I am at sixes and sevens tonight.

I received a text message from my phone company this afternoon telling me that I owed them money. According to their website, however, I didn’t; I’m all paid up until May. Unfortunately, I only looked at the website after I had clicked on the link in the text message and given them my bank details through it.

Realising that I may have just been scammed, I called my bank to cancel my debit card. I don’t think I needed to do this as I didn’t give the possible scammers my PIN but I was even more at sixes and sevens earlier.

After I had calmed down, somewhat, I called my bank’s fraud line. The fellow who spoke to me put me at ease. There isn’t much they can do with the details you have given them, he said; what you might get in a few days is someone calling you purporting to be from the bank. If they do ring you, hang up immediately. He was Scottish with the kind of rugged voice that one can’t help but trust so even though I’m a bit put out by what has happened, I shall do my best to trust him.

Two final points: firstly, even though I was calling very late in the day, both the fraud line man and the Liverpudlian lady who cancelled my card for me were completely professional in the way they spoke to me. I really appreciated and appreciate that. To be honest, I was half expecting not to get any reply at all because of the offices being closed; to be spoken to as kindly as I was, was really good; much more than I deserved.

The second final point is the obvious: be careful of scams! Please don’t be a dummy like me.

Scams aside, all is well in our house. My parents potter about and do their thing; I get on with my work. I am getting very tired in the evening these days – a product of all the physio and exercise and of the early wake up times. My alarm is set for 5am but over the last few days I have been getting up in the hour before then. Bad form but there it is.

My exercise film over the last two days has been Sherlock Holmes (2009) starring Robert Downey Jr in the title role and Jude Law as Dr. Watson. I saw this film in the cinema when it came out and enjoyed it so was very happy to put it on again; especially since I had forgotten most of the plot. The story is wittily and cleverly written but this film is really about Robert Downey Jr. He is a great actor – effortlessly able to combine the comic and serious in one performance. I guess that’s what Richard Attenborough chose him to play Charlie Chaplin in his Chaplin biopic (a film I would like to watch again because Reasons). I rate Robert Downey Jr 10/10 and Sherlock Holmes 8/10. The sequel is on Netflix so I might just go straight to that next.

My creative life is inching along. I have been thinking more about the Twitter story I want to write. I don’t know if I ever will but I might mention it in a future post.

I am coming to the end of Clare Lydon’s Nothing to Lose romance and continue to plough through Antony Beevor’s account of the Second World War. Every time I read it I am gobsmacked by the amount of death and destruction wrought by the Axis powers, by the ruthlessness of Stalin, and the mistakes made by just about all of the world leaders, all of whom were blinded to one extent or another by their ideology, desires or ego. I might come back to this point as well as the question of what makes a good ruler has been on my mind lately.