Randomiser

I recently came across the apparently common habit of saying 'Hello Mr/Capt Magpie, how's your wife?' to magpies when they are seen on their own. I had obviously heard of the '1 for sorrow, 2 for joy, etc' thing, but never speaking to the Magpie. People even salute them as they say this. I asked a couple of people and they all seem to have heard of it. Weird how it missed me out. I suppose everyone could be playing a trick on me, and I have to admire the sheer strangeness of the trick if they are, but I doubt it.

The thing was I was told about this habit over the weekend, then about two days later I read an article referencing it. Strange how things often come in clusters. Like days where there seem to be lots of pregnant people about, or people with broken legs.

Reminds me of the time I saw a lady slip over on a banana skin. That's right, a banana skin. I wasn't watching the circus or a cartoon, this happened in everyday Stratford. I was walking past the lady in question as it happened. As she was helped up someone looking on said, with a sense of wonder in their voice as if they couldn't quite believe they had seen it happen in real life 'She slipped on a...banana skin!'. It was like an anvil had fallen from the sky, or someone had given her a stick of dynamite instead of a cigar to smoke, it was one of those things that is in hundreds of cartoons, but never happens in real life.

Amusingly the fallen lady, hearing the on looker, muttered (something like) 'Flipping banana skins', as if this happened to her all the time. Maybe it does. Maybe all those cartoon images happen to a poor minority of individuals constantly, many of who display a flare for art so have gone into the cartoon industry. They think they are producing public health information films.

The next day I told Andy the story of the lady and the banana skin, and how you never usually see that in real life, Andy agreed saying he had never seen it happen in real life. Later that night Andy, late for an appointment, was running down the road. Half way there he almost slipped over, when he looked down he realised he had trod on a banana skin.

People (myself sometimes included) often think that these clusters must mean something, that it must be more than coincidence. I guess what we forget is that what you experience in life is more or less random, and randomness will mean that sometimes you get clusters of events.

I really hope that after reading this someone sees a magpie slipping over on a banana skin.