COLUMNIST – KATHY CLUGSTON Just a Coincidence?

Kathy Clugston

Kathy Clugston is a freelance radio presenter. She chairs the long-running BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’ and presents the weekly entertainment show ‘The Ticket’ on BBC Radio Ulster.

JUST A COINCIDENCE?

This month, Kathy Clugston discusses a string of coincidences that popped up in her day-to-day life.

Something strange has been going on this month. It wasn’t just my seeing a long spiky object advertising itself as an ‘onion holder’ and thinking “ooh, that looks useful!” or spending a full hour gazing at YouTube videos of cats and dogs cuddling tiny babies - no, I have been beset by odd coincidences. We all experience synchronous happenings from time to time: you suddenly think of someone you haven’t thought of in ages and they phone you; a song comes into your head and you hear it on TV; you bump into your neighbours in a remote foreign location - well, not these days but you know what I mean. This is what happened lately.

1. I was out walking in the park with my friend Nuala, when she used a word I had never heard before. The word was palimpsest. It literally means an old manuscript that has been used more than once after earlier writing has been erased, but is used metaphorically to describe something that bears traces of its previous form. Hats off to Nuala for casually dropping it into a sentence. Later that day, I asked my Mum if she’d ever heard it. She hadn’t, and we talked about how unusual it was to hear a word in conversation that we couldn’t even hazard a guess at. That evening, I had a spare ten minutes before a Zoom call and decided to have a quick go at the dishes. I flipped on the radio. A Radio 4 comedy drama called Incredible Women, starring Rebecca Front, was on and I was just in time to hear her say: “Old houses are a sort of palimpsest, each inhabitant writes over the history of the previous generation…” I nearly dropped a cup. 2. One of my Mum’s many hobbies is giving off about the contestants on the TV quiz The Chase. She was amazed that some young chap didn’t know the phrase “in a blue funk”. I had to confess that I didn’t know the ‘blue’ part and ventured that it was an oldfashioned term. That very evening, I picked up a biography I’ve been meaning to read for ages and… you know the rest.

“There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed,” said Napoleon Bonaparte (in French, presumably), while Albert Einstein believed that “coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous”. I’m afraid I can’t believe God is at work, sneakily trying to increase my word power. I think we crave patterns and meanings in this crazy old world. There are plenty of statistical explanations for what we experience as coincidence, and yet… I had turned on the radio at that precise moment...

3. I did a radio interview with Belfast actor Maria Connolly, who’d written a play about the American art collector Peggy Guggenheim. I had scant knowledge of Peggy and when I looked her up I noted that Maria bore a striking resemblance to her. Maria explained that this was how the play came about – she’d been in the Guggenheim museum in Venice and was stopped in her tracks by a portrait of Peggy. They were both wearing a blue dress and a silver necklace. I was telling all this later to my partner Jim and he said, “Oh. I’m writing something for work and just before you rang I typed the words Peggy Guggenheim.”

These are the most striking events, there were

Illustration by Jacky Sheridan

other, smaller things too. I don’t know where it’s all leading. I might vanish in a puff of smoke into an alternate universe. I’d better leave a bit of space at the end in case the Editor needs to write a short but heartfelt tribute.

In the meantime, let us consider the words of the author Deepak Chopra: “When you live your life with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities.” I think I’ll go with that in future. I like the idea of a world of infinite possibilities. Let’s hope we can get out into it and bump into the neighbours some time soon.

[Note from the Editor: At time of publication, Kathy still exists in this dimension. No heartfelt tribute required.]

THIS MONTH’S OBSESSIONS:

Cribbage – Mum and I fancied teaching ourselves another game, to build on our Gin Rummy skills. So far I have learned that cribbage is where the term ‘level-pegging’ originated, and that I am very bad at mental arithmetic. Power: The Maxwells - A podcast about the dubious dealings of Robert Maxwell & family. Aimed at the US market – references to British newspapers and public figures are carefully explained – but great storytelling. Fifty/Fifty by Steve Cavanagh - The latest page-turner from the Belfast crime writer centres on two sisters who accuse each other of murdering their father.