When I was walking recently a very friendly brown cattle dog came up to me. She then proceeded to escort me on a fair stretch of my walk up to a lookout before heading off on her own track.

This morning I was heading home when the same brown dog spied me, from the same side street, and enthusiastically bounded over to greet me. She then escorted me the entire way to my own front door. A significant distance and I was worried she wouldn't find her way home. Now, it had threatened rain when I was heading out so I'd grabbed my raincoat from the back of the car before starting the walk. As I was pondering what to do about the dog I opened the car door to throw my jacket in. At exactly the same moment the brown cattle dog leaped into the back seat of the car!

In a state reasonably close to disbelief I slowly climbed into the car and started up the motor. The dog seemed quite excited about this. Slowly, I pulled out and still in something of a dreamlike state, I drove the dog back to the sidestreet she'd emerged from. Then, much as a chauffeur would, it was just a matter of opening the door and the brown dog leaped out. She then turned towards me, and I swear she gave me a "Thanks for the lift mate" look and then headed off down the street.  I gotta say I had to admire her style.

But things didn’t stop there. There’s a follow-up story. Last week I was walking a similar path when a black staffordshire terrier spotted me and came bounding over, wagging his tail so much that he was nearly throwing himself off his feet. Perhaps unwisely I gave him a pat - and that was it. We appeared to be bonded for life. Next thing I knew here was another, different dog escorting me home. Now I wasn't too keen to be seen chauffeur-driving a different dog home - the neighbours might talk, after all, so I stopped in my tracks and turned around, heading back the way the dog had come from. He followed me as if his life depended on it.

I waved my arms at him to get him to go away .... oh, good, now he thought I'm throwing imaginary sticks. At this point another walker approaches me. We smile to each other and I say to her "This dog keeps following me everywhere.'

'Oh,' she answers, 'you were getting on so well I just thought you were the owner.'

Seriously....I'm just wondering what to do with the dog when a mercenary idea hits me. I smile at the lady, say cheerio and turn on my heels heading back up the street. My new-found canine friend hasn't noticed yet but when he does turn around I'm heading for the hills, so he does exactly what I'd hoped - he latches onto that poor unsuspecting walker. For all I know he's still with her.

There's actually a further twist to this tale, which takes it to a new level of weird. This morning I'm out walking, really early, and out of the bushes on one side of the road trots a fox. It crosses my path, quite close, and disappears into the bushes on my right-hand side.

Or, at least I thought it did. A short while later I turn around and find that the fox is trotting along behind me - very close. I swear that if I'd reached out a hand he'd have come up for a pat.

I did shoo him away but it made me wonder what on earth was going on here. In the end I could only come up with two possibilities either a) I had some kind of strange canine/vulpine blood in my ancestors veins that attracted these animals - possibly granddad was a loup garou - he always was rather hairy b) I smell weird. Sadly, I fear it's the latter. Though possibly now its c) I'm a character in a Terry Pratchett novel.

So, I get home today and there's a note on the screen door as follows:

G'day Darryl, Give me a call on [mobile No.] - I have something of yours - Wayne

Ok, so there's exactly zero Darryl's in our house and I don't have a lot of Wayne's on my Christmas card list. In the end I decide to give Wayne a ring and let him know that he's got the wrong house.

After I explain to Wayne that I'm not actually Daryl and that he's got the wrong place it transpires that he's left the note on the wrong house. He's found Darryl's wallet in the car park and the ID indicates Darryl lives at 13 Douglas St - the problem is that I live at 13 Sapphire St. People do this all the time because Sapphire cuts across Douglas.

Wayne seems nice enough so I agree to walk the note around to Darryl - at 13 Douglas St - and pass the message on. I knock on the door and after a while it's opened by a friendly fellow. 'Hi,' I say, 'I was wondering if I could talk to Darryl, please?'

'Who?', the fellow replies.

Ahhh.... 'My name is Chris,' I continue, cautiously. 'I live at 13 Douglas St. Someone called Wayne, who I don't know, left a message on my door instead of yours, by accident, for Darryl.'

'There's no Darryl here. My name's Jim, and I've lived here for years.'

There I was representing a Wayne I'd never met, trying to find out if a Jim I'd never met, knew a Darryl neither of us had ever met.

Does this sort of thing happen to other people too?

 I woke up last night at 3.30 because there was a light flickering. Turned out not to be inside. I thought it must have been a streetlight, but then realised that simply wasn't possible from where the light was coming from. So I got up and proceeded to watch what I think is the most amazing lightshow I've ever seen. There was huge stormheads to the south and out to sea and I can't tell you, can't even come close, how much lightning was filling the sky in the two directions. It genuinely looked mythological - like two gods were hurling lightning bolts at each other. Perhaps the most bizarre thing about this whole show was that there wasn't a rumble of thunder to be heard. Just the wail of the rising wind.

There I was standing on my balcony and I suddenly thought - I can get a better view than this. Well, one thing led to another and the next thing I know I'm walking down out street, phone camera in hand, barefoot and wearing a dressing gown. My journey to get a better vantage point led me to the golf course. That would be the first time I've ever stood on a fairway, barefoot, wearing a dressing gown that trying to blow right off my back (yes, not a pretty sight really) at 3.30 in the morning, wind howling and trying to film an incredible thunderstorm - all in a strange sort of silence that wasn't really silence with the wind blowing - but certainly a sensation that for a while you had stepped outside the ordinary world. The only company a fox that looked liked it couldn't sh!t itself silly anymore that it already had and a bat that basically achieved the same effect on me when it took off from a nearby bush.

The video turned out to not even come close to capturing anything of the grandeur - but the experience of trying to take it, well that was a whole different kettle of awesome.

So, yesterday I woke up with a splitting headache and a really sore neck, so I decided to take the day off work (which as you know is never really a day off work with deadline submissions etc, but still at least working from home). Around midday I decide that I need to get some treatment on my neck so I go down to the massage shop in the arcade and they give me a neck, shoulders treatment.

As you have to lie on your stomach you have to stick your head in a hole in the table - you probably know the drill. Anyway, they'd given my shoulders and neck such a work-over that I knew I'd have a big red ring around my face from the pressure from the table hole. And because it's dark in the rooms you can't even look in a mirror (even if there was one) to see how bad the "ring" looks.

I head out into the mall, feeling sure people will see the ring and being a bit self-conscious about that. Sure even it's pretty clear there much be a ring because people's gazes do seem to linger. Now, I can't get away quickly because I also have to get an e-tag thing sorted at the RTA. So, off I walk down the entire length of the mall, suffering people's glances and then proceed to sit around the RTA for at least 20 minutes people coming and going all around me. Finally I get served and as I'm standing at the counter my hand touches my collar - and it's weird - my button is missing.

No hang on - it's still there, but on the inside. Realisation dawns. In the dark of the massage shop I've put my shirt on inside out!!! And, it's the kind of shirt that is clearly on inside out. Then just to tell the world about it I've walked the length of a busy mall during school holidays and hung around the RTA for ages. No wonder people were staring. Now, if I'd been young enough I could have got away with it being some sort of cool statement, but at my age is just smacked of early onset dementia. I might as well have worn my undies on the outside.

Nor could I do anything about it then and there so I had to do the walk of shame again along the length of the mall before I could get to the toilets and turn it inside out.

The final stinger - as I was doing this walk of shame a young woman I walked passed looked straight at my face and then turned to her friend and said "Is my face red?" Yep, it turns out I was right all along - my face was bright red as well. My cunning plan to distract the world from this by wearing my shirt inside out had failed. In the end I was just a red-faced, can't-dress-myself old f@rt.