Old wives tales

If I see anyone using a plate that has another one stacked underneath it I immediately get them to remove it. Do they not know that eating from a pile of plates kills a sailor? I have no idea where this comes from but it makes me very twitchy indeed. My friend J gets very agitated if anyone lights a cigarette directly from a candle,  as once again this puts seafaring folk  in grave danger

Apart from my plate issue I am not particularly superstitious, though I do always look for the second magpie and will avoid walking under ladders if at all possible,  and have even been known to throw salt over my left shoulder while touching wood. But these are more rituals than superstition and  I don’t do that shouting and walking backwards  thing you are meant to do if you see a bird, or take to my bed if a black cat walks across my path. I once had a huge mirror fall on to my head resulting in five stitches and my neighbour having a funny turn at the sight of all the blood, but no significantly bad luck befell me for the next seven years. Some people think leaving  your shoes on the table makes you unstable and brings doom and gloom upon your household . Personally I think shoes on the table just get mud on the table. Umbrellas being open in the house don’t bother me.  I never mange to keep hold of one for more than a day or so before I leave it somewhere so chances of having one to open are very slight. I had a friend whose father once received a birthday present of a set of beautiful kitchen knives. In his view this brought such terrible  bad luck that he wrapped them back up, put them in the attic and never opened them again. And the old wives tale that women in boats bring bad luck is complete nonsense. The fact that on a trip down the river last summer I managed singlehandedly to capsize the supposedly unsinkable canoe,  causing my partners socks and shoes to go floating downstream along with the paddle was pure coincidence. 

When we were young we used to go and stay  in Cornwall with my mothers sister and my cousins. In the village there lived an ancient old lady called Mrs Povey. She had, according to local gossip, never been further than Penzance ( all of about 20 miles) and was still convinced that the world was flat. Much to our excitement it was alleged that when it was full moon she used to scratch on her windows and howl. She was also very superstitious. She had all sorts of strange remedies for various illnesses and complaints  that  included passing a small child underneath the belly of a piebald horse to cure a cough,  and for measles she recommended hanging a live chicken upside down in your bedroom. After 24 hours the spots and infection would pass to the chicken who would eventually die,  and the patient would then hop out of bed and skip downstairs miraculously cured.  Nobody seemed to be able to verify she had actually ever done any of these, but its a great story.

I do believe,  on the whole, you make your own luck,  to pick yourself up, dust yourself down and head towards the sun believing that good things are just around the corner and that things can only, and will get better. If you are of the glass half empty persuasion I think doom and gloom are far more likely to come knocking at your door than if your glass is annoyingly, cheerfully,  brimmingly almost full. But maybe that’s just me . 

Then again I have just seen two magpies hopping across the fence at the end of the garden.