Expect the unexpected seems like a good motto.  Peculiar events are happening already.  That was fast.

 Instead of attending a meeting, I found myself hurrying 60 miles North to rescue Child Number Two from a nasty mess of his own making.  Fortunately, the sensible footwear and explorer’s equipment were all prepared.  I used my new satnav for the first time, and felt oddly comforted by its calm presence.  Listening to ‘Perform a u-turn as soon as possible’ is so much more positive than screeching ‘My God!  I’m on my way to Ouagadougou!’ 

From number Two’s fragrant bower, while attempting to salvage a way forward through the train wreck of youth, I phoned the friend who had agreed to act as Chief Moral Support.  I wanted to warn her I would be missing the meeting, because she was only going for my sake.  Surprisingly, she had forgotten the arrangement.  She had, on a whim, driven 60 miles South, to visit her Youngest.

She does make that trip frequently, but I would still call it an odd coincidence, that unexpectedly, we should both travel sixty miles in opposite directions at the same time.  I mulled it over, as I counted the financial cost of rescuing prodigal sons.  Had I already started experiencing mysterious effects?  There are theories about coincidence.  I fished out a book I remembered half reading years ago, and I flicked through it again.  ‘The Roots of Coincidence’, by Arthur Koestler.  This is what I gleaned from it, but I am afraid it is certainly far less than was there:

Looking at the world of atoms gives us a very different view from our usual, day to day, don’t-forget-the-potatoes practical perspective.  Seemingly solid objects are really made from tiny particles moving around in a void.  Matter is not matter.  Therefore, perhaps we should not be surprised if we notice something odd. 

We have all been comfortable for the last couple of hundred years living with a belief that things happen because of cause and effect.  Someone pushes you: you fall over.  However, cause and effect is really just another theory – it explains the world as we see it right now, but an extra observation or a bit

more information could disprove it any minute, and upset the whole apple cart.  Consider the attitude of our ancestors, ‘… of course the sun moves around the Earth, you can see it every day.  It’s only common sense’. 

Some people have concluded that there is another reason why events might happen, which is not cause and effect.   Sometimes, events and objects get pulled together because they are alike in some way.  Koestler said this idea had been around some time and it had had a couple of different labels over time. I liked the sound of ‘synchronicity’, so I have adopted that.  Synchronicity may explain some of the events we perceive as paranormal, and it certainly explains a coincidence like two women who had agreed to meet, suddenly both driving away symmetrically, to be with their respective offspring.