Post 105: 24th February

It really has been a struggle with bureaucracy recently! To add to all my other irritations( TV licence and printer )I had a mysterious phone call last week. A company selling car parts in Northampton left a message on my answer phone asking me to ring them back. As they knew my name and phone number I was immediately suspicious and called them. The gentleman I spoke to told me that it was to do with an order placed online. Apparently someone had used my name and credit card details but had asked for the items to be despatched to Bristol. When they investigated and the addresses didn’t tally they wanted to check that I had placed the order. I was grateful they had picked up on this fraudulent deal. I cancelled the credit card immediately, and spent several hours transferring some regular credit card payments to a different card.
The Northampton company refunded my money and the fraud team said they would investigate further. When I received my bill there were two transactions on the old card I hadn’t made. One was from a cinema in Bristol; not difficult to connect that one with the fraud; the other was another online order I hadn’t made.
The credit card company will refund me all the money. They think the card was ‘cloned’ in some way. Scary stuff!
As some of you know I have been working on writing my memoirs and linking it to my ongoing diary of my battle with Cancer. Well it is finally completed now. As Rachel said, there is no ‘outcome’ to wait for, because none of us knows how long we really have. I was going to wait until I had the operation but decided it would be a better idea to finish the book at this point. Now is as good a time as any.
I have decided to ‘self publish’. To support the ‘print on demand’ scheme, Chris and I are compiling a list of subscribers. If you think you will want a copy (exact price will follow, but it will be a hardback and will probably cost around £7-£11) then please let me know by email and I will add your name to the list to be printed in the book. It isn’t compulsory!