Fabulous fun is France.

A very good friend of mine moved back to France a few years ago and ever since then I have been trying to catch up with her there, so I was delighted when she said she was free for a few days this June and I duly booked what I thought was a four day trip away only to discover when I checked my Ryanair details that I had only booked Saturday to Tuesday!  Despite this we managed to pack a lot in, not only was her tiny village enjoying a marathon

when we sat out for our morning coffee and having a day showing off old crafts and having sausage suppers at midday, but down the road was a major eco event where my friend had been asked to look after three of her grandchildren whilst her son's band play.  It was brilliant,  it was warm but not too hot, the food was 10 times better than any British festival and some of that can be pretty good and the band were great, with everyone up and dancing by the second song. I joined in too which was great.    And then the second day we had time by the fire having long heartfelt discussions about our roles in life now we are older, then had a lovely three course meal in a local restaurant and a walk around the local lake, before I bus into Toulouse for the evening and the flight home today.  Brilliant.  Amazing what you can do and talk about in two days. 

My friend's rental house is amazing - a large old building and she has made it look wonderfully homely. She is close to her children and grandchildren and children, but independant of them and does not want them to define her in her closing years. I am not a grandmother and I am still working but I feel very detached from much of life these days and am finding it very difficult to know how to manage my later years. I would like to travel that much I know - longer and further away than I can currently but with climate change is that feasible?  I would like to move too, and have a garden, a proper garden, but is that compatible with travelling. i want to be near family but they are scattered in four different places, so cannot please all of them by avoiding their patch!  And whilst I am lucky enough to own my own home I cannot sell it at present, its value may go down, etc etc etc. I am not alone with these concerns. And while I am happy bumbling along in many ways, indeed these days bumbling is a great joy, but could I be doing more with life whilst I have it and if so what?  The kind of debate we shared.   Meanwhile wish my own house had as much character and also feeling very blessed to have friends in such interesting places. 

A few more glimpses at sunny Sardiniabefore the locusts moved in!

Still railing, despite a wonderful day

It is funny how one can have a wonderful day and yet still want to rail at the world. For reasons I do not fully understand a woman on the bus really annoyed me.  She sat for an hour looking at her phone. Her bag sat beside her and no one who stood because there was not a seat even asked her to move it, it was like she did not see them and they did not see her, just a bag and so the seat was not free.   Yet everyone who got on and wanted a seat expressed their frustration with the world that there was not a seat and they dashed for one the minute a person got off, and all this was invisible to the woman whose bag sat next to her taking up people's seats. She and the world were in their phones meanwhile outside the waves were crashing on the shore, to the right of the bus and flamingos were flying in formation on the other side of the bus and it was as if no one else could see all this going on and that was why I was railing at the world.

Bt are also enough to drive anyone up the wall, since getting a new hub, the service has got worse and worse and they keep making it worse and worse e.g. cancelling the engineer and then telling me that I was the one who cancelled.

Anyway, I will try and regain my sea side calm again by putting up some pics of

flamingos.  Bus trip to Pula totally worth it, both for the views en route then the Roman remains of

Nora and a fab but wildly and unintentionally expensive meal in the cafe there. ln theory should be working now to pay for it all, but as you can see displacement activities have won out again! 

Unexpected Cagliari.

Cagliari is unexpectedly turning into one of the best places I have ever visited,  I always enjoying travelling, but so many things have just happened whilst here it has been magic so far.

First there were the dolphins, which completely blew me away, and the others who saw them.  I know they are not whales but I have attempted to see Whales in Scotland and Iceland, but failed totally, I missed the one seen by the others in Ecuador, as I did not go with them that day and the closest I have come to any such siting is the river in Senegal where I did see a dolphin at a distance, and was looking out for it, but the dolphins here in Cagliari were right under our noses, so close up one could see their markings. There was even a white one, which grew gasps from those who had gathered to watch, so after that it will be hard for Cagliari to fail as an attractive place, but there is also this brilliant weekend on this weekend, a bit like the Open House scheme in London, but with the added benefit that the tour guides are the local school children and in the evening free music events are being put on in some locations. An English speaking Thai woman, who now lives here and I, were for example given an almost exclusive tour of the palace of the Viceroys. And this evening I have jigged around to an evening of Irish music put on in the university palace.   Wonderful. I was even serenaded when I stopped off to have tea and cake before returning to my pilgrimage hostel by a crooner in the next door cafe.  Brilliant day. 

So excited - I hope you can see why.

Which report finds a high failure rate with regard to solving fraud crimes.

Which has recently done some analysis of how successfully or not the police have been resolving fraud cases.  It makes for interesting reading.
https://www.which.co.uk/news/2018/09/exclusive-more-than-96-of-reported-fraud-cases-go-unsolved/


However, in my case the person who took the money I put into a business account, was interviewed by the police. He even told the police that he had taken the money and put it into a bitcoin account, despite it only being in the business account in connection with the sale of a property, and even though there was loads of evidence that he had lied to me in order for me to be involved with that sale. It was the police who first told me that I had been groomed, yet they still did not try and take the matter to court or interview the person's former wife or other family members despite them being advised that the family had acknowledged that I was not the man's first victim.     Now he has resurfaced.  So what will the Police do if another victim comes forward or if the family will help validate the information that I have given them? 

That man put this video up three months ago, but what is not clear from that is that I saw this video some years ago.At the time Mr Banjo said the talk had been recorded whilst he was in Nigeria at a conference. However, I could find no record of that talk in the hotel records for the day he was supposed to be there.   I paid for that flight on the basis that I thought him attending the conference was vital to the business and on the basis that I would get the money back. I never did. I have no idea whether the police even checked if he had entered and exited Britain that day or who if anyone did use that flight.  Nor did I get the money back that I put into our joint business account for the purchase of the property or get paid for the work I did for him on a project to work with Nigerian Cassava Growers. They have never confirmed that he was working legitimately for them ever.  He told me he was in the process of buying two houses in Cambridgeshire, but it turned out that he was living in rented accommodation for example. 

I have let the police know about the information he has put online, but do not expect that they will take any further action on my case despite my best efforts to get them to take him to court. I think they are waiting till I have forgotten all the details and presumably as Mr. Banjo is confident enough to put all this up he too thinks I have forgotten but there are some things that one never forgets and being groomed is one of them.

And I do all this with money from stupid women like Ms Austen who believe me!

 I can provide consultancy services on Blockchain and Smart contracts. I have written a book on the Trade Blockchains Revolution.

I have written several papers on Blockchains Business Strategies and Countertrade. I studied for a degree in finance at the University of East London. I was a Commodity Trader and a Sovereign Debt Instruments trader in the City of London. I have also been involved with innovative trade financing and parallel trading programmes.

I was also trained in the use of Database and network systems, and subsequently, the commercial use of the Internet.I subsequently went on to acquire extensive experience in Internet Business strategies. In the mid Nineteen Nineties, I allied this training and experience, with my own background in Finance, to advise many organizations on their Internet strategies and produce Internet Strategy Reports For them. I have worked with many organizations to help them in their utilization of the Internet for enhancing their supply chains

The emergence into the public consciousness of the use of Trade Blockchains as a decentralized resource in 2016 has thrown up many opportunities for Smart Contracts as a Game Changer. I also believe very strongly that Decentralized Technology can help to improve things for poor farmers in developing countries by using Trade Blockchains to facilitate the disintermediation of intermediaries who don't add value in the supply chain, thereby generating more revenue for the farmers.