Earlier this month, I had to watch the film, Jaws. (I'll explain why another day. It's for a thing.)
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| Jaws |
My weeks are busy these days, but I had a spare Friday afternoon, so I settled in and watched the film. The following day, I saw some Jaws chat on Facebook. 'Strange,' I thought. 'Is my laptop spying on my TV viewing?' Then I saw why. Turns out, the day I'd chosen to watch Jaws , happened to be the 50th anniversary of the story being set. The 4th of July, 2025. Weird!
A few weeks earlier, something else happened. My cousin and I visited our shared Grandad's grave. He died decades before I was born, so while she was in the country, we went to the cemetery and tracked it down. It's faded now, and the grass was covering some of the letters. As I pushed it away and read the inscription, I looked up. 'What's today's date?' I asked my cousin. It was 22nd June. The same date that was written on the gravestone. Spooky!
One last thing to ponder. I've been getting into my family tree thanks to Ancestry.com. It's been quite the surprise that a branch of my paternal, maternal, mother's family, lived ten minutes down the road. In fact, my great, great Grandmother - Catherine - is buried in the cemetery next to my local station. The internet showed me a photo of her gravestone. It's the shape of a cross. I decided to go to the graveyard and have a wander, just to get the lay of the land. It's an enormous space. There are over 13,000 graves and it stretches as far as the eye can see. Obviously this was a needle in a haystack sitch, but I thought I'd get some exercise and see if there was anyone in an office I could ask.
I walked through the gates and saw how big the space was. I pondered whether I could work through one section of graves, now, and move onto another area next time. I chose the section to my immediate left, and headed over to begin my walk. About ten metres into the area, was a cross-shaped gravestone. I walked over. Yep, you guessed it. Out of 13,000 gravestones in a massive cemetery, Great Great Grandmother Catherine was the first one I spotted. Bizarre!
Three strange coincidences, and three mini-stories to share. But what does it all mean? Anything? Nothing? Not sure really. Regardless, I wanted to officially record the oddness, somehow. Just cos. And it doesn't mean anything's changed. I still don't believe in fate, God's will, kismet, or destiny. It's not where my mind goes. But even me, in my logical, reasoned way, thinks the last few weeks have been mad. Just thought I'd share.
I'm powering through the doubts and continuing to edit the third Leeza McAuliffe story. Leeza is also researching her family tree. Not in the same way as I am. She's not about the graves. That's only Morbid Me. No, she's interested in the life of her great aunt, whose death is the inciting incident at the start of the book. When I planned this out, last Summer, I had no plans to start researching my own ancestry. The thought hadn't entered my mind. But somewhere along the way, that's what's happened. Either I've manifested my own future plans by writing them for my characters, or more weirdly, my fictional characters have begun to guide my life from the page. I need to stop thinking about it this now. I sound deranged.
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| Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor was CHILLING. |
I saw the new Superman film. I'm not a fan of CGI. It often takes me out of the story, as my mind wanders, imagining the green screen backgrounds and the actors having to react to nothing. That being said, I enjoyed it a lot. I'm glad to see it's doing well financially, too. Not that I'd usually care about that side of things. But when the far-right media lambast it as 'woke' it's good to see their nonsense has zero effect. It's not all film news, though. This week I've been reading Deborah Frances White's new book, Six Conversations We're Scared to Have. It feels important and urgent right now. Whilst never once giving space for othering and bigotry, she leads the reader by the hand as she encourages us to consider where people's abhorrent views may come from, and why they're prevalent right now. It's academic but in the least stuffy sense. A genuinely thought provoking read.
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| FIT |
Sometimes you need a pistachio cookie to make the world make sense again. For £2, Marksies will furnish you with exactly that. I found this chunky beauty on their bakery aisle.
Out and About
Oh London. You are knackering, especially when I tackle you in a day. On Saturday I visited my Auntie, in Ladbroke Grove. I had a lovely day, a decent train journey to read my book, and a family catch up with parents and assorted siblings. Not bad, all in all.
There's a postscript to the day. My dad, who regularly chats with his neighbour in North Wales, happened to share that he'd been in London at the weekend. Turns out the neighbour in Wales had lived a stone's throw from my auntie's, for years prior to moving. Another coincidence. ISN'T THE WORLD MAD?!
It's all eyes on the Lionesses tomorrow night. If you survived the stress of Thursday's Sweden match, you might still be listening to dolphin sounds in a darkened room . It was quite the panic-making shebang. Here's hoping tomorrow is calmer all round. It'd be quite nice to have the coincidence we win the Euros again. Come on England!
Have a lovely week, folks.
Is it coincidence or is it that we get to that place by conversation with others? I have a new neighbours we are getting on fine and we have chatted, they are from Widnes, I said to the daughter I lived in Widnes when I was younger, she couldn’t wait to her Dad out who is 8 years older than myself, but it happens that we went to the same school and we lived on the same street in Widnes! So if I hadn’t been talking I would have never known, but yes it is quite weird that we’re re again living on the same Road, ps I don’t remember him from back then but nice to have good neighbours again.
ReplyDeleteAnother crazy coincidence! But perhaps you're right. Being open to the world/people/convo will show up more shared stuff maybe? N x
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