Hey, check me out; the blog had some ‘technical difficulties’. No, that’s not an Israeli army euphemism for my blog slaughtering scores of innocent Palestinian children. No, my blog home page simply went blank. As blank as a Creationist's science book. If you logged in looking for updates (ahem, yeah right) and found a blank page instead, then that’s why. Sos.

Today I nearly scalded myself quite badly trying to teach an insolent Asian a lesson in manners, which completely backfired. There's a girl\woman\female at work I see fairly regularly around the office and who has a striking absence of courtesy. I don’t think I have ever heard her say please or thank you to anyone. She hardly acknowledges the presence of anyone around her, she pushes into queues, she will barge her way off a bus in front of the other, patiently waiting passengers, she asks for stuff from the canteen with no civility, no “please can I have?” or “thanks very much”: she’s horrible.

The main thing she does that aggravates me is stalk around with her arms folded and stride through doors being held open for her with absolutely no “thanks” and no acknowledgment of the person holding the door for her. She will also, happily it seems, let a door close behind her with no attempt whatsoever to hold it if there are people following.

So, after holding doors open for her a number of times myself and being blankly ignored (like it was my job to hold doors open specifically for her) I decided that the next time I came to be going through a door in front of her, I would skim through the smallest crack and make no attempt to prop it open for her. So, I just came back from the canteen with a large cup of tea and noticed that she was walking my way back into the office. The door was already closing and seizing my opportunity to let the door close in her face I tried to quickly scoot through the diminishing aperture. What I actually managed to do was catch the sleeve of my sweatshirt on the handle, stumble and kick the door loudly enough for people to look up at me and then tip half a cup of boiling tea partly down my leg. Still, she did have to unfold her arrogant arms to open the door herself, so that taught her a lesson. I think. My leg hurts.

Back to the main theme, it would seem, of this blog – co-incidence. I’m interested more in these co-incidences now from the angle that some more impressionable people would read into them more than I do, even though I'm the one that the co-incidences are happening to. What I mean to say is that some folk with a supernatural, superstitious and religious bent would be seeing the work of a higher force at work here. Possibly.

1. Sarah and I watched ‘The Root of all Evil’ last week and in the final interview Richard Dawkins is speaking to the Archbishop of Oxford in the cemetery of a small, possibly local (to Oxford) church. In the background is a dual carriageway and I wondered out loud if it was the A34 and the church in that case would be in Botley. I took Toby to music class the following morning and as drove back home I took a wrong turn in Headington. I had my bearings roughly and decided to follow the road back to the ring road. I came to a small T-junction amongst some houses with The Black Boy pub on my right. I looked left before puling out and lo and behold, there was the church from The Root of Evil with the A40 dual carriegeway in the background. It’s in Barton by the way. Spook!

2. I was posting in the Superfuture.Superdenim forum about the dangers of buying (fake) PRPS jeans from eBay and made the statement that I didn’t want others to make the same mistakes as me. I posted, “I’m very altruistic like that”. Approximately 5 seconds later Sarah called me from the car to tell me that Richard Dawkins was on Radio 4's 'In Our Time' talking about altruism. Double spook!!


3. [Not a co-incidence as such]

I bought a McDonalds breakfast on Sunday and as I was waiting for my yummy pancakes and syrup I considered the charity box on the counter. I’ve seen them, but never paid attention to what they are actually collecting for. The money collected goes towards McDonalds’ own foundation to help families with children in hospitals that are not local to them by finding or providing low cost or free accommodation. This seemed noble enough and, as I have been paying particular attention to the level of charity work undertaken by religious organisations and the criticism of atheists and their, alleged, lack of charity I decided to donate my 98p change. I didn’t really get a “warm glow” as such from donating; it just felt like more of a duty. After all, what is 98p? Not enough money to really miss, but a decent enough amount to make some kind of difference when donated.

I walked back to my car and as I opened the door I saw a shiny £1 coin on the wet tarmac. A reward from God for my charity…..? I’ll let you decide. No, not you, the other guy, behind you, yes you, you can decide.