Like most people, I love a good coincidence. An almost supernatural yet statistically reasonable event that seems to echo your own, is delicious. I realise that there are some people who believe this proves the existence of a higher being but they are the sort to bow their heads and ask him if he could save them from Covid-19 even though he created it. Needless to say, I’m ignoring them.
So, yes, I love coincidences but realise they are just that and not a page torn from the Book of Gary’s Fate. And one cropped up today.
I was walking back from a disappointing yet ultimately satisfying expedition to Boots* when I bumped into Andrew. I usually see Andrew in Starbucks so it was odd to meet on the street. Anyway, I commented on how tanned he was, asking if he’d been somewhere nice.
He explained that he’d been to Barcelona in February for a birthday weekend and the weather had been delightful. Obviously this sparked a conversation about how much we both adored the Spanish city.
He told me how much he loved jazz and funk and how he visited a jazz club just off the Ramblas. He then told me about a church he walked by in the Gothic part of the city.
He’s not big into classical guitar but something about the poster outside the church beckoned him in to buy a ticket. He was not disappointed. The guitarist was superb, he said. Magical, was a word he used.
As he described the venue and where it was I realised that it was exactly where we went to see Ekaterina Zaytseva back in February 2017 when we were in Barcelona. We reminisced and compared finger plucking geniuses we’ve seen.
As an aside, the weather today was glorious. The gardeners were very pleased with it.
There were a few black clouds flapping about and there was a sudden and unexpected shower late on but otherwise, the day was beautiful.
Andrew was on his way to have someone look at his laptop which is refusing to send invoices so I let him go and continued to Waitrose passing the first few brave souls taking breakfast outside at Cote.
I guess they take March 1 as the start of Spring like the meteorological types do. Which brings me quite coincidentally to…
Today saw an interesting Twitter exchange. In response to a stupidly xenophobic Tweet regarding having a ‘patriotic breakfast’ before heading off for the Brexit negotiations, James O’Brien tweeted the following:
The thing is that the concept of breakfast is actually American, invented by two Seventh Day Adventists, James Caleb Jackson and John Harvey Kellogg in the 19th century. They did it in order to sell more cornflakes and sugar to the world. Call me cynical but that makes breakfast itself pretty much something that a True Brit should decry.
By the way, when I say ‘True Brit’, I mean the Brexit voting, immigrant hating, Little Englanders who seem to want to drive this once great group of countries back to the 1940’s. The ones who haven’t much in the way of brain cells but, usually, very big stomachs. Probably caused by all the sugar in their American breakfasts.
* I read today that the hand sanitiser that everyone has been buying out of every shop lucky enough to have stock, is useless against a virus. They are antibacterial so attack germs. A virus is not a germ. Washing your hands a lot is still the best protection.
