I’ll try to keep this brief if you keep your laughing at me to a minimum!

Had a bit of a stressful night last night. We were hit by storm Eowyn or whatever it was called. I was worried about my polytunnel and the fence and I was right to be.

The polytunnel held firm, thanks to my method of securing the cover. The fence however, did not fare so well. Picture a dark and stormy night: Scooby needed out so out he went. I opened the door a few minutes later to let him back in as I knew he wouldn’t enjoy the weather. He didn’t come back in. I called him and still nothing. I grabbed my coat and a torch and went into the garden and that’s when I saw one of the fence panels was down and Scooby had vanished.

I ran back into the house to get the dog whistle – Dearest Son was grabbing shoes, coats etc to get ready also. I ran out the front door, blew the whistle and had just opened the gate when a very scared looking lurcher came hurtling down the street back home. To say we were all relieved would be an under-statement.

I tell you all of this to give some context by way of explaining my high stress levels. We now have a fence to repair and are meant to share costs with neighbours who we don’t know so not looking forward to getting that sorted.

Anyway, amidst all of this, I thought ‘I’ll check ma blog and catch up’. Earlier in the day I had noticed my little logo had disappeared from my comments and on my home page so I wanted to check it too. I had somehow been signed out, which I don’t usually do. I signed back in – I thought, and kept getting told the password wasn’t right and so had to use email links to get in. What I eventually got into however, was not my blog. It was an empty site, with a very weird username:

I don’t know what you would have done, but I panicked. Where was my dashboard? Where were my posts? I tried all night to get back into my ‘real’ blog but to no avail.

I couldn’t get past Wapu, the AI assistant because you have to have a paid plan to speak to a human and according to this new account, I didn’t have a paid plan – even though I do.

I sent email (s) pleading for help, I checked YouTube, online searches, you name it. I even shed a tear.

This morning, I woke up and tried to block the gap in the fence best I could so Scooby can’t run out again and got back online. All I could get was this blank page. Then I had an idea. I tried a different username and somehow, by magic, got back into my REAL account!! Hooray I thought.

Then I thought, ‘right you buggers, I’ll get you’ and I went through Wapu to get to an actual human. My thinking was they could check out who hacked me, who set up an account using my logo – and give them a good thrashing.

I got a very helpful, friendly support technician and they did some digging. I gave them screenshots and all the information I could.

The short version of what happened is this: I hacked myself.

The long version goes something like: When I tried to log in I couldn’t remember what username it would be – my name, the blogs name or what? The email address and password didn’t seem to match so eventually, it appears, I set up another account. Then every time I logged into WordPress, went straight to this new thing which had nothing in it. So I had, in fact, hacked myself. Turns out no damage was done to my actual blog after all.

Yes, I am an idiot.