David Bradley – Page 29

Phishing, smishing

TL:DR – Phishing is a form of social engineering where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware on their computer or other device via a phishing link in an email or on a website. Smishing is the text message equivalent of email phishing.

I justr received an email from a reliable and trusted contact to notify me of an alert they received from a third party pointing out that phishing attacks are on the rise. The trouble is, the email they sent with a copy of the original alert is full of links offering advice on how to stay secure and specifically how to avoid being phished…

In case you don’t already know, phishing is a scam (smishing is SMS phishing) whereby a malicious third-party hooks you in and gets you to click a link in an email that inevitably leads to the installation of malware on your device or tricks you into entering private and/or personal data on a remote website, often disguised as your bank or an e-commerce site.

The bottom line is you should NEVER click a link in an email or indeed any other kind of message you receive regardless of what it suggests that you do.

If you must visit a site mentioned in such a missive, because you think it really is legitimate, then have a look at the source of the message you received to see if the link really goes to the website of the trusted source or if it’s a decoy for a malware site. You could also then copy the actual link into an online malware scanner, such as VirusTotal, to double-check that it’s safe. Do that in an incognito tab in your browser and make sure you’re not logged into any sites in that browser window when you do.

Also, watch out for phishing hooks in your online calendar on dodgy websites and also watch out for websites that seem redirect to somewhere unexpected they may have been page hijacked.

But, there is another kind of scam that doesn’t involve links, indeed there is a type of attack that doesn’t even use bait. These are called no-hook phishing attacks. They’re more about social engineering (a confidence trick) rather than a technical attack.

Some of these emails are not aiming to scam you, but to legitimise an email address so that it can defeat spam filters and be used later for more conventional phishing attacks once the email systems perceive it as safe.

Anyway, back to the phish with no hooks. First, you receive an unexpected message on your device from someone you don’t know about something with which you’re not involved. You respond to let the correspondent know that you’re not actually the intended recipient, they reply with an apology and perhaps some other comment that then requires a further reply from you out of politeness. This is where it gets weird. The person you don’t know who accidentally contacted you is drawing you into a conversation, and you feel obliged to keep replying.

There is evidence that this kind of no-hook phishing attack can last for weeks before the payload is delivered. The scammer, having gained some degree of trust through the ongoing friendly conversation suggests you check out a website…or maybe even just suggests that you might like to know about an investment scheme through which they themselves have made a lot of money. It’s not genuine, it’s not banter, you’re being conned.

The bottom line should be don’t reply to their initial message out of politeness and you will never be sucked into the con trick. If you do happen to respond, remember the golden rule and don’t let your guard down: do not click any links in a message ever.

But, if no link ever arrives, be even more cautious when your new best friend pipes up with unsolicited investment advice or some other such nonsense.

Davey Winder discussed all of this in more detail in IT Pro here.

How to cook a delicious and cheap pilchard curry

TL:DR – A delicious but inexpensive recipe for pilchard curry.

When Mrs Sciencebase was a student, she used to make an inexpensive curry: tin of pilchards, tin of tomatoes, chopped onion, crushed clove of garlic, teaspoon each of cumin, coriander, and turmeric powder, salt & pepper, and a half a teaspoon of chili powder. Served on a bed of whole-grain boiled rice.

It sounded a bit grim, but wasn’t too bad. (Brown-bread icecream for pudding or Granny Grape Pudding). It was all certainly a whole lot more adventurous than the boiled noodles and soy sauce I once cooked her because I had nothing else in the cupboard. Don’t know if it compares well with a camping meal we once had together, which amounted to half each of a raw calabrese head, half a bag of Bombay Mix, and half a bottle of red wine. Oh, how the other half live, I hear you exclaim.

Chopping weapons-grade, home-grown Scotch Bonnet chili peppers

Anyway, back to that “curry”. The powder mix works well with other main protein ingredients, but at some point, having taken on the mantle of chief-curry-cook in our house, I wanted to stretch out the recipe a little further. I began adding various other spices, crushed cardamom seeds, cinnamon, grated fresh ginger, cloves, and mustard powder. Over the years, the list grew and grew. At some point, I used to make up a jar of the mix that would last several weeks and it usually contained well over 40 different ingredients. Ludicrous. I think at one point I was even adding garam masala as well as frying and crushing whole seeds of coriander and cumin. The curries I produced always tasted pretty good. I think…

Grinding cumin seeds with a pestle and mortar

Time went by, we got busier, there was little time for such lengthy curry powder recipes, we didn’t always have all the ingredients I needed, I simplified the blend. It wasn’t quite the three-chord-trick that Mrs Sciencebase came up with for her pilchard curry, but it was a shadow of its former self, perhaps half a dozen ingredients rather than a couple of score. It always seemed to taste about the same as the more complex blend.

Then one day, around the time covid started, we were on very limited shopping opportunities and Mrs Sciencebase simplified the shopping list to the minimum…and a tub of mild madras curry powder was purchased. It contained maybe half a dozen different ingredients, the ones from the student pilchard curry recipe and a couple of others. The new curries I made with this pre-mixed powder didn’t seem to lack anything, in fact, they were pretty much the same to taste as the original pilchard and anything that I put together with four different spices in the pot. So, we’ve stuck with that. It doesn’t feel quite as Zen to use a pre-mixed powder, so I do often add some extra chili powder and grated coconut, occasionally some lime juice. One thing I don’t ever use these days…and maybe only ever did once, are tinned pilchards.

Supplementing physical and mental health

TL:DR – Anecdote is not evidence, but I feel like I gained some benefit from taking a multivitamin supplement, it probably compensated for poor absorption of iron and perhaps other vitamins caused by one of my prescription medicines.

I’ve always been wary of taking vitamins and other supplements. There are good reasons not to do so, if you have a reasonably balanced diet. Excesses of some vitamins and minerals can lead to problems like kidney and liver damage, kidney stones, and some can interfere with the absorption and activity of prescription medicines.

However.

I have been feeling rather tired in recent months, becoming unaccustomedly exhausted after even light activity. I’m talking after a short walk, but sometimes even just after a shower. Was it long-COVID, was it my medication, was it just me getting older?

Mrs Sciencebase had an iron and vitamin supplement for an unrelated reason and suggested I try it, see if it would help.

Well, I took the recommended dose for a few days, not expecting to experience much improvement. Amazingly though, I felt a remarkable change in what people commonly refer to as “energy levels”. Activities that had started to become a tiring chore became a lot easier, I hopped on my bike and did a decent half an hour’s cycling without breaking a sweat, a couple of days after that I did an hour, at speed, and aside from being thirsty when I got back to base, I was fine.

I know anecdote is not evidence, but honestly, it seems like too much of a coincidence that I felt like I had recovered from apparent chronic exhaustion within three days or so of taking the supplement. Moreover, when I look at the side effects of one of my medications, it does suggest that tiredness and various other side effects are associated with reduced absorption of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). So, I’m sticking with the supplement for a while longer.

Intriguingly, the effects do not seem to have been wholly physical though. Most people have had a tough few years, but there has been significant family loss and stress here that happened in the middle of covid, is ongoing, and I have not been what you might call the happiest bunny in the warren, for a long tim, I must confess. Stuff that I usually really enjoy has not, on too many occasions, brought me much joy in recent months. I shrugged it off as being the grief and worry…but…a few days ago, I felt like the proverbial cloud had lifted, and even though it was a drizzly day, the sun seemed to be shining again.

Could this too have been a supplement fix? Well, there are many, many biochemical pathways that are linked to mental health, disturbance in some of those are known to be connected to depression. These various pathways need various micronutrients to work properly. Might I have been deficient in an essential biochemical component? Have I now replenished my supplies and rebooted those pathwats?

Perhaps the brain, when faced with deficiency, goes into some kind of lockdown to make you mope, reduce motivation, and so activity? And, when that lockdown is prolonged and deep, could it also begin to impinge on other pathways to the detriment of mental health. If so, I wonder if this is exacerbated in the wake of a double-dose of grief accompanied by a lot of not unwarranted stresses and anxieties.

I don’t know. Like I say, anecdote is not evidence. I’d rather not take the supplements for a prolonged period of time, so I will be having a chat with my doc at my annual review about my current medication. I will tell them that what I do know is that I’ve been taking a daily dose of micronutrients and feel physically much fitter than I have for a long time and mentally far brighter.

As a footnote, I shared this post on my Mastodon and a couple of people suggested that my experience may be due to my “taking control” or simply a placebo effect. Well, that is a possibility, of course. However, I’ve had symptoms for a long time that coincide with several mentioned on the documentation accompanying one of my medications and I feel that reversion to the mean/norm (basically, the placebo effect) was so sudden and coincided with taking the supplement that there must have been a physical effect of doing so rather than my spontaneously recovering…but, again, anecdote is not evidence, either way. One cannot do double-blind, placebo-controlled studies on oneself.

Mastodon FAQ – Less Musk, More Tusk

TL:DR – Answers to frequently asked questions about Mastodon

Simply join me here via this link.

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is an alternative social media system comprising lots of different interconnected sites, each with its own specific interests, but all running the open-source Mastodon software, which makes them all function in roughly the same way and allows communication and sharing between users.

When was it started?

Mastodon was started in March 2016, but gained a lot of new interest in April 2022 and again in November 2022 in the wake of major changes at one of the more well-known social media systems, Twitter.

Why is it called Mastodon?

Apparently, it’s named after the American rock band of that name. Mastodon is a term for any of the prehistoric mammal species in the genus, Mammut. The word loosely translates as “nipple toothed”.

Technically, how is Mastodon different from Twitter?

First off, Mastodon is not a single service in the way that Twitter and most other social media tools are. You’ll have heard the word instance and server bandied about with reference to Mastodon recently. That’s the jargon. Each instance is really just a separate website with its own domain name. The one I’m on is Mastodon Social, its address is https://mastodon.social.

Why do the different instances look the same?

The thing about all these instances, these websites, with odd-looking addresses is that they all run the same software, the mastodon software, so they have the same look and layout and make the same tools available to users. Superficially, this sounds a bit like Facebook Groups, but you can think of Mastodon as being more akin to hundreds of self-hosted WordPress blogs with multiple bloggers/authors/users/admins.

How do I choose which instance/server to use?

You can pick one that looks like the most interesting or where you can see lots of your friends and contacts are active. I’ve put together a list of the top 20 instances that the people I followed on twitter are now using here.

What’s that word, fediverse, mean?

The Mastodon creators call the network of interconnected sites/instances the Fediverse, it’s a federated network.

What effect does being in a federated network have?

The key thing about the sites being connected/federated is that the Mastodon software provides tools that connect all these sites so that users on different sites can communicate and interact.

Interact, how?

Different instances being interconnected means if you see an update in your timeline, they’re called toots, you can like, or favourite, it by clicking the star below the update. This adds it to your private list of favourites and also lets the person who posted that update know that you saw it and liked it.

Is that it?

No, the interconnections mean that if you want to make a stronger response you can comment publicly on an update. You can also do the equivalent of a retweet on Twitter or a reblog on Tumblr, which is known as a boost on Mastodon. To do this you click the boost icon, which is an icon formed from two arrows . It usually shows between the comment icon (speech bubbles or backwards arrow) and the favourite/like icon (the star). A boost promotes the update so that more people will see it in their timelines.

Does Mastodon have an algorithm to boost updates?

No, there’s no biasing algorithm running behind the scenes, so if you want the world to know about an interesting update, you need to boost it manually.

Okay, how do I find an instance to join?

Finding a Mastodon instance that suits you can take time. I opted for Mastodon Social because back in 2019*, it looked broad and general and I wasn’t actually sure how to find any others. There are so many now for lots of different niches and interests all with their own set of rules and recommendations for use. You can search for something suitable here.

The instance I chose is shut to new users, what do I do?

The admins of all the various sites are endeavouring to get on top of problems caused by the influx of new users but several are currently closed to new logins. Be patient. They will open up again soon.

But, I want to get started now, what can I do?

Well, you could join one of the open instances and start there. Keep checking your preferred instance and once it opens up to new logins, sign up. There are steps you can then take to export your temporary instance to your preferred one.

I joined, what now?

Once you’re signed up and have added a photo and all the other bits and pieces you will want to find people to follow. You can do this in a wholly organic way, simply follow people that post interesting things on your instance or across the fediverse. Alternatively, you might see a mastodon handle from someone you follow elsewhere on social media and can open their link and follow them directly.

What do I see in my timeline?

There are three levels of timeline on Mastodon. On your home screen, your timeline will be filled with updates from the people you follow. If you want a broader view you choose local, this shows you updates from everyone on your instance not just the users you follow. If you choose the Federated option then you get to see updates from all the instances. You can also create lists of users to see updates from particular cliques and niches.

Can I use an RSS reader to watch an account?

Yes, you can subscribe to public posts from a user by tacking “.rss” on to the end of their user address, e.g. https://mastodon.social/@sciencebase.rss

Can I message other users?

Yes, aside from commenting on a post, if you have someone else’s ID or handle, you can direct message them (DM).

Are DMs encrypted and safe from prying eyes?

As with many other social media systems like Twitter DMs, Facebook Messaging and others, direct messages between users are not encrypted. It is worth being cautious when using any such system and not using them to share personal or private information. It is worth adding that if you @ mention a third party in a Mastodon DM, that third party will see your DM as well as the recipient.

Isn’t it difficult to follow someone?

Not really, if they’re on the same instance as you, you just need their handle, the @sciencebase in my case, if you’re on mastodon.social. But, if you’re on a different instance, scicomm.xyz, for instance, you will need to include the username and the instance, @[email protected] in the search to find them.

What does the hourglass next to the person I followed mean?

Some users have their preferences set to allow them to moderate who follows them rather than automatically accepting everyone. If someone has this set in their preferences, you will see an hourglass after following them until they accept or refuse you. If you get frustrated by this, you can always cancel the request.

Can I bulk follow people from my Twitter?

Following people can almost be automated, although not quite. If you have lists on Twitter, you ~~can~~ could previously scan them with various apps – Debirdify, Twittodon, Fedifinder, and Movetodon but they have been mostly locked out of the X/Twitter system as far as I know. These will find the people on Twitter who have added their mastodon ID or link to their bio, used it as their URL, or have a pinned tweet announcing it. All three apps let you export a file (a CSV file) that you can import into Mastodon and use to bulk follow those people. Incidentally, you can scan other twitter user’s account to find their people with Mastodon IDs.

Will they follow back automatically?

No, a followback is not guaranteed as is the case with every other social media system. However, the people you follow will get a notification to say you followed them and they may then choose to do so.

How do I get a blue checkmark?

There are no blue (actually white or black) checkmarks or tickmarks on Mastodon.

So how can we know an account is genuine?

You can’t really. But users can at least verify any links they add to their profile and these will appear in green. It is worth doing this for your own account to give yourself some validation. It involves adding a snippet of HTML code to the website you wish to be associated with. That’s as close as you can get to making your profile look official. I’ve verified sciencebase.com on my Mastodon account. An impersonator wouldn’t be able to do that without hacking this website.

How many people on twitter are now on Mastodon?

Impossible to say, some people are just trying it out, others have jumped ship. I’ve used Debirdify a few time to gather my twitter gang. I estimate that about 14% of the people I follow on Twitter have added their ID, so I’ve found them on Mastodon and been able to follow them there. More people are signing up all the time and not everyone is coming from twitter.

How do I get around twitter’s Mastodon link ban?

As of 2022-11-16, Twitter seems to be marking links to Mastodon sites as being unsafe. So, you need to obfuscate them if you wish to share with your twitter followers. This link shortener lets you do that: https://spacekaren.sucks

Could I set up my own, personal Mastodon instance?

Yes, you could. That is the basic concept for the creation of “Mastodon”. Some people run the software, administer their own domain, and are the only member of the instance. They are part of the federated system nevertheless so can interact with others as they see fit and others can see and interact with them.

Are there any legal issues I should be aware of before setting up an instance?

Yes, plenty, but none that should limit you. If your server will be in the US, the EFF has a legal guide you should read first.

Who is John Mastodon?

There is no such person, a columnist wrote about how twitter had banned “join mastodon” having assumed that was a mistake and that John Mastodon was the founder of Mastodon…the name has now been taken to the next level of meme and satire. Remember Spartacus? “I am John Mastodon!”

Isn’t mysogyny at play again?

Yes, you’re right, it should have been Jean Mastodon.

Can I make Mastodon work like TweetDeck?

Not quite. On a desktop screen, you can make Mastodon look a bit like that. Go into your Preferences and tick/check the box for Enable advanced web interface and then click to save your preferences. You then get side-by-side timeline columns. I’ve not investigated customisation yet.

What about mobile devices?

If you prefer, you can definitely go mobile on Mastodon. Tusky, is the Android app I use, it’s the one that suits me best. Not many people seem to recommend the native apps. Tusky and others have most, but not all, features you see on desktop in a web browser.

How do I find anything on Mastodon?

A common complaint from some new users regards the clunkiness of searching. There is no simple search method that will find people or specific posts across the fediverse. This is deliberate, it’s a protection mechanism that limits how easily trolls and bots might otherwise home in on vulnerable users.

So, how do I search?

Well, you can search by hashtag and users are encouraged to use hashtags to engage. You can search by ID/handle for someone on your instance. You can search by ID link to find people on other instances. Indeed, if you want your posts to be found, it’s worth adding appropriate hashtags. Many new users make their first update an #introduction and include their key hashtags as part of that.

Speaking of trolls..?

Most of the Mastodon sites are tolerant and accepting of diversity and highly intolerant of bigotry and abuse. It would be patronising of me to describe them as safe havens for minorities, but it seems that by enforcing rules that do not allow trolling, bigotry, and abuse, they can offer their users a far less toxic social media experience. This is a good thing, obviously. It is those negative issues and not just the muskiness that have driven many people to leave Twitter.

Can that tolerance vary from server to server?

Yes, each admin establishes a different baseline for their server. It must be said that some servers are more accepting of particular minorities than others and it is wise to check the rules when you make your choice of which to join.

Can I block someone?

Yes, there is a block and a mute option. There is also the option to report to the server admins anyone being abusive, trolling, or spamming you, if you so wish.

Why is everything so clunky and glitchy?

Because of the musky mess being made of the bird place, there has been a huge influx of new people to the mastodon servers, around 2 million in less than a month. Most of the small servers are volunteer run and so there have been glitches where resources were insufficient to cope with so many new users. They’re working through it. Things will get better.

What if some awful billionaire wants to buy Mastodon?

As has hopefully become apparent from the answers to the previous questions, Mastodon is open source and runs on many different servers. There is a not-for-profit company that first created the software and owns the branding, but even if that were assimilated up some awful billionaire’s fiscal portfolio, it would be impossible for them to buy the fediverse or even the mastodon instances within it, although it might force admins and users to stop using the logo!

Could someone buy an instance?

Yes, and it is already happening, one of the biggest instances was recently purchased. However, before that happened almost all of the other instances de-federated it so that it was no longer really part of the broader fediverse but simply a standalone website running the Mastodon software.

What’s Sciencebase’s Mastodon story?

I first logged on to a Mastodon server in August 2016 and promptly forgot about it. I joined Mastodon.Social back in November 2019, but didn’t use it much until April 2022 and then only for a week or two…I came back to it again in October and have become much more active since then. I’ve been hoovering up twitter followees and others as something of an escape from what Mastodon users often refer to as the bird place, you know the place, the one that’s more musk than tusk, Twitter.

You can search for me by my handle, ID, call it what you will as:

@[email protected]

Alternatively, a handle can be given as https://mastodon.social/@sciencebase which obviously looks like a normal web address but with an @ sign, use that instead of the handle if your device doesn’t recognise the former.

What about sciencebase on other social media?

Of course, have been for years, always try to be an early adopter. I’ve set up sciencebase.com redirects to my socials. If you type a URL like this https://sciencebase.com/mastodon, it will take you to the appropriate site. It should work with the following: tumblr, flickr, instagram, twitter, facebook, linkedin, soundcloud, bandcamp, tiktok, reddit, basically anywhere I’ve got a social media presence. E.g. https://sciencebase.com/tumblr

I’m still not convinced, isn’t there a nice, simple alternative to Twitter?

Well, to be honest, a nice cup of tea and a good book would probably do your mental health more good, but there are lots of other social media systems out there some of which have been around for years – Tumblr, Diaspora, Discord, CounterSocial, Minds, Cohost, that might ultimately emerge as better alternatives to Twitter. Indeed, some commentators are pointing out that because Mastodon is federated and doesn’t allow for facile conversation and commentary across the fediverse, a well-established system like good-old Reddit might ultimately fair much better and become the new go-to social media spot.

Should I leave Twitter?

Please don’t abandon Twitter and certainly don’t delete your account (someone will claim your handle and use it after 30 days). Twitter might emerge from all this confusion in a better state, but it will need lovely people like you to hold the haters and the trolls to task, to block and report the nasties, and to keep irritating Leon Umsk until he abandons it as a bad job.

But, I really want to leave is there a good reason not to delete my account?

There is a very good reason not to delete your Twitter account, whatever choice you make. Within 30 days of deletion, your username becomes available for someone else to use in whatever way they like for good or bad. If you must leave, simply deactivate your account and if you get a deletion warning from Twitter follow any instructions to keep the account alive.

If not Twitter and not Mastodon, where else?

There are lots of options for those wishing to escape Twitter who don’t necessarily want to join Mastodon. There are some of the older, well-known social media sites such as Reddit, Indenti.ca, Diaspora, Discord, Tumblr and then there are newer initiatives like Cohost!, Counter.Social, Hive Social, Post.News, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s new initiative, Bluesky, and many others.

Why did Sciencebase publish this FAQ when there are already others out there?

Well, I’m a writer, I wanted to put in words my own thoughts about the service and to share those with people who had asked me about Mastodon, so here we are.

How many followers does Sciencebase have on Mastodon?

Just over 1000 as of 2022-12-21

*Bizarrely, there was a tag visible in my Mastodon account, that suggests I actually first logged in in August 2016, not long after the software protocol was launched. Someone mus have told me about it and I took a look, but did nothing more.

FAQ created: 2022-11-21. Last updated: 2022-12-21

Apple of Sodom

As regulars to the Sciencebase site will know, I’ve been doing some ad hoc wilding of our garden for a few years now. Always hoping that blooming wildflowers would attract interesting invertebrates. There are therefore patches and pots that I’ve not managed with all sorts of odd things sprouting from them at different times of year. At the moment, there is a big tub, which used to be crocuses and daffodils that has a very tall and leafy plant growing in it at the moment, with pale-purple flowers in bloom (it’s November!).

I used the ObsIdentify app to take a couple of photos and it turns out to Apple of Peru, Nicandra physalodes. The species is also known as the shoo-fly plant (it repels aphids and other flies and although toxic is sometimes rubbed on the skin as an insect repellant. It’s also known as the Apple of Sodom, presumably somehow that relates to its encapsulated poisonous fruit.

As the name would suggest, Apple of Peru is a native to South America, self-seeds easily, and is sometimes grown as a decorative annual. I didn’t plant it, seeds from some outside source presumably landed in the tub and it’s grown where it fell. I think it’s meant to be in bloom from April to July, usually in tropical and sub-tropical climes rather than the temperate zone, so not entirely sure what it’s doing with open blossom now and setting fruit in the middle of November in England.

World population likely to reach eight billion by the end of the year

TL:DR – The world population is now well over eight billion, 8 000 000 000

At the time of writing, the human population is roughly 7,986,585,500 as of today. That’s about 13 million shy of 8 billion people. On average this year population has been growing at about 222,000 people every day.

The world’s population has doubled since 1974, the year ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their song Waterloo.

It was half the 1974 number in 1927, the year of the first transatlantic phone service.

We numbered a mere billion in 1804 the year Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of France.

It had taken from 1600 to Napolean’s time for the estimated world population to have doubled to a billion, that was the year England’s King Charles I was born.

The population hit just 250,000,000 between the years 900 and 1000.

It was half that last figure some time between 200 and 500 BCE.

During the fourth millennium BCE, the world population was roughly that of modern-day Belgium where we find the municipality of Waterloo.

Projections suggest that the global population will continue to grow, but at a slower rate than in the past partly because of declining fertility. The United Nations projects that the global population will reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.9 billion by 2100. However, these projections are highly uncertain and depend on a variety of factors, including fertility rates and mortality rates.

Departing Twitter

The holiday cruise is drawing to a close. Many of the cruisers have a clutch of new best-friends-forever friendships. These were easily won and formed in the halcyon days in the far-flung resorts visited on the liner. They may have been melded over one too many shared jugs of sangria by the pool. Maybe they were sweated out under a burning sun in the queue waiting for the boats to take them ashore to see the old town. It’s possible that they were the tortured rapture of a shared grievance about cold showers or a badly stocked minibar at the rep’s desk. It’s the last night blues which inevitably sees all these BFFs grappling each other’s shoulders, swearing undying allegience to future get togethers back in the homeland, swigging yet more sangria and swapping phone numbers, Facebook details, and perish the thought, home addresses.

But this was no ordinary cruise it went on for years, the liner filled up with more and more passengers, more and more with complaints, a few too many people grappling other people’s shoulders uninvited, a lot of spilled sangria, and always somebody else’s towel on a favourite sunlounger. Then the rumours started that some hotshot captain was going to take the helm and set off on a new course. He was supposedly to take the liner to new beautiful lands with even greener grass to view from the deck. But the grass was astroturf and there’d be a charge for the free sangria. Lots of passengers took their chances, dived overboard, and swam ashore, thrashing through the water to reach unknown lands where ancient pachiderms wandered freely. Those that stayed tried to tolerate the growing number of sangria spillers, towel abusers, and shoulder grabbers. There was a lot of mopping up of spilled drinks to do but not enough moppers. The hotshot captain never showed up…the liner carried on riding the waves through the summber months.

As the summer passed, the new captain was helicoptered in once again, chucking kitbags of money at the cruise company and insisting on taking the helm. He made most of the crew walk the plank and threw the mops overboard. He told the sangria drinkers they’d have to pay for a little blue badge on their towel if they wanted to get a sun lounger by the pool. Indeed, if they didn’t have the badge, they’d have to swim in the bilge below decks.

The sangria drinkers remembered their old new BFFs who’d jumped ship to be with the pachiderms and started manning the lifeboats. Without a compass, they headed in different directions and hoped for the best. Others remained steadfast, even mocking those in the lifeboats, for leaving them behind. Meanwhile, the hotshot captain steered the liner on a perilous course, one that took the vessel into uncharted waters where trolls swam among floating mountains of ice and not a pachiderm was to be seen…to be continued…