Sue Vincent's Daily Echo

It was not a good day.

It had started in the early hours with a nightmare that woke me screaming. Given the general atmosphere of fear, anger and frustration that seems to be being reinforced at all turns and with every headline, this was hardly a surprise. Except to the dog… who still hasn’t forgiven me for waking her in a panic, teeth bared and ready to protect hearth and home.

It continued with a blackmail email, sporting one of my passwords just to show they did, indeed have access to my computer.

The ‘gentleman’… and I use that term so lightly it could vapourise at any moment… then went on to suggest I pay a ridiculous amount of money to stop him sending emails to my contact list. Emails containing details of my ‘”sick tastes” in pornography and the videos he had captured through my webcam while I was watching the aforesaid porn. As I do not visit pornographic sites and do not actually have a webcam on my computer, as I haven’t used that password since an email security breach some years ago and as, on investigation, it would appear that the text of this particular mass email is well known, I felt perfectly justified in reporting and deleting.

Even so… it was vaguely disturbing. It is my inbox… and such a find feels rather like having an intruder in your home. It left me feeling besmirched. I can only imagine how terrified many people would be by such a nasty piece of work.

And he has the cheek to call his victims “sick”!?

To follow up rapidly, my first job of the day was to remove ‘Poorly Fish’ from the pond for burial. Poorly fish was a huge mirror carp in my son’s pond. He has not been well since last summer and we have tried absolutely everything to try and make him better. Up until the past few days, he has still been able to hang out with the other fish… then he started self-isolating in a corner. His eyes began to bulge and Nick was beginning to think of the kindest way to end the suffering of a twelve-pound fish. Not a pleasant thought or an easy decision in any circumstances. But, seeing parallels with his own situation when he was in the coma made it even worse to contemplate.

Thankfully, Poorly Fish gave up the ghost overnight, removing that awful choice, but presenting me with an unhappy task first thing this morning. However, trying to get him out in a net he had outgrown was no easy task either… and pulled my neck badly enough to leave me with a growing headache, that was getting worse by the time I had managed to cut my grass and clean the windows. Especially as the elderly lawnmower also gave up the ghost, blew the main fuses, doing dreadful things to my computer as well as upsetting the fish in the aquarium…

Then, when I checked the news and found the recommendation that over-fifties ought to remain in lockdown longer than younger people, I damned near exploded! So, it is okay, if we are over fifty, for us to risk life and limb going out to work every day and keeping the country running while the majority stays at home, but not okay for us to get any kind of life back when everyone else is eventually let out of their domestic prisons? (Insert expletives of choice. Yes, all of them. Mine are probably unprintable.) Now, that would just be asking for trouble…

I console myself with the thought that tomorrow is a new day…