All in a day…
The Queen’s phone number reportedly sold by one of Her loyal Royal protection officers. The Prime Minister of the day’s phone, family medical records and bank account allegedly raided. Well, that’s only the start.
Scratch the news surface, and what do we find? Italy’s economy under siege as a Greek debt default moves from “if” to “when”. Massive implications for the entire global economy, not least ours. UK names vastly exposed mainly on reinsurance.
Scratch further and I’m looking for packaging to wrap a mobile phone in for the post. Not one I have hacked but one I found in the deepest West Berkshire countryside. Rare to be walking along an earth track glimpsing bind weed, rough stones, and assorted wild flowers beneath trees, and to spot a basic, somewhat dirty, mobile phone lying there.
The thump of a rave in a cornfield high above the house in which we had been staying had alerted us overnight to what is now a summer phenomenon – a kind of flash concert, illegal, involving hundreds, maybe a couple of thousand – transported in old bangers from all over the UK and beyond. Ramshackled tents, old blankets, boots, and a band – plenty of cider too.
The phone must have been dropped by a meandering raver. I picked it up – and being of an inquisitive mind, I fiddled until numbers and names came up on the grubby screen. The top one, “cuddly cakes”, I divined, was either a confectioner or a lover. I had a flash of Murdochery.. was I hacking? I think not. But I called. A tired young voice answered – yes, it was her partner’s phone but she was running out of credit – she would text me. The rave seemed to have left her not only tired but penniless.
She found the pennies to call back. I imagined her, and him, in the corn field. But she wasn’t, she was far away in Stratford-upon-Avon. No picking the thing up then. So I offered to post.
I found loo paper to wrap around the dusty phone in, slipped it into an envelope and into the mail. “Cuddly cakes” and her lover are connected again, and I am left to return to more immediate matters of telephony.
