A message from the departed

Bitching over a dead person's possessions is undignified. By chance, Billy Mann uncovered the perfect solution

The subject had turned to death. He wasn't sure how it happened, but there it was. And before he knew it A_ was telling him about one of the local guys who had recently met his maker, and the rumpus that followed his sad departure. His charred bones had barely cooled ready for the crusher before various junior members of his family were at each other's throats over who gets what. He said I could have his Mexico 70 World Cup stickers book. This was the commemorative pictorial album lovingly stocked and tended by children at the time. That one of Jairzinho was special. What a player!

The conversation continued precariously, and with detailed reminiscences of the 1970 World Cup, until a note of levity could be found. This arrived with a wistful smile and an explanation from A_ of how his own mother scotched the potential for such family strife. She had seen this kind of thing before and was buggered if she was going to see her children bitching over "a few knick-knacks". A_ raised his eyebrows at this point and described a gift he had bought for his mother while on holiday some years ago in Crete. It was a set of small vases or vessels finished with a rather expensive looking lustre glaze. They cost £500. He was quite flush at that time.

A_ began to wonder how much they might be worth today. "I had them valued about 10 years ago and he said one was worth £500". He had three. But the question was itching like mad. What was his mother's magic formula for stopping any arguments over the worldly goods of the deceased? The question continued to knaw, and as it did his thoughts drifted to other examples of this malaise he had known. A_ looked him in the eye as if the answer was too bloody obvious to state. It was. Each time one of her children had brought her a gift, once they had gone she place a small sticker on the item with the name of the gifted, so that when she passed on, whatever you bought her was returned in the spirit of 'What goes around comes around.

Hacked off by hackers

Having your Facebook account hacked is no laughing matter. Well, maybe, concludes Billy Mann

At a fireworks party in a friend's garden I was retelling the story (detailed elsewhere in this blog) in which a young girl, probably as a mischievous bet with friends, decided to tell me, a pitiful looking old codger tottering along the street, that the prime minister, David Cameron, had once inserted his penis into the mouth of a dead pig. 

   One of the group at the fireworks party took this as a signal to pitch in with another seemingly alarming story. She told us that her Facebook page had been taken over recently by people operating out of Beirut. 

    "They posted all kinds of things in Arabic. I had to send messages to everyone saying don't believe everything I was saying because it wasn't me. It was these people in Beirut, talking Arabic."

    "What did they say, these Beirut Facebook chancers?"

    "I don't fucking know. It was all this awful Arabic stuff."

    "How did you know it was awful if it was in Arabic?"

    "It just was."

    "So, you told everyone to ignore all the rubbish you had spoken in recent history because it wasn't you at all, it was these Lebanese Arabs impersonating a middle class, middle aged woman who lives somewhere in the southeast of Britain?"

    "Yes."

    "And what happened next?"

    "I told Facebook and they fixed it."

    "Just like that? Did they tell you what they did or what had happened? Did they contact anyone in authority?"

    "No."

   "Oh."