The day started in a rather odd way.

The old gas cooker in our kitchen had started to splutter in an alarming fashion, so I had decided to take it to a repair shop in the back of my old Nissan Micra. I was walking away from the shop, toting my work laptop on my shoulder and enjoying the sunshine when I noticed a large auditorium with the doors open.

I fell into conversation with an evangelical preacher who looked a little like the Kenneth Cranham character in 'Oranges are not the Only Fruit'. After debating the ethics of Comic Relief, pornography and gun control with him, I convinced him of the errors of his ways and accompanied him as he apologised to members of his congregation individually.

Feeling vindicated, I went back outside and realised that I had left my house keys in my jacket pocket that was on the back seat of my car. I headed back to the repair shop, taking a short cut through an alleyway, nearly tripping over a gas cylinder in the process. I saw that there was another half to the shop that sold old 7" vinyl singles and the like. I started looking through the boxes for a copy of 'Shout' by Lulu when a bearded sales assistant called me over. He explained that he had the 10 metres of aerial cable that I had ordered, but he would have to show me which of the coloured core wires to twist together for it to work effectively.

That was more or less when I was woken up by Jamie wondering if it was time to get up. I had forgotten to set the alarm and had overslept by fifteen minutes, and the strange sense of dislocation has stayed with me all day.

I've finally realised where the foul smell that has been plaguing our garden at odd intervals has been coming from. One of the houses that back onto the field nearby evidently has a cracked sewer pipe somewhere, so the council have been along and dug a short trench and fenced it off with orange tape barriers with dire health warnings, and then promptly vanished without actually doing any repair work. Lovely.

I've also finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at long last, which is another reason for the dislocation. I started reading it on holiday, and got two thirds of the way through in a week but then returned to my usual chapter a night reading speed which takes rather a long time to get through such a whopping door stop of a book. Worth reading, if you like epic alternate histories in the Mary Gentle vein.