GM James Plaskett presents another of his
coincidence files.
Plaskett:
Here are 4 from my files for 1990. Once again,
they are from those that did not make it into
my book.
1) BOOEEE...BOWIE?
During the afternoon of July 21st 1990 I for
some reason thought back to an incident from
the summer of 1986. I had ben browsing through
a bookstall at London's Liverpool Street Station
and had come across a biography of the actor
John Hurt. Leafing through it I saw an anecdote
where it was mentioned that Hurtıs child had
once mispronounced the name of musician David
Bowie as "Booee". The ancedote continued that
now whenever David Bowie rings up the Hurts
he says "Hi. BOOEEE here."
At the time that had made me wonder just how
often Bowie rang up the Hurts?! It seemed a
slightly odd snippet to include in the book.
At 9:04 p.m. that evening my brother David and
I began to watch a film in his Johannesburg
home on his EMM-NET TV video channel.It was
called The Lady in Red and starred Gene Wilder.
I had not seen it before. At 9:27 a character
played by Gene Wilder heard his daughter say
that she could not do something that evening
because she had tickets to a David Bowie concert.
The mention of Bowie's name made me think back
to the earlier mispronunciation that I had thought
of that afternoon. But I noted that here was
no real coincidence because his name was encountered
often enough and here there it was said correctly.
But sure enough less than twenty seconds later
I heard Gene Wilder say to a boy with a punk
haircut "So you're taking my daughter to see
David BOOEE?" "David Bowie!", his daughter instantly
corrects him.
2) Tony Miles
At 11:05 p.m. on July 23rd 1990 I was seated
on board flight BA56 at Johannesburg airport
waiting for take off. For some reason into my
mind came a conversation that I had had with
George Botterill over a meal in Blackpool two
years earlier. I had asked him if there were
any one chess opponent against whom he always
did particularly badly. He replied that that
would have to be Tony Miles. "I've played him
about ten times and Iıve never drawn a game:
Iıve never felt like drawing a game either."
Waiting on the plane I began to think back to
any games between them that I had seen. I was
thinking about their game from a 1978 England
Vs Wales match when over the intercom there
came - : "Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
This is your captain speaking. My name is Tony
Miles."
3) Sic transit Feather
On the afternoon of October 4th 1990 I thought
back to a routine that I had seen performed
on stage by the impressionist Mike Yarwood in
1980. One of those that he had mimicked was
the trade unionist Vic Feather. I thought of
how such an impression could hardly be possible
ten years later, for now Mr Feather's name,
unlike in 1980, was hardly ever in the news.
I thought of how I had heard no reference to
him for many years.
But that very evening I was watching the TV
programme Question Time and the presenter Peter
Sissons made a reference to Mr V. Feather.
4) Apologising for the offence given twenty
years ago in childhood
On the afternoon of November 30th 1990 I was
talking with the editor at the offices of the
Bedford Citizen newspaper. A woman journalist
entered the room and asked if I was "Jimmy Plaskett".
Nobody had called me that for many years. I
said that I was and she went on to introduce
herself as Geraldine Throssell. This was her
married name. She had married the brother of
David Throssell, a boy whom I had lived near
and with whom I had been friends when we had
both twenty years earlier attended school. She
said that she had a memory of having done something
wrong twenty years ago. She said that she and
her boyfriend, now her husband, had arranged
to pick David and I up from school one Saturday
morning but there had been some delay on her
part and I had gone off in a huff, refusing
the lift home. I had walked it instead. as a
consequence she had been told off by my mother.
She said that she seemed to recall that it had
genuinely been her at fault and said that she
was sorry.
I had hardly a clue what she was talking about,
but I accepted her apology, one which she had
deliberately reentered the room to deliver,
and I joked that it was just as well that I
had popped in that day as it had given her the
opportunity to get it of her chest.
The following evening I saw at the cinema a
film called Flatliners. It was about a group
of medical students who had deliberately had
their hearts stopped in order that they might
undergo a kind of controlled near death experience.
One of them was troubled by how this had led
to the resurfacing of memories of his having
bullied a girl at school 20 years before. It
bothered him so much that he had sought out
the girl, now married, and apologised to her.
Do you agree or disagree with Plaskett's arguments?
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David Friedland | Subject: | 2001-06-05 12:07:03 |
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Mike Throssell | Subject: | 2001-07-12 13:44:10 |
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Henry | Subject: | 2002-01-06 15:28:58 |
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