You really couldn’t make this up.
Another strange month, culminating in a life-changing few days in New York, more of which next time.
But the twenty two days before our departure was event-filled and offered yet more – as if it were needed – evidence that my seven ladies were telling the truth.
The month started with a trip to a self-help guru training day, all very useful, and the journey there brought chance encounters with two very influential old tutors who had sat themselves (separately) in the same carriage on the train there.
The following day, on a different train entirely, I met an interesting family who themselves showed a sincere interest in what I was writing in my little notebook about (them) and proceeded to borrow my phone, discuss Christmas spending amounts, and comment on my niceness, whilst swigging Stella from a can. What intrigued me about this meeting was that they now have my phone number – long story – and I wonder to myself, will this development come back to haunt me?
It hasn’t yet.
This was the day I also completed a ‘mental toughness’ questionnaire, and I was not entirely surprised to find out a couple of days later that I had the lowest possible ‘mental toughness’ score, one category of which looks at how ‘in control’ you are of your life. Every participant receives a ‘coaching’ report full of useful advice for improvement – I will be looking to follow this over the next few months and check my progress….
Perhaps the highlight of the start of the month was the World Cup. I prayed that England might get paired up with Algeria, the land of my fore fathers, and just as Derren Brown suggested might happen, my wishing came true and the two countries will play each other next June in South Africa. I immediately began collecting information on Algeria, though planning a sojourn there this year proved problematic when BA advice suggested nobody travel there unless it’s absolutely necessary… However, I also found out that one of their squad plays for Blackpool.
All the above, and following, was played out against the backdrop of a rather uncomfortable domestic situation in the flat above that which I recently moved into, the woman there, in between drunken-sounding screams, sounds as if she could be the two-faced individual / one who likes a drink that the fortune tellers warned me about?
A school trip encouraged me to consider converting to Judaism, and a TV drama was aired about someone whose life is dictated my fate and numbers, meanwhile hands came back in to my thoughts for a reasons that will soon become very apparent. And, at my grandma’s ninetieth birthday – the age I was told I will also live to – we discovered that two of my relatives were buried together, nine days apart, over a hundred years ago.
However, the main reason that all of this paled into insignificance during December was because the proposed trip to New York was put into serious doubt ahead of the planned strike by BA cabin crew during the period our trip was booked. Days of uncertainty, waiting for contradictory press statements, were nightmarish, given what was in store, but all the while I kept a secret security inside myself that told me everything would be ok.
You see, whilst most of the fortune tellers had foreseen me crossing the waters and having a good time, others had seen the year ending on a high, and a couple had suggested I consider living abroad, one in particular had been adamant that I would receive very good news on December 17th.
Lo and behold, an announcement was made on December 17th that the strike ballot was illegal and we would, after all, be going to New York…
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