I'm always amazed, although by this stage you'd think I'd know better, at the stupidity, the patheticness and the pointlessness of e-mail Spammers. This morning, for example, I received an e-mail the subject line of which read, and here I quote, "Hi Scragends, I haven't seen you in ages..."

The word "Scragends" should have been a giveaway I guess. I can only assume that most people get similar e-mails that read 'Hi Julie4592' etc. Naturally I opened the e-mail excitedly, in the hopes of rekindling a long lost romance or meeting up with a forgotten relative who was about to kick the bucket and leave me tons and tons of money, only to discover instead that I could now save thousands of $$$ on my mortgage.

One major point here. If I was stupid enough, moronic enough and uninformed enough to consider that moving my mortgage from my current British lender to some unknown, Internet Spammer-hack tied up to the American market, even then I wouldn't consider switching to somebody who had cack-handedly tricked me into opening their crappy e-mail by pretending to be an old school colleague that I'd lost touch with. Seriously, if this was their way of getting my attention then what the hell would they get up to with my money?

I'm now off to check this afternoon's mountain of 'Increase your Penis Size' and 'Lose Weight Now' e-mails. And JoeBloggs397@Hotmail.Spam.Con had better watch out.

p.s. The snow on the Cumbrian Mountains across the bay this afternoon looks extremely Christmassy and inspiring. Unfortunately my nose has now turned blue from standing in the icy cold wind and the snot has frozen in my nostrils. I'm thinking of inventing a nose-mitten and sewing the holes up in the knees of my denims before my legs drop off.