Please don’t think for a moment this is a legitimate offer from me to you but it’s the proposal I found in my e-mails this morning. Several others including “We can help you lose weight now”, “I’ll give you my secrets to become an Internet millionaire” and “Our natural Viagra pills will keep you hard all night” accompanied it. Now, you’ll have to believe me, I haven’t requested anything to enhance my sex life or reduce my weight even though I’m sure most of you probably think otherwise.

    I’ve no idea where these unsolicited communications came from although I haven’t ruled out the possibility that Mrs. Snowman was instrumental in at least some of them. There is also the chance one of my more devious and creative readers is responsible in which case I might replace my e-mail address at the start of this diary with that of The Vatican’s Information Department to avoid a repetition.

    However, it wasn’t really the e-mails that were the most worrying thing on my computer today but the pop-ups. I was happily sat on the sofa with the laptop resting on my knee and logged on to register for the lunchtime freeroll.

    Two keys were pressed and an image of a very large vagina filled the screen.

    For the first couple of seconds I tried to persuade myself it was a picture of a hamburger and therefore an advert for a fast food restaurant but the peripheral image of an approaching and very determined penis told me otherwise.

    I quickly got rid of it and tried again.

    This time an hilarious mpeg of a very bad actor falling over his own feet followed by an even worse actor pretending to be serious, informed me that a host of lawyers would be delighted to sue anyone who breathed in my direction without written permission. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who is stupid or careless enough to injure themselves in a safe work environment shouldn’t be compensated…they should be sterilized to prevent them from breeding.

    Although I was initially aggravated by the unwarranted intrusion into my computer time, it did give me another cunning money-making idea.

    “Snowman’s Spiteful Mail Service”.

    It’s quite simple (as usual), my readers send me the mail details of people that make them cringe (ex-wives, couples they meet on holiday and won’t leave them alone, insurance salesmen, cat breeders, etc.) and I send them an unsolicited mail with a picture of the mother-in-law and the cat and threaten them I’ll send them to their home for an extended vacation unless they never contact them again.

    It’s such a terrifying prospect they’ll desist immediately and I’ll earn a bundle of cash in fees. The only problem with this scheme is that they are likely to send back the mail unopened and I’ll be deluged with thousands of images of the cat. Maybe I should think this through a bit more.

    Anyway, I eventually registered for the poker tournament and immediately wished I hadn’t. It wasn’t long before a donkey went all-in and I called with A-Q suited. His 10 high obviously won and I found myself eliminated. The evening event however went much more to plan. I like the $500 games as I can come 130^th and earn as much as I would by coming 10^th in a $50 event. You’ll be amazed to hear I finished 59^th after some extremely lucky cards and added $1.88 to the bankroll. This time I’ve promised myself I’m going to have a buffer of $10 before I venture into the cash games so I’m sure it will be a few more days before I can report I’ve blown it all again.

    Before Mrs. Snowman comes back from work I will have to clean up the computer files and re-boot the thing in case she is confronted by one of the porn pop-ups and I receive a couple of broken fingers for surfing adult web pages.

    In the event she does get an eyeful, I’ve taken the precaution of downloading information from several sites relating to seafood delivery and fishing quotas. That way, if questioned I can always say it was a spelling mistake and I’ve been surfing prawn sites. I might get away with it.

Starting bank:  $0