I have my problems. Don’t we all.

But now I have to add paranoia to my list. Yes, I’m paranoid. Someone is stalking me.

I know a little bit about him. His name is Lord Peckerhead. No. I’m not joking. And I don’t think he is in the CIA. He says he isn’t anyway.

It all started when I was playing around on a forum. It’s a strange kind of forum, where people post nonsensical comments about nonsensical things. Just my kind of place, I would have thought.

But then Lord Peckerhead comes along and tells me I won an egg last Easter! How did he know? I’d forgotten about it. It’s not up there in my life’s great achievements.

So I sent him an e-mail out of curiosity. I asked him how he knew. I wanted to know if his lifetime hobby was collecting statistics on people who had won eggs. And what was even stranger was that the shop concerned never advertised that Grandad had won an egg.

I didn’t hear back from him so I forgot about it. And I kept well clear of that forum.

But then, this morning in pops an e-mail out of the blue.

I will quote it in its entirety. I’m sure he won’t mind.

Greetings, O Venerable One,

I’m very sorry I haven’t replied before now; I hardly use this email address at all (as you might imagine, it doesn’t always create the right impression in a business/professional context…)

I enjoyed your rambles and I knew your real identity because, well, you’re so famous. I then googled your real name because something I’d read on your site made me think – I can’t for the life of me remember what or why, now – that I might have met you once, way back before all this internet lark started.

Lo! and behold, up popped your name on a list of prizewinners for that Easter egg competition. The mind boggles. Maybe if you take it up with them (“breach of privacy”, etc.) they might offer you another one to keep quiet about it?

Then again, they might say “F*** off, aren’t you that beardie guy with the blog? Privacy my orse…”

I hope my little prank wasn’t too unsettling – I felt oddly guilty when I read your entry about the FBI and their black vans.

Vale, et scribe,

Peckerhead

So far from putting my mind at rest, he has made me even more nervous [if that’s possible].

The line that unsettles me most is “I knew your real identity because, well, you’re so famous.”. Even I have forgotten what my real name is. Everyone calls me Grandad. I’ve forgotten what my old name is. I’ve even checked the label inside my underpants, but it just says “Grandad”. And then he tells me I’m famous?

I know I was on the BBC News and ITV News back in ’68, but they never mentioned my name. I also appeared on RTE a few times, but I was always in the background. I was in the papers once, in ’71 when a bus tried to drive into my mouth [but that’s another story]. So what is this fame that eludes me?

I wrote an article for the Irish Times last year. That is true. But in typical newspaper fashion, they got everything wrong in my personal details, and mixed me up with someone else. I told them [the paper] about Ron and Dick who host my blog and they put in all Dick’s details by mistake.

And he says he knows me. Isn’t that a symptom of a stalker? Is he trying to put my mind at rest before killing me? Or is he just trying to add to my paranoia?

So, Lord Peckerhead – I am appealing to you. No. I’ll rephrase that. I am begging you to send me an e-mail. Tell me who you are. Where did we meet? Why am I famous? How come you know more about me than I do?

I am on 20 Prozac a day at this stage and am beginning do dip into my store of Valium too.

As Saddam Hussein once said – the suspense is killing me.