Bad Luck

I have a clock radio that is tuned to Daventry so that the time is always correct. The alarm goes off at 7 in the morning (ie the radio comes on) and stays on until 7:59:59 and then goes off again unless I push a switch - in which case it stays on. Since it's radio 4 I wake up to the final blast of the time pips and if I don't touch the button before 7:59:59, I won't hear the last pip at 8 o'clock. I'm not superstitious or anything, but if I don't hear that 8 o'clock pip, then I know some sort of disaster will happen during the day. This also holds true if I hear any of the "Archers" or indeed any of their theme tune.

As I said, I'm not superstitious, but If both happen on the same day, the day becomes evil. It doesn't happen often - the last time it did, I got a phone call from flick saying that Ed had gone into hospital with pneumonia.

The pips bit happened two days ago. Then we got a power cut and I lost a whole day's work. It happened today too. At lunch-time I discovered I had a flat tyre, and spent all afternoon at the tyre place getting it sorted - losing another couple of hour's work.

OK I am superstitious - but with good reason. I think my bad luck for today is over


..although I did see a single magpie....