Stuart Wolfendale

The public holiday on Thursday brought with it great bounty. It was all delivered by email of course, dropping, ping- pong into my box, as the gentle rain from cyberspace.

 

I am not talking just about money, which is why I disregard the mere bagatelle of 150,000 Euros I was told I had won in an unspecified ‘International Lottery Fund’. It’s amazing how you can be involved in these things without knowing it; rather like Facebook.

 

 I also do not count the mail from FBI Director Robert Mueller informing me, in train long sentences running on  lines of ungrammatical capital letters, that he was keeping US$10.5  million, which were somehow my due,  until I could prove, to my last PIN, code that  I wasn’t a terrorist. I have had letters like that from Robert before. I wish he would understand that the last outfit I am going to deal with in collecting money that is not mine is the FBI. I don’t know what he does with it. He can give it to General Motors if he likes.

 

The real promise came instead from two generous, unsung women from unlikely and quite opposite points on the planet. The first one announced herself as ‘Wolfers69′, which was clever of her and had my attention away from the cornflakes in an instant.

 

She tells me her name is Olga, that she is from Perm and wishes to visit my country as a tourist. Now if you are from Perm, described as the gateway to Siberia and where the expression ‘heavy industry’ is a lightweight understatement, you will probably be content to visit anywhere else in any capacity. Strictly speaking, this request should leave Olga straining her neck on the Peak Tram or seeking out double X panties in Stanley Market but her view of tourism is more residential, in its way.

 

She says to me that she is looking to meet ‘a playful and open minded stud for a casual sexbuddy type situation’. Well, with a name like that she was bound to have legs up to her armpits and no interest in Kolwoon street markets. And, gosh, well, I have been known to play a mean round of darts and not give a damn if the dessert comes before the cheese. I don’t know what friends of mine have been saying  about me up in Perm but more than once I have been told that I can go on and on and I am the sort of fellow that can have heaps of fun and still be happy to slip back home alone around ten.

 

I have been around the world twice so to speak, so I do realize that the casual type situation will probably involve more than one buddy. I am just wondering if that would include a large Serge out of Macau over-ready to break fingers and necks over Olga’s time and money.

 

Still, I am an imaginative sort of chap and see myself  through these risks carrying a clear mental picture of  Bond girl Olga Kurylenko –yet not  mezzo soprano Olga Borodina , though I am sure she could be quite  a playful buddy in some roles  Olgas , like Ms Borodina , can cover quite a range , so I must be prepared.

 

In either form, I imagine she will be a high maintenance item and this was worrying me until cyber heaven again, unable to stop itself for me that morning, hit the Netvigator bucket with another loud ping and there was Mrs. Azzam Nashida.

 

Addressing me as My Beloved One , which is really terribly nice of  her and because she does not know my name from the random selection of my address,  Mrs. Nashida told me her moving story. Let me summarise it for you and see if it does not pull at your hearts strings or tug a little at the mooring ropes of belief.

 

She is a deaf 51-year-old woman with advanced lung cancer spreading to her brain who has lost the power of speech and has two months to live. An orphan, widowed after her husband was killed in a car crash and childless after twenty years of marriage, she nonetheless managed to sit up in her hospital bed in Botswana, mark you, with a lap top and rattle out a request to me to become the beneficiary of her US$6.5 million in liquid assets.

 

Botswana must be a rum sort of place because Mrs. Nashida went and deposited her money in a ‘Security Company’ which has written to tell her that it is fed up of looking after it. If she doesn’t go and get it or send someone for it they will confiscate it she says. This sort of company, I would like shares in.

 

Not having confidential couriers or lawyers with power of attorney in Botswana, she wants give this Beloved One a letter of authority and put me in touch with the grumpy Security Company. Will that leave me home and clear with six and a half million? Not if I am beloved , it won’t.

 

Mrs Nashida wants me to invest it for her in charities of my choice, her own orphanage and found more orphanages and widows. I wonder if Olga has been widowed at some point. That would be helpful. Mrs. Nashida says that doing this will let her ‘rest in peace because my time is soon up.’

 

She emphasizes that she is a good Muslim. It is a pity that she has not seen my surname because even in its Dutch or German versions, it does not hold much promise of Islam. Nevertheless I will do my best which will involve diverting the smallest portion of the money to help Olga  in a casual, buddystud sort of way-  just for the time being - whilst at the same time , energetically founding widows.

 

Mrs. Nashida has not got much to get going with. I imagine she or the miserable Company will need quite a few banking details, so I had better let her have them. With that moving smoothly along, I imagine Olga will need my personal details including credit card numbers to sponsor that visa she will certainly have to apply for.

 

I had better get a move on because it will be a busy week. Yet more enquiries are coming in involving the Bank of Nigeria and exiled officials who all seem to know of me and, would you believe, I have just received a mail from something called the Netvigator Accounts Unit which wants all my email passwords or they will shut down my account as ‘inactive’.

 

Those people have brought me so much good news this week, I had better return their kindness.

Posted in All, Peculiars, Television and wireless