Monday, November 23

This morning I went for a walk through the woods, and two small deer crossed my path about half a metre in front of me. If I had acted slightly faster I could have stroked the second one as it passed. They acted startled. I acted startled. They turned round about five metres away and both stood looking round at me.

I turned and walked after them in an effort to get a photograph of them, but they made certain that they increased the distance between us without actually running.

I have sat in Stoa for an hour or so, helping finalise the Buddyschool website before it gets handed over to the Education Department. I look out of the window at the psychedelic scene in the library where the light show completely fools my iPad.

I have had not one, but two, phone calls while sitting here from scammers wanting to help me to free my computer from malware: the very malware they intend injecting during the rescue process. I kept one of them on the phone for ten or fifteen minutes with faux ignorance, before eventually asking if this Ubuntu that my youngest son had installed on my computer counted as Windows or, if not, what should I do?

I asked about the weather in Delhi and the man on the other end corrected me. He worked in Lahore. We both understood that I knew about his intentions, and that he knew that I knew about his intentions, so we chuckled and said goodbye.

The young woman who followed thirty minutes later proved less interesting. I followed all the procedures that she suggested, checking the website she wanted me to log into on my iPad, but got bored when she went to fetch her supervisor. I put the phone down, as we used to say, after she left a gap in the conversation.

I found myself interested in the level of ignorance that they expected me to display. “Can you see a key at the bottom left of your keyboard marked C-T-R-L? That’s C for Canada, T for Tokyo…”

I noted to myself that they did not even use the proper alphabet: Charlie Tango Romeo Lima, please.