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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

This one is absolutely infuriating. Yesterday I was mounting some brackets on the side of a piece of equipment in my office. I had a medium sized screw gripped in my fist and reached out to put it on my desk. As I reached towards the desk, I could feel the screw in my clenched fist... and then I couldn't. By the time I opened my hand onto my desk, it was gone. I didn't feel it slip, didn't see it fall, and didn't hear it land. I performed various experiments with identical screws to see where it could have ended up, each time it was plainly obvious it was falling, and made an audible sound upon impact, and was pretty obvious when I looked for it. I've looked everywhere with a torch to see if I can find the damned thing, no sign of it. I thought it might have, in some inexplicable way, got caught in my clothing, but a search revealed nothing. Grrrr.
It'll be in my sock drawer by now.
 
Very minor, but odd. I had a vivid dream about being in a department store in the US fixing a gold star on a Christmas tree. To the left of the tree was a black plastic bin bag surrounded by the shards of a broken terracotta pot.

That morning I walked down an alley near my house, that I haven’t been in for weeks, and there against a wall, was a black bin bag with a broken terracotta vase around it. If it had been the other way round I would have been certain that the dream was an echo.
 
This is minorly strange because I hadn't seen it before : looking out of the train window as I came home from Work yesterday, I saw a flock of birds on a field. The birds were spaced about 2-3 feet apart and were too big for pigeons and the wrong colour for crows. As the train got close, the birds lifted for a moment and then settled again and I realised they were red kites - 40 or 50 of them. I know juveniles can be quite friendly with each other but assumed that birds of prey were essentially territorial.
 
This is minorly strange because I hadn't seen it before : looking out of the train window as I came home from Work yesterday, I saw a flock of birds on a field. The birds were spaced about 2-3 feet apart and were too big for pigeons and the wrong colour for crows. As the train got close, the birds lifted for a moment and then settled again and I realised they were red kites - 40 or 50 of them. I know juveniles can be quite friendly with each other but assumed that birds of prey were essentially territorial.
Red kites flick very much like vultures.
 
I'll never forget sitting on a train in Didcot Parkway on my way to Oxford and looking up to see a flock of red kites about thirty strong, circling over the train. It was ever so slightly worrying for a moment or two.
 
Very minor bit of strangeness- the day after Simon lost his screw I found an old furniture tack on the carpet in the middle of the bedroom doorway. Rusty old thing, no idea where it came from but it cannot of been there long as this is a bare foot area and yes I do vacuum!
 
This is minorly strange because I hadn't seen it before : looking out of the train window as I came home from Work yesterday, I saw a flock of birds on a field. The birds were spaced about 2-3 feet apart and were too big for pigeons and the wrong colour for crows. As the train got close, the birds lifted for a moment and then settled again and I realised they were red kites - 40 or 50 of them. I know juveniles can be quite friendly with each other but assumed that birds of prey were essentially territorial.
Good to know that they kept there two meters separation distance!
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Very minor bit of strangeness- the day after Simon lost his screw I found an old furniture tack on the carpet in the middle of the bedroom doorway. Rusty old thing, no idea where it came from but it cannot of been there long as this is a bare foot area and yes I do vacuum!
No intent to insult your housekeeping but when things like that happen you have to be very sure there are no rats or mice in the vicinity. And believe me in even the best kept household they are never terribly far away. They will drag off paper and packaging for nesting or chewing purposes. Potentially leaving any metal bits behind.
 
I have just been on the phone to my mum and she has told me something strange. When she was a little girl she had some cheap porcelain horses she used to play with a lot. Over the passage of time and play they all got smashed and lost.

Earlier this week, she found the body of her favourite horse in the back garden near the greenhouse. A few days later she found a leg but it didn't match the first pony. I asked her if she'd checked the dresser with her collection of other figurines to see if anything had vanished but she said that the porcelain ponies had been long lost before I was born. The thing is we all moved to that address in the 1980s so it's not as if the horses could have been dropped in the garden there in her childhood. It's like they have travelled through time and space to be with her again.
 
I have just been on the phone to my mum and she has told me something strange. When she was a little girl she had some cheap porcelain horses she used to play with a lot. Over the passage of time and play they all got smashed and lost.

Earlier this week, she found the body of her favourite horse in the back garden near the greenhouse. A few days later she found a leg but it didn't match the first pony. I asked her if she'd checked the dresser with her collection of other figurines to see if anything had vanished but she said that the porcelain ponies had been long lost before I was born. The thing is we all moved to that address in the 1980s so it's not as if the horses could have been dropped in the garden there in her childhood. It's like they have travelled through time and space to be with her again.
If lost toys are translocating, even in pieces, perhaps my dad's lead soldiers will suddenly appear in Lincolnshire despite having been buried in a garden in Northampton!
 
I have just been on the phone to my mum and she has told me something strange. When she was a little girl she had some cheap porcelain horses she used to play with a lot. Over the passage of time and play they all got smashed and lost.

Earlier this week, she found the body of her favourite horse in the back garden near the greenhouse. A few days later she found a leg but it didn't match the first pony. ...
Could it be these porcelain horses were mass-produced, and her recent discoveries were of some other child's (duplicate) set?
 
Could it be these porcelain horses were mass-produced, and her recent discoveries were of some other child's (duplicate) set?
There is a Chinese tradition of sets of porcelain horses which actually represent the same horse in various postures.
One horse used to be shown rolling on its back but this was discontinued as undignified.
 
Last night I couldn't find my phone to turn it off. I looked everywhere I thought it might be but no.

I went to bed & resolved to find it next day. I have an alarm set on it but it has never gone off since I've had the phone. It doesn't seem to activate when the phone is switched off, which I do at night. Sometimes I forget to switch it off but still the alarm has never worked. I've had the phone about 6 months.

This morning I heard some unusual chiming coming from downstairs. I tracked it down - it was my phone alarm clock helpfully letting me know it's location. It was underneath some papers.
 
A pathetically minor strangeness has just occurred.

I took the dog out for her afternoon stroll down the local bridleway. We were the only people on the track, nobody ahead or behind. I walked her out for about half a mile and then came back (I've got work and it's warm, so it was far enough). As we came out of the fields and back up onto the sandy path, I saw something shimmering in the sun. It was a 2013 ten pence piece, so bright and shiny as to look newly minted.

The strangeness is that I didn't see it on my way down, nobody came behind us to have dropped it and I'm positive I would have seen it as it is SO bright and shiny and the sun was reflecting off it making it unmissable.

I picked it up and brought it home. It may be lucky, you never know!
tenpence.jpg
 
Is it possible it slipped through a hole in your own pocket on the way down?
This is a good thought, but no. I've got my work uniform on and don't carry money in those pockets (not really allowed to have cash on us at work).
 
This is a good thought, but no. I've got my work uniform on and don't carry money in those pockets (not really allowed to have cash on us at work).
Maybe you didnt notice it because the sun was in the opposite direction when you walked past it the first time, or you were just distracted, but at least you are 10p to the good :)
 
Maybe you didnt notice it because the sun was in the opposite direction when you walked past it the first time, or you were just distracted, but at least you are 10p to the good :)
This is the most likely explanation - that my attention was distracted by the dog just as I walked past the ten p the first time. It was just so staggeringly visible even from quite a distance. But yes, I probably just walked over it.
 
More on the Great Nantwich Dognapping Incident -

Dog thief who stole two Labradors from outside Cheshire M&S is jailed

A dog napper who stole two dogs from outside an M&S store in Nantwich has been jailed.

Malachy Doherty and his 14-year-old accomplice sparked a massive reaction on social media when they stole two beloved Labradors called Denzel and Welly who were tied up outside the store as their owner shopped.

Thousands of people shared an appeal for information online and South Cheshire Magistrates’ Court heard that led to a tip-off, with police officers tracking down the dogs three days later to Tunstall..


The 37-year-old went on to plead guilty to theft and failing to surrender to bail. He was today sentenced to 27 weeks in prison.
 
I don't know what was worse in that particular case, the dog napping itself or inveigling (bullying?) a 14 year old into participating. :(
 
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