Well, there’s a thing. In this post I mentioned that we had received an Easter card intended for another set of Braggs entirely.

I was kindly directed to a Rhiannon Bragg on friendsreunited by ShadowTail, who posted a comment on my blog.

£7.50 later and I sent off a message…

I received a reply, and bingo! Owner located!

Weirdly, they live about 100 metres away, round the corner. So we popped over with the card..

Thank you lazyweb! That seriously made my day.

I awoke to a great commotion outside the bedroom door - the Mogret was miowing/blorping/chirping excitedly and insistently.

Then we noticed the half-a-whateveritwas that she was consuming.

Well that’s nice, Cat: bring us a present and then get overexcited and eat it yourself. Thanks.

I guess it’s baby-bird season, and there’s no amount of beeping collars that will allow baby birds to escape from her. Which is sad, and makes me want to lock her inside. It’s a tricky one: I know she is obeying her nature, and the fact that she is the most efficient hunter that I’ve ever seen is something that nature rejoices in, but at the same time, I like birds, and the thought of any species losing a baby is anathema to me.

The solution is not to have a cat, I suppose, but she is such an important part of our lives that we would miss her terribly were we to give her away. She would make an excellent farm cat, and would thoroughly enjoy the experience, but we are too selfish for that. She’s *ours*!

So, I apologise to the bird population, but you are going to have to nest smarter. Admittedly quite a lot smarter, as Mogret’s pretty intelligent. Sorry.

So, the pixie and I accompanied most of my work colleagues to ten-pin bowling this evening. Well, we watched, they bowled - it all looks scary.

Sky sports was on the TV alongside the bowling-score screens. I was idly watching the Arsenal match, as one of my colleagues had gone to the match tonight, instead of bowling, and I wanted to make sure we were having more fun than he was I thought I was hallucinating when I saw a squirrel run across the screen. Seriously, there was a squirrel running across the pitch. I didn’t dream it look these people saw it too (19 minutes bit)  I’m not seeing things.

Anyway, a good time was had by all, although I’m dying to find out if Guy actually saw the squirrel from wherever he was in the stands..

I also saw some bunnies bouncing around, eating grass. Not on the football pitch, in a patch of grassland near the bowling alley. I still haven’t lost the childlike glee at seeing bunnies bimbling around wild. I will never make a wildlife photographer though, as while attempting to sneak up on them to take pictures, I dropped 1.5 litres of volvic water in bottle on the ground. Loudly. Needless to say, they scarpered. Philb was giggling uncontrollably. I punished him by making him hold the water while I skulked around and had another attempt. Bunny pictures might appear on flickr tomorrow, but let’s face it, we all know what bunnies look like, and it’s only me that gets excited by seeing wild ones dancing around.

The lost Easter card mystery becomes even more mysterious: the card is addressed ‘Holyport’ rather than ‘Maidenhead’.

I had first assumed that they had simply consulted the phone book for ‘Bragg’ and assumed that I was their intended recipient. The phone book lists our address as ‘Maidenhead’, as does bt online.

Curiouser and curiouser.

We are no closer to finding the correct location for this card to be in, which is sad.

There appears to be a lead piccolo of the Philharmonic, called Keith Bragg, but without contacting him to find out if he has a wife named Rhiannon, this doesn’t help.

The card

The detail of the card

The inside of the card

If anyone recognises their handwriting, or is the intended recipient, do contact me and let me know where to post the card on to.

This morning a lovely handmade Easter card was delivered through our letterbox. It was addressed to ‘Mrs R Bragg’ but with our address. I didn’t obviously know what the envelope contained, so I assumed it is easy to mistake a K for an R while copying out something. So, I opened the envelope.

Inside was a card addressed to ‘Rhiannon, Keith and Peter’ from ‘Susan, Sandy, James and Matt’.

I am distressed. This card is wonderful, and it has arrived at the wrong home.

Using the wonders of the Intarweb, we are trying to track down the possible recipients and relocate this card to them.

The current best guess is that the Peter Bragg is the same one on the newsround site as having attended a Jubilee celebration in Windsor.

I do hope we can locate either the sender or the recipients, so this card can go to its rightful home.

Some time ago, I mentioned to my husband that I would find it amusing if eyelids made a clicking noise.

This has resulted in sporadic outbreaks of making-clicking-noise-with-tongue-while-using-eyelids. Using eyelids? Operating eyelids? Whatever, you know what I mean.

It looks amazingly cute and funny, although that could be because philb is unbelievably pixie-like. He looks rather like one of those Russ trolls that I used to collect as a teenager. Although that could just be the cheekbones.
The sillyness was compounded today, when I decided to use mouse-buttons for that authentic clicking noise.

Try it. Get your partner/housemate/random acquaintances to try it.

I will be mortified if you do not find it hysterical.

Today, along with most people with email addresses, I received yet another phishing email. It wasn’t a particularly fancy looking email, and it was purportedly from a bank that I don’t even bank with. That’s reassuring in a way, because if I receive spookily targetted phishing emails, I will start to worry. A lot.

It makes me very angry that the banks of this world sit back and let this happen. For example, most of the content of this phishing site was linked directly from the real bank site. Why on earth do the bank sites not validate their referrers? The javascript and stylesheets were both links to the secure site that is actually run by the bank. The banks are making it easy.
Now, what I know and understand about computer security could be written on a whisker, but looking at my webserver logs, my javascript files and css files get called with a referrer of the page that requested them. Surely the banking server could do a simple ‘is this called by me’ thing before serving up the javascript etc?

Okay, so you can reauthor Javascript and CSS, but that involves more of an effort than simply linking them in. Plus, if you host your own javascript/css, you are no longer linking to a nice https site and getting the benefit of the padlock appearing on your own phishy site. Not that it is difficult for scammers to get a valid SSL cert these days..
There are probably darned good reasons why banks don’t do this - I admit I don’t know anything about security. But it angers me that these phishing sites are allowed to piggyback off genuine sites in order to steal money/information.

This particular site actually labels the images shown with the stolen customer details, so the bank will have an exact record in its server logs of the people that were scammed. Which just shows how confident the phishers are that the banks can do nothing to stop it.
It’s all very sophisticated, and all very scary. I feel genuinely sorry for the people that do fall for this evil trick, but hopefully there is enough publicity about Bad People, that even the terminally stupid might think twice before clicking on random links.

I shudder to think what this site would have done to my poor (Windows) computer, had I opened it in a web browser, instead of just inspecting the html - there were some Very Scary Things in it.

We were starting to get a little concerned: she’s not allowed out at night, being nigh-on impossible to see, and it’s now dark. We’ve been calling and calling but no Mog.

Then, next door’s conservatory door opens just enough to allow a cat to leave, and then closes again. Suddenly the Mog appears at the end of next door’s garden.

We had assumed, all along, that she must visit other people, as I note the lady the other side installed a cat flap not long after Mogret arrived here. Apparently Mog used to wail outside their bathroom window (upstairs - she climbed on their extension roof to do so) until they let her in..

Our cat is a disgrace.

Tony, the guy whose house she has just left, lost a cat to a car before we moved in, and warned us about keeping her safe. I’m glad she has befriended him, as cat-people without cats are sad and lonely creatures, having lived without cats for a few years myself.

No sign of Random Cat tonight. Haven’t seen him since he wailed in the garden for Mogret to come out to play this morning. Honestly, it’s like a kid knocking on your door to ask if his friend can come out to play. Still, it’s cute.

I have decided it is now warm enough for our lemon-children to venture out into the sunshine. Of course this now means that I can take pictures of them, ably assisted, as always, by Mogret.

Lemonpictures 

Waitrose organic pre-prepared pineapple (in the chiller section) and half a pink grapefruit make for a yummy lunch.

Philb pointed out that the addition of some lemony goodness might have improved the blend still further, but by the time he did so, lunch had been consumed. Something to note for next time.

Incidentally, it is worth paying that bit extra for the white pineapple. The difference between the white organic, and the normal yellow stuff, is astronomical. Literally a whole world of difference. The white organic pineapple is melty, smooth and subtly sweet and makes the normal yellow pineapple seem crude and inedible by contrast. My pineapple-palette has been entirely reconfigured. No more can I consume the common-or-garden yellow pineapple, of which I had previously been so fond. Now, only the white organic pineapple (sold by both Waitrose and Sainsbury’s) is good enough.

In other news, Random Cat has been back and playing chasing games with our Mogret. It’s so cute. She’s flirting and thoroughly enjoying herself. It’s good to see her happy, as I feared she was bored and lonely. I have emailed the Cats Protection people (the rescuers of Mogret) to see what they think we should do about Random Cat. I mean, I want to adopt him and adore him, but not if he is someone’s pet. Although I wish they’d get him Done, as he’s making quite a nuisance of himself.. I gave some serious consideration to the idea of getting him a collar with a message-roll in it and attempting to contact a possible owner that way.