Here's my weird coincidence. In 1986 I was 14, and I really hated vomiting. My fear of vomiting haunted my childhood years. I had a real phobia, and would do anything to avoid it. I mean, no-one really liked it, bit I really, really feared it. Anyhow, I was 14 and going through some mild kind of childhood illness, and one night I felt that familiar sense of fear. I started to feel sick, and that certainty I was going to vomit came upon me. So, I made a deal with god. Right, I said, I promise that if you stop me from vomiting, I promise I won't buy Voivod's album Rrroooaaarrr. Voivod were a thrash band, and 37 years later, are still one of my favourite bands now. Pretty soon after offering up this deal to god, I started to feel a lot better, and the feeling I was about to vomit disappeared completely.
And I pretty much forgot the deal I made with god.
Fast forward a few years to the summer of 1989. I was 17, and flicking through the records in a record shop in Kidderminster. To my delight I found a copy of Rrroooaaarrr. This was now the last Voivod album I needed to hear - in the interim they had become one of my favourite bands - classic albums like War And Pain, Killing Technology and Dimension Hatross.
That night I had a dream. I can't remember much about the dream - only that it involved an exploding 'box of blood'. I woke up, and discovered, much to my horror, that while I was asleep, I had had a nosebleed, and had ended up swallowing a lot of blood. Pretty soon, I began to feel very sick. Very sick indeed. And ended up vomiting everywhere. And again, an hour later.
The next day, it struck me that I had broken my deal with god...
It's not so much the coincidence that I happened to throw up on the night following I bought the album - I can well imagine my subconsciousness remembering my deal, and somehow affecting myself so that I ended up throwing up - some kind of placebo type effect. It was more the way I had thrown up - that I happened to have a nosebleed in my sleep, unluckily ended up swallowing a lot of blood which then made me violently sick.
Quite a coincidence.
And I never ended up much liking the album anyway.