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Coincidences

A while ago I started reading a book on Kindle about the White House Farm murders.
It's In Search of the Rainbow's End, by Colin Caffell, father of the young twin boys who were killed.

I can't face much of it at a time but working in the site where I first picked it up reminds me.

So I was there again last night, and thought about Colin and his children as usual, then leafed through the Metro for the crosswords.

There I found an article about Jeremy Bamber's latest attempt to gain his freedom.
 

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Today at work I had to speak to a customer who had tried to rip off the company I work for by over a grand.

He got caught, and instead of the police being involved, he agreed to pay back the money over a period of time.

Ten minutes ago I was wondering what would have happened had he not agreed to pay.

One second after that thought, a song I was listening to had the lyric "I know a few debt collectors."
 
Isn't there a cut-off level for the value of the goods before police can get involved? If it's over a grand, the police can be called in (I think).
 
Isn't there a cut-off level for the value of the goods before police can get involved? If it's over a grand, the police can be called in (I think).
It's not about the value, it's whether the thief/embezzler/employee has agreed to pay the amount back.

If this happens and the money isn't repaid it's a civil matter and the company will have to sue them.
 
The decision to pursue the customer would be taken at a level way above me.

The company has employed external debt collection companies at times, but I think this only happens if a customer makes no attempt to pay a debt and does not respond to letters and calls.
If they are in touch, even if they are in the wrong, they get leeway to pay over a period of time.
 
In 1857 Ramsgate born philanthropist Moses Montefiore built a windmill in Mishkenot Sha'ananim, then on the outskirt of Jerusalem.

In 1948 it was used as a Haganah lookout.

When the British troops arrived to blow up the windmill as ordered, they saw a commemorative plaque on the windmill which said Montefiore was from Ramsgate.
So too were the troops detailed with the demolition mission.
So they just blew up the top part.

The windmill has been rebuilt and is still there today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montefiore_Windmill

More about the windmill in post #1 of The Evil Eye thread

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/the-evil-eye.70495/
 
Here's a nice video about coincidence.

Or rather, synchronicities; why patterns in your life aren’t a coincidence. :nods:

(It has to be watched on YouTube, dammit.)

url=
 
A younger member of my family was at the BBC Radio One Big Weekend outdoor music festival this weekend in Dundee (80,000 people over three days, no mud or sleepovers, think of a small sanitised T In The Park).

During the event they randomly got talking to a fellow reveller, and discovered in a couple of weeks that *exact* person was the NHS nurse that'll be on-shift, looking after them when they're through to the city for a minor medical procedure...
 
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Just now I was thinking about the late and much-missed Michael Bentine, specifically his ability to spot which of his wartime Air Force colleagues would be killed on bombing missions. A thread on RAF ghosts reminded me of this.

Having lost track of my copy of his autobiography I looked for it on Kindle.
Lots of books came up with the word 'Banana' in the title but not Bentine's, alas.

Flipped over to Facebook where a friend request had popped up from scammers using the usual ploy of presenting a photo of a pretty girl.

This one was holding, yup, have a look. :chuckle:
Bentine would have laughed at that.
 

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The blue paint on the snail came from work on a ship conversion.

Painty-Man advised me to look for 'converting a naval tender' on YouTube where I found an entire channel on it, featuring Painty-Man himself volunteering.

The vessel is a former RN supply ship being turned into a floating clinic for use in Madagascar. Its small size and draught mean it will be able to sail up rivers to reach remote communities.

It's so far moved between Conwy, Bangor and Acton Bridge (in Cheshire) depending on the work requirements.




If only we had a poster who knew all about ships and sailing. Someone like that'd LOVE this. ;)
Here's a snap of the ship, borrowed from elsewhere.

Note the blue paint! :)
 

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Had an odd coincidence today: someone I care about has been in the hospital a few days and this morning had apparently taken a turn for the worse. This made me feel very sad, but I was at work so was trying to stay on task processing entering bill information. While entering the information, a name popped up that was the EXACT same name of the person I was worried about, except for one letter in the last name. First name, middle initial and last name individually not incredibly rare, but not very common either. A little later, the same name popped up.

I'm glad to say that this evening I was able to visit and found the outlook is much better than it was this morning. Still tough going, but not downhill.
 
@Ogdred Weary and I mentioned Tommy Cooper just now, and a Radio 4 programme then began about Cooper's town of birth, which has a statue of him:

Inside Pages

Caerphilly​

Journalist Ian Wylie journeys to some of the hidden corners of Britain to view small towns through the lens of the people who don’t ignore them - their local reporters.
Some of the towns are struggling, others are thriving. The one thing they have in common is they’re pretty much invisible in the eyes of the national media, even though they are home to tens of thousands of people. They don’t have football teams. They’re not pretty resorts that attract tourists. They can’t even claim to be a contested marginal seat that will determine the outcome of a general election. Our guides are the passionate people who remain committed to telling the stories of what’s happening in their small towns. Through their newspapers, websites and social media posts they refuse to turn the page on local news reporting - often at some personal cost.
In our first episode, Ian travels to Caerphilly in South Wales. It’s a small town with a familiar issue - it feels dwarfed by Cardiff, the big city nearby.
 
I chose the worst one... but there no good ones.
You mean the worst view? Any angle of those staring eyes is scary.
Incidentally, the photo is reversed.

Statues are supposed to inspire a reaction like awe or affection.
Eric Morecambe's is positively interactive.
 

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You mean the worst view? Any angle of those staring eyes is scary.
Incidentally, the photo is reversed.

Statues are supposed to inspire a reaction like awe or affection.
Eric Morecambe's is positively interactive.

That one seems to have been taken at an angle and filtered to look as sinister as possible.
 
You mean the worst view? Any angle of those staring eyes is scary.
Incidentally, the photo is reversed.

Statues are supposed to inspire a reaction like awe or affection.
Eric Morecambe's is positively interactive.
Didn't some moron cut one of Eric's arms off?
 
At 10:33 this morning, I was illustrating to a colleague that a good journalist does not need to be a subject matter expert to properly interview an expert.

I cited Michael Parkinson as not being an expert in comedy, but some if his most memorable interviews were with comedians.

At 10:53 I opened a news window to see:

Chat show host Michael Parkinson has died aged 88

Spooky!

RIP, fine interviewer and raconteur.
 
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