Spam

After waiting this afternoon for three hours for an email confirmation to turn up in my inbox to no avail, I remembered that I have a spam folder on gmail which I rarely visit.

I quickly located my lost email, and the second one that had been sent when I clicked on the 'If an email hasn't turned up press this button to send it again,' button, and the third and fourth which had been sent similarly before I became distracted by a 'dogs getting themselves into situations they immediately regret' montage.

It having been a while, I had quite a good nosy around my spam folder. I must say, at the end of my investigation I think I like it rather better than my inbox.

My inbox regularly receives invoices and bills to be paid. My spam folder, on the other hand, seems to cultivate a class of sender who is determined to send me money. There was an offer from a lovely man who works at a bank in China, and another from a Russian who I presume wants the same but I can't translate well enough to be entirely sure.

My inbox regularly receives notifications that the opportunities I've applied for have been graciously turned down. Even the ones when I offer to pay large sums of money.

To the contrary, in my spam folder the opportunities are flooding in. All that's required is for me to confirm that my email address is still valid and the opportunities will be tremendous and nett me a sweet profit for no effort at all.

Someone called me a dear friend, and wanted to know if I wanted to become fashion. Another person told me I'd won a Euro lottery which I hadn't even entered simply by virtue of owning an email address.

Somebody was even soliciting for a representative for their lumber company based in Vinh Niem and thought I might like the job. I don't even work with lumber. It's too sweet really.

My life would be so different if my spam folder was everything I received in the way of email. I'd grow close to random Nigerian princes as I fleeced their government of billions of dollars. I would rule the lumber industry, and I would win so many lotteries that I wouldn't even bother to claim them if they were worth less than 10 million.