Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

– Auric Goldfinger (yes, the baddie in Goldfinger)

Remember the fractals? In “Seeing the Curl“, I suggested that coincidence could be a fractal curl.

In the last week, I think I’ve been falling down the fractal slide, a little like Alice down her rabbit hole. Either that, or I’ve slipped into Cheap Tabloid Horoscope World.

“This week, Piscilibrarians, you’ll uncover money you didn’t know you had. And watch out for technology. It’s not your friend!”

Every IT problem that could come to pass came to pass. In fact it didn’t pass. Each one of them set up shop, moved in the lover, had brats, who all got ‘flu… The mac, the laptop, the tablet, the printer, the ‘phones. I’m surprised the traffic lights didn’t start telling me where to go: “Don’t bloody walk. No! OK – now!” [just as a 10-ton truck careered out of control].

Mind you, the money wot was hid was good. I’d massively overpaid the tax man and ridiculously underpaid my expenses. It’s not new, it’s not gained any interest, but it’s honestly mine, so I’m not complaining.

But you know how you can go for months without anything ever “happening”? For some people, life just butts its way into thrills and excitement, doesn’t it? Being discovered as the wild face of yesterday while picking your nose in the photo booth, or perhaps eaten by an escaped and rabid dolphin at a beach party -good examples, both, of life just “happening”. So often, you just get on with it, though, don’t you? You know, you think, eat, have feelings, do more or less the same thing as you wander along. You make things happen yourself; you are – you believe – the agent of change. External interference seems minimal (“ah, but is it?”); nothing happens. Well, irritating although the IT cauchemar [pretentious French for ‘nightmare’; I can’t call it a nightmare without putting tongue firmly in cheek] was, its seeming randomness was definitely a happening. As was the cash being refunded – and in both cases, I felt as tho’ they’d happened without me doing anything.

And there’s the widgimaflip*: the sort of thing that scriptwriters (and novelists) love. The events’ seeds had been sown way back (idiots overpaying their taxes, for example) and forgotten. Only the beloved honesty (anality) of the tax man altered the single-minded (egocentric) unravelling of the Imp life. And you see, there’s the fractal! The butterfly flap of Swindon’s finest junior tax inspector caused a minor earthquake in the Imp household (I splashed out on some  fine peanut butter, in all probability).

Ah…glad I got that off my chest….

😉

*patent pending; the Widgimaflip will be 2012’s most thrilling metaphorical and metaphysical linguistic and conceptual invention….