I’ve not got all the kit sorted out for my new smart phone so this old sock is its case to stop it getting scratched while in my bag. Amazingly I know the number of my phone already (partly because by a weird stroke of fate it’s got a sequence of 3 digits in common with my TNS company phone (and in the same locations).

Tonight’s job was to slip the phone from the sock, work out how to use the phone without the aid of DM (tick) and to load the paltry few phone numbers from my old phone that was really my Dad’s phone that I inherited with £18 of credit and added a couple of numbers of my own (tick).

So, I sat on the sofa and texted my contacts so I could notify people of my new number. I sent a message to my sister (number was already in my phone from my Dad’s day). I got a very strange message back and my mental cogs got to whirring…she (or so I thought) said “Hi, I’m at Warwick Uni on my teacher training induction week”. I responded “???” My sister has no qualifications to speak of and certainly none that would give her access to do a PGCE. But, rather oddly, she’d contacted me only last week saying she needed help with lesson planning. Could she somehow have got herself onto a PGCE with no qualifications? Surely not – no offence Jan but you have to jump through a lot of academic hoops to get onto one, which I know from personal experience.

Anyway, a message came back saying “Have you got the right number? I am Keith.” I responded that I’d been given the number by my Dad, which effectively I had, and that my Dad must have made a mistake. I wished keith luck for his PGCE and told him he’d need it it was very tough. A short conversation followed with a total stranger. You see, my lovely eco-friendly phone case was a definite tick…then I go and blow it by trusting my Dad to have my sister’s right number in his phone (cross, in more ways than one). However, it did lead to a rather exchange between me and a total stranger.