Weird things

When I was at school, my Latin teacher once talked to us about the Sword of Damocles. She then said “Even if you have never heard that phrase before you’ll hear it again in the next few days because that’s that way it always works”. Sure enough, within the next few days someone used the phrase and I was in awe of my Latin teacher.

The other night I went out for a drink with a friend who runs a bookshop and I was for some reason mentioning ‘Sense and Sensibility’ as an example of something someone might order (not that I have ever read it). The next morning when I went downstairs there was a copy of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (on DVD) sitting on the table in the hall. My brain clicks through and thinks “that was a Sword of Damocles moment”. Then that evening I was reading Toxicsoup’s blog and that day’s post mentioned the Sword of Damocles. Weird – and proving that my Latin teacher is still right after all of these years.

I often get strange messages or texts on my work mobile phone. It has got a really nice phone number i.e. easy to remember, and people often comment on what a good number it is. But for some reason it also seems to be one that people dial by accident and I get drunken messages from people pouring out their woes, messages from taxi drivers waiting to pick someone up and so on. I don’t know why I explained that because this next bit is about my personal mobile, but I just thought I’d say it anyway. Er, I think maybe the point was I don’t tend to have very many unusual things happen with my personal mobile. Enough disclaimers there? Shall we move on? So…

The other night I sent a text to someone and almost immediately another friend texted me about something entirely unconnected. But then a couple of minutes later a text came in from a number that I didn’t know and the message just said “Who is this?” There was no name or anything else. I was rather confused and wondered if I had sent my text to the wrong number but according to my phone I hadn’t.

I decided not to reply, as my response could have been exactly the same - “Who is this?” – and then it would just have started to get complicated. So I don’t know if my text went astray somehow via the network or if it was some long lost friend trying to establish contact or what, but I declined to answer the question. It felt kind of weird to get the text though and made me wonder why I had suddenly received it. Other people may well have replied, but I obviously have no sense of adventure.

A while ago I got a text that said “Hi [my name]. Its Duncan are you ok I’ll send you a pic if u hve cam fone? Can you send me one?” Now apart from the fact that he seemed unable to use the Queen’s English, I was somewhat perplexed by this message. I only know one person called Duncan and I couldn’t think why he would be sending me that text. Then a few minutes later, my mobile rang and it was this chap Duncan. My mind was racing trying to work out if I knew this person. Now I *know* what I should have done was to say “who are you?” but for some reason this didn’t really cross my mind at the time and I just mumbled slightly incoherently. He just said “you sound as though you’re a bit busy at the moment” and I said that I was and he rang off. I assume that, by strange coincidence, I got a text intended for someone of the same name and it was probably going to turn into some budding romance between them and I ruined their chance of true love. Maybe I should learn something from the text I got the other night and learn to say “Who is this?” though, instead of feeling guilty for not knowing who a person calling the wrong number is.