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Coincidences

Minor coincidence on my Youtube screen:
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I’ve posted on here somewhere some years back that the number 11 keeps popping up in my life. I Often wonder what it all means and a quick google told me that it was angels sending messages urging me to stay positive in life – not sure about that though.

Anyway, Sunday afternoon we were driving back south from a weekend in Northampton when my phone pinged. I looked at it (I wasn’t driving) to see it was a random Facebook message from a paranormal group called Paranormal 11.11. How very curious. I’d never heard of this Australian based paranormal group before so how they got my details is anyone guess, although admittedly I’m not too sure how face book works.

The message said “Hi Dick, please let us know how we can help you. How did they know my name, and how did they get my phone number, and the name “Paranormal 11.11 is so random bearing that the number 11, is like a lucky charm number for me.

Weird one.
 
Dick Turpin said:
Weird one.
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Yes it was weird on the other hand 11.11 is quite a common lucky omen choice.* I certainly have always felt pleased if I happen to say, glance at a digital clock and that is the time. I can't say I've noticed it bringing me any particular luck mind you!

*I've always put it down to the first WW armistice and that the 11th hour of the11th day has become hot wired into our brains.
 
escargot said:
Techy's currently being followed around by Alice Cooper's Poison. On the computer, in the car, on t'wireless etc.
I noticed that the band are currently playing in Britain. :thought:

Edit: I googled the band to see where they're playing and that song came up first. Dammit.
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This morning Techy looked at a phone message in which the first word was 'Poison'. o_O
It's to do with some band he's following.
 
I recently picked up a couple of secondhand books. One was a modern reprint of Bradshaw's railway guidebook as used by Michael Portillo in his BBC television series Great British Railway Journeys. My brother will be having that.

The other is what I thought was an undertaker's possibly gruesome memoirs but is actually a novel about the retrieval and care of the Aberfan victims.

It was of course the Aberfan anniversary, 21st October. 50p well spent.
 
Sollywos said:
Well now a lot of my little everyday coincidences seem to come to me via whatever book I'm reading
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It's happened again albeit in a very minor way hardly worth mentioning but it pleased me and once more it's via an Australian detective story.

I've spent weeks looking for a specialist jigsaw table. None of them would fit in the space available no matter how many times I kept measuring!! It had been taking up too much brain space. Just so I could stop thinking about it I'd more or less decided to get one of those folding tables that at least could be put away in between puzzles and were a cheaper option.

Then I decided to see if there was something more aesthetically pleasing to be found second hand on Gumtree. And lo and behold there was! At bloody last!

So yesterday was spent contacting the seller and arranging for my son to go and fetch it. He got it yesterday evening and reports that it will indeed do the job nicely. For the princely sum of £15.

So basking in the relief of a problem cheaply solved I opened the kindle to read a chapter of the first Oz outback detective story I've read since the one mentioned above (post 3180 ) and what do you know but one of the characters had got one of the specialist tables I was after! No idea why the authour mentioned it I can't see it being relevant to the story but mention it he did and I happened to be reading about it the very same day I'd solved my own problem lol.

Yes I know a silly little bit of a coincidence but it struck me as being odd. Jigsaw tables don't tend to get mentioned in many novels and specially not in those set in the Outback!

I've had lots of other coincidences of this nature recently, I've only highlighted this one because of the Australian detective fiction linkage :)
 
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This is a cracker. A paramedic knocked his bag over while treating Sergei Skripal and consequently picked up the wrong vial of medicine.
Luckily it was the exact remedy needed to treat Skripal.

Paramedic gave Sergei Skripal novichok antidote by chance, inquiry hears

One of the paramedics, Karl Bulpitt, told the inquiry into the Wiltshire poisonings that he meant to administer naxolone, a drug that counters the effects of an opioid overdose, to Skripal as he was taken by ambulance to hospital.

But as he tried to keep Skripal breathing, he knocked over his drugs bag and then picked up vials of the nerve agent antidote atropine by mistake. It was only when Bulpitt returned to base that he realised.

The counsel to the inquiry, Andrew O’Connor KC, said giving Skripal atropine “would clearly have helped Mr Skripal and may even have saved his life”.
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Another minor book coincidence this morning.

In the kitchen reviewing and rejecting various breakfast options, I was intending to go back to bed and have a read before getting up proper I wanted something to be eaten with a spoon but didn't fancy porridge and only had a stale crust of bread left. (No I'm not that poor there is more in the freezer but I never defrost it until all the previous loaf is eaten:) ) I'd got some baked beans that needed eating today so hit on the solution of toasting and buttering the crust cutting it up and adding it to the microwave zapped beans. hey presto breakfast in bed friendly beans on toast.

Settled back in bed spoon in one hand kindle in the other tuned the page and the character who I'd earlier left contemplating his life as he neared it's end was recalling the time he'd been camped in Arizona looking for the wild horses and had had to eat his canned beans using his pocket knife as a spoon!

So I ate my breakfast in sync with my character lol!

I was slightly disappointed to look out of the window and not see any wild horses but you can't have everything!
 
I recently discovered the meaning of some symbols scribbled on cave walls (probably) and how this symbol transformed into the ancient words "nehebkau" and "henet". These represented evaporation and condensation respectively and were represented by serpent. In Ancient Language "serpent" meant fluid flow through air.

I've lived in this house for many many years and hadn't seen a snake in the last 30 years or so. They used to be common when the house was surrounded by fields and woods but now it's mostly lawns as far as the eye can see.

The very day I solved these words and symbol I came upon a snake entering on the eastern boundary near the northern edge. Despite the low temperatures he was trying to get to a small wooded area in the front of the property.

Reality is so much stranger than fiction.
 
escargot said:
I recently picked up a couple of secondhand books. One was a modern reprint of Bradshaw's railway guidebook as used by Michael Portillo in his BBC television series Great British Railway Journeys. My brother will be having that.

The other is what I thought was an undertaker's possibly gruesome memoirs but is actually a novel about the retrieval and care of the Aberfan victims.

It was of course the Aberfan anniversary, 21st October. 50p well spent.
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Weirdly I found that reprint of Bradshaws endlessly fascinating. I still dip into it.
 
Had three tonight in short order, all music-related.

After a bit of a week and a bike ride today in the cold we're sitting around snacking, browsing the 'net and watching TV, specifically Ultimate Cover Versions at the BBC.

At some point I was looking at an artist's work and thinking 'My old neighbour would like this, what's her name?'
Couldn't remember it, at which point the singer Michael Bolton began performing How Am I Supposed To Live Without You?
When his name came up on the screen I thought 'That's not how you spell it! It's B-o-u-l-t-o-n... oh yeah, that's my neighbour's name!'

Next, I was telling Techy about a temporary traffic camera I saw being installed near a filing station.
It reminded me of once driving along there with my car stereo playing Bob Dylan's Make You Feel My Love, and my passenger laughing at Dylan's rasping delivery.
When the passenger later died this little memory was a comfort. I always think of it when I drive or pedal past that corner.

Yup, Adele did indeed begin singing that very song on cue. OK Passenger, I haven't forgotten you. :)

Then... when Ray Charles was singing Take These Chains From My Heart I stopped the TV to chat with Techy. Started singing the song before restarting the TV and joined in with Ray on exactly the same word.

Cracked it. :bthumbup:

Like One Song To The Tune Of Another. :nods:
 
My sister told me this one at the weekend. We have a not very common surname and to add to that my sister's first name is not all that common either. Anyway her eldest daughter is in Australia at the moment and she was out in a restaurant with her friends at the weekend. A table beside hers was reserved and the table was reserved under the same name as her mother. She took a picture of the card to send to my sister to prove it.
 
Tenuous as hell but... This morning I was driving two of my offspring to the station to (finally!) catch trains back to their intended destinations. Just as we arrived at the station, the DJ on the radio started talking to a guy who said he was a sofa delivery man. The Dj asked something like, 'What's the most challenging sofa you ever delivered?" and the guy said "A 4-seater one." At this the DJ started waxing lyrical about imagining how it must be to have a house big enough for a 4-seater sofa.

The coincidence? The reason I was able to drive the offspring to the station was because I had the day off. The reason I had a day off was because we were expecting a sofa delivery. A 4-seater sofa delivery! Yes, we have a very generous living room. :)
 
Just now I was on the phone arranging a delivery. The bloke was telling me about his recent business relocation, which had come right after his cancer diagnosis.

As I'm always up for hearing about illness and he was happy to tell all we had a nice chat.

Here's the coincidence: he had no symptoms until he notice a tiny drop of blood in his urine. He was wondering about it as he zipped his fly, when a text arrived from his doctor. It asked him to attend for a routine prostate cancer test.

The tests showed his prostate as enlarged though not cancerous, but the doctor suspected worse and sent him for further tests. These showed a large but operable kidney tumour. Fingers crossed, he will be OK after an operation in the New Year.

He firmly believes that Someone Up There is looking after him and sent the text at exactly the right time. It's hard to argue! :thought:
 
maximus otter said:
I shot a Chinese water deer buck this morning. Only when l got home and began to complete my records did l realise that it was shot one week - to the minute - since my previous kill: Another CWD buck in the same field!

maximus otter
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They certainly don't learn from each other's mistakes, do they.
 
IbisNibs said:
They certainly don't learn from each other's mistakes, do they.
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Sometimes they are scarily perceptive; sometimes they are thicker than Barry White’s shit on Boxing Day.

Example: Here is a view of the scene less than one minute after l shot the first CWD that l mentioned above:

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Here is the scene a couple of minutes later when I’d walked to the dead deer in order to recover it:

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:dunno:

maximus otter
 
According to the dictionary installed by the manufacturer on my computer, stool pigeon dates from the "late 19th cent.: so named from the original use of a pigeon fixed to a stool as a decoy." I'm not sure how a police informer relates to a decoy. Presumably a stool pigeon provides at least some accurate information!
 
bugmum said:
Tenuous as hell but... This morning I was driving two of my offspring to the station to (finally!) catch trains back to their intended destinations. Just as we arrived at the station, the DJ on the radio started talking to a guy who said he was a sofa delivery man. The Dj asked something like, 'What's the most challenging sofa you ever delivered?" and the guy said "A 4-seater one." At this the DJ started waxing lyrical about imagining how it must be to have a house big enough for a 4-seater sofa.

The coincidence? The reason I was able to drive the offspring to the station was because I had the day off. The reason I had a day off was because we were expecting a sofa delivery. A 4-seater sofa delivery! Yes, we have a very generous living room. :)
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As a side note, I live in the world's tiniest house (well, close), but I have a four seater sofa which came with me from the old house (which was huge). It fits just fine although I am replacing it next year with a two seater sofa now the kids have left and there's only me and the dog. You don't need a huge house, just an older one where a large sofa doesn't block every single doorway...
 
Just skimming a feature on best-selling Japanese fiction, which mentioned these themes:

There are recurring motifs: coffee shops, bookstores and libraries, and, most of all, cats.

I then looked at one of the article's pictured book-covers and thought 'Ah, there's one of the cats the journalist discussed'...but it's actually the sleeve of the cover-star's shirt(!):

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catseye said:
As a side note, I live in the world's tiniest house (well, close), but I have a four seater sofa which came with me from the old house (which was huge). It fits just fine although I am replacing it next year with a two seater sofa now the kids have left and there's only me and the dog. You don't need a huge house, just an older one where a large sofa doesn't block every single doorway...
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When Escet lived near Geneva he had American friends who rented a house in on an astonishingly picturesque street in Ferney-Voltaire.
They wanted their immense Chesterfield with them so had a window removed and the sofa craned in. :chuckle:

(I seem to recall that it went in through the first floor, i.e. upstairs, but that can't be right. I'll ask.)
 
We're watching Moonflower Murders on t'BBC. Just now I was reading on'ere about melodramatic chefs, when the first scene of the programme showed a chaotic hotel kitchen scene resulting in the departure of the chef.

There's soon a murder under discussion.
Weirdly, Alec Secareanu who plays the alleged killer strongly resembles Luigi Mangione who is under arrest for the recent CEO murder in New York.
I thought 'Ooh, where have I seen him recently?'
 
Rino Gaetano is a singer who is still very famous in Italy (I don't think abroad). He wrote very beautiful songs, often catchy, but with lyrics that were almost always serious, provocative, of social and political denunciation.

The interesting thing, however, concerns his death: in one of his songs he predicted almost exactly the situation that would have involved him.

From Wikipedia.it:

Prediction of death and refusal of hospitalsIn La ballata di Renzo, a song written by Gaetano ten years before his death, the story of a boy named Renzo who dies in circumstances similar to those of the singer-songwriter is told:

"The road was dark, he went to San Camillo
and there they didn't accept him perhaps because of the time,
he prayed to all the saints but he went to San Giovanni
and there they didn't want him because of the strike."
(Rino Gaetano, "La ballata di Renzo")

In the song, Renzo is hit by a car and dies after being rejected by many hospitals in Rome due to lack of places, while his friends are at the bar. This has led many fans to claim that Gaetano had somehow predicted his death. In fact, the song mentions three of the hospitals that refused to admit the singer-songwriter on June 2, 1981: the Policlinico, the San Giovanni and the San Camillo. In reality, unlike the song, the singer-songwriter was rejected by the hospitals because they did not have, at the time, adequate facilities to perform the surgery he needed. [Ok Wikipedia, but you're a bit picky!]

In his book,[66] criminal lawyer Bruno Mautone hypothesizes that Rino Gaetano's death was not a random event at all, but that, on the contrary, it was a murder organized by the Italian secret services, probably commissioned by their American counterparts, since the songs of the singer-songwriter from Crotone cited names and facts that should have remained secret. According to the author, the source of Gaetano's revelations was a very dear friend of his, Enrico Carnevali, who died a few months later in a road accident "which happened like Rino, on the Nomentana". It should be emphasized that Mautone's remains only a hypothesis, for which there is no definitive evidence to support it.
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The incident car and the tree:

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