Mystery text messages

I am not a big user of the text messages part of my mobile phone, although it is undeniably useful on occasion. So I have been a touch surprised to receive one junk message and one interesting message.

The junk message is from someone whom neither I nor my telephone know, but who appears to know my name and number and who is enquiring about his honda password, whatever that might be, a password which looks to look rather like the user names used by the Halifax online service. How did this person acquire my name and number? What is the honda in question? The last honda that I had anything much to do with was the excellent Honda 90 once owned by my late brother; sneered at by real motorcyclists, but excellent value nonetheless. But I don't think that that can be the connection, so what is? Is my memory even more defective than I had realised?

So, option 1 is a memory defect. Option 2 is an attempt by someone in their cups, who knows someone who has a reason to know my name and number, to be funny. Option 3 is the work of some shadowy organ of GCHQ, perhaps trying to raise a crust in these austere times by flogging the details so carefully gathered from the ether to some marketing type.

The interesting message is, I think, from the people at Dignity in Dying (http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/), an organisation which I strongly, if rather passively, support. They introduce me to the world of e-petitions at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/, which, on the basis of a few minutes browsing, looks to be a decent attempt to provide a route into the making of government policy. Collect enough e-signatures for your hobby horse and you will get a sympathetic and intelligent hearing.

There seem to be hundreds of e-petitions in this system, most of them attracting a very modest number of signatures. Clearly getting people to sign e-petitions is not so very different from getting them to sign paper ones: it takes hard work once you get get beyond friends and relations.

However the text message included the clue '48628', so I tack that to the end of a suitable looking address to find myself looking at an e-petition about not cutting back quite so hard on the legal aid bill, an e-petition which has attracted a lot of e-signatures. But what is the connection with Dignity in Dying? I try searching the petition system using the keyword 'dying' and come up with lots and lots of petitions, one of which catches my eye, being about having a referendum on the subject. Catching my eye because it reminds me of how many shades of opinion there are (shades of the internecine, acrimonious & arcane disputes between old fashioned lefties): I do agree with the writer of the petition in wanting there to be decent end life facilities for those without decent life, but I do not think that promoting a referendum is the way forward. But do I compromise and climb aboard his wagon as the best fit available? I decide against, trying instead the keyword 'euthanasia' which comes up with the much more likely, but lightly signed, petition which seeks to 'Legalise Moderated Euthanasia'. Sober and sensible wording, no connection that I can see with 48628, but I can sign up for this one and am suitably impressed with the signing facilities, enough details being taken for the signature to be checkable and including the simple check of having to respond to their email before your vote is counted.

A rather different sort of mystery concerns the rather good Montgomery Cheddar cheese which I bought recently in Budleigh Salterton. What sort of a name for a cheese is compounded out of the names of two places? To qualify, do you have to be made using the cheddar process in the former county of Montgomery?

I had always thought so and have found the cheese flying under this banner to be good. But a few moments with Professor Google suggest that Montgomery is probably the name of someone who lives a lot nearer Cheddar than mid Wales. See http://www.montgomerycheese.co.uk/. Odd that I had assumed that the M word was a place rather than a person, even though I know one. A place associated for me with a very old fashioned hardware store which sold me an excellent felling axe. Beautifully balanced thing, not too heavy, quite unlike the ugly weapons you might get in HomeBase or Travis Perkins. I even get to use it once in a while. See the end of the post of 2nd February for a further axey factlet.