Happy ending: I got my new Visa card in the mail yesterday and the bank fraud dept had called on Friday & left a message. When I phoned yesterday they just wanted confirmation of the fraudulent transactions.

It was fascinating, actually, a little travelogue. First, three rapid-succession purchases in Sainsbury just after 6pm, while I was still pushing my trolley around the aisles. "They were probably passing the card from one to another, at the same checkout," the man said.

Then a brief stop at Woolworths before hitting the Gap and a sportswear shop. After that, on to buy petrol at Asda, via another supermarket in Portobello Road. It's all been "frauded", and in fact none of the transactions even made it as far as my account, so in that way it's nothing to do with me.

I wanted more detail! I wanted the time of every single transaction so I could track them through the city! But the answers I did get took much computer-work from the patient fellow at the bank, and in the end I gave up.

I was weirdly tired yesterday, so I didn't go to town, didn't do any shopping whatsoever. I did design a Christmas card but it's horribly naff, so forget that. I walked the dog, ate and sat around doing nothing. Oh, and I worked on the Exile game. Very absorbing. Hours slip by like minutes.

Some of those hours were very early am, so I slept late this morning. Another good walk -- it was mild yesterday but very frosty today, and sunny. Bertie had a good run with Kira, a bouncy bitser, and I chatted with the owner, who turns out to be very interesting. He's from Shetland originally, and in his youth did an 18-month stint on a Norwegian whaler at South Georgia. His captain was a woman, and she was also the harpoonist. "No-one argued with her." This was in 1956. He said his granddaughter interviewed him for a school project recently and was so horrified by his whaling exploits she didn't talk to him for a week.

While we were walking we heard a yoohoo and there on the road bridge, high above us, was Sandy with his two dogs, peering down.