That’s a genuine question. Security drives me nuts sometimes. I have a little address book filled with all my accounts and passwords and frankly, if that gets lost, I’m in trouble. I won’t even be able to ask my zillions of accounts to send password reminders to my email address because that password is in the little book too. And no chance of setting up a new email address and asking all my accounts to use that. Cyber hands will be flung up in horror at the very idea.

I do see the point of security, of course I do. It means that only the clever crooks can hack our accounts, not just Joe Blog. Does anyone have a blog called Joe Blog? I should go and look. No, I will go and look later.

My school reports used to say I was easily distracted. Huh. Look at the above for self discipline, Mrs English Teacher. The stories I could tell you about her – where was I?

Right. Security. I was away over Christmas and tried to log in on Christmas Eve to see if anyone had sent any emails I should be dealing with, and Yahoo said pompously that it couldn’t see its way to letting me into my account. Oh please please? Grudgingly it said well, there was one way it would consider it. All I had to do was respond to an email sent to my verification account.

Which, it turned out, was my work email account from 2 years ago.

Okay, bad housekeeping on my part that my verification account was 2 years out of date, I will put my hand up to that. But hello? even if I was still working there, how much use would it have been on Christmas Eve, at 6.30 in the evening? I begged for security questions instead. Yahoo, eyeing me askance, stood firm. I was looking dodgier by the minute. No chance.

People do go on holiday, Yahoo. Sometimes to other countries. Anyway, those friends and relatives waiting anxiously to hear from me had their Christmas quite possibly ruined.

I am now brooding about internet security. All those passwords. Forget which letters you had in capitals and boy, are you in trouble. Use the same password for everything, eek, recipe for disaster. One account hacked is every account hacked.

And don’t get me started on the spammer-proof wobbly letters. I must be part spammer because I really struggle to recreate them.

Anyway. That’s my little rant over. I now have created another account, introduced it to Yahoo, updated my verification emails on both, identified all eleven wobbly letters and numbers, apologised to those poor friends and family members for making them so anxious, and must go walk the dog. I actually came in to wish you a lovely festive season, if you like festive, or a lovely couple of wintery weeks if you don’t (or of course summery ones for the luckier half of the world) and all best for 2015 if that is what year you are about to enter.

I’m even worse at politically correct than I am at internet security but I do hope you are having a nice time whatever it is you are planning on doing just after you finish reading this.  You could walk the dog with me? Yes, icy out there, but the sky is blue, the sun is shining and I’ll be putting the kettle on the second we get back.