Twenty-first century crime caught up with me last week when the bank phoned to ask if I really had spent the previous day shopping in Norway with my credit card.

I checked my diary, flattered to be seen as a potential globetrotter, and confessed that I had instead, at the very moment my cloned card was used, been on a train just outside Severn Beach.

I've never been to Norway and will probably never go, but I saw no reason to let the lady from the bank know that I live such a sheltered life.

Compared to my humdrum existence, the world of international card fraud seems rather exciting, with some Mr Big sitting there in foreign parts cloning cards with Interpol hot on his trail. In reality, explained the lady from the bank, it may have started somewhere as mundane as my recycling bin, into which I may have stupidly slipped a few barely read statements and other bits of personal mail. The crooks get hold of this stuff, and sell it on to someone who makes fake cards from it.

So, chastised, I saved up all the financial stuff for a week and hit back at the high-tech fraudsters by using my personal data to start a bonfire. A fire is a rare treat, and one that reminds me of my childhood, before bank cards, overdrafts, credit crunches, and the rest.

I was wondering why nobody around my way has fires these days, and put it down to a lack of imagination, or some secret method of composting entire branches and old cupboards.

Then a neighbour came round, and pointed out that my bonfire was illegal (and immoral because of the emissions).

If the police come about the fire, I'm going to plead that I was driven to it by a gang of international credit card criminals.

And if the bank asks me again about doing everything online, and thus avoiding the need for the bits of paper they send me, I'll tell them what I've always said. I don't trust them. It's nothing personal, it's just that given the way they have helped bring the country to its knees, I feel reluctant to let them look after my details on the world wide web. Given what the fraudsters can do with a bit of discarded junk mail, think how much fun they'd have once they cracked the online password into the entirety of my finances.