Calibrating Auspicious Sightings

Lots of very exciting work-related things have happened in the last few weeks. I wonder if these are attributable to a sighting of Miriam Margolyes on the north bound platform of the Northern Line at a station close to my home a few weeks ago. It seemed quite auspicious at the time. I felt she had a message for me but couldn't quite discern what it was.

Or is there a connection to a more recent sighting of Anne Reid round the back of John Lewis in Oxford Street? She's very pretty in real life, and was wearing a nice shade of lipstick. But she didn't seem to be trying to tell me anything. Perhaps, on that occasion, I was the apparition, sent with some messenge for her? If so, I can't tell you what it was, being the vessel and not the originator. Even if I did know, there's probably some kind of confidentiality clause that covers that kind of thing.

Although I tend to feel that it was Miriam Margolyes who was the harbinger of this change in my fortunes, it's quite possible that I have missed out on seeing other bearers of good news. You see, a friend of Kyle's told him the other day that he had found £97 on the ground in the last three months just by looking out for it. I'm not sure that I quite believe it, although Kyle assures me it's true - apparently the floor of supermarkets offer particularly rich rewards. I have been keeping my eyes to the ground. So far, all I have found is 20p, and that was on the carpet in the living room, which doesn't really count as it probably belonged to Kyle in the first place. Perhaps he was just trying to give me hope that I would find money if I looked hard enough?

I think I will go back to walking with my eyes on the crowds and my thoughts in the clouds. In the mean time, I have the sighting of Miriam Margolyes to sustain me. I wonder if there's a way of calibrating these sightings in terms of the good news they herald? e.g. one Miriam Margolyes equals x number of theatrical commissions, an Anne Reid foretells a successful meeting at the BBC, and so on.

I read an interview with John Hurt recently, in which he said he likes walking around London because no-one recognises him. People do recognise him, of course - they just pretend not to. He passed within an inch of me once, in Soho about ten years ago. Was that around the time I heard I was going to get my first novel published?