephone company, and they confirmed it.

Back down the hill in town I noticed that they are pushing along with the preparations for Carnaval.

The roundabout that was there the other day has gone, and in its place is a stage. I seem to remember there being some music on there last year, as well as the MC of the whole proceedings.

I hope that it’s going to be a little more lively this year than last.

Round the corner and up the hill, and a temporary road closure.

The rue des Juifs is where they park some of the floats for the carnaval, and so they are clearing the streets of some of the street furniture to give them more room to manoeuvre.

Outside one of the cafés here is an old rowing boat that is used by customers to sit in and admire the evening. They are in the middle of winching it off to I’ve no idea where.

Back up here I carried on with updating the blog but it was soon lunchtime.

And it was such a beautiful afternoon that I made some butties and went to sit outside on the wall.

While I was there I took a few photos with the different lenses of the camera and edited them.

You can see the results down below and these shouls give you some kind of idea of what the camera is – or isn’t – doing.

After lunch, I attacked the Royal Bank of Scotland yet again.

A mere 87 minutes on the telephone and not much further forward either and this is going to be a very long job to persuade them to do what I want to do, and take me a great deal of effort.

I just don’t know why I’m stuck with the useless pile of bankers that I seem to have acquired. I am really totally and absolutely full of dismay about all of this.

Totally fed up, I went off for a walk around the walls. And took another pile of photos on different settings.

Strangely, it seems to work like it should on automatic exposure, and about three stops up on manual exposure – in other words, it needs twice as much light than it says that it’s receiving.

I’ve had a look on the internet to see if there’s any firmware update, but not at all. So I’ve no idea now.

No tea tonight. I had a few biscuits and one of Jenny’s chocolates, followed by a chocolate soya drink. Not that I couldn’t have eaten anything but I’m trying to keep some weigh off now that I’ve got it off.

I don’t suppose that I’ll be able to keep it up but that’s no reason for not trying.

Instead, I went for a walk around the Pointe du Roc in the pleasant evening, and to play with the camera again – this time with the 50mm f1.8 lens.

Of course it’s very difficult to tell what’s happening with that lens because I only every use it in the dark and set it by eye anyway, frame by frame.

But they don’t look like they used to, that’s for sure, especially after all of the work that I’ve been putting in.

Round to the entrance to the harbour to watch the trawlers come in with their catch.

This would have been a beautiful photo in the right conditions with reliable equipment, and I was expecting to have done something much better than this after all of the practice that I’ve been doing.

I’m going to have to upgrade the camera some time soon, which is a shame.

So, dismayed, I’m off to bed. An early night. I’ve decided to start with the alarms tomorrow and see how I’m going to get on.

——— RANGE ONE ——-

beach quay herel granville manche normandy france

——- RANGE TWO ——–

donville les bains city walls granville manche normandy france

crowds beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

trawler coming in to port de granville harbour manche normandy france

trawlers coming in to port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Friday 9th November 2018 – I HAD A SURPRISE …

… lie-in this morning.

Apparently my phone decided to do an upgrade in the middle of the night and it was waiting for me to switch it back on.

It’s twice now that this has happened so I’ll have to think about having some kind of back-up in case it ever becomes a crucial issue, because I can see this one day ending in tears.

So with a late start this morning and a late breakfast I was getting a little behind in my work. And seeing as I’m now getting to some kind of crucial point in my journey in the High Arctic then I’m going to be doing an awful lot of research just now.

And as a result I had only done half of what I intended to do with Day Three of my blog by lunchtime. That’s not going to be back on-line anything like as quickly as I might have hoped.

Lunch was taken indoors today. It looks as if the outdoors eating is over now, especially given the wind.

This afternoon I did some tidying up – not as much as I would have liked of course but I’m finding it difficult right now to keep up with things.

That took me nicely up to my afternoon walk, when I braved the hurricane and set off around the headland.

And despite the wind, I wasn’t the only person out there.

We had some more pool-dippers down on the beach looking for crustaceans and the like in the tidal rock-pools. And whatever they find, they share with their friends because, as I have told you … “and on many occasions too” – ed … you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I showed you a photo of the workmen digging away at the side of the car park at the Pointe du Roc?

It’s quite clear now what they have done, but even though I’m now better-informed, I’m still none-the-wiser because I can’t understand why they have done it.

I suppose that all will be revealed in due course.

With the wind pushing me one step forward and two steps back, I eventually made it back here.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch …
Cold telephone canvasser – “I would like to introduce you to Madame Klara, astrologist …”
Our Hero – “Well she’s not much good, is she?”
CTC – “How do you mean?”
OH – “Well, if she had been any good at foretelling the future, she would have known that I would tell you to !*à# off!”

Once I’d dealt with that, then back on with updating the blog entry.

Not very far though because Rosemary rang up. And we had a good chat for all of, would you believe, one hour and forty minutes. We had a lot to talk about.

Tea was a delicious steamed vegetable mix with vegan sausages and cheese sauce. That really was nice too.

The evening walk was round the walls, but even though it wasn’t too far off high tide, the sea round by the Plat Gousset was in the lee of the old town so that the sea wasn’t all that rough. No waves crashing up over onto the promenade.

But once round by the Place Maurice Marland I got the whole lot again, with rain and plagues of locusts too. If anything, the hurricane is blowing even stronger.

Gribouille had been rather stand-offish this afternoon but this evening Minette was sitting on her windowsill and being quite friendly.

There’s a little bit of a problem too. The dashcam was full so While I was out for a walk I set it to download all of the films onto the storage device. But for some reason or other the dashcam has reset its date so all of the films are out of order.

Not much that I can do about that, but at least I can reset the date. And this proves that the stand-by battery that will power the dashcam when the ignition is switched off works perfectly.

So now I’ll go for an early night again.

And hope that I get up at the right time tomorrow morning.

Friday 17th January 2014 – DURING THE NIGHT …

… I was in Berlin, on the Underground with the much-maligned Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature in these pages half as often as she deserves) and we became separated as a train that she stepped onto pulled away before I could stepon it (Strangely enough, such a situation did actually occur when I was in London once with Liz Ayers).

I made a gesture to PP to get off at the next station and wait for me, and I would follow on the next train.

However we were waiting for hours and hours. It turned out that there had been an accident and the line was blocked, and then they hauled into our station a smashed and damaged Underground train)

We couldn’t continue on the Underground and so we had to take an overground train and then a bus, which dropped us a few hundred yards short of our destination. And the station was so big and confusing from above ground, and there were so many people milling around, and we had taken so long to get there that I was certain that I would never ever find PP again.

As I’ve said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … if only my real life waseven half as exciting as my dreams.

Today, in the glorious sunshine that gave me a world-record January total of 107 excess amps of solar charge, I remeasured all of the uprights (and how I wish that I had noticed that I had my measuring stick on a piece of wood when I measured Upright 3 – GRRRR!) and all 6 are cut, as are the lets into the floor beams above.

This afternoon I cut the joints in the first two and also cut all of the horizontals.

I’ve also fitted a batten across the uprights that support the stairs, screwed about 20 screws into it and I’ve started to hang up the tools there. I’m really in danger of being organised before I’m much older.

I had an interesting ‘phone call too.
Caller – “This is France Telecom Orange, your service provider. We would like to tell you about the massive reductions in telephone charges that occur as of today”
… (lengthy discussions on phone charges) …
Caller – “Now we just need to take your address details to check them with our records”
… (no problem with that – it’s in the telephone directory anyway) …
Caller – “Now if we can check your bank account details”
Our Hero – “Madame – what tree do you think that I fell out of?”
Caller – *click*
I suppose that there are some people who fall for calls like this.

-3

Thursday 28th July 2011 – MAYBE IT WAS …

… the shock of being up and out of bed by 08:00 this morning that did it – I dunno – but I didn’t last long this 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.

It’s no wonder that I crashed out early on.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: telephone scam

Tuesday 26th February 2019 – I REMEMBER HEARING …

Friday 9th November 2018 – I HAD A SURPRISE …

Friday 17th January 2014 – DURING THE NIGHT …

Thursday 28th July 2011 – MAYBE IT WAS …

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