Being Bitten to Death By Mosquitoes - Now That Is Unlucky!

Apologies that there was no blog last week but I was away with work.

This week will be a bit shorter than normal as I have again been travelling away all week and I am rushing to fit this in – but here goes ….

Today - the dreaded day arrives – Friday the 13^th.

It is supposed to be a very unlucky day, so I would recommend not doing anything that requires an amount of luck. Apparently the fear of this day is known as paraskavedekatriaphobia – not something my spellcheck had ever heard of.

The origins of this unlucky day are mostly mediaeval which probably explains a lot, bearing in mind the level of god-fearing and witch-burning that was going on during that period.

There are several theories;

• It was the day that Eve bit the apple from the tree
• The day the great biblical flood began
• There were 13 people at Jesus's last supper on Maundy Thursday, the day before Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday
• On Friday October 13th 1307 Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar.
• The 14th century execution of Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay, took place on Friday the 13th. He cursed the Pope and the King of France, and this spread misfortune down the ages.

All of these seem possible but rather tenuous, but obviously something started it.

There have been a large number of historic “incidents” to demonstrate that the curse is real;

• In 1976, New Yorker Daz Baxter was apparently so afraid of Friday the 13th he decided the safest place to stay was his bed. Mr Baxter was killed when the floor of his apartment block collapsed that day – so don’t try staying in bed!
• In 2009, the £13.5 million SAW ride at Thorpe Park had its opening premiere, only to be shut down due to a computer programming fault.
• In 2010, lightning struck a 13-year-old Suffolk boy on Friday 13th at 13:13. Definitely unlucky for him
• During the early 1990s retired bus conductor Bob Renphrey also vowed to stay in bed on the superstitious day after some seriously bad luck. The Welshman has crashed fours cars, fallen into a river and been made redundant on previous Friday the 13ths – now that is a real reason to fear the date!
• Buckingham Palace was hit by five German bombs on Friday September 13 1940 with both King George VI and Queen Elizabeth coming close to being killed. One member of the royal staff died and the palace chapel was destroyed
• A Chilean Air force plane ‘disappeared’ in the Andes on Friday 13 October 1972, with 16 survivors turning up two months later. They had been forced to eat dead passengers in order to survive
• Rapper Tupac Shakur died of his wounds on Friday September 13 1996, six days after being shot multiple times in a drive-by shooting
• The Costa Concordia cruise ship ran aground on Friday 13 in January 2012 off the western coast of Italy killing 30 people
• Isil carried out seven coordinated terror attacks in Paris killing 130 people on the evening of Friday 13, November 2015.

 (All “facts” sourced from The Telegraph)

This is probably tempting fate but I am sure if you wrote an article on any other day of the year across history, that you could find equal amounts of death and destruction that you could attribute to the date. But you never know, and who is going to tempt fate when the notion of a cursed day is made aware to them.

It does provide opportunities for those who wish to risk their future. Many things are cheaper such as weddings or flying.

So as you go about your day – see whether you too can win from the curse of Friday 13^th – if you dare!

Agrigento

One day on our recent holiday felt just like Friday 13^th or possibly April 1^st.

As we left our hotel one morning to move on to another town we were presented with the usual challenge of – “you need to pay for taxes extra”. This seemed to happen at every hotel and surprisingly enough the money never seemed to warrant a receipt and often was cash only into their back pocket. (Not that I think some people might be on the fiddle).

This particular morning, we were ambushed with an excessive demand for cash as it included a parking payment. Thankfully we had exactly the amount they demanded but nothing more. “It is ok, we will stop and get some cash on the way”, we thought.

As we drove out of town, we looked for a bank. Nothing jumped out, so we kept going. We were heading for Agrigento, a famous Greek historical site.

We pulled off the road in a nameless town and went to the bank.  We found a “Bancomat”. Sadly, despite it saying that it accepted all known cards, our collection of cards from various financial institutions didn’t work.

Puzzled, we carried on towards our destination. We now began pulling into every service station or collection of official looking buildings, but alas no Bancomat.

We finally arrived at our destination an hour late and came to the parking area. It required cash only to park and there was no cash machine. We drove off again to the nearest town looking for a dreaded Bancomat.

Finally, after several other attempts of using our cards in a machine, we found a different type of machine that worked. It felt like the moment that you find water in the desert having walked for miles feeling thirsty and dehydrated. We were elated.

We walked back from the Bancomat to the car, which we had cleverly parked in a supermarket car park out of the way of the terrible traffic surrounding the bank. The feeling of elation quickly subsided and was replaced by a gut feeling of terror as we saw that in the three minutes that we had acquired our cash, we had now been locked into the car park behind a huge metal gate.

We rushed to the car park and tugged at the gate. It shifted – thank god. My better half stood in the gap while I nipped to the car and drove towards the gate.

The owners arrived waved their hands at us in anger and shouted in Italian. They tried to close the gate, but my better half didn’t budge. She is pretty determined when she needs to be.

I squeezed the car into the gap and we left in a hurry, unsure why they were so irritated by the two foreigners that had gate crashed their parking rules and left without a word of thanks, or at least they didn’t listen to our best Italian “thank you”.

We now had 90 mins to look at a site that usually can take a good day, having driven 3 hours to get there and three hours to get back.

But it was worth it!

How many people know that you can take your animal on a plane?

How many people have seen someone taking their animal on a plane?

I have heard of people putting animals in the hold, but never actually having them in the seating area itself ….

On our journey back from Italy we had to fly via Rome.

As we walked down an escalator towards the gate in Sicily, I heard a noise that sounded like a cat. As we reached the bottom we looked around and I could still hear a cat calling.

It seemed like it was coming from under the escalator. Maybe there was a cat trapped in the mechanism. We peered into the mechanism but could see nothing. We were about to ask a lady who had just arrived at the bottom of the escalator, when we realised that she had a cat in the bottom of her cabin bag. It was hidden, but it was noisy.

“Are you allowed to smuggle cats on a plane”, I thought. “How did she get it past security?”.

Well you are allowed to take them with you. Just as long as they go under the seat in front in a suitable carrying case. This cat was not in anything remotely suitable, but clearly that bit of the rule was not being applied in this case. Maybe this cat was used to flying?

We boarded the plane and thought nothing more of it.

As we were seated waiting for take-off, the lady with the cat in the bag, boarded the plane and sat immediately behind us. The cat was still calling for help, and more and more people looked over to see what was going on. The flight crew took no interest as if it was an everyday occurrence.

During the flight, the cat finally settled down. It stopped shouting and began to moan quietly as if wounded.

The flight passed relatively quickly and the pilot announced that we were about to land. This was the point that the cat clearly panicked. Sadly, this resulted in it pooing into the bag.

I know this because the smell started gently and then spread around the plane. It was so strong that it almost made you gag. At first you hold your breath, but then as your face turns blue and your veins stand out you gasp in fresh breath filling your nose and lungs with more smelly air.

Everyone looked around hoping that we weren’t going to be circling around for too long. An image of the inside of the bag came to mind with the poor cat lying amongst a collection of its own excrement.

The lady looked on as if nothing had happened. Then I heard her explain to someone in English, that when we landed she had to drive another couple of hours to get home. The thought of the cat cooped up in her car for two more hours didn’t bear thinking about.

As the plane door opened and the sunlight streamed in, everyone rushed to get off.

I can honestly say I have never been so glad to get off a plane.

Somehow the link below springs to mind when remembering this event.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17wpi

Welcome Home - Now Pick Me Up!

Coming back after a holiday is always a sobering experience.

Within days the cats had delivered me a live mouse into the bedroom while I was asleep and then followed that up by bringing us a live rat into the hall while we were eating our dinner. They were pleased to see us, but only as long as we kept their food bowl well topped up.

The catalytic convertor on my car has now decided to fail more completely and the warning light is now almost permanently on with the occasional time off for good behaviour. A likely expenditure that I really could do without at this stage.

The greenhouse now has no sun to grow any of the plants, and my better half decided to take the bull by the horns while I was at work and pull all the plants up. This was rather unexpected, and it has created a spectrum of tomatoes. A spectrum because we have tomatoes in every state of ripeness – see the picture.

At this time of the year, tomatoes from the greenhouse can be used in many ways. However, drying them in the oven and then using them with pasta is particularly good. The green ones can be fried to give a pleasant accompaniment to meat dishes.

Finally, this week has been dominated by the name Harvey.

Ben Stokes rather disappointingly performed a public impression of Katie Price’s disabled son Harvey, for which he had to apologise. Why do sports people not understand the influence they have on others?

But more obviously, Harvey Weinstein has been castigated for sexually harassing women. I think he deserves all he gets, but I am only surprised that people were surprised by this behaviour from a Hollywood executive. I thought the immoral behaviour of producers and money men in Hollywood was already understood by everyone who had ever read anything about Hollywood. The notion of people having to sleep with someone to get a part has been described since films began.

The link below is probably a bit tenuous but certainly relevant to Mr Weinstein.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47PtUvHIQpk

Have a great weekend!

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