According to a phone call I got today, I was involved in an accident in which I wasn’t. Since I was busy when it came, I responded “No I wasn’t” and put the phone down but it left me musing about the scam ( and scam it must be because I can’t think of any accidents I’ve been in serious enough to warrant a phone call).

Maybe next time, I’ll be smart enough to say, “which one?”. They will probably say, “all of them”, and I’ll respond, “I need to check this is genuine – which year was the first one”. They will take a guess and I’ll say, “sorry – you’re a long way off… it was 1862” and then I can educate the caller about how, if they are brassy enough to cold call with a lie, they ought to be brassy enough to do something more worthwhile, like stand up in front of a classroom of teenagers and teach them something meaningful or sit down with a patient and tell them that, yes, they have a terminal disease but there is help available as they go through the process.

Next time…