From Spam to Sublime

Hard to think of a circumstance that involves Spam, in either the edible or electronic form, in which my heart is going to leap with joy.  I should also note that most of my family would argue that Spam should not actually be classified as edible, particularly in the form of Spam sandwiches.

Like anyone who has an email account and a pulse, I am besieged by Spam imploring me like a character from Alice in Wonderland to either shrink, “Lose two dress sizes” or expand (and for censorship reasons I won’t enlarge on what portion of husband’s anatomy they are urging me to upsize).  Particularly irritating is the fact that for some reason the Spam-a-lot crew seem to have reached the conclusion I am called Susan, and so I am the recipient of endless messages that urge “Susan” to get a life in various formats involving internet dating, singles bars, credit searches and bank accounts in Nigeria.

I try not to click on Spam, not matter how alluring the header, but somehow I have obviously allowed some kind of worm to hack its way into my email contacts list.  In either a very cunning move, or by pure luck, the bug sent out a wave of spam with a subject header that was the date and time – but the actual email was all about the financial joys of working from home, and could plausibly have been something I might have sent out, after all for a guaranteed half million a year I’d probably be happy to sit staring at my back garden.

The downside of my account being hacked was of course all my contacts got a spurious bit of Spam from me – and may well have concluded that I had finally lost my marbles.  The upside is that it forced me into long overdue password changes, and as I tried to contact everyone in the address book to apologise – a task made more difficult by the fact that Yahoo had obviously cottoned on to the Trojan Horse nature of my account and refused to allow me to send mass emails, I realised that the contact list was stuffed with details of firms and individuals I last dealt with at least 5 years ago, so as part of the exercise I have done an electronic clear out and prune and am thus filled with a rare feeling of virtue.

It is a pity I can’t motivate myself to extend this electronic clearing out frenzy into my domestic arena.  Every time I open the larder cupboard door at the moment I am greeted by a flurry of pantry moths flapping crossly away as the light penetrates their world.  The presence of the moths indicates that there is something nasty in the form of moth larvae (I am hedging round here – can’t bring myself to call them maggots, and anyway weevils is probably technically more correct) crawling round in the dried fruit, cereal packets or the flour.  In a story to make the stomach turn, last week Drama Queen No.1 had an oatmeal bath, which in her case involves her tipping half a cup of oats into the bath (no need to bother with encasing oats in stocking or anything like that, after all in her parallel teenage universe every other member of the family wants to bathe in porridge for the next few days).  Having soaked in the bath, she got out, only to discover what she claims was a maggot on her neck.  YUCK.

It is however far too beautiful a day in Sydney to tackle the moths and just to lift the tone of this post from domestic and electronic pests, this was the view of the dawn over Sydney Harbour this morning.   I go for a walk every morning with the foul hound and sunrise at the moment is just spectacular and sets a tone for the day that even the flap of tiny moth wings can’t ruin.