It's been a funny old day

There's an old BBC sitcom called Open All Hours featuring Ronnie Barker as the shopkeeper of a little corner shop in Yorkshire. At the end of each episode you see Arkwright getting in all the things on display outside his shop while saying, "It's been a funny old day." (Perhaps he doesn't say that every week?)

I'd just sat down with my Weetabix this morning when I decided to look at my phone and read a text. It said I'd been in close contact with someone who had the Omnicron variant and I needed to follow a link to order a test kit. As it happened I already had some tests so, as I was due to go to exercise class, I tested. Negative of course.

Apart from meeting family the only place I've been is Monday's fitness class so I assumed it must be someone there. I mentioned it to a friend who told me there's a scam going around that sounded very similar. 'One reason to be suspicious is if you're not signed up for Track and Trace,' she said.

I'm not but that hadn't occurred to me. I just assumed that Big Brother knows everything and it's all done by magic.

On reflection when Husband had a similar message his gave details of when the contact happened. But it was very convincing. I'm just glad I didn't follow the link.

Anyway, after exercise class it was off to Zac's to cook chilli again. On the way there I passed hordes of chaps in orange and dark brown stripey blazers looking like something out of Brideshead Revisited. That was odd enough but next minute I see, coming towards me, a mock-Tudor barn with an animal's head sticking out of the front. Fake head. A cow I think but it might have been a horse.

Then in Zac's I was told that work on the alterations to the building -planned for the last too-many-to-recall years - might actually be a step closer i.e. it could begin this year.

At that point I was sure of what I'd only suspected up till then. Somehow, without noticing, I had slipped into an alternate universe.