Friday 13th – the least of your worries!
Welcome to Friday 13th.
Now I wouldn’t say that I am an especially superstitious person, and I didn’t wake up this morning with a feeling of impending doom, as some may have done, overwhelmed by the sinister stigma of the date. My relationship with superstition is pretty much on a par to my relationship with religion. I can’t say I’m a fully paid-up card-carrying member, by any stretch, but by the same token, I’m not going to shit on a crucifix ether.
I tend to not believe that burning ears mean someone is talking about you; there is almost always a more scientific explanation, like you just fell asleep with your head against the radiator.
Some so-called superstitions are really just a way of wrapping up common sense advice, like not walking under a ladder for fear of something dropping on your head – paint, nails, slates, window cleaners, lesbians with power tools etc. Not stepping on the cracks in pavements is logical – with the state of British paths these days they are fraught with tripping hazards and badly laid slabs are just a liability. See a pin, pick it up and all day long you’ll have less chance of standing on a pin.
Some are more sinister. Literally. The idea of throwing spilt salt over the shoulder is to ward off the Devil, who is said to sit at your left side. Why the left shoulder? The Romans used to march with the regimented left, right, left, right chant we recognise in modern soldiers, but the Roman words were ‘sinister, dexter, sinister, dexter’ and hence the word has taken on its evil undertone.
Opening umbrellas indoors is seen as an unlucky thing to do, but that probably stems back to the times of ancient Egypt where umbrellas were used to provide shade from the sun; opening them indoors was seen as an insult to Ra the sun God, who would punish the offender. You really wouldn’t want to upset Ra, or his wife, She-Ra.
Why is Friday 13th also considered unlucky? Friday was execution day in ancient Rome and therefore Christ is thought to have been crucified on that day. Following the trend, Friday used to be Hangman’s Day in Britain and some believe it was the day God threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden (although the National Trust say there is no specific reason why a garden should be closed on a Friday so that is a largely unsubstantiated claim). There were 13 people at the Last Supper and the 13th Tarot card is Death. Oh, and Margaret Thatcher was born on Friday 13th, so that seems as good a reason as any to fear the worst.
Amusingly (or not) the houses on our side of the street take the odd numbers, so 1, 3, 5 etc and next door to us one way is number 11, meaning that we SHOULD live at number 13. Our house is actually 15 and to the other side is 17. Somebody thought ill enough of the number 13 to miss it out although I can’t help but wonder if this is a bit like the premise of the Final Destination films – trying to skip the number is flawed logic and the bad luck will happen anyway. Would we have bought this house if we had realised it was really number 13? I am not so sure.
I’ve never held with the idea that having a bird poo on you is lucky though – seems damned UNlucky to me (especially if the bird in question is a forty-something, thick-set, heavy-hipped Brummie called Barbara). The whole bird poo thing just smacks of being one of those things that an anguished parent once said to a distressed child who had just been targeted by a defecating duck. Parents say some terrible things to their kids and should be ashamed of themselves. If you eat apple pips a tree will grow in your tummy. If you swallow chewing gum it will get wrapped around your lungs and suffocate you. If you keep shaking your sister her head will fall off (it never did). They still do it these days too – apparently if you eat runner beans you will turn into a runner and if you eat Green Giant sweetcorn you will turn into a slightly camp version of the Incredible Hulk. Telling a child that ‘if the wind changes, your face will stay like that’ is just pure evil. As is the notion that picking your nose will cause your head to cave in. It hasn’t, despite many a pleasurable rake out. It is however, a well-known biological fact that if you unscrew your belly button your bum will fall off. Warts are a sure sign you have kissed a frog (despite the fact that kissing frogs is the only way to snare yourself a prince – methinks Camilla was a vivacious herpetologist in days gone by). Don’t get me started on Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Bogeyman or the tooth fairy. Any parent who tells their offspring such lies should be put away for inflicting mental cruelty, although I guess it could be argued that these are just preparing kids for the adult equivalents, the lies and concoctions that society throws at us every day – politics, weather forecasts, DFS sales, train timetables and religion.
Some superstitions are mostly harmless – I see no point in NOT saying hello to a magpie, and touching wood is a useful ‘just in case’ tactic.
We have a horseshoe above the front door, but that is just to counteract the fact we should be number 13. (I figure that IF these things are to be believed, one should neutralise the other and thus we can carry on with life untouched).
A specific superstition that I know to be true however is one that I was introduced to at school and has stayed with me ever since. It isn’t really a superstition, more a complex conspiracy theory, woven in a mesh of misinformation and sprinkled with just a little secrecy to keep things interesting. The enchantment goes as follows: If you sneeze three times in succession and nobody says ‘bless you’, you can be taken by the fairies. I feel the time is right to now expose the full truth of this spell, and that the world is in fact ready to know of our master plan. This is the way that the homosexual community has been recruiting for millennia. Three sneezes and you become a fairy. Forget all your theories about genetics or environmental conditioning. Forget biological predisposition, familial tendencies or possibilities that early trauma causes people to be gay. None of that is correct. It just takes three sneezes without a ‘bless you’ and you are ours! We can come and get you at any time. We don’t always convert you straight away, of course. That would mean a disproportionate recruitment peak in flu season (we invented flu too, by the way, just to make you sneeze more. And pollen) – no, you just get tagged and we can take you any time we want. We find this method of recruitment to be much more effective than TV commercials, newspaper campaigns or leaflet drops. So don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Graham Norton used to be married with three kids you know, until he sniffed a particularly pollen-filled tulip, and look what we turned HIM into. John Barrowman used to be a dustman. Sandi Totsvik and Sue Perkins were both straight porn stars in their youth – Sandi, you may recall, also performing as the stunt double for Jessica Rabbit many moons ago. Yet, one squirt of Fabreeze too many and they were sneezing like troopers. (We do apologise for the Touch And Go “Poo at Paul’s” commercial, but we needed to attract a younger apprenticeship and those things really do make people honk out some hefty sneezes).
Matt Lucas used to be a bricklayer from Luton and, prior to initiation, Julian Clary was a docker called Pete. Don’t think that marriage will protect you either. Elton John was, after all, a happily married heterosexual man, as was David Beckham (you’ll see what I mean when he eventually ‘comes out’).
You will have noticed the increase in gay activity in your neighbourhood of course, as we further our plans of world domination. Although we have to be careful. The last time we tried anything on this scale was way back in the 1660s when one particularly enthusiastic boffin tried to make a new type of sneeze-enhancer distribution system, which was to be deployed by miniature percussion cartridges strapped to the back of rats (working on the assumption that no person is ever more than 10 meters away from a rat). Sadly the spray was too potent and ended up causing some nasty side effects. We covered it all up, of course, by calling it bubonic plague, and setting fire to London as a distraction, but it was a close call!
In case you were wondering, yes, swine flu is ours, as was its precursor, bird flu but we’ve not quite got the dosages right yet and we’re rethinking the whole animal deployment programme, mainly because such schemes seem less effective on vegetarians. If ever you see pink Pepsi though, remember, you heard it here first.
If you mention any of this to anyone, we will deny it, and you have no proof. But watch out next time you pass through the perfume section in Debenhams – it isn’t always eau de toilet that they spray and it is best to travel in pairs so you have a ‘bless you buddy’ just in case. On puff and you’re ours!
