It is now six months since the ladies told their tales.
With a delicious flashback, February started with our opening fortune cookies from New York. Mine said: If you do not have a plan for your life, someone else will and this month, once again, that seemed to be the case.
Despite a slow start, with only the father-in-law-to-be’s eerie trip to a psychic and a re-visiting of Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack in any way stimulating amidst the mundane flotsam and jetsam of modern life, February 12th really got me thinking.
This was the day that was. On it, one hundred and one years ago, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. More of that to come. But this year, it was the day that was the anniversary of the passing of my grandma and my friend’s father; I heard on the radio a request for a taxi driver whose birthday it was, he was 48, it was also his elder brother’s birthday – who was 49 – and his eldest brother’s, who was 50; and a couple won the record Euro Millions Jackpot. That same day, the local paper heralded me as Crosby’s ninth most romantic person.
And then, belated proof that those ‘giant rabbits’ I’ve been talking about for so long, exist. They may even be re-incarnations.
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/813208-the-pet-rabbit-so-large-they-thought-he-was-possessed
Fast forward a couple of days and, despite all those pints of Guinness that led to an impressive rendition of Halfway to Paradise on the karaoke, I was warned by a doctor that I could lose no more weight – numbers, in particular my weight and BMI – were significant once again, even more so now.
The next day, I got up early, to watch a programme about van Gogh: “not a madman whose madness produced his art… an educated, highly intelligent, talented individual, who suffered severe mental breakdowns, and art was sometimes a way through that, or triggered it, we don’t know.” Either way, I then discovered he had painted a Zouave, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouave ) a French Algerian soldier, and I wondered if this might have been a relative of mine?
So then what? I re-read Dave Gorman’s Are You Dave Gorman? and immediately created a Facebook for my alter ego, I’ve befriended 4 Greenbanks so far. I found a branch of my family tree I never knew existed, on ancestry.co.uk. I met Landon Donovan, a supposed lookalike. I also visited a restaurant owned by a chef I admire greatly WHO JUST SO HAPPENED TO BE SAT ON THE NEXT TABLE TO US (“it’s an honour to meet you” etc) which was next to a potential wedding venue which we loved (and were shown around by the lookalike of my arch nemesis, strangely) and then Darius Campbell / Danesh won Opera Idol before we watched a film in which the lead character is proposed to via fortune cookie.
And, just when I was beginning to think that nobody reads this blog, I was contacted by a complete stranger – an EVERTONIAN and LOCALLY BASED TEACHER – who had happened upon my site whilst trying to detect who had been sending her strange texts.
http://www.jonathangreenbank.com/archives/44
You couldn’t make this up. And then, I saw twenty magpies at school, which nobody seems to have any explanation for other than the opportunity for magpie pot pie… and the same night dreamt about breaking glass dishes, which is said to mean the end of employment pursuits, the night before the ‘dreaded phonecall’ that effectively signalled the end of normal life for a while.
