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I was, in my younger days, standing in the chicken run. Do you go to Stratford?
I was a West Side boy! Moved to East Yorkshire 28 years ago so dont get to go much. I was born and raised in Stratford so when I do go back its a bit mind blowing seeing it as it is now.
 
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My older brother had a season ticket in he chicken run. Then his work changed and couldn’t go on Saturdays, so I used to blag his ticket.

That was years ago though. I’m happy to say that his allegiance has changed ever so slightly over the years, and that these days he has a season ticket with me at Brisbane road, along with his son and his grandson
Football and I have fallen out unfortunately, but I went to Brisbane Road a few times and always enjoyed it.
 
This morning I was listening to Michael Caine on t'wireless reading from his memoirs. One of his anecdotes was as follows:

He lived near George Harrison and they'd socialise at each other's houses.

One day when Harrison popped round, Caine said 'Oho, brought your guitar then?'

Harrison said 'No, it's not a guitar. It's a ukulele. I'm a member of the George Formby Society.'

He then entertained Caine's delighted family and guests with a selection of George Formby songs. :)

So... today at work I spotted a customer holding a ukulele. I'd never seen someone open carrying one before! :chuckle:

He enjoyed the Caine/Harrison story.
 
today at work I spotted a customer holding a ukulele. I'd never seen someone open carrying one before!
I thought we had laws about that sort of thing?
Surely he must've submitted his details to the police to get a licence, and needs to keep it in a locked cabinet, and is only allowed to have a certain number of replacement strings?
 
I was thinking about redheads earlier on this morning and checking the racing post I noted Sassy Redhead was going in the 2:25 at Chelmsford. Sure enough she won at odds of 11/1. I was a bit miffed as I had noted it but not acted on it. I have seen this name type occurrence in the past in relation to picking horses. It has always interested me on how there appears to be something odd about being drawn to a name that subsequently wins but its pure coincidence isnt it!!
Your story reminds me of an incident that happened back in the late 1980’s. I was walking to a bookies in Farringdon London, to place a bet on a horse called Take- the- Biscuit . As I rounded a bend in the street, I noticed a commotion going on further up the road near Farringdon tube station. A car’s engine had caught fire and smoke was billowing out of the open bonnet. A quick-thinking guy who worked in a shop next to the station came out with a bucket of water and affectively put the fire out.

Nothing more to see so I waked past and entered the bookies and noticed that there was a horse running that afternoon at Doncaster, called “Burning Car”. I took this as a sign so put £10 on it each way - which was a lot more than I was originally going to put on Take- the- biscuit.

It came second from last unfortunately. Stupid signs and omens etc
 
Sorry but I must digress into an old joke you have reminded me of:

I was on my way to 'the bookies' to place a bet on a horse and on the way there I saw a police car with '999' on the reg plate, attending to a car crash involving 9 vehicles, outside a pub called "The 9 of Diamonds".
So I went in 'the bookies' and a race due to start at 9.09am had a horse called "Nine times Nine", at odds of 9/1.
So I bet £99 on it to win.
It came in ninth.

Back to the topic now thank you.
 
I recently drove down a back road that I had not used for years. Sad to see a few bedraggled flowers at the side of the road and I then recalled that they had been placed at the scene of the murder of a young woman a few decades before. I've prob mentioned it before but someone I knew had the same name as the murderer, drove the same type of vehicle and lived and worked in the same area as the wanted man. He was hounded by the Police as you might expect despite looking nothing like the bloke they were after. On top of this my friend continued to have the most appalling luck in his life but despite this always remained positive and upbeat, whereas I would think that his experiences would have seen a good few off. He moved and I've not seen him for 25 years or more and I hope he is ok.
 
This has just happened.
This morning I ordered tickets for 4 of us to see the venerable Thijs van Leer's prog-rockers Focus down in Haslemere on Sat 15th of April.
Cost a (not unreasonable) £96.
Literally within 2 minutes, I got an email alert that good old Ernie had coughed up a Premium Bond win - of £100.
 
This has just happened.
This morning I ordered tickets for 4 of us to see the venerable Thijs van Leer's prog-rockers Focus down in Haslemere on Sat 15th of April.
Cost a (not unreasonable) £96.
Literally within 2 minutes, I got an email alert that good old Ernie had coughed up a Premium Bond win - of £100.
It's usually the other way around- you win on the P/B's and then your washing machine packs up.
 
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.
 
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.
Good job it wasn't Des O'Connor's greatest hits then, as it might have been permanent!
 
't'other night I watched a recent 'Missing People'-themed programme which mentioned one Finn Creaney, aged 32, a bushcraft expert who hasn't been seen since setting off on a mountain walk in Scotland in March 2022.
He left his pregnant wife and a young child behind.

Looked him up, thought 'Oh dear, doesn't look good!'

Next programme was about the Scottish police searching in rural Scotland for, yes, the same Finn Creaney.

They really did pull out all the stops, to no avail. The family are continuing to look for him.

Wonder what happened to him?
 
't'other night I watched a recent 'Missing People'-themed programme which mentioned one Finn Creaney, aged 32, a bushcraft expert who hasn't been seen since setting off on a mountain walk in Scotland in March 2022.
He left his pregnant wife and a young child behind.

Looked him up, thought 'Oh dear, doesn't look good!'

Next programme was about the Scottish police searching in rural Scotland for, yes, the same Finn Creaney.

They really did pull out all the stops, to no avail. The family are continuing to look for him.

Wonder what happened to him?
You've got to wonder what happened to him, given that he is/was a bush craft expert.
 
Similar here, I get invited to school sorority reunions in the US. Every congressman across the divide wants my support. The US gun lobby inundate me. And from the content of my emails I seem to be having countless weekend breaks across the States and Canada with a multitude of different women. Essex doesn’t seem that exciting with all this going on.
This was happening to me with some woman in the US giving my email address too! One had her correct email address in the text so I’d started forwarding her mail to her and asking her to check it in future. I even got emails from her wedding planner asking me for my opinion on crudités. It stopped after I responded to her hotel booking by requesting a room upgrade to the deluxe.
 
You've got to wonder what happened to him, given that he is/was a bush craft expert.
The explanation is probably either sadly mundane - he misjudged the weather and terrain, got lost and died of exposure - or more complex - the planned expedition was a diversion from his true intent to either disappear into a new life or do away with himself.
 
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.
About 10 minutes ago, just before I read this, on radio 4 the actor Tuppence Middleton was talking about her emetophobia - a fear of vomiting.

So, not having come across the fear of vomiting in decades, if ever, I stumble across it twice in a few minutes, which feels like a coincidence to me.
 
About 10 minutes ago, just before I read this, on radio 4 the actor Tuppence Middleton was talking about her emetophobia - a fear of vomiting.

So, not having come across the fear of vomiting in decades, if ever, I stumble across it twice in a few minutes, which feels like a coincidence to me.
I wonder about emetophobia. Some phobias make a sufferer throw up on the spot.
If emetophobia works the same way, well, unlucky.
 
My coincidence -
Chess keeps cropping up. I keep seeing references to it online and on TV, even on t'wireless. Chess imagery is everywhere,
My brother posted photos of himself on Facebook playing it. A relation I visited had a posh chess set laid out on his coffee table.

Chess is not exactly an enthusiasm of mine, to say the least. I'm not looking for it.
 
About 10 minutes ago, just before I read this, on radio 4 the actor Tuppence Middleton was talking about her emetophobia - a fear of vomiting.

So, not having come across the fear of vomiting in decades, if ever, I stumble across it twice in a few minutes, which feels like a coincidence to me.

She's elsewhere in the media, reporting that she also suffers from OCD. What are the odds, eh?

Dr. Otter diagnoses that her new project is a stinker and "Tuppence" (*retch*) requires sympathy & publicity.

maximus otter
 
My coincidence -
Chess keeps cropping up. I keep seeing references to it online and on TV, even on t'wireless. Chess imagery is everywhere,
My brother posted photos of himself on Facebook playing it. A relation I visited had a posh chess set laid out on his coffee table.

Chess is not exactly an enthusiasm of mine, to say the least. I'm not looking for it.

You're just a pawn.
 
A tiny coincidence in my email inbox.

Two consecutive emails - one about a lost dog, the next advertising the 'pawfect escape for you and your pooch'.

Looks like one dog went early of its own accord...

(Bog Island is the name given to a large traffic island in Bath that used to house underground public toilets.)

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