They say that bad luck comes in threes. When I say ‘they’, I couldn’t actually pinpoint who ‘they’ are, but whoever ‘they’ might happen to be, there seem to be a lot of ‘them’ and ‘they’ worry me. ‘They’ are worrying me in particular today because I’ve just received my fourth set-back in under a week (seventh if you include my picks for the Grand National).
I won’t bore you with the details: if I say fork seals, laptop, horses, lawnmower, cat, you’ll get the gist. The point is, whether it’s four or seven, there’s something ominous in the maths. Either I’ve been given a bonus set-back or I’m due a couple more. Given that my laptop problem hasn’t been fully diagnosed yet, I suspect the latter.
By the way, I’m still relying on copy and paste to overcome my keyboard issue. I’ve created a handy depository of letters, which I’ll leave at the bottom if any of you have a similar issue and need to borrow them.
So what is luck? We have a peculiar take on it. Am I lucky that my laptop is still 95 per cent functional? Or am I unlucky that the orange squash was knocked over onto it in the first place and I had to wait a week for an appointment in my nearest Apple authorised shop just to be told that it needed to be sent away for two weeks?
A couple of years ago I fell off a ladder from a fair old height and shattered the joint where my wrist becomes my hand. They said I was lucky. But in all honesty, I would have preferred to have come down off the ladder in the orthodox manner, maybe had a cup of tea and been spared the night in East Surrey hospital, being kept awake by Phil, the Neanderthal bastard lovechild of Arthur Mullard and the Alien, shouting for the nurses every five minutes so he could swear at them about the self-inflicted pain in his leg. (If you’re reading this, Phil, how is the septicimea?)
Do an internet search for ‘the luckiest man in the world’ and you’ll be introduced to Frane Selak, a music teacher from Croatia. Dubbed ‘the world’s luckiest man’, Frane has enjoyed the varied pleasures of a train crash, a plane crash and a bus crash. He has also been hit by a bus, blown up in his car several times (you’d think he’d change mechanic) and forced off a cliff in his car by a truck. Oh lucky man!
The lucky bit, of course, is that he’s still alive. Oh, and he won $1m dollars on the Croatian lottery. Now that bit I would say was lucky. The rest? Not so much. But guess what? Frane gave all his winnings away, apart from the bit he needed for a hip replacement (huh, lucky that’s all he needed replacing), and he’s all the happier for it.
The word luck was a relatively recent addition to the English language, landing here some time around the 15th century. Before that we didn’t have any, or else we used the word fortune, from the Roman goddess Fortuna (the goddess of fortune, coincidentally). Indeed, most of the familiar sayings involving luck weren’t coined until the 19th century.
The source of the word would have been the same verbal fountain in northern Europe that spouted the Dutch geluk and the German glück. The latter became a popular surname, the 18th century composer Christoph Willibald Gluck and the 20th century artist Hannah Gluck being notable examples. Both had a fair dollop of luck in their lives – the former was patronised by Marie-Antoinette (not in the same way she patronised the starving poor), the latter was the niece of the founders of Lyons Corner Houses – which suggests (if you accept two as a reasonable sample size), that your surname can dictate the type of life you’re going to lead. Morrissey, for example, comes from the French for morose.
We can’t talk of luck without mentioning superstition. The start of my week of set-backs was, as the sharp-eyed among you will be itching to point out, Friday 13th. But I don’t believe in all that. I recently found a rabbit’s foot but it didn’t bring me any luck. On the contrary, in fact. The foot was on my bedroom carpet and the rest of the rabbit was inside the cat.
“Lucky I went for polypropylene rather than wool,” I thought to myself as I scrubbed the blood out of the fibres.
wWsS
